Solo Mom's Stunning Luxury, Minimalist Tiny Home

Great tiny house design doesn't happen overnight. It takes time and experience to really get things right. It also requires a personal journey. A deep understanding of what you need out of your space. And this next tiny house that we're about to visit is a spectacular example of when you get all of those things just right. Hey Bryony, it is so nice to see you. You too, thanks for coming. It is absolutely my pleasure and all I can say is wow, this is one incredible tiny home you've built yourself here. Yeah, it really is. I'm a bit happy about being here, yeah. Yeah, and you have had a tremendous journey to get here, haven't you? Yeah, it's been a challenging decade coming from where I've been through divorce and financial instability and not having five dollars in my bank account and not being able to get my kids to school and living in off-grid with generators and things compared to now, like the beach side, the dream tiny house. I thought I would never be able to do it in a million years. It's a bit of a pinch me moment for sure. Yeah, I can see that. To me, this tiny house looks like the absolute epitome of luxury. Absolutely, and that was the entire brief. Coastal, luxury, I wanted to step into this house and kind of feel like I've made it after everything. Can you talk to me a little bit about what it was that initially inspired you to go into a tiny home? So I've come to tiny house living primarily through financial necessity. My mental health was completely shot. I knew if I didn't take serious action for the good, things were not going to end well. So I sold everything I owned. I moved out of my rental. I ended up with $2,000, sold my couch, my desk, my benches, the beds and everything. We lived out of an Esky instead of a fridge for a while. And I bought a really, really shitty $2,000 caravan. We lived in that for 12 months. That was the start of sort of tiny house life. This is with your children? Yeah, this is with both kids. So I was a newly single mom of two who were 12 and 6 at that point. And that was the beginning of me getting out of the wheel of debt collectors and financial anxiety and phone calls and survival mode and sink or swim every day. And eventually, eight years later, here we are in this. Wow, I think that is such a powerful and beautiful story. And it's also such a powerful reminder that not everything has to happen all at once. You don't have to go from nothing to luxury tiny house. Even within the tiny house world, you can still work your way up progressively. Absolutely. There's a lot of people, I think, look at the price tags of tiny houses now and think they're out of reach and the movement is not what it used to be. But people don't realize you don't have to spend $150,000 straight off to get something like this. You start where you're at and you gradually build up. You're so right about that. And it is so important, I think, to know that it's okay just to do things in life in stages. And with your tiny house now, you are definitely in that luxury stage. Tell me about the design of your home. This is my third tiny house, which just blows my mind now over seven years. The first one I was in was very small, six meter, single level. I'm planning for the future and my knees do not like stairs and things. So it definitely had to be single level. You're also very tall. I am, yeah, I'm like six foot two, similar to you. So this is nine and a half meters long. It's two and a half meters wide. The neighboring council to where we are here actually launched a pilot program for tiny houses last year. Great. And it needs to be on a registrable trailer of 2.5 meters wide. So just in case this council decided to change their mind, instead of originally I was looking at a three meter build, we did end up going with a two and a half meter one. So that if need be, I would comply with everything I needed to be able to fit into a trial or approvals here. Great. And this tiny house, it's very pretty, isn't it? It is. I wanted something that was a little bit girly and feminine. This is color bond nail strip. It's similar to the standing seam, but all the fixtures and everything is hidden. I love that look of the continuous from the roof straight down to the side without gutters and anything breaking those lines. It's so clean. Yeah. And you've got an addition onto this tiny house as well. Yes. So I do live here with my 13 year old son, Ryder. The house itself was designed primarily for me to live and work. He uses the kitchen and bathroom. On this property, we're actually intending on bringing our second small tiny house bedroom pod for him to live in. But when we got to the property, it just so happens that two meters to the other side of the house, where the drawbar is, they have a small second dwelling granny flat situation that they were using for storage. And my landlord is amazing and actually offered it to me for pretty much nothing per week for my son to live in instead. So now that he's a 13 year old boy, he's got his own little teenage space and he's living the dream. Absolutely. I would have loved that when I was a teenager. And talking about the parking spot. Wow. It was a bit of a challenge getting here. It's a very different thing to where I was previously. I