Off-Grid Tiny House

When we started building the house we had no idea where we were going to live. So it was a complete act of faith because we don't have enough money to be able to own land. We knew the area that we wanted to live in. I just posted a picture of our house, just said, you know, does anyone have any land? Does anybody want us? Hey y'all, today we are in Wales and Tom and Amy are going to give us a tour of their self-built tiny house where they have been living for one year. It's completely off-grid. Let's have a look. These doors were sanded and painted by myself. Tom did a lot of the building work here and I did a lot of the painting and the sanding. And we both designed it together and I did as much as I could with the skills that I had. This is our little burner, our tiny wood stove. We got this on eBay. It's really tiny. It's really, really dinky. The thing with this is that we have to cut the wood, like we have an axe there because we really have to cut the wood quite small to get it in there. But it worked really well in the winter. With this, the insulation, because the house is insulated with sheep's wool and sometimes just cooking dinner and having the oven on, it was enough to warm the space. The good thing about living tiny is that you don't need a lot to heat up the space. And they have a copper around that heats up the water. Yeah, so this was Tom's idea. This was his invention. I'm sure other people have done it. We've put copper around and we have a pan here, a stainless steel pan, and we put water inside and there's a tap here. So when that's on in the winter, we heat up the water and then we use it for washing up so that we don't have to be using the gas. And it worked really, really well. We've also added this grate so that we can cook on the stove. So we can put some big stainless steel pans and we can cook stews and curries and all different things on there to, again, save us having to use the gas. So, so far, it's worked really well. And about insulation, how thick it is? So we used 2x4 to build the construction because we wanted to make it quite sturdy and to have that extra insulation too of 100mm of sheep's wool insulation. And we've used breathable membrane because we wanted to have, we didn't want to have a vapour membrane that was, we read lots of horror stories about vapour in a tiny house and a house being able to breathe. So we've, we used a membrane which allows, sort of, it quite, it responds to the seasons. So it's breathing both ways? Breathing both ways. And we've found, we haven't had... The bit rock? Oh yeah, and we used, so that was another weight thing. We used, on the outside, underneath the cladding, a product called bit rock instead of the outer weather membrane. So do you know the bit rock? It's like a composite board and it's soaked in bitumen. So it's not the insulation, it's like the extra, instead of like having a layer of plywood or OSB on the outside, we've got this bit rock. And this is our, this is our wardrobe space. So there were, I mean, we had to get rid of a lot of things to, to be here. But yeah, this, this is the space that we have for our clothes. We have a light so that we can, we can look in and see in. And yeah, and it's, we really can't buy any more things. Like this is jam-packed as you can see. I'm surprised it didn't all fall out as I opened it, like stuffing it back in. So yeah, this is, this is our wardrobe space. And then in these two drawers, we have like underwear and they're quite, they're quite deep. So we have, you know, our clothes that are in here. And the same with, with this, yeah, Tom's drawer underneath there. Oh, this is Mark's. Exactly, exactly. This sofa was free. This was a foraged good. This was from Freecycle as well. So someone was just getting rid of this and we decided we went and picked it up. And then Tom sort of built the sofa like, yeah, you built the sofa around the house. Yeah, so it pulls out to a full double bed and it also pulls out to a slightly more comfortable sofa like that. So you can lean back into it. And also we have under here, we've got more storage. So that's all of Amy's summer clothes. And we have like all of our linen and stuff like that. So it's not, it's not the comfiest sofa in the world. Like, you know, we've adapted it to make it more comfortable. But again, we just use what we had. Like we couldn't afford to go out and buy, you know, buy a sofa to come in here. So we just, well, it's also when there's tiny space with the space as well. If you have a big sofa, you're wasting space. So we wanted to make the most of it. Yeah. And you got proper floor, like thick proper floor. Yeah, so this is a really cool story to this floor. I was out running and I went past someone's garden and they had this big mound of floorboards. And a lot of the wood that we have used was from this. And I went and I asked the guy, I said, can I have this? And he said, yeah, I'm just going to burn it. And so it took about three loads in the car. It was only up the road, but Amy's dad actually helped me and we went and picked it all up. We came back here and when I worked it out of the floor space, I realized it was exactly the right amount for this whole space, for the upstairs, for all of this. There was not one bit of wood spare. It was exactly right. So strange. Yeah. And a lot of these timbers as well we used was from the same pile. So most of the timber on the inside, if not all of it, it was kind of was found or foraged or donated. So we, yeah, we were quite thrifty on the inside. Yeah. Most of the, all of the architraves and everything is from pallet wood. Oh, really? Yeah. The only timber that we bought was this tongue and groove on the roof. We've got a bit of handy storage under here too. These flip open and this sort of flips up and we can put some things in here. Tom keeps his art supplies. Not so easy to get to all the time, but it works as storage. So they're really handy to