Heidi Called. She Wants Her House Back

With this sort of house design, you’re shooting yourself in the foot while accidentally banging your head.

Its attraction must be that it's a cheap method of construction, because you’re only really paying for two thirds of a normal house.

Instructions: Put up two walls. While cement is wet, let walls fall towards each other. Return unused roof and nails for full refund.

The thing that keeps looming large in my mind is the crap that must collect behind the furniture that can't be pushed any closer the wall.

When I first met Emergency Contact, she was living in an attic and throwing cats at passing school children. (One of those things is not actually true.) The pitch of the roof meant there was only a two foot stripe down the middle of the room where I could actually stand up. The rest of the room was essentially unusable.

This is where the house design above seems like a false economy. Look at how much space is actually wasted - all the floor area you can't really use because you can't walk up to it. I reckon you'd have to measure in about six foot from any floor/roof join before you found enough useful airspace to stand... and you haven't even got the furniture in yet.

In the snow fields of Nordic countries and Switzerland, maybe there's a call for it. The terror of tonnes of snow busting through the shallow pitch of your roof might be a real thing.

But this place is just up the road from me. Sydney’s land prices are steeper than that roof. It's the middle of winter and it was 25 degrees C yesterday. Global climate meltdown and economic warming (what - ever) lead me to ask, “Come now, chalet you can’t be serious?”

Thank you and good night.