His 3-Bedroom Tiny House on 2.8 Acres | Freedom to Express Himself!

I ended up stumbling onto Tiny Homes of Maine. They had a lot of great floor plans. This one is called the Sebago. It was the largest that they had at the time, and I had always wanted to come to the northeast to retire, so I figure my job lets me work from home, so I might as well just come. When I came out to Maine, I wasn't sure what I was going to do. It involved a lot of research, but luckily the Tiny Home Company that I worked with made it really easy. At the time, there were some policy changes going through in the state to allow tiny homes to be built as a residential property on any land. That very much worked in my favor. Hi, my name is McKenzie. This is my tiny house in Fort Kent, Maine. My tiny home is planted on its own land, and it is on 2.8 acres of land. I've been living in my tiny home for just over two years now. It was built by Tiny Homes of Maine. The dimensions are 30 by 10. All right, come on in. Let's check it out. Welcome to Pterodactyl Landing. It's about 300 square feet. The model is called the Sebago. I chose it because it has two lofts up there and a main floor bedroom, so whenever I want to have a guest visit, I have plenty of space for everyone. All right, starting behind me is my kitchen. It's got just the standard size oven. I know some people opt for just a single or two burners, but this has a full four burners. I was very attracted to the amount of counter space that it has so that I can do a lot with it. I've made pasta here before, so it has plenty of space for everything that I want to do, so it's been great. It's got plenty of shelving for my dishes, my pots and pans, anything that I need. It has lots of extra storage space, so we've got cabinets below and above. These ones I use for extra storage because you've got to use a ladder to get up there. This fridge, it's a little bit smaller than normal, but for me, just as a single person, it has all the space that I need. I decided to do black instead of stainless, and then I also painted it with a chalkboard material so I can draw on this as much as I want. So the only thing I feel like I sacrificed when I was deciding what to put in was a dishwasher, but that just means that I have to wash dishes by hand a little bit more often, so no great sacrifice. Very privileged problem to have. I've enjoyed the kitchen. It's given me all the space that I need to cook all the recipes that I want, to learn all the new stuff that I want. August of 2024 and 25, I lost 60 pounds just through dieting. It's been incredible. It's still hard. I still struggle with it. I still get my sweet tooth, and that's really the culprit. Living tiny, and specifically in a tiny house in a tiny town, has really helped me to force that self-control. So I previously lived in Ogden, Utah, which is one of the larger cities in Utah. I had a full-size house that was 2,000 square feet, two bedrooms. It was really nice, but it just was way more than I needed. So after I got divorced and was just on my own, it just wasn't practical anymore. It was too much upkeep and too expensive for me, and it just wasn't what I wanted anymore. I am 33. I am originally from Utah, and I moved to Fort Kent, Maine. For work, I manage a support team for an education technology company. For hobbies, I usually just hang out at home. I like to build models. Little Gundam models is what they're called. There's some incredible hiking trails just down the road, and we're in northern Maine, so other hiking trails and lakes are just a short drive. When I was living in Ogden, it was a more bustling city, so I felt like I had to be up and at them and go, go, go all the time. So living here in a very, very quiet town, I think the population is something like 4,000. There's not as much to spend your money on to do, so I've been able to dig myself out of some financial straits just being up here because there's not as much to do. So it really forced me to slow down and get used to a slower pace and have some self-control. So I definitely didn't realize at first how much my environment was influencing as much of my life as it was. One of the neighbors down the street, they were very sweet. They came in and took a look at the house, and the next day, I woke up and there was pancakes and syrup on the front porch from them. So the town, neighbors, anybody that I have interacted with, they've been very kind, very helpful. In the winters, they've come and helped me plow my driveway when I wasn't quite prepared, so couldn't ask for a better area. And if we step back here, this is my bathroom. So we have two windows, just makes for a very beautiful view while you're in here. We have a washer-dryer combo, so this does both. This has been great, just means that you have to do one load at a time. You can't wash while you dry, but I mean, you can just throw it all in at once, set it and forget it, and come back a few hours later and it's all done. The main thing that I wanted that wasn't standard with the tiny home was this tankless water heater. So I have hot water year-round for all my guests. Nobody ever has to worry about using somebody else's hot water when taking showers. So this has just been great to have, especially in winter. It's also got a nice big shower, which is great because obviously I'm not a slim fella, so I need a lot of space in my shower and I feel like this has all the space that I need. Additionally, there is this beautiful vanity light. It works great. And then there's the light in the shower itself. All the windows in the house are standard. There's 19 windows in total, which is great when you're looking out of them, but it sucks ass when you're trying to put curtains on them. It's expensive as hell. Looking at this all from the perspective of a single man, this is perfect. It gives me everything I need. I have space to do my laundry, fold it. This counter space was something that I didn't anticipate that has been just an extra bonus. It's got plenty of shelving for towels and whatever else I need it for. So when I'm in here, it feels like I have all of the features of a regular house, but without any of the extra that I don't need. So above the bathroom is my first bigger loft. I use that one primarily for guests, but in the winter I like to sleep up there. It's a little bit easier to manage the heat. I can just be up there with a small space heater and save some money. So it retains heat very well and it's very comfortable, especially for just one person. Is it me or does today's news feel like everyone's yelling? And it could be confusing and hard