Living in a Shockingly Small 110 ft² Apartment with Clever Self-Built Furniture! – FULL TOUR

Hi, I'm Adrian. Welcome to my extreme tiny apartment. My apartment was advertised as 95 square feet, but when I measured it, it was closer to 110. I'd call it a studio, but there's two rooms with no door in between, so I don't know if that counts. I built the desk, bed, and closet all to work together. It's all custom built to fit in this tiny space. I'm located downtown Ottawa, specifically in the Byward Market, and I've been here for just four years now. Why do I live in such a small space? It's because rent prices are high and things are expensive these days. I didn't want to have roommates, and I was starting a company, so I wanted to keep my overhead as low as possible, because some months are better than others, and on the slow months, it can be difficult to make ends meet. Here, the rent is only $700 a month Canadian, which is about $512 US, which makes it pretty affordable. I have a parking spot, and all utilities are included for that $700. When you look at it that way, it's not that bad. In this area, some people pay $200 a month just for parking. I know that just one bedroom is going for $2,000, which is more than double what I pay. For some people, this definitely would be extreme, but for me, the way I've laid it out, it just works fine. And in the location that I'm in, the location is key. If this was out somewhere in the country, this wouldn't make any sense, but because I'm right downtown, there's restaurants, there's all sorts of things to do in the area, it works for me. Okay, so this is the entrance hallway slash kitchen slash closet. Here, I built this simple closet for my jackets, my hats, my sunglasses. I'm a videographer, and sometimes I have a lot of gear that I have to carry with me, so this rock and roller cart is super useful. It's a heavy-duty cart that I can carry a lot of gear with. I keep my shoes here, and yeah, this is my entry closet. So it is a small space, but I do have four windows which provide lots of natural light for me. That was one of the things that I wanted when I was looking for an apartment. I didn't want to live in a basement, and I didn't want to live somewhere where there's only one window off in the corner. So this is my kitchen. When I moved in, there was just one small crusty hot plate. So this is an induction cooktop that I put into the counter. I brought my own toaster oven and microwave. There wasn't anything here, but there's a fridge underneath of here, just a mini fridge. But I made it into storage, and I built this drawer for my utensils. So I moved my fridge up here. It was underneath the counter, which was pretty uncomfortable to access, but now everything's eye level, and it feels like I'm in an actual house. This is my monitor. It's just mirrors, what's on my desktop. I basically just have it up there for when I do dishes. I can watch YouTube. I have a curtain here to divide the space. It can help a little bit if I'm cooking, and lots of grease in the air kind of keeps it in this room. Also, if I'm trying to sleep in, it helps keep it darker in there. Come with me up this step, and let's take a look at the second room, which has my office, my bed, and my bathroom. So this is my office area. I built this desk myself with wood that I cut down and milled myself. You can see all this raw wood here. This is MDF. I have my double monitors here that can adjust and rotate. It was important for me to be comfortable, so I have an ergonomic chair, and it's kind of a nice place to work, to be honest. I added this little cabinet here for storage. You can store more things underneath of it. I have my my big desktop computer underneath the desk hidden away, and I also have this this little shelf I put in for my taxes and some paperwork that I like to keep. So this is where I do all my video editing and all the work that is involved in running a business. Although, sometimes I feel like I need a change of scenery, so I'll take my laptop and I'll go to a coffee shop or the library to get some work done. So you might be wondering what is this above my head, and this is actually my custom-made spring-loaded Murphy bed. When I first came to see the apartment, there was someone who was viewing the apartment ahead of me, and he said there's not even enough room for a bed in there. And, well, he was wrong, but this is actually the second or third rendition of bed. The first one, I had basically just a twin bed on stilts, and that got old really quick climbing in and out of that, so I had to engineer a way around that problem. Yeah, so this is my Murphy bed. I put a lot of thought into how to make it as easy as possible, something that I wouldn't mind doing twice a day. So with one finger, I can bring it down, and it's quiet, and it works, and really easily, still one finger, I can just push it back up. So yeah, it's super easy to climb in. It's really easy to just get in like that. One of the design factors when I was building this was to not have to move anything. I don't have to move my monitors or my chair, or I can leave things on the desk, and it clears it all. So that makes it a little bit higher, but it's still really easy to climb into. When I had the bed on stilts, I would be banging my head on the ceiling some days, which was not pleasant. Now there's lots of room, I don't feel claustrophobic when I'm in bed, and I get air circulation, so this really works for me. I have these hinges here because I want to eventually design a way that this folds, it goes up against the ceiling, and can go up vertically, so I don't have this hovering above my head. I haven't figured that out yet. If you have an idea in the comments, please leave it. One of the options I could have gone with is have the bed fold up like this. However, I didn't want to have things connected to this wall, because it's a shared wall, and I didn't want to have noise transfers. So you can see that there's a gap, even the main support here, there's a gap. So it's only connected