Affordable Living: Tiny House with Clever Design

We were just bartending at the time so we didn't really have like a whole lot of money to do this. This is a absolute savior for the storage space issue that we had. Waking up here is just magical. Even the rough times you look back on it and you're just like, oh my god, I learned so much. Hi, I'm Taylor. And I'm Teddy. Come take a tour with us. All right, welcome to the kitchen. This is one of my favorite places in this house. I think the way it came out, the design, everything worked out great. It's basically a galley kitchen. There's a little bump out here that just gives us extra counter space. When we moved into this space, we actually increased the amount of counter space that we had, the amount of cabinetry that we had, and eat-in ability. My wife's favorite is this deep sink. I think I actually like petitioned for getting a split sink and I'm very happy that we went with the one big deep sink because it became everything for this kitchen. This is the dishwashing, this is washing produce, all that kind of stuff. This propane stove, this was actually our first ever gas cooking stove. That kind of makes a big difference when we're cooking. Beforehand, we had Teflon pans on a little heating element and this we went cast iron, Dutch ovens, cooking on gas. It was just an upgrade to our cooking ability. Another thing that really upped our cooking ability, especially any sort of cast iron, high heat cooking, was getting the exhaust vent. This, even before we had any sort of an air conditioning unit, this became what I call the air exchanger. So it would be at nighttime, you'd open up one window in the bedroom and you'd turn this thing on high and it would suck all the cold air from outside into our bedroom. It was a creative way of cooling ourselves until we ended up with the air conditioning system. The fridge that we have is like an apartment size fridge, so I wouldn't, you know, not really tiny by any means. We definitely were able to, you know, go to the store and live here and not have to run out every day for, you know, at least five days we get out of like a solid grocery store run. Design-wise, you know, we kind of wanted to keep it somewhat open with our plates and food storage and just kind of blend that all together. You know, somewhat decoratively and somewhat functionality and I think it looks really nice. This pantry is small, but we did have like a system for everything. We had a drawer that was like for baking, we had a drawer that was for cans, and then we had a drawer that was like for breads and snacks and tortillas and all that kind of stuff, all the dry storage goods. And then this top one here is just for silverware. So yeah, so this space standing here having a window here and a window here and then a skylight on the top. It's just a very open, airy feel, even though I'm in a very tight space. This is a nice view right now, but then in the wintertime it's a mountain view. So I have a mountaintop view right here from cooking and then if I'm washing dishes or doing anything here, I just have a nice, beautiful woods view from here. I love the privacy feel and the secludedness that it feels in the kitchen. Honestly, everywhere in this house. We just paid as we went. We had five grand saved up and we went to Hitches Plus in Barnardsville. Barnardsville. Yeah, and I remember he was like half now, half when it's done. And we were like, OK, that's great. We were just bartending at the time, so we didn't really have like a whole lot of money to do this. We saved so much money by not paying for any labor, but it was a three year long process of just kind of paying as you go. So as far as coming up with a number, I mean, yeah, we never I don't think we saved all the receipts, but I think when we go back and look through, I think like $65,000 is is like pretty much what we are sitting on right now. For the house, yeah. And then the land was $65,000 as well. And we only pay a mortgage on the land. Paying $550,000 a month for a couple is kind of unheard of right now. Welcome to the living room. This is a nine foot by eight foot living room, which is definitely the smallest living room that we've ever had, that I've ever had. But we packed a lot of features into it. I mean, everyone's kind of main piece in a living room is usually a sofa. And this is, I mean, about as big of a sofa as you as you can get in here. Every day that we would sit and watch TV, we would get all three myself, Teddy and Molly. Like we got so good at cuddling as a as a group that we could all pack ourselves into this sofa and and, you know, unwind and watch TV. The next thing that was probably most used in the living room as far as entertainment was our projector. We have this little like nebula capsule projector, which is super small and super useful. Our projector screen that we have is 100 inches wide, and the picture that we get is probably like 70. So 70 inch TV is actually the biggest TV I've ever had. The Mr. Cool unit that