Cottage industry / Renovation of a tiny - wait, make that minuscule -- house in Pacifica turns its owner into a specialist in compact living

smallhousexx_027.JPG Dirk Dieter's 210 square foot house in Pacifica. Photographer: Eric Luse / The Chronicle names (cq) from source Dirk Dieter smallhousexx_027.JPG Dirk Dieter's 210 square foot house in Pacifica. Photographer: Eric Luse / The Chronicle names (cq) from source Dirk Dieter Photo: Eric Luse Photo: Eric Luse Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Cottage industry / Renovation of a tiny - wait, make that minuscule -- house in Pacifica turns its owner into a specialist in compact living 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

Dirk Dieter collects old kitchen appliances and car bumpers, which would warrant a "so what?" except that his entire house isn't as big as many kitchens, and his garage functions as his only closet.

In 1999, the industrial and exhibit designer paid $101,000 for the 250-square-foot Pacifica house built on a triangular lot along dead-end Short Street in 1954. In the old days, it most likely was a warming shed for local fishermen, but Dieter envisioned an affordable entry into the hot California real estate market.

Recently, he completed a modest but dramatic renovation that inspired him to formulate strategies and design furniture (www.verb2.com) for streamlined living.

The strategies did not include expansion. Well, OK, Dieter added 20 square feet to the house for a more formal entry and a laundry nook. And he built on a 224-square-foot garage, so he could keep the house clutter-free while he trained himself to live a simpler life.

"This house has an interesting history of people who lived here, trying to live very humbly and inexpensively," Dieter, 47, said as he guided an understandably short tour of the property, the outside of which is distinguished by a coastal cypress tree in the yard and a Kelly-Moore Bergamot Orange door in the entry.

"There was a guy with no shower who used a dump bucket. I don't think it was ever Sheetrocked at all: I found inside the walls newspaper from the '70s. It had been repossessed, foreclosed on, and I bought it from the bank and redid most of the work."

It didn't take long for Dieter, who grew up in a four-bedroom house in Berkeley, to learn the pitfalls of living in the little place on Short Street. For years, neighbors had taken to cutting through his yard to get to the park at the end of his street; he redid the fence. Humidity and smoke took a large toll on his confined space; he designed and installed a custom range hood.

And contractors seemed to giggle at him when he asked for bids, which was compounded by the fact that living in a house during construction is bad enough when the house has more than one room to begin with, and his didn't.

But he managed to open up the floor plan, demolishing the wall that had closed off the kitchen and creating a chef's haven with what remained. He kept the small stove and fridge, put horizontal-grain doors on the cabinets to widen the look of the space, and installed two sinks, figuring he could always top one with a cutting board if he needed more counter space. The lights are covered in bent acrylic that TAP Plastics manipulated to his specifications, and overhead there's room for a few of those old kitchen gizmos.

A black Corian counter, sanded and oiled, doubles as a dining table and barrier to Dieter's work space.

"I definitely don't want people in the kitchen, but I do want them helping me," he said.

A refi allowed him to add the garage.

"Part of simplifying life is not having a huge mortgage -- some people work for their house," he said. "The only burden, really, is keeping things neat. It really helps to have a garage -- mentally and physically -- to throw things in there and get them off my mind.

"People wondered why I didn't want to build more living space, but I seriously needed that (garage) space during construction for materials, and now it's where the junk resides. My car has been in there maybe two times." (It's a small car, by the way, a green Metro.)

If having a garage or some other designated chaos space qualifies as Chapter 1 in the Dieter textbook on living large in a small space, there are some other chapters he might include:

-- Nix doors that swing. Find cabinets with sliding doors, and use curtains or shades to partition off space. (Dieter's "laundry room" is a nook stashed behind a natural-fiber shade.)

-- Multipurpose furniture, such as Dieter's futon, and folding furniture, especially chairs, add flexibility. These pieces do not have to be ugly; Dieter has found modern and comfortable chairs at Ikea and Design Within Reach.

-- Put furniture on rollers for easy cleaning and access to partitioned areas. Some rollers come with brakes or locks, providing stability for beds and couches.

-- Build into the walls to create nooks and display areas, but don't build into the room with molding, baseboards or even door and window frames. Even carpet intrudes on space; Dieter used bamboo on his floors. "Basically, everything that comes into the room, I'm taking away," he said.

-- Make cardboard prototypes for possible additions to make sure they'll fit into the scheme of everyday life. Dieter even put up a mockup of his range hood to confirm that yes, it really did need to be just 3 inches deep to ensure that it wouldn't regularly meet with his head.

-- Think vertically. Narrow spaces between cabinets and appliances create storage for pans and cutting boards. An Ikea accessory that affixes to the ceiling and floor provides a full-length mirror and hat or coat hooks. Dryer stacks atop washer.

Along those lines, Dieter came up with a pair of original designs. One is the rolling, 77 1/2-inch-tall Tower of Power for audio-video equipment, a vertical stack of home entertainment storage with a power strip along the back; his is made of maple and tinted acrylic and can be duplicated for $1,025 or customized in various materials and specifications.

The other is the rolling, 69-inch-tall Clothes Tower, an off-the-shelf aluminum bun rack with eight drawers in 1/2-inch Russian birch that holds all of his clothes that aren't hanging. It's $875 -- "not Ikea prices, but not Design Within Reach, either," Dieter said, "and well made to last a lifetime."

His latest piece is a hanging storage cube, to serve as a nightstand next to a bed or lamp table next to a sofa, or as both next to a convertible sofa.

"It's like the old college thing, where you build up the bed and put things below it," he said. "The thing for me has been, keep it light and airy."

So far, so good. The last time Dieter had his little pad appraised, it was valued at $375,000. Of course, he noted, "You have to find somebody to buy it. I think it will be a good rental."

Good thought. Although he's managed to have as many as eight people over at one time, it's not as if anyone would want to live there with him, not even his girlfriend, Yvonne O'Brien of Aptos.

"I have a small house, but that is a really small house," she said. "When I first went over, I was impressed by the garden, the yard, the way it was laid out -- you feel like you have more room than you think because it's not cluttered. He's made it very comfortable. I've stayed for weekends with my dog (border collie Pi) and we've never bumped into each other."

As the saying goes, it's a nice place to visit but ...

"It's fine for a weekend, but to live there, no," she said. "Just my clothes alone would fill it."

Well, she could always stash them in the garage. Dieter did have that part of the structure engineered to allow for the possibility that a second story could someday be placed on top.