have. Things that we don't need to use very often. Yeah. And we also can use it when we're sat on the sofa to put our drinks on or as like a little side table almost. And then books, we needed space for our books. I, I'm, I write, I'm a writer. So I also have lots of notebooks and absolutely love to read. So these bookshelves were also from foraged wood that we were able to use. And you're a climber? I'm climbing, yeah. Yeah. I try, I don't really train as much as I, I bought it and I thought I'm going to train every time. Yeah, I do like, I do like to climb. When I feel like it, I do some finger training. And this is our, we have a water filter here. This was how we were able to, we were drinking the rainwater basically. And this is what it was going through. This was another piece of foraged wood that was lovingly sanded and varnished. So yeah, my, my, my dad is a, he sort of fits kitchens and bathrooms. So in his shed, he had lots of really nice off cuts of things. So we managed to get this off cut of worked up. And then these, this is like acrylic worked up, which is really nice stuff. And he, he had just a little piece left over. So we, we used that for our kitchen space. It's more sanitary. Yeah. We got this, this chair here was a freebie again off Freecycle. And this was made by Tom, which is just gorgeous. So this was made using hemp for this part. And yeah. I meant to make another one, but I never did. So that's why we got this one. So we fight over this chair a lot. We always want to sit on this chair. It's gorgeous. Yeah. And underneath here is where we've, we've put some extra hooks for shoes, you know, yoga mats. And we've tried to use some of the space under here too. We made, we made the windows just a little bit too high so that when we're sat down, we can't, we can see out of the window, but we were, we were like, if we were to do it again, we'd maybe just lower it just that little bit. So when we were having breakfast, we could have the full range of this beautiful view. There you go. Exactly. Silver lining. Every cloud has a silver lining. So yeah. Um, well. And you've got proper stove. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So we haven't really. Yeah. You can see sometimes when, when you don't spend as much, we fix this about three or four times, but there's just no fixing it now. Where was it? It was, it was a refurbished model. So it had like a dent in it and it had, so I think it was an X, um, display model, but yeah, it's really nice, really nice oven and, um, stove. So we haven't really sacrificed anything with the, we can still bake and cook. And, um, uh, we've got four hobs there. Yeah. And these tiles again, where someone was, was giving these away. Um, we have the, the tiles as well on the back of the, where the wood burner is. Um, and yeah, and we really wanted a round window. I really wanted a round window. I'd seen, seen a lot of tiny house videos and I just, yeah, I really, really loved that as part of the design. It reminds me of the sun. Um, and yeah, it's one of my favorite things actually in this house is this window. These pipes were homemade. So again, this was copper that basically that were made into, into taps. They have a charm. Like copper ages really nicely. It goes like that sort of green, green color and yeah, it works fine. It works perfectly. This, unfortunately, this was originally supposed to go fully over here. Um, but we cut it just a little bit too, too short. So now it, it's, it's our way of sort of hiding some when we don't want to do the washing up. The thing with a tiny house is that you either have to clean as soon as you do something. Um, because otherwise you just don't have the space. Um, so this is, yeah, this has helped because it gives us an extra space here over the sink to be able to cut and chop and everything else. So yeah, that, that was a good idea to put that in. When we were building the house, funnily enough, the first thing that went in was the bath. That's the first thing we did because it all sort of revolved around the bath. So we'll show you in a minute, but the bath goes behind here. Um, so this is how we designed this kitchen space and we wanted to have the walkway. We wanted to be able to walk into the bedroom. So we've kind of got like a half space here, which these drawers open out. So we've got quite a lot of storage for our, um, cutlery and things like that. And it works quite well as long as you don't leave anything here. It's very annoying. You have to open the drawer, you have to move everything here. Yeah, have a bit of a juggle. So it really helps, makes us stay a bit tidier. Yeah. The design of the house, we designed this by both sitting together and being like, what do we a hundred percent want in our house? What are the priorities for us? We both had different things, but it came down to, for me, I needed a bath. Like I wanted a full length bath. I just didn't want to sacrifice that. It's a pleasure for me to have a bath and a desk as well. They were the two things that we realised that we really needed. And so, yeah, the house was built around those decisions. And this is the sort of Dometic fridge here. It's really small. It's a tiny little freezer section. And turns on 24 volts. Yeah, this runs on 24. That goes direct from the batteries. So it's super low energy. So we can run it all through the year on the solar system, which is really important to us. It hasn't really been a problem, has it, having a smaller fridge? No, you just adapt to what you have. Obviously, we know that we can't freeze a lot of things. So we just, our cooking revolves around that. We don't have ice cream very much. Yeah, unfortunately. These drawers, I'll show you this way. So I really like the idea of these basket drawers for fruit and veg to allow some airflow. So yeah, those are really good. That's where we keep our fruit and our veg. We made the most of every little end space. So we keep our chopping board in