was on my own land for five years. Right. This time around, being so close to the beach, which I worked very hard to manifest, I knew I wasn't going to be able to buy land again. So it took a little bit of doing, but I figure it's kind of what I do for a living. So if I couldn't put my money where my mouth is and find a killer spot for myself, then I really shouldn't be in business. And of course, it makes sense that you have found the dream parking spot because that is also your business. You are the founder of parkmytinyhouse.com.au, which is such a necessary service, helping tiny home owners to find their own dream parking spots. Absolutely. As I mentioned before, tiny house life has been so completely transformational for me. And it makes me really upset, thinking that there are others in a situation, maybe now where I was eight years ago, that don't have the option of going tiny because of the where do I park it kind of equation. And I really wanted to remove that obstacle for people. Congratulations. That is such a huge accomplishment. And it is, again, just so necessary for the movement. So thank you for all that you're doing there. Thank you. Appreciate it. Well, already just looking at your tiny home, I am completely enamored with what you've created here. And I am so excited to see what you've done on the interior. Can we have a look? Come on in. Thank you very much. This is an absolute dream. I love the way that you have styled this home. Thank you. I wanted it to very open, light, breezy, very high end luxury coastal. I wanted to feel like I was walking into a five star resort and able to put my feet up and relax for the first time in a long time. And I'm very happy that we've achieved that with this. The other thing that just immediately hits me walking into this home is the sense of spaciousness. Within nine and a half meters length, I still wanted to feel like it was quite a spacious, big, open, airy one bedroom and pretty happy that we've achieved that. Yeah, absolutely. And then, of course, that spaciousness has been further enhanced by the placement of these really big, beautiful windows. I love the picture window and the indoor outdoor flow, even if you're not outside, to still have that feeling of being outdoors, even when you're sitting there enjoying a cuppa and looking at the ocean has just been kind of life changing. There's something about water that just immediately connects us to that sensation of relaxation. Couldn't agree more. I feel very, very grateful to be here. I've wanted to live by the beach my entire life and didn't sort of think it would be possible for a really, really long time. So very happy to be here. And I have my morning beach walk. I try and get out and about and actually enjoy it and not just look at it. I love kayaking, so I'm down the beach a lot of the time and can see the tides and things from here to know when it's a good time to head out. Nice. And your lounge, I really love this space. Again, just entirely focused around that picture window, but it also just looks like such a nice space to sit back, put your feet up and relax. Funny story is I've actually been here for nearly seven months now, since April. I only just bought this couch last week, knowing you guys were coming. What was there before? Nothing, nothing. I had a little, like a little small tub chair that I would twist around and put my feet up so I could have my morning coffee looking at the ocean. But I have not had a proper couch in any house that I've lived in, in seven or eight years. I use that to actually remind myself that I should sit and lounge and take time out. Well, I'm very glad that you have that now because it is an essential addition. And it looks like you've got another unit over there with a bit of storage in it. Yeah, I actually had them build this at the same time as the house as part of the whole deal. I wanted somewhere that we could come in, sit down, take the shoes off, roll and hide all the bits and pieces so they're not in the pretty bedroom closet. And it's a good place for extra storage. And then your kitchen, this is palatial. I love it. And admittedly, most of the interior design in the house was all designed around the kitchen, not because I'm a cook, but this, the island bench was really important to me because living here, I work from home. I work rather a lot. So I had to design it to be not only kitchen, cooking prep space for the occasional salad, but also to work and have a really decent space here. And as a serial entrepreneur, your office space is very important to you, isn't it? It is not a typical office in any way, shape or form. So in the front, we have drawers that come out where the keyboard and mouse and all my little stationary bits and pieces and my never ending to-do list lives. But we've also put in a really cool niche at the end of the bench. I wanted to be able to work and have a big computer screen that I can work from, but tuck it away at the end of the day so that we've got family area, eating area and food prep space. And it works amazingly well. That is a very tidy way of doing it. And beautifully lit as well. I really like your lighting features here. Thank you. I looked for a long time to find just the right thing. I love this. The detail on these is a