Spectacular Federation-Style Tiny House Redefines Home With Jaw-Dropping Cottage Charm

One of the things that I've always loved about tiny houses is the sense of coziness that they can elicit and here in Victoria we've found the most adorable cottage style tiny home that really takes that to the next level. Hi Lana, how are you? Thanks Bryce, how are you? Very well thank you, so nice to meet you. G'day David, how you doing mate? Nice to meet you. It is so lovely to meet you both and this is the most charming home that you've built yourselves. Thanks. And we're on your own land right now, this is an incredible property. Yeah thanks very much, we bought it in 2019, it was 25 acres and yeah we enjoy it. Amazing, how did you find this spot? I'm from New South Wales originally and we decided that we wanted to live somewhere near Melbourne but we didn't know where so we took a couple of months off and we went camping and we arrived here and I was like this is the spot and Dave kind of looked at me like I was a bit mad and we went to the real estate agent and there was a bit of land for sale and we drove out here and everything just kept falling into place. We made an offer, it was accepted, it was subject to planning, we got planning. We didn't think it would be accepted but it was. Yeah and so everything just kept kind of happening and we're like well we'll just keep testing it and it just kept working and so here we are. And 25 acres, that really is a great chunk of land. Already I can see you've been hard at work improving the property and doing lots of planting around the place. Yeah we have about 50 fruit trees in the ground. I mean we planted more but you know they perish and we have about an acre around the house under a market garden. It's a great opportunity but it's a lot of land to take care of as well. Yeah certainly a lot of work but very rewarding work at the same time and you've already done a phenomenal job developing around the house. I see you've got some beautiful gardens there, you've got the polytunnel, you've done a lot of work here already. Yeah we think we haven't finished the tiny house or you know it's been a long time going but there's been all this other work that's happened around the house. We're learning on the job for both the house and the garden. Fantastic. Yeah we're amateurs at both. And you named your tiny house River after the TV show River Cottage which I just absolutely loved because River Cottage was such a formative show for me as well. It was probably where I first found my love for homesteading so I just love that you've named your tiny house that. Yeah there kind of was no other name when we decided like we wanted to go for like Australian Federation kind of cottagey feel and Dave has loved Hugh Farley Whittingstall forever and so I was just like we just need to call this River Cottage so River is the name. Yeah I love him too he's like my spirit animal. Yeah no he's a hero and like we're trying to create an entire kind of a lifestyle. His show was I suppose the marvel you know you learn along the way and I mean we have like our skills have increased exponentially and yeah it's been enjoyable. Yeah absolutely and the house this is just absolutely gorgeous. You bought the land here so what was it that inspired you to build a tiny house here because you could have built a conventional home. We wanted to get on the land quickly. Yeah within two weeks. Yeah yeah I mean yeah so it was a kind of an efficiency that way and we thought we would build it you know relatively quickly um I think I don't recall saying two weeks but I wasn't the impression it was two weeks and yeah and it was so that we could move here quickly and we could experience living on the land because like I think the location the climate that has had a huge effect on decisions we've made about the house and also like I was interested in the building experience like to actually you know build a house. Lana always all through our relationship she spoke about her uh you know cabin in the woods. I mean we didn't get the woods there's not many trees on this property. We don't want woods in Australia. Yeah but our own home built by ourselves like that was really appealing. Yeah so it was efficient it was practical and it was an adventure. And the home itself is just adorable you've really captured that cottage aesthetic. Yeah thank you. Thank you. We found lots of replicas of things that we could kind of add like the finials on the end and trim and the bullnose and the colours even down to like Federation style and so yeah there was like a lot of things that we didn't know about before. That kind of lead to a general aesthetic. As we were designing the tiny house it's a box unless you do something different it's going to look like a rectangular box and so the details like the finials, the mouldings, the eaves brackets, the bullnose, the dropping of the middle section that was all done to create a bit of visual interest and like the pink colour is um quite popular around the neighbourhood. Well everyone asks why I chose to paint it pink and it's actually Dave's decision to paint. No no no it was the it was. You were quick to back out of that one. No no I mean absolutely I love it I actually I'm the biggest defender of the colour now when people ask me about it but um it was the