here. We've got a bottle rack down there. And then these, again, drawers are for just stuff. Really useful, all of our bags. And we do a lot of cycling, so our pannier bags go in there. Spare things. So every space has been used. Yeah, we've got a little pantry here. So we pull out where we keep all of our cans and peanut butter. And there's different sections on the other side. Yeah, so that's really handy. And then underneath the sink, we have where we keep our organic bin. And then next to that, we have our drawers for, yeah, for some of our lids of our saucepans. And then we have our cutlery drawer in here as well. And the same with this drawer. This is all of our kitchenware. And we do a lot of cooking, so we needed quite a lot of space for our kitchenware. And then all of our other ingredients, our tina, our kombucha, and some of our other ingredients we have put up on these shelves. Fresh eggs. Fresh eggs, yeah, fresh eggs. Still got poop on them. Yeah, yeah. All of these, the drawer fronts and all of this, I made all of the cabinets with all the leftover ply from here. And then all of the drawer fronts were made from, from, went on FreeCycle, which is a site where you can, people put things up for free. There was loads of beds. People were giving away double beds with the bed slats. So lots of things in the house are made from bed slats. These are all bed slats. And I made all of the, all of the drawers and for the cupboard as well. Luckily, I had the use of a workshop so I could, I could run things on the table saw and route things out. So yeah, we made all of the doors. A big part of being able to build this house was having the tools. Like Tom's dad is a carpenter as well. And so we were able to use his workshop and his tools. Otherwise, it would have been so expensive to, an extra cost to buy them or to hire them. It was a real blessing to be able to have those. And I think we used, you know, the most out of that, out of that situation. We were able to save a lot of money because we were able to do a lot of things from scratch. Yeah. The bathroom. Yeah, the sliding door. I like this because it's kind of, it's kind of a job that I did. And then didn't really finish properly. It was a door I found in a skip and I just asked if I could have it. And then it was too wide. So I just cut a bit off and stuck the end back on. So it looks kind of funny. But yeah, yeah, it's nice. It saves space having the sliding door. Yeah. And then I'll let you do the bathroom tour. Okay. Yeah. So we have our compost toilet. Next to our compost toilet, we have some space for storage where we keep our toilet roll and we keep some cleaning products. And here is where we keep our sawdust to use in the compost toilet once we're done. We also have, again, we got our homemade tap and tiles that were foraged that were given to us for free. And yeah, and then we all of these drawers and these cupboards, we just pop all of our all of our shower and clean in there. Oh, thank you. The only thing about this sink is that obviously we get a lot of water that builds there. So I think that if we were to do it again, we would do this sink a little bit differently so that water doesn't build up in this area. And then we have a homemade shower. So this again was made out of copper and then holes were drilled in. This shower is amazing. It feels like you're in the rain, that you're showering in the rain. It's a really great shower and it's starting to weather really nicely as well. So yeah, we're really happy with this. And it's a full length bath. So I've only had a few baths since I've been here because obviously you do have to save water as well. And a bath uses a lot of water, but I've enjoyed every single moment of bathing in here. And it sort of feels like you're in a cave. It's like this secret part of the house that you don't know exists and you know, light a few candles and it's a really lovely area. And yeah, it's a great space. This is my favourite part of the house. I absolutely love this banister. We were inspired, we went to see a friend's house and they had something similar and it really inspired us. And this is made from dieback ash, basically. So in a woodland, the ash was being cut because it had disease. And so instead of leaving it to rot, we foraged it and we whittled it and we sanded it and we made this banister. It looks very nice. Thank you. And you still have some storage in the stairs. Yeah, so we've got storage here, which is just like random bits and bobs really. You always need a drawer just for keys and all of those sorts of things. And in a tiny house, it's no different. Odds and sods. So that's our drawer for that. And that step is that you can sit actually there. This is where we put our feet for our desk. And these as well, these pieces of wood, which are just absolutely beautiful. Like the perfect, you know, we spent a long time looking for wood that was right to support the desk. And the same with this piece here. So yeah, this was all found. Be going for walks in the woods and then my eye would be just looking for bendy pieces of wood. So much recycled material. It still took you only one year to build it. And you still were working full time. Yeah, so we were working full time. Well, I was working four days a week. And I'm studying as well. We were studying a masters alongside doing the house and working. Not quite sure how we did it. No, I don't know how we did it either. It was sort of once we had the idea, it was like this sense of urgency. It was just like, we have to do this. We knew it was going to be a life change. And we wanted to we also wanted to start a business. We wanted to be our own boss. We started a forest school as well. And we knew that we were going to move the house and start the business all at the same time. And so we just put our heads down and we just had no social life for a year. We have no social life. We've had no social life for a long time. But we just we just