gypsum pendant. So you've got to touch them with gloves there. They're a little bit boozy, but I like that the pattern on these match the backing that's on the island bench under here and the same panelling that's in the bathroom. Again, it was all about the really high-end luxury looking coastal resort vibes for sure. Yeah, you have definitely nailed that in this space. And tell me about the functional elements in your kitchen. I don't cook a lot, so I only have the two burner cooktop. I have microwave for bits and pieces. The back section here was really designed around my coffee machine because we're in Melbourne, we are coffee snobs here. So the entire backing here was designed about having the coffee machine proud of place and be able to access that really easily and everything. I don't have an oven, but I don't use an oven and that kind of thing. So that was an intentional choice with the space that I had so that I can have the integrated dishwasher in the back. Perfect. And a nice amount of storage in here too? It was actually really important to me to have a reasonable amount of storage, obviously, because it's a tiny house. But in my first tiny house, the six metre one, I had one little cupboard this wide as my pantry for my stuff. And things were constantly falling out and it was a constant sore point. So in this house, we've got the overheads, we've got the down low bits, like there's just on both sides, I crammed in as much as I humanly could. Yeah. Having been through a few iterations now of tiny house living, you've really had that opportunity to learn about how you interact with your space and what works for you and what doesn't. So it's really interesting to see the way that you've taken those lessons into your new home. Absolutely. I've used that experience as the basis for fixing all those little things and creating a 2.0 version in the house that we now have. Yeah. Well, this is all just so beautifully done. I'm very excited to see what you've done in the bedroom. Can we check that out? Come on through. Oh, wow. This is really unusual. I have never seen a design like this before. The way that you've got the shower exposed to the bedroom is just such an interesting design choice. I was definitely going for five star hotel vibes and I've seen it done in a couple of hotels. It's probably very different, not something you'd have in a lot of houses, but knowing that it's just me primarily living in here and privacy on a big acreage like this is not an issue. It's fully opened from between the shower and the water so that at night time, I can actually shower with watching the flashing lights from the water, boys out there and watching the cruise ships go past. Wow. It's pretty special. That is stunning. And I really love the way that it enhances the space as well. Again, it sort of adds that sense of spaciousness being able to look into the next room. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I love the feature wall in here too. I wanted something more than just the white paneling, but we needed something quite shallow because we've actually chosen to make a feature of this because the bottom part of the mattress is recessed into the wall and depth was a major issue. We wanted to have space to walk around because it was a very intentional choice having the bed sideways rather than long way. The long ways just didn't feel right to me, but to make sure we had enough space to walk around the mattress adequately, we recessed the bottom bit. So we wanted to make a focal point out of this and they absolutely nailed it. Yeah, brilliant. I think one of the big challenges with that 2.5 meter width is the orientation of the bed. But when you are able to orientate it this way, it's just so much more natural being able to take full advantage of that view. I just think this works really well. We found a way to make it work so that I get to go to sleep looking at the stars and the view and the aurora was happening recently. I got to lie in bed looking at the aurora, which was just special. Magical. And another really interesting design decision here is you have kept all of the wardrobe exposed. It is behind glass, but it's obviously see-through. What was the thinking behind that? I love the look of it. I did see it in another display home and as soon as I saw it with the LED strip lighting everything, I'm like, wow, that looks really spectacular. Also, it helps me color coordinate my clothes and the ADHD in me had hoped that having it all on display would make me keep things a little bit neater. It works sometimes and it's getting there, but I love the openness of it from a practicality point of view. Being able to see at a glance what you want, like before you open the fridge door, to pick outfits, it makes it easier to kind of coordinate things and it just so happens that the colors I wear kind of match my house anyway. So it works pretty well. With all your beautiful clothes on display, I think it does add this pop of color and extra vibrance to the room. So I do like that. I may or may not have cleaned before you came here, but yeah, it looks like this normally. It's fine. You would not be the first person. And can we check out the bathroom next? Let's go. All right. Again, the design in here is exquisite. It's simply