landscape chose it so we had like three or four colours we put we painted boards put them out in the landscape as we were building the house to see which would be the least conspicuous and the pink throughout the year actually stood out the least was like fit in most with the landscape. You're so right about that colour pink though as well when you think of this kind of landscape pink isn't the immediate colour that would come to mind but it really works here. Yeah it really does yeah. And you built this home yourselves have you ever done anything like this before? Before this Dave had built a chicken coop and a bed board for the back of our car to go camping so this is a little bit of an upgrade. Yeah I'm actually I'm impressed with Lana for her faith because I often say to her like can you believe that you know we built a house and she's like Dave you built that chicken coop that before beforehand and it was it was it was really like a Fort Knox of chicken coops. It sounds like a fantastic coat. It was yeah it had a slate roof and the whole thing but yeah that was the extent of my carpentry experience uh before now. I couldn't hold a hammer so we've come a long way. Yeah you certainly have yeah and I look I have to thank you know yourselves but like YouTube in general and the Australian Home Builders Guide it has the A to Z of how to build a house in there and the guys up at Mitre 10 they gave me huge amounts of advice and they were really generous I think they kind of found it amusing. People are yeah they want to help and they're they're very generous with their time and their knowledge and you can kind of figure it out but also there's people there to help you when you're a little bit lost. Yeah it is one of the things that I genuinely love about the tiny house movement that it has emboldened people to build their own homes who probably never would have given it a shot otherwise. Yeah my grandfather built his own home and I thought that was just like magic I never thought that that would be my story as well and to be fair without Dave it probably wouldn't be but it's been a fun journey to go on. Yeah it's a life skill I mean shelter is pretty essential so it's good to be able to manage it yourself. You are so right about that. So the trailer is seven and a half meters long what size is the house overall? We extended a small bit over the tow bar so overall it's about nine meters in length. The trailer that we got the next trailer up was as long as we've effectively got here but it was like 30% heavier because you know it's a steel trailer. Yeah so these overhangs and they're more efficient in weight and they kind of stretched you know got an extra couple of square meters so it's 27 square meters all up and I think probably six that is from the you know the overhangs and things like that so yeah that was helpful. It sure is well I am already just absolutely enamored by what you've built here and I am so excited to see what you've done inside can we have a look? Absolutely. Thank you very much. This is fantastic you have built so much character into this home. Thank you yeah it's kind of evolved over time I think living in it and like really understanding what we wanted around us because I'm very nostalgic and sentimental so like little kind of chuckies is important to me. We also drink wine and we like coffee there's kind of lots of stuff everywhere that kind of reminds us of our journey and our pasts and our love of food and wine. Yeah every square centimeter you see an opportunity it's like we could get storage in there or you know we could get that appliance we wanted or whatever and so like it's almost been a small bit of a challenge in a way but yeah no it's worked out really well. I think there's this misnomer that you have to be minimalist to live in a tiny house I don't think you have to be minimalist I think you have to be intentional. Yeah absolutely. When we first started talking about a tiny house and like I was looking at your videos and stuff I was like I have a lot of stuff am I going to be able to like function in a tiny house with like the things that I like to have around me and yes is the answer. Just the attention to detail in here and all of the quirky little factors like immediately my eye is drawn to that really cool little hobbit nook up there. Thank you I've kind of requested some novelty I really like novelty so the hobbit hole kind of came about because there was a hole that needed to be filled and it felt really boring to just put another piece of wood there so I've never tried doing anything miniature before but I was like I'm going to give it a crack so that we can have a hobbit hole in our house and not just another bit of wood. I think it like spurs creativity because you do end up with these peculiar shaped holes or problems or whatever and I mean you're the only person who's responsible for fixing them so you come up with innovative solutions and the porthole in the shower is why have it but also why not I mean like we needed light in the shower it's a small room and so yeah we got a porthole off a boat. Yeah I think it's so important to have fun when you're designing and building and to really make a space your own. Absolutely. Yeah the layout in here is really nicely done too I love the way that you enter the home and immediately come into