to the back wall, which is an exterior wall, and then I just have this little shelf here that it just holds up where the point load is. I built the desk, bed, and closet all to work together, so you can see that the bed just barely makes it past all the storage, which makes me have as much storage as possible by having this kind of contour around the movement of the bed. And lastly, I wanted to make sure that when the bed is down, that I can still get through here. I have a little space to walk to get to the bathroom area and to the kitchen, and without having to put the bed up and down or crawl underneath. So these were some of the scraps that were left over from milling. You can see it's just the outside piece of the wood. Not very useful for any kind of thing structural, but for a shelf, it works great. This bar here actually, while it does help me get into bed, I also use it to do chin-ups, so you could say I have a home gym. So here is my one comfy chair, all again custom built with just plywood and some foam that I had, all repurposed stuff. I think this is an airplane blanket actually, but yeah, it's a comfy place to read, and if I have a guest, then there's room for someone to sit. And I do have guests, believe it or not. So the shower was already here, but everything else I built around it. So actually, the shower just went up to here, and everything above and to the side I custom built to fit in this tiny space. This is my closets. I have my black shirts and my white shirts, and up here I have just some storage. So I put the stuff that I don't use too often up in the hardest place to access. I have my laundry hopper here. I have my linen closet with my towels, and here's some just like empty bags and stuff. So here I just put a little rod to hold my shirts that I want to keep hanging, my collared shirts, and then here I have my air conditioner, which is crucial for summers in Ottawa. And so here is my bathroom area. I mean really, you're already in the bathroom area with the shower and my sink there. So here is where my toilet is. I bought stick-on vinyl for the flooring, because the flooring was like super yellow when I moved in. So I have a nice white floor. Up here is my junk drawer. I keep my spare change, and I have some matches if you need to light a match. So yeah, the elephant in the room, there's no door. However, it's just me living here, so it's not a huge issue. Although I am thinking about putting either an accordion door, or a lot of people recommend just a shower curtain. But I think the way I would go is like an actual solid door, so that I can have it sealed off from the rest of the room. So I do have two sinks in my apartment. Here is my bathroom sink, the other one you've seen in the kitchen. There is a little bit of storage here in the medicine cabin. It's actually built into the wall, so it's deeper than it looks. And then under the sink too, there's some more storage that I keep just cleaning supplies in. These I built myself. It's not finished. I just stuck these here because there's not enough counter space for my razor, or whatever I want to put. While I'm not an extreme minimalist, I'm still kind of a minimalist by necessity. I still have lots of gear that I need for work, and I like to have hobbies. I don't just meditate all day. So I try to fit as much into here as possible without having clutter. When I first moved in, it was definitely difficult because I had so many things. I hadn't condensed all my belongings down to just the essentials yet. So it was real cluttered in here, and honestly, it was hard to even move around. But now after I've been here for four years, it's just normal to me. I mean, I don't have like an entertainment space. A lot of people will have a living room. I don't have a living room. I have a seating for four, those two folding chairs that I have. And there is a communal space outside that is also nice to use in the summer. In the summer, it's great because I can walk around all these parts. But in the winter, sometimes I start to feel a little bit of cabin fever coming on just because it's painful to go outside. So I do find myself hibernating a little bit in the winter. One advantage to living small is you don't have all these possessions. And being in such a small space, I have to be very careful about what I bring into my apartment because every single thing I bring in has to be useful to me. So if I bring in something, I have to get rid of something else. So I'm a videographer in Ottawa. I specialize in the construction industry, but I've also been doing some mini documentaries. And I'll also be posting updates on what I do to this apartment because I'm sure a lot of you are going to have comments and I'm going to implement some of them. So I'm going to be posting updates on YouTube and on my Instagram. Everything is under H-Pen. Occasionally I get tempted to move into a bigger space, but that means I'll be paying twice as much a year just to have a little bit more space. And honestly, at the moment, being by myself, it's really not worth it to me to spend that much money. I like to keep the expenses as low as possible, which is what I'm doing here. Eventually I'll be able to get a bigger apartment without even thinking about the money. But right now, it's exactly what I need. This apartment has let me be able to start a business. I'm able to work on my own schedule, get my own clients, work for myself, and still have time to create things that don't necessarily pay me right away or pay me at all. So some of the projects I take on are either low or no pay, but they're fun to do. And I wouldn't be able to do that if I was paying $2,000 a month. I would have to either just be constantly looking for the next corporate gig or I'd have to go back to working nine to five. So yeah, this apartment really lets me have the freedom to create. Subscribe to Exploring Alternatives and please share this video if you liked it. You can also follow Adrian on his YouTube channel and Instagram at agepen. Thanks for watching.