Microhouse

Microhouse: Your Partner in Innovative Backyard Cottage Design

As an award-winning collaborative, Microhouse is passionate about creating exceptional designs for backyard cottages, small houses, and their communities. Our team takes pride in crafting innovative solutions that are customized to our clients’ unique needs.

Our Comprehensive Services

At Microhouse, we are the go-to experts in Seattle for backyard cottage design and permitting. Our goal is to help our clients exceed their expectations by creating small homes that are both functional and beautiful. With our extensive experience, we make informed design decisions from the outset and throughout the entire process, allowing our clients to optimize their resources and focus on what matters most to them. We work with top-notch consultants and home builders to ensure quality and affordability in all that we do.

Exploring Possibilities and Costs

We understand that determining what is possible for your lot and establishing a realistic budget are crucial questions when it comes to backyard cottages. To accurately answer these questions, we offer paid site visits, where we collaborate with a contractor who has built backyard cottages. Together, we assess the existing conditions that may impact construction and discuss how to best achieve your goals. Based on this assessment, we provide a rough schematic design and a summary of pre-construction costs. The contractor will also prepare a budget outline for your project. Upon completion, you will have a reasonable budget and timeline to guide your project, and we can begin the design process. If you choose to engage our design services, the cost of the scheduled site visit will be credited towards your design fees.

Getting Started

We understand that feasibility questions are important, and we are happy to address them over the phone. To begin the process, simply send us an email with your address and tell us about your goals for your small house or backyard cottage. We will schedule a follow-up phone call and/or site visit to kickstart your project.

Open Houses and Workshops

Microhouse also hosts workshops and open houses, providing a great opportunity to learn more about small houses and backyard cottages, and to connect with others who are interested in building and living in these unique spaces. These events are held periodically throughout the year. For the current schedule, please visit our backyard cottage blog.