Retired Grandma's Gorgeous Tiny House in Daughter's Backyard

Hi, I'm Denise Martin, and welcome to my tiny home in Central Oregon. I live here part-time in Arizona the rest of the time. My daughter, son-in-law, and my grandchildren live in the front part of the property in the main house, and I live in the back part of the property. The total acreage is a little over two acres. The middle of the property is dedicated to Spindrift Homes, which is the company that my son-in-law, Bijan, runs to manufacture tiny homes. My tiny home is 30 feet long and 10 feet wide. It has a beautiful outdoor patio, which I enjoy very much. I make fires frequently in the evening, toss the ball to my dog right from the patio, and just enjoy the clean, crisp weather. Why don't you guys come inside my lovely tiny home, and I'll show you around. Welcome to my home. The inside is approximately 300 square feet. The design is modern farmhouse, which I chose. I wanted to make sure when we were designing this home that I got so much natural sunlight, which is so important to me. I have a skylight right in the middle of the house so that I can always have the sun shining in when I'm in the kitchen, plus the windows surrounding me here, so the sun, no matter where it is during the day, it's always coming in. This is my extremely functional and comfortable living room. Over here, this piece lifts up so that there's storage underneath of it, and then under here is a pull-out couch that flips up and actually makes into a small bed. Usually in the evening, I have the pull-out up and a blanket on top so that the dogs who can't be away from me for two seconds have enough room to pile on, and that's how we enjoy the evenings. So I have two large dogs who live with me full-time, but they're not here because they'd be creating all kinds of havoc, so right now they're up in the main house. So to stay warm and cool, I have this mini splitter up here. In the wintertime, it heats the entire house. From the ground up, it's a little bit chilly still, so I have this really nice portable electric fireplace that I use. I pull it right over close to the couch, and it keeps my feet and my legs toasty warm. And then, the most important thing about my living room space is my hat rack. These are my trophies, and I proudly display them for everybody to see when they walk in the door, and I love wearing them on my head. If you'll notice, what I don't have in here is a television mounted on the wall. I very specifically didn't want to interrupt the design of my farmhouse. I do have a television. I keep it hidden, and I pull it out and send it on the countertop whenever I want to watch television, and then I put it away. Heading into this side of the house, we're coming into my kitchen space, and this is where I spend the majority of my time, is right up here at this bar, which I'm so fortunate to have with these bar stools, but I also have a fold-up table here that if I wanted to entertain more people, I could pop that up, and I would have seating for one or two more people right here. I'm so fortunate to be able to have this L-shaped kitchen here because it's 10 feet wide. If it were any narrower, we wouldn't have enough room to have an L, so that's what makes it possible to have this with the two seats right here. I recently retired, just at the end of last year. Actually, I was a financial executive and working all the time. My hobbies include cycling, triathlon. For me, the most important thing about being here is being with the family and being able to spend time with them and not just be so far away and having to just see them little bits at a time. You miss so much when you're just away. As a grandmother, I wanted to be completely involved. That's why I'm here. My daughter and son-in-law wanted to have me close, and so we thought about a lot of different alternative and ADU-type situations that might work. At first, I was reluctant to live in the tiny home, even though that's what he does, and I've been kind of a part of it since he started doing it, and I've seen all the different ways it could be. For me, it always felt like it was just going to be too small, and so I wanted a little more space, having always had a lot more space, so I wasn't really sure about it. I was completely surprised by how spacious this is. I thought I was going to be claustrophobic. I thought I was going to need to warm up an outdoor space so I could have room to hang out and feel comfortable. I find that I'm just completely comfortable, relaxing in the coziness. There's just so many things about it that are just so intricately placed and easy and intelligent. Like, I've never lived in a house like this. I also enjoy that aspect of just the convenience of how everything is placed. By far, what I most enjoy is when Lily comes over in the morning for breakfast, which she does, I would say, five out of seven mornings a week. She comes over, sometimes she'll bring a little plate of something that Mom made her, and other times she'll just come over and she wants her yogurt and honey and her juice box, her avocados, and her eggies. So, you know, we have a whole thing that we do, but that's my favorite thing, when she comes across and just hangs out. So that's the highlight of any day that I have here. But other than that, I just enjoy how quiet it is and open. You know, the dogs have so much room to run here. The fact that I can just walk over there and enjoy a family meal. I don't have to cook for myself all the time. I don't know, I could just go on and on about how awesome it is to just be here on the property with the family, and that's really what I enjoy. Heading into the kitchen, I have this under storage here, which is my pull-out Lazy Susan. It's amazing how much stuff I can get under here. I also had a custom built-in microwave. Even though I don't cook with the microwave very often, I like to eat my coffee up, because I don't like to drink cold coffee, and that's what I use the microwave for. Under the microwave is a very functional pull-out drawer that actually has two drawers. Well, the one on the top is where I keep my utensils, cooking things, and then the one on the bottom is storage stuff. Here is all things coffee and toast, and I'm so grateful that I have a place to put it away so it's not sitting on the countertop. Where I'm washing my dishes, it's so beautiful because the light comes right in almost all day long. Oftentimes, I'll see the horses right across the street. One morning, there was a family of five deer grazing right outside my window. It was just amazing. Going into my cooking area, this is my stove. I love it because this flips up very easy. Turn it off, let it cool down a little bit, and then cover it back