this very cozy little lounge. Because we've been living in it whilst building it that corner has seen many different iterations and that is by far my favorite when it doesn't become a dumping ground for stuff as you walk into the house. You'll notice it's kind of skinnier on one side and bigger on the other and that occurred whilst we were building it because we were like we'd really like to share the couch with our dog well dog at the time now dogs so we kind of measured up her bed and made one side of the couch that width so that she'd be comfortable lying up on the couch with us. Great and do you find it quite comfortable as well? I love that side of the couch. Nice when you can build something for the dogs but also enjoy it yourselves. Yeah absolutely yeah yeah the dogs have yeah living with two Labradors there's a lot of accommodations in here for them. Yet our first dog she has been in this house since day one so a lot of the things that we've built and thought about have occurred because she's been a part of the journey of building the house. And then lots going on in this part of the home this looks like a very multifunctional space. Yeah it does it has a lot of functions. We both love food and cooking so the house kind of was built from the kitchen back so when we kind of decided to build this really long bench in the middle it was to be a workspace but also to eat at to make pasta to do prep whoever was the sous chef could be out here cutting while the person in the kitchen was cooking and so like yeah it's meant to be a multifunctional space but based mostly around food. But like this we call this the tower of power because it does so much work so that we ended up with this kind of really awkward space between the cantina and the kitchen we didn't want them to run into each other and then there's a gap you can see up there and so we were like well you know storage is always important and we made this you know floor to you know ceiling storage slash baristas station slash kitchen island and slash dog drawer slash dog drawer every piece of space is doing like multiple functions like we're working incredibly hard. And up in the fun loft it then turns into shelving for current craft projects so like a dump shelf essentially and a print shelf and so like the whole thing helps us throughout the whole house. It's a small piece of space but like you know you can see how much can be done with it so and it's the same here you know this could just be a corridor but instead it's a dining area you know and the stairs is functioning as storage you know the steps are storage the storage all underneath it. I actually find that because the stairs are in the center of the house most people instead of coming in and sitting on the couch or sitting on the stools come and sit on the stairs so the stairs have really become like a part of the the sitting and the kind of communing yeah part of the house. Yeah the design of these stairs is really great I love the way that you built that tower though that's just so unique. I think it makes a really great focal point for the house as well. Yeah we call this the atrium because it's the ceiling's high but it's really doing a lot of heavy lifting and yeah I mean we have a kitchen island I mean I don't think many people have that in the tiny house. And the fun loft sounds awesome what do you have going on up there? That's Lana's creation. Yeah so when we decided we were going to build a second loft it was going to be you know the office but as kind of time went on I was like it should really be like a part where I really like crafting and Dave likes you know model airplanes and welding and all that kind of stuff so it really needs to be a part of like the fun part of the house so I started terming it the fun loft in its construction and that's kind of dictated everything since as you'll see on the carpet and like some of the decorations like everything up there is meant to be about fun. We sit down and play board games on the floor and whatever but also when we have people to stay they sleep there and you know it's a home office you know we both work from home so there's another computer up there so we have two computers in house so we can work simultaneously and but again you know that could just have a single function like a spare sleeping loft but instead it's doing like five different things. And I absolutely love the design of your kitchen that just looks like the coziest best space to cook in. Yeah it kind of evolved I think we're really lucky in that we have been living in this house while we've constructed most of the interior when we moved in we literally had a camping table over in the corner there was no kitchen sink we had to do the dishes in but as a result we've kind of really understood how we like to cook and so like it may look like there's all these kind of little nooks but it's the easiest place I've ever like I really like baking Dave really likes cooking and it's just like the easiest space to do everything making bread making pastries making every night dinner like it's just an absolute pleasure to be in there and everything's kind of at fingertips we have everything we need. In terms of the way we've laid out the counters there you know it's a small space you really have to really study where are you going to get your