to follow. That's why I'm happy to have found Morning Brew. It's a free daily email newsletter that makes business news engaging, entertaining, and easy to understand. It only takes five minutes or less to read, covering the most relevant news affecting your career and life. I appreciate how Morning Brew makes staying informed easy and fun. It's written in a witty, casual tone with short, simple write-ups that anyone can understand. Plus, it includes daily games and quizzes that sneak in business knowledge without you even realizing it. My favorite thing is walking away feeling truly better informed, not angry. A productive and calm way to start the day over coffee. Morning Brew is the go-to newsletter for four plus million professionals. It's 100% free and takes less than 15 seconds to sign up. Click the link below to sign up for Morning Brew for free or scan the QR code on the screen. So in the middle is my living room. It's got plenty of space. So I was able to fit a nice big couch. So this is my dining room table, but I can fold it down to modify the space a little bit if I want to turn the chairs around, have it more of a conversational setting. So dining room table is great. I have the same thing over here for my desk. So if I want to, I can turn this chair around. This is where I typically work or build models. They're called Gundams. It's based on a cartoon called Gundam. It's been airing for something like 40 years now, but it's basically just about giant mech robots. I don't watch the cartoon much, but I like to do small fiddly things with my hands. So it's very conducive to like ADD behavior, just something to work on all the time. When you're not using one of the ladders or either of the ladders, there is a space to put it just right here. So this model has a wheel well down at the bottom, which I've actually found more useful than I thought, but it also has a hook up at the top so you can hang the ladder when it's not in use. I very much enjoyed having enough room to hang out. Like I said, it feels like it's just my own apartment. Like I'm not really compromising much on space compared to a regular house. It's just taking away all of that extra stuff that I don't need, simplifying maintenance, everything, make my life just a little bit easier, make my life a little bit cheaper. So it's been amazing. Up this ladder is the second loft. So just the same as the other, I just have another bed up there for guests. This one I am more likely to use for storage if I need to, but it's currently being occupied by my roommate Bones with a Z, but Bones is spelled with an S, so don't misspell his name or he'll get mad. But yeah, just an extra loft to do whatever I need to with. There's skylights in both of these lofts. Back here, last room is my main floor bedroom. So what I liked especially about it is that it has a closet. You can open up nice closet space and then it has a small heater attached to the wall. And then the floor plan of this room has a space specifically for the bed. So it was nice to just be able to push a queen size bed right back in there. It fits perfectly. So again, it's just the perfect size for me and my cat. Having a main floor bedroom was important, but the longer I've lived in here, the more I'm actually considering turning this into an office and hobby space and just staying up in the loft permanently. I've found the loft to be so much more comfortable than I anticipated. So again, the adaptability of the house is just great. It was not difficult at all to find land up here. It was a little bit trickier to find land that was already ready to have, you know, the well put in, the septic system put in and a plot put on it. A lot of the properties that were for sale when I was looking were like forested properties where you would have had to clear a good amount of trees. This was actually being sold just by a farmer who now lives a couple doors down who just didn't want to maintain this part of the property now. So now he has a smaller pumpkin patch that he still works on, but it was very easy to find this and I'm very grateful. The land itself was about 30 and it's 2.8 acres. So about 10,000 an acre. And then the tiny home itself was 150. I wasn't able to get that without a lot of privilege. I bought my first house at a very good time. So when it was very cheap and then when I sold it, it was also at a very good time for selling. So basically with the profits of selling the house, I was able to pay off all my debts and move up here. So now I have a loan on the house, but it's only a 10 year loan and I'm partway through it. So I'll have it paid off by the time I'm 40, which is a huge weight off my shoulders. So the transition from living in a big house to my tiny house, it wasn't as jarring as I thought it would be. While the house is being built, I was privileged enough to have family to stay with. So for a couple of years while we were waiting for the house to be built, me and my cat were living in my dad's basement. There was a wait list and then there were delays due to COVID. During that time, I had already kind of compacted my belongings and got rid of what I could and what I didn't need anymore. And then when the house was ready and it was time to come out, I basically packed clothes and bedding and my cat in my car and that's all we brought with us up to Maine. So we had a fresh start from there. It was definitely freeing to start new. Now I don't have any junk in here. Everything that I have has a use or it, you know, makes me happy or it was given to me by a friend that has meaning to me. I think that living in a tiny house has definitely helped me in a lot of ways. I won't go too much into it, but I am divorced. We got married very young. So I think, you know, by the time each of us had grown up, we grew up into people that, you know, we didn't really know who we wanted to be ourselves yet as individuals. Now having been divorced and having gone through that trauma and then finding a space for myself, I've definitely been able to explore my hobbies, try out a lot of different hobbies, discover what I like, what I don't like and why I like it so I can branch out. I've been discovering what I need for myself. I'm proud of the progress that I've made and continue to make. Thanks for stopping by Tiny House Expedition. I'm Alexis. And I'm Christian. And this is our tiny house on our homestead in Oregon. Looking for more tiny inspiration? Watch these videos. But if you're looking for something specific, visit our channel homepage to browse tiny homes by category. And don't forget to subscribe. Hope to see you soon.