up, and it becomes kind of a nice staging, preparing area when I'm not cooking. I don't cook that much because right across the way is where my daughter cooks all the time, and I find myself trickling over there for dinner. But when I do cook, I enjoy the ease of being able to just have this little space with everything right here where I need it. This is a really unique refrigerator that Bijan puts in all of his tiny homes. Kind of retro classic, but it's big enough for me. Fortunately, it sits up off the ground so I don't have to reach way down, but I can just stand here and open my freezer. Plenty of room in it for every single thing that I need, and it's perfect. On this side, this is where everything is stored. I keep these baskets. I can fit two baskets deep in each one of these cubbies, so mostly what's in here is pantry-type stuff, food. Over here are dog treats and dog balls. It's basically anything that I don't want sitting on the counters and inside gets stored in these baskets and storage bins. Here is one of three closet storage spaces that I have. It's wintertime, so I use this one for all of my coats. Over here is a simple, tiny little closet, and because it's full-length, I can hang full-length things in here and throw my shoes and my boots on the bottom. And then finally, I have this space, which is perfect for things that are shorter. This space is usually where the washer-dryer combo goes, but since my daughter lives right across the way with a full-size washer and dryer, I opted for a wine refrigerator here instead. But over here specifically was very much of a custom design, and it's because I do a lot of work at home, and so I needed a place for a printer, office supplies, and that's why we built this in. I can just have all of my stuff, and when I'm working, I can just pull it out and set it where I'm working, and then have a place to put it away. Finally, leading back here is my bathroom space. I have a full-size shower with a rain shower head and a pull-down seat, which I use for just sitting. Plus, it comes in handy when I'm shaving my legs. And I also have an incinerator toilet. The best thing about the incinerator toilet, besides the fact that everything gets burnt to ashes, is there's never a smell. Even right after you do your business, nothing smells. It's perfect. I have over here where I keep my towels, my makeup things. Even though it's really small in here, it's kind of a very compact, amazing space where everything is very accessible, and I can just get to it easily and quickly and get myself ready and be out the door. So one of my favorite things about my tiny home is the speaker system, which was a complete surprise to me. I didn't design it. I didn't know Bijan was going to put this in here, but I'm thrilled to have it. It is a Bluetooth speaker system with the speakers built in. You just turn it on. Boom. You can turn the music on on your phone using Spotify. You can control the volume up and down right here. And it is just the most amazing sound quality in the world. That concludes the lower level, and now why don't you come upstairs, and I'll show you where I sleep. This is a king-size bed that fits up here on the ground. It's extremely comfortable. Like I said before, I have skylights, so I can wake up to the morning sun with windows all around. Over here at the top, all of these baskets that are in here are places where I put, you know, clothes, workout clothes. Everything that doesn't get hung up in the closet fits into these little cubby baskets up here. You can't really stand up in here. It's about 3 to 4 feet to the center. So you just know that when you wake up in the morning, you can't just spring out of bed. But other than that, when I'm sleeping, it's extremely cozy. My son-in-law, Bijan, is the owner of Spenddrift Tiny Homes. It is a company dedicated to building these tiny homes. Excellent at it. He's got a nice big warehouse where he builds two at a time. That was the inspiration for me. Otherwise, tiny homes would have probably not even been on my radar. The design, we did that together. He had some ideas, and I was really all about the color. He was all about making sure that it was in the right place for the wheels and, you know, things like that. Together, we kind of created this. This is a great option because it's mobile. If the family decides to move somewhere, the tiny home goes with it, right? It's not stuck on the property. I'm in pretty good shape, so I can get up and down the stairs. You know, as a grandparent, that's okay for me. But he builds models where he has the bedroom downstairs so you don't have to have a loft, you know, where you sleep. The design can be completely flexible according to what you need. I would encourage anybody who wanted to have a granny flat or whatever they call them to consider a tiny home because it's just so easy. It's an easy solution. I was planning my retirement for almost the entire year. When I finally pulled the trigger and did it, the transition, in a lot of ways, it's amazing because I don't have to report in or take phone calls. I don't have to answer to anybody. I'm just completely flexible with my time and available for anything that happens. Honestly, I'm a little stir-crazy. I'm just like, okay, what am I doing today? You know, I'm used to just working 10 hours every single day and then squeezing everything in around it. So for me, it's like get up, have breakfast, get on my computer, watch the stock market a little bit. But usually something will happen. Sarah will say, can you pick up the kids at school? Or can you take them to school? Or can you come over for a little bit? I'm doing something and I need you to hang out with Lil. Or we're going on date night. Inevitably, I find something to fill my day. I have a house in Arizona in a retirement community. I spend a lot of time there in the wintertime. Weather's gorgeous in the 70s. For everybody who wants to live in Arizona, that's when you want to be there. Between 18 and 1,900 square feet, 2-bedroom, 2-bath, a big, nice yard. Like I said, in a retirement community, so it has all the amenities, pools, tennis and everything. And then here, I have my tiny home that I can just be in in the summertime when it's blistering hot there. And it's absolutely gorgeous here. Summer and fall are my favorite times of year here. It's perfect. It's perfect. Thank you for watching our video and for stopping by Tiny House Expedition. I'm Alexis. And I'm Christian. Don't forget to like, comment and subscribe. And for more tiny home tours and stories, click the videos below. And join us on Instagram for bonus content. Including face-to-face conversations with us. We hope to see you there. Thanks, guys. Have a good one.