we have is amazing at cooling, heating, saving money on energy, super easy to use, all that stuff. But this was a later addition to our tiny house. So two winters that we had the tiny wood stove, their Dwarf 5K. This was our kind of sole real heating unit for for the house. Yeah, I mean, it's great. We live in the woods and we have like endless energy, basically, that we're creating on on this property. It's a free resource for us or at least a circular resource for us on the property. The steps that we have here pull out. This is a absolute savior for the storage space issue that we had. So our kitchen is lofted up two feet. This main living space is eleven and a half foot tall, but we have two foot by eight by eight storage space underneath the kitchen. And it's absolutely necessary when you're working with this much square footage to be able to have some modular storage space where you can bring things out when you need them, but keep everything dry and humidity controlled. Underneath there, we have like a manifold like water manifold. So our our water inlet comes in through there and goes to a whole house filtration system. And then it hits the water manifold, which splits off hot and cold to the kitchen and the bathroom and the outside. And it's called a home run setup that like everything has its own line for the manifold. And then we have a propane hot water heater and that lives under there and gets exhausted to the outside. And we ran as much propane stuff as we could just to keep it a low electricity threshold. We saw probably over 10 properties and being out here in North Carolina, you're not going to get anything flat, especially something that we could afford. We found that open use zoning was our best bet, and we got lucky and found a property that originally had two single wide trailers on it. We were able to use the well, just get a new well pump, and then we were able to use the septic tanks, just get them cleaned and refitted and trenched to the house. So yeah, it was easier to see this one just because there had been houses here before. Sometimes like the raw land is just like, you know, it's kind of difficult to see like how it's going to sit. Yeah, this one like, you know, it wasn't nice. Like we took a long time to clean it up. It was a lot of trash on the property. It was a long time to clean it up, but it did at least look like you could believe that. Like, oh yeah, I see how this is where the driveway is and this is where you could put a house and stuff like that. It was a little bit nicer. All right, so we're in the bathroom space now. We do have a washer and dryer combo unit. It has worked so well for us for the past, I mean, close to five years now. Having a sink above a washer and dryer and then our shower behind it. It was just a lot of configuring that Taylor really just hit it out of the park with. We have our waterfall shower, which that was a must and I'm so happy that we got it. We got very lucky with the land that we purchased. It came with two septic tanks on the property. They needed some work done to them, but we got those back up and running and we weren't quite sure what kind of toilet we were looking for. Compost, incinerating, but because we bought the land while we were still kind of adding the final touches, we went with a normal toilet and it's been great. We have a pocket door with two mirrors on either side, so you get a lot of light, full length mirror. I never really had any issues getting ready here in the mornings. So we are in the loft bedroom. This is my favorite place in the house. Waking up here is just magical. This was also our workspace up here. We did have the kitchen, but when that was in use, it was really nice just to have this extra little desk area. This is our little tree house and yeah, I love it. I love falling asleep under the stars, waking up and just immediately knowing where you're at in the seasons from the trees above and the leaves. It was just the whimsical, magical feel that I really wanted in my home. So we are in our backyard now in the fire pit area that we made. We kind of sourced what we had on the property at first. Eventually, we really needed some wood storage, so we built a 16 foot and we still need more wood storage somehow. We built a pretty big fire pit, but this has just been a great addition, extension to our living area. I like the way that we went about ours, but maybe, you know... Be flexible. Yeah, there we go. That is a word of wisdom. Yeah, it's hard because like everyone's going to have a different situation, a different type of schedule, like general advice to give to somebody. I feel like it's not going to be easy. There are a lot of times where you just want to cry and ask yourself if this was the right thing to do. It's so worth it. All the hard work, everything you learn, even the rough times you look back on it and you're just like, oh my God, I learned so much. All hard work pays off. All right, well, thanks for taking a tiny house tour with us. Yay, bye.