done and beautifully executed. Bathroom was really not a compromise for me. Obviously my workspace is really important, but I am a long, hot shower girly. Do all my meditation and all my best business brainstorming and thinking at night in here. And I've seen too many tiny houses with these cramped little bathrooms because people go, you only spend 10 minutes in there. But I actually wanted a space that was comfortable enough with my height that I could do everything I needed to do and not feel like I was cramped and just wanted to get out as quickly as possible. I wanted to enjoy it more like a spa resort kind of vibe. I'm totally with you on that one. Shower is actually where I do all of my thinking as well. I'll actually steam up the glass and I'll like draw design ideas and everything. So a long shower is important for me as well. But I see you haven't actually put up any glass or a screen of any sort yet. Well, I can't even embarrass you, you'd better admit it. I've been here seven months and I think I have so much decision fatigue from everything else that's happened this year in the starting parts of the house. I've put it in the too hard basket for a really long time. And I think now that I'm living in it and love it so much, I have such high expectations of all the finishes that I don't want to make the wrong choice. So I've kind of procrastinated my way into what to put in there. So open to suggestions. As long as it's not a shower curtain. There is, in my opinion, a special place in hell for whoever invented shower curtains. But yeah, no, I totally understand that. I really do. I think, especially with a build project, the sheer quantity of decisions that you have to make, it does get overwhelming. So believe me, I understand that. And as long as it works for now, there's no hurry, right? Yeah, 100%. All the copperware in here is stunning as well. I actually did choose these really intentionally. I see a lot of tiny houses with sort of brass seems to be like the thing of the moment. And I don't like doing anything the same as anyone else does. I love the richness and the warmth of the color. Like, I think a lot of people equate copper fittings with like old school with sort of that green aged patina. And the new modern ones don't have that. They have a coating on them that stops them from getting build up. And it just looks like that forever. And I actually love the warmth and the richness in the color. Yeah. And the basin. That is such a beautiful feature, isn't it? It's actually, the basin's actually a really cool story. I was at the Homeware's bathroom store looking at fixtures and fittings and trying to decide on the taps and the sinks and everything. I knew I wanted it to be a really special focal point. And I really wanted something different. I thought a copper one initially. And then I saw this out of the corner and it was a display one where it was all lit up and everything. I instantly fell in love. And it is the best product because they're like recycled and Australian made and all the good things. But they're super lightweight. If you're looking for a nightlight feature in the bathroom as well, it doesn't get any better than this, does it? It does give it a really beautiful glow. And I got the matching mirror with it. So it's a halo mirror that lights up and the basin and the light together. Just, it's something really special at nighttime. It does definitely give hotel vibes. Absolute luxury. Composting toilet here too? Yes. So obviously I'm on rented land. So it really needed to be a composting or incinerating toilet. Probably an awkward conversation to have, but I'm actually thinking about ditching the composting toilet and replacing it with an incinerating one. Really? Cause it's less, yeah, less day to day. I'm grid connected. I have power and gas and water and everything here. So for me now, it actually makes more sense to have maybe a gas incinerating toilet that still does what it needs to do, but there's less maintenance. Just sort of takes one more little part out of the equation of potential challenges. I think this is a great composting toilet, but there are definite pros and cons with both. So it's going to be interesting to see how you go with the incinerating toilet next. So you've been living here for seven months now. How's this working out for you? I feel a little bit like it's a dream. I pinch myself every day when I sit here and have my morning coffee and I look out at that view. It's exactly what I wanted. And then some, I love the lifestyle of it. Work flows really well here. It's just conducive to living instead of being in survival mode all the time like I was before. I feel like in this house, I am calm and safe and held and all the things. And I just feel like I'm living and thriving again. This is such a beautiful tiny home and I can see that so much of the design decisions has come from your prior experience. Is there anything, even at this stage of your design, that you would now change given the chance? In terms of the design itself, honestly, no. The build of it is amazing. The quality is amazing. It flows so well and it functions so well for everything I need it to do. I think like anything, once you've lived in a house for a little while, you see tiny little things you want