counter area for is it going to be enough and we ended up with a large usable space that like has a lot of utility and you know there's nothing we can't cook in there. Brilliant I love the way that you have tackled the storage in this house as well that ceiling storage especially is super interesting. Well we have you to thank for that. Oh really? Yeah there's a video from gosh it would be like seven years ago now the woman in California her and her daughter yeah and like when you walked through the house in the kitchen it was just all like the drop-down storage and I was just like that is genius because like you're not going to put insulation like this is one room essentially so like what a great way to kind of get in storage and so we've kind of dotted them throughout the house we have the ones in the kitchen for food obviously at the front door for shoes so you can immediately take them off and not walk shoes through the house then we have one in the bathroom for you know storage overflow. Fantastic what I love about making these videos is knowing that they go out into the world and that people like you pick up the ideas and build them into your space and and create wonderful things like this I just I find that really humbling and I love that. Yeah and it's a testament to these people the amount of creativity that goes into a tiny home is is incredible yeah like I said earlier this ability to build this thing yourself this this empowerment that you have to choose solutions that you find interesting or or borrow ideas. Yeah I completely agree I absolutely love all of the shelving and the display storage that you have in here and all the room for books as well this is so great. Thank you yeah I'm a very sentimental person so like every single thing in here has like a story a lot of it is our journey we've been together for 13 years so like there's a lot of things that we've accumulated in our travels and all the different places we've lived and we're both big lovers of books I think uh when we travel we go to bookstores and supermarkets more than anything. I'm the same I do that too. Silly things do when you're getting on a plane. Yeah but we've worked out how to how to manage that. Both these shelves here like they're two-sided so on the back of them is the storage for the room that they're in like it's kind of wonderful like it would be idle space otherwise and here it's shelving and it's you know it's alive with their memories and things like that. Yeah what are your favorite books in your collection? Oh Jesus I mean you should have signposted. I think like there's like books that we have from our travels so there's a cookbook shop in New York called Bonnie Slotnick's and we really like New York Jewish food like bialis and bagels and lox and all that kind of stuff very hard to find in rural Victoria and so we've brought a lot of those books back that like we absolutely love and then I've been reading a lot of novels since the pandemic we have a few Lord of the Rings and Hobbits everywhere my favorite author is displayed up on one specific shelf Robin Hobb so. Robin Hobb is my favorite fantasy author too. Yeah yeah the Farseer Trilogy. Yes! Absolutely love it. Yeah it's my thing. The Farseer Trilogy got me into fantasy it should have been Lord of the Rings but it was Farseer Trilogy that really pulled me in. There you go this is the Robin Hobbits. Yeah beautiful yeah maybe that's why I feel so good in here. And next up we've got the bathroom can we have a look in there? Absolutely yeah please. Oh again this is such an adorable room I love the color in here and what are those photos? Yeah that's me I saw somebody on Instagram do it and I thought it was hilarious. It's hilarious. So I decided that we would add that to our bathroom. Are your dogs very proud of their portraits? Absolutely not if you look closely at her face there is a real look of like disgust and shame. What are you doing mom? Yeah yeah pretty much but I thought it was worth it. I like the black and white as well it kind of like leads people in like oh nice but what the heck so yeah I enjoy that a lot. I love that very cool. You've got the composting toilet here? We do. It did take a bit of convincing or you know to adapt to the concept but you know haven't used it now for a good few years and yeah it's brilliant. The tile work in here is exquisite I love the pattern on the floor thank you. Thank you. One downside to building in 2020 was not being able to go and select things and I had a really specific thing in my mind there are tiles on floors in some of my favorite bakeries and eateries in Brooklyn in New York and I was determined to have that pattern in our bathroom which became impossible to find in Australia so we did one really stupid thing in this house and we ordered these from America. No yeah of all things to order from America as well because tiles are heaven. Exactly exactly although like one of the virtues of building a tiny house is that like it's the same with the hardwood floors and main part of downstairs the areas are so small we only needed a pack and that was enough for in here. It means a lot to have it here but it also meant this room turned into the New York room as you'll see with some of the decorations so uh yeah it uh everything kind of started with the tiles. I really like the shower