went for it and worked really, really hard. It was definitely a passionate passion project. Yeah. I'd wake up in the middle of the night thinking about wood and drawers and that kind of thing. In a hot sweat. Yeah, I know how it is. Yeah. And money wise, how much was this project? So yeah, I think we worked out that the build itself cost us around $18,000, $19,000. And then there were some other costs. For example, we rented a barn space where we build it. So that was worked out to be £1,000. And then and then we spent that's not including the solar panels and the batteries. So it was all told it was around $26,000. And that includes getting it here as well. So it cost us a bit of money putting on a load loader, paying for the tractors and all of that. So yeah, about $26,000, $27,000. Something like that. The upgrade system is expensive. Yeah. We saved lots of money wherever we could. And we spent the money where we thought it was important to spend it. So on the shell, we basically spend most of the money for the insulation and the membranes and the roofing sheets to make sure it was watertight. And then on the inside, we were a bit more creative with materials that we found. This is our office. We do work from home sometimes. So it's really good to have. We work together. We both run a business together. So it's really good. I can be here in the office and Tom's down there. And, you know, we can just be talking to each other. It's a good way to work. And we have here some cupboards, some storage that we also with coaches. We are wellbeing coaches. So we work from home. We have lots of resources that we use for that. And so a lot of that is stored in here. Yeah. And sometimes like we have beanbags as well. We put up here and we just use this as a bit of chill out space. We sit here and read. You'll see we love to read. We have a lot of books here. So it's really nice to have that space. And yeah, it's a lovely area, actually. I spend a lot of time up here and I get to see the whole house too, like to have a little lookout, which is lovely to do. And I love the idea that I actually can stand like all the way. I still have space, actually. Yeah. I don't know why that was a really important thing to be able to walk around the house. It feels like more like a bigger house than having to crawl everywhere. Yeah. This as well, just to say that this art is Tom's on the wall that we've got up behind you. This was one of his drawings. Yeah. And that picture of Gandhi as well. Good old Gandhi, the peacemaker. This is the bedroom. We've got this shelf here, which is a bookshelf, which kind of gives it a bit of its own kind of part of the house. And it's where we keep all our plants. So yeah, it creates a nice kind of barrier. This is one of my favorite design features. So we're both, I think it's safe to say we're both a little bit messy when it comes to clothes. So and I knew this because we've lived together for a few years. So I wanted to have a place where we could just stuff the clothes that we're like wearing instead of having to like put them back in the drawer. So this is like our dirty clothes and then our active clothes drawers. Tom's very hot on this active clothes. He needed that active clothes drawer. Because we don't need to wash your clothes every day. So clothes that you just keep wearing and just we keep in here. So it keeps it quite tidy. Yeah. And then there's not much up here. We wanted this to be quite an uncluttered space. So yeah, we don't have them. We don't have much else up here storage wise. Our bed was another free cycle. Well, this bed was amazing. It just goes to show what people are getting rid of, basically. And this is what's the brand of this mattress? What's the brand of it? It's like a memory foam mattress, basically, like Tempur or something like that. Tempur. Like knew this was thousands and someone was just giving it away and she'd never even used it. And so yeah, we... It's the comfiest mattress I've ever slept on. It's amazing. This bed is so comfy. So yeah, this bed is great. I mean, yes, we do have to crawl into beds. We can sit up and read, which is nice. We've got an amazing view out of our window. So yeah, it's nice because you can come to this space. You can get changed standing up. You don't have to. And then put the clothes and then just crawl into bed. Yeah. And I really like this feature as well, which is where we have the change of pitch in the roof. We put glass there. So it gives us a nice bit of light coming in. That was a bit of an afterthought in designing it. I thought, oh, why not put glass there? And then, yeah, so glad we did that. It gives us sort of the morning sun. Yeah. We've got a little corner for our guitar as well. We struggled to know where to put the guitar, but we found a little spot for it. And you can see we've got our slow cooker on here. We're making a lasagna in here today. And we just pop it up. Obviously, not always enough room in the kitchen, but we just are able to use it. And we actually find the slow cooker is so efficient. It doesn't use that much. Well, it's just taking from the solar, basically. So we're not having to use the gas. So we do a lot of cooking in our slow cooker. And this area here, all the plants give us a lot of privacy. People can't see into the bedroom. It's a private space for us. And an area where you can also, you know, chill out. Or if you've got a long day, come here and it feels like you're on your own. Which is a really nice part of the house to have. Not that there's ever like lots of people just in our house. No. It's sometimes important to have privacy. Exactly. When you're living in a small space. And if it's raining or... Exactly. All right. Thanks for watching. There is one more video. If you want to learn a bit more how they're living and how they found this land, you can find it right here. Social media from me and Toma will be in the description below. And see you in the next one. Cheers!