to change. But for me, it'll just be like adding a little shelf above a window for some more plants or a little footstool here. And tiny things like that. And a deck, of course, because you can't have a tiny house without a deck because it doubles your floor space. It's quite ironic. I think there's a bit of a perception, a misconception even amongst the public that living tiny amounts to some level of uncertainty. I've found living myself now for this long, both on my own land and rented land, there's actually more security living this way than there was when I was renting a traditional home. Like I moved five times in 18 months because one landlord wanted to sell up, one wanted their adult son to move in. Whereas where I am now, I'm particularly in a land rental situation. You have a one-on-one relationship with your landlord. You work in with them to take the bins out and you let each other know when things are going on in the local neighbourhood. So I feel quite comfortable that I'll be here for quite a few years. Also being in a tiny home on wheels that I own outright, I now have something that no one can ever take away from me. So it's stability and flexibility all wrapped up into one beautiful bundle for me. And what about the cost? I'm really bad at keeping track. We added lots of extra bits and pieces in through the build with some extra high-level finishes and the flooring. But I think in total it came around about $115,000. Great result. And I want to sort of reflect on what you said before as well, because I think it's so true and it's quite a sad aspect of the tiny house community now that people see these kind of luxury model tiny homes and they get a little bit of sticker shock at a price tag like $150,000. But it is so important to sort of hark back to what you were saying before that not everything has to be done at once. You can sort of work your way up to where you've got to. And that's just such an important thing to remember in all of this that, you know, it's kind of sad in some ways that tiny homes even now are being looked at as aspirational. But it really is so achievable to get here where you've got, isn't it? I don't think it's a bad thing that they're aspirational. Like, as we know, there are so many different reasons people come to tiny house life, but it's more about the flexibility for me of using the tiny house as a tool to embrace whatever aspect of life you're looking forward to, whether it's being able to work less because your overheads are so much less. Regardless of the reasons that some people go into it, they're a tool for whatever it is that you actually want to achieve that's important to you. Yeah. Maybe I used the wrong word when I said aspirational. I think what I really meant was unobtainable. Yeah, absolutely. Some people are more than happy to live in a really rustic, beautiful, simple lifestyle, like the Australian version of homesteading and being self-sufficient, and that's more than enough for so many people. So not everyone will aspire to something like this, and that's totally fine too. Yeah. And the previous iterations of your tiny homes were also instrumental in your journey into getting here as well, because it really taught you so much about what was important to you. Yeah. Learning how I actually enjoy living and what works for me, for sure. Yeah. This tiny home, it's been a big part of your journey, but it's also been your children's journey. Can you talk to me about their relationship with the tiny house? It's interesting. When I ask... I mean, Ryder's 13 now, and when I ask him what he thinks about living in a tiny house, like most teenagers, I just get... He doesn't really give it much thought, and it's so normal for him because he was, I think, five or six, maybe, when we moved into a tiny house the first time. That was a little bit of an adjustment, living in such a small space. But now, I think we've been doing it for so long. Kids are so versatile. It's just totally normal. So now that you're all settled into your tiny home and this beautiful parking spot, what does the future hold for you now? Who would know, as my mum would say. I can't see me leaving tiny house life anytime soon. One day in the future, I will have a luxury bricks and mortar beach house right on the water where I can step right out onto the sand. But for now, I can see me being here for at least five years while my son finishes high school in the area. And then, who knows? Who knows? The great what's next? Absolutely, yeah. Bryony, this is such a beautiful tiny home that you've built yourself here. I hope you are immensely proud of this design because it is a real masterpiece that you've accomplished here. Thank you so much for sharing it with me. It's been an honour to share it with you. The design of this tiny house is flawless. I can't fault it. I think that all of Bryony's experience in prior tiny house living has led to her designing an absolutely exquisite home for her. But what I'm so much more impressed with is her personal story. Getting to this place was such a journey for her. There was so much hardship to overcome. And yeah, she should be so proud of this house. But more than that, she should just be so proud of where she's now at in life. This really is a wonderful, wonderful place.