door too. Oh thank you um thank you Dave. Yeah no problem. Yeah I really like reclaimed materials and a lot of this house is not reclaimed materials so where I could kind of insert that I did so I bought these off Facebook marketplace and was like hey Dave can we make a door with these and Dave kind of brought it to life. Brilliant and having the water saving shower what a great feature especially here in Australia where you can have these really long dry hot summers. Yeah absolutely I love showers a lot and Dave was saying that we were going to have four minute showers like that would that would be all we could manage with our water tank and so when I saw your video on the Nebbia I did a lot of research and it uses 50% of the water so I was like well that turns it into an eight minute shower so we can work with that. Yeah some of those extreme water saving shower heads just feel like you're being peed on by a kitten or something whereas the Nebbia it is quite an immersive nice experience. And bedroom is upstairs can we have a peek at that? Yes please. All righty again I just love how I can walk into each and every room in your home and it's just so filled with character. I love that. Thank you. Yeah one of the things Dave said when we first met was like how he liked how I had little kind of bits and pieces stuck all over the house and I've managed to continue that in every house we've lived in including this one so yeah there's a little bit of us in every room. Yeah it's a home. And I'm still on a lean up here but you're both standing up this is a high tiny house isn't it? It is it was measured exactly to us. It's with these kind of like temporary not temporary but like additions on top of the common wall for the house so you know if we were to relocate it in the future or if it had to go like be towed on the road with you know a modest amount of work we could lower the roof and so we kept that option open in other words. That's such a great way of doing it though because you own this land this is a home which is going to be here for a very very long time and so prioritising your comfort in the home over the ability to very very occasionally if ever move it on the road is exactly the right approach to take. Absolutely. If I was to build a second tiny house that would be the first question I would ask is how many times I'm going to move it and if it's only once or twice well then it needs to function more like a demountable so it could go in the back of a large articulated truck and be taken away. If you understand that it frees up so many kind of choices for you. I really like the windows and especially those skylights up here too. Thank you yeah we're in the country we have spectacular stars out here you can see the Milky Way especially in winter and I'm so glad we did it but it does get hot in summer so we eventually had to install some foil blinds but that kind of solved that problem. Yeah absolutely. And yeah now we're just really pleased that we have them. Brilliant and I see you've got a projector up here as well. Yeah we do. We love TVs and movies a lot so that was an essential. The size of the screen when it comes down it takes up the whole width of the house. Dave put in lots of nice speakers so like it's literally better than a cinema. Awesome. Yeah we really enjoy it. I think Jurassic Park was the first thing we watched and it was worth it. It was the best. It's one of the real treats of the house actually. Like I really love watching movies. It's one of our favourites. Storage under the bed as well. Yeah when we started talking about like the base we were really conscious about using every inch of it for storage so there's shelves all down the side there's two at the front and then there's a four bin train down the middle so the part that you wouldn't be able kind of access from the sides and so you can just kind of pull it out one by one so obviously the fourth bin has the the least used stuff and the first one usually has the dog stuff because they sleep up here with us. Yeah that's got to be tight. I kind of wish we'd built the house a little wider so we could have a king bed. Dave had only ever had dogs that lived in kennels outside and so he was going to build a little kennel replica of this house outside. Right. But I who was not a dog person became a dog person within about five seconds and was like this dog is sleeping on our bed and I won. It worked out well she's quite a delicate dog as well so which I know it's great. So the house has now been completed for 12 hours but you have been living here in various stages of completion for four years. How is tiny house life working out for you? The best. Yeah. It really got heightened when we'd finished like the main furniture so when we didn't have to eat our dinner on the stairs we had a bench when we had a couch we had somewhere to sit that wasn't the bed so like there are iterations of the tiny house I would not like to go back to but in its current form like I don't want to leave I love this house. The lessons I've learned here about using space and design and things like that like I'll take it everywhere it's a really fabulous way to live and we're able to have our dogs we're able to have you know family stay we're able to entertain there's nothing you can't do and I couldn't recommend it more. Yeah