modern

It's a shed. It's a work studio. It's a bedroom for your mother-in-law. Yes!

We're talking about pre-fabricated home additions by the Seattle-based Modern Shed. These structures are unattached to the primary home and can range from uninsulated traditional storage sheds to the more finished 'modern shed' complete with glass doors, windows and maple plywood walls. This company is filling the void for consumers who don't want the headache and, often, higher cost of adding on to their existing home.

Yesterday, a solar house landed in New York's Times Square.

Dubbed the Lumenhaus, the high-tech home is Virginia Tech's award-winning entry in the 2009 Solar Decathlon. It was supposed to remain open to the public through Sunday, but it's Broadway debut was cut short when it was dismantled late last night due to permit issues (thanks, Mayor Bloomberg).

Kent Griswold hasn't turned his dream into reality – yet – but he's making a living blogging about it. His passion? Tiny houses. And he may have hit on something.

Griswold, 51, started his blog, Tiny House Blog, a few years ago just to have a place to put his assorted photos and links collected during years of fantasizing about owning a cabin home in the mountains.

Now, in just the past year, his blog is receiving triple the number views, from five to 6,000 unique visitors each day. Griswold tries to keep up a steady nearly-daily posting of interesting tiny home solutions, from build-it-yourself options that range from a 102 sq. foot number with a building plan that starts at $859, to a 16' x 20' Vermont cottages to micro lofts.

And there's an ever-increasing amount of readers who are more than happy to share their own stories. Griswold thinks the economic downturn is responsible for the building-small craze.