especially having built this home yourselves you must just have such an incredible sense of pride encapsulated in this home. Yeah and like Dave says on an almost daily basis like can you believe we built this thing and like I can't but also I can because I can remember every stage and like every like layer that has gone I can't believe how many things go into a house and I will never take that for granted again. Yeah I look at the work I did previously and I actually can't believe that I that I did it or and the complexity like every corner of the house you visit has been visited like you know 10-20 times and there's a lot of energy and passion going into a house and so like I mean to have done it yourself and to live in it then like yeah you really love it like in a way that you you wouldn't otherwise. This house means like home and it means a base for us especially as like we have been traveling for 80% of our relationships and now we have like a base and a home it means everything. I think we all understand what home means to us but you know I'm from Ireland I grew up there and you know when talking to family and friends you know I would refer to Ireland as home but here I would call this home now you know like we spoke about the stars earlier like it's incredible you know the Milky Way you see it on a weekly basis and so by building this ourselves by doing all this work ourselves like you experience in it in an incredibly direct and like fundamental way and that has made this my home because I understand it so so intimately and so deeply it has so much meaning to me because I've done it. There's a connection to it that you can only achieve by doing it yourself. Yeah so it's our home and I love it and I love all of it like it's a beautiful part of the world it's incredibly generous country I just yeah I've nothing but gratitude for it I really adore it. How did you go budget-wise on this home? I think about $75,000 but but that would be in 2019 dollars because costs of construction Australia have gone up you know 40 to 50 percent since then I mean that would be to get the house built the floors down the walls done you know the appliances but then it would you know it would be empty you know you would need to provide all the soft versions but the human effort that has gone into this is gigantic. Yeah it can't be understated you're right about that. And now that you've completed this home though you are just about to embark on a new building project tell me about that. Yeah so we're hoping to build you know on this land as well a conventional house that's going to start you know within the next couple of months and I mean we're not going to build it I mean I can't imagine. We'll be out there every day making sure they do things right. We'll be the best supervisors but I can't imagine how long it would take me to build it myself but yeah so we're going to do that but smaller spaces like this it's it's almost a lifestyle the design of the house the conventional house we're going to build has completely changed after living in the tiny home we know what we want from a house we know what it needs to do and so it's been an invaluable learning experience and I think that household will go great but yeah and apply many of the same principles as here. Great and what's the plan for this house once the new house is built? I want to come down here every other week. We literally said that the other day we will visit this when we yeah. But I think as well like we were talking about maybe living in this and renting out the little big house like we kind of we're required to build the bigger house and so we're not really ready to give up on this house yet so maybe we'll live in it for a bit longer but like it's always going to be here so family friends like whoever would like to come stay. When you say you're required to build the big house you mean in terms of council regulations as in this home here being parked is really only possible when you have the larger home on the property as well? Yeah that's correct yeah so in our local government area the tiny houses have to be situated with an existing dwelling and that's really just for planning so this is and this is farmland. To be fair to them it's so that they can be sure that you know it is appropriate to have like a dwelling on this piece of land for wastewater management and environmental reasons and all that stuff so the assumption being if there's an existing house there well then the land is appropriate for you know residential occupation. Yeah well I absolutely love what you've created here. This home is just absolutely packed with charm and character. Your land is beautiful and I just cannot wait to watch it evolve over the years. Thank you so much for sharing your pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for coming. My pleasure. Lana and David have created a magical place for themselves to call home. When you build your own home you have this opportunity to craft a space that truly reflects who you are as a person and that is precisely what they've done here. This is a space that not only functions so well for them but is also just so beautifully adorned and decorated with all of these trinkets and things that just truly make this space feel like a home from the moment you walk through the front door. This is beautiful.