Fresh Start in Gorgeous Tiny House | Building Her Dream Homestead!

The biggest benefits of living in a tiny house have been the sense of organization, knowing where everything is. This house feels like the best hug I've ever had. My daughter and I don't get in each other's way. We love being close and we snuggle up on the couch and eat dinner every night and we eat outside in the summertime which is really nice. It's a hug and it's an invitation to leave. My belief is that we are here to be together and I think our big houses are beautiful but they keep us more apart than they do together and that might not be everybody's experience but my values are to be close to the people I love and when they come into my house they have no choice but to be close to me. Hi I'm Rochelle. This is my tiny house in Biddeford, Maine. I've been living tiny for six months. This house was built by Fritz Tiny Homes. The dimensions are 37 by 8 feet. The tiny house is on an acre and a half of land and Biddeford, Maine is zoned for tiny living. It wasn't hard to find this land. Developing it had its ups and downs but in all in all it was a good process. Right now we have just a basic staircase but eventually we'll be building a 16 by 8 deck in the front and wrapping it around to the back of the house over time. All right let's go see what's inside. Welcome to the tiny house. This tiny house has about 300 square feet. I chose the Halcyon 2 model from Fritz Tiny Homes so that my daughter and I would have enough space to both have our own rooms and it was the biggest one. So starting with the living room, this is our most lived in spot in the house. The couch comes with the house and so you can pick out your color and your style of couch and it's very comfortable for sitting and also for sleeping on. I've used it when I've had company and it's a really great part of the house and there's enough room here in the living room for me to do yoga so that's really nice. I really enjoy the view from the couch. I also enjoy the view outside from the couch because these four by six windows are stunning. Moving towards the center of the house, I'll talk about these amazing concrete counters. There's multiple different shades of gray that you can choose so I picked a lighter shade. I wanted to keep the colors in the house really light so that it would look more open and spacious. There are lots of different options for the counters. You can do more wood if you want or more white. It's very customizable and that was one of the features that I really liked about choosing Fritz Tiny Homes. Here's something that's one of my favorite things about this house is that every single counter and drawer is soft close and so there's never any banging or and it's always like when you're moving around quickly it's just really it's really nice. The house comes with a propane stove so I chose this wonderful propane stove with the silver knobs and handles matching my microwave oven which is really fun to have a microwave in such a small space. I went with a black interior sink which doesn't show the mess as much and the faucets and handles and things in the kitchen all match. I like the darker color against the lighter choices. I'm really happy with how it turned out. There is so much space in this kitchen. I have most of my major appliances all hidden away in the cabinets. It's easy to grab and pull out and use. Another thing I love about this kitchen is how many outlets there are. Just along this one counter top there are three outlets and then there's another one or two over here so it makes it really easy to use my different appliances while I'm cooking. I love being able to stand here and see out this beautiful window. I'm looking into the back part of the yard and the land. It's been really lovely. This kitchen feels really spacious actually and with the hutch on one side and the sink and stove on the other it's easy to be in here. I love cooking. I could cook for hours in this kitchen. Bonus feature for this kitchen is that when people walk into your house they don't see your refrigerator because it's been hidden into the beautiful design of the house. If you're wondering where all my food is it's right here in the pullout pantry. Seven or eight shelves and all of the things I need. Ten years ago if you would have told me that I would be here in this place I would have laughed I love being in this time of my life where there's still a lot of life to live and have more experience and feel ready to do something new and exciting. I'm 52 working as a yoga teacher and massage therapist. I've been doing that for 25 years. Then I was a mom for the last 10 years mostly staying home with my kids. My marriage ended and I'm on a new trajectory finding my way in the world and adding a new career on because I'll never stop doing body work. It's wonderful but I'm going to be a special ed teacher. I'm just finishing up my degree in special education. I dabble in in cooking and baking and then I love to hike and be outside and go to the ocean. It's a mile from the house so I can walk there in about 15 minutes. We had a 1,200 square foot house and four kids in Texas and we wanted a little more space and more nature and a smaller town environment for them. So we decided to move here and build a house. So we built a five-bedroom home in Kennebunkport in the woods. My ex designed the house and it was lovely. I loved it but there was a lot of space. Yeah, living in that house especially during COVID everybody was in their respective spaces and that's nice for families I think but I think we lose an element of intimacy and connection when we're trapped behind doors away from each other in the same house. As much as I loved it and how and it's beautiful and it's built for us I think I felt a little bit lonely too. Fast fashion is a scam. The prices are cheap but so is the quality. So in the end are you really saving? That's why Quince is such an incredible brand. It's your one-stop destination for high-end essentials including clothing, home goods, and accessories. Luxury quality made with sustainability in mind but all while keeping the prices low. We're talking 50% less than similar brands by cutting out the middleman. I'm completely in love with my new Mongolian cashmere boatneck sweater. I can easily dress it up or down for cozy hangs or date night. It's so effortlessly chic and has got to be the softest sweater I've ever owned. Everything we've both tried from Quince feels so premium and well-made. If you're ready to feel fancy without breaking the bank shop Quince. Scan the QR code on the screen or use our link in the description to get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. So behind the pocket door is the bathroom the bathroom hallway and here in the bathroom we have a beautiful sink. I love the design of this sink and one of the things that drew me to the house was the creativity. It's got some amazing amounts of storage. It's foot deep cabinetry and all of the plumbing for the sink is up in the wall so you don't have a under the bathroom sink that has a lot of like awkward space so they were able to use that space under the sink really efficiently. So there's like super long drawers that you know this is like two and a half feet and then lots of space underneath for storing all the things the bathroom things. The toilet is designed kind of in the middle of the space. There's a little oasis in here for going potty and here's the full-size bathtub and shower which works great when you have a kid. We love it so much. I added a window to the bathroom so that we could also see nature from our bathroom time. So the house is heated with radiant heat and there's a broiler in the house and so this is the broiler room. It's where I keep a lot of my cleaning supplies. The internet is in here and my sledgehammer so that's where I store my sledgehammer. It's very interesting where you end up putting things. The heating system is something I really appreciate because it's just warm floors all the time in the winter which is great for Maine. I also have a laundry room. This is the combination washer dryer and some storage underneath where I keep my tools and my vacuum so that's been great to have a washer dryer. It feels like home when you can wash your clothes. In the back of the house is the master bedroom suite. This room can be customized to have anything you want and I chose the bedroom. It has a queen-size bed and another two four by six windows which are amazing. At first it was a little tricky to fall asleep to the moon and wake up with the sun but I love not having window treatments here. It makes me feel that much closer to nature. The headboard is just beautiful. It has two outlets with a way to plug in your phone and two or three places to put books and plants which is pretty much what I decorate my whole house with. This room is beautiful in the sense that it's carrying the beams all the way through the house so these beautiful beams with led lighting and the headboards have lighting as well which is really nice so I can change the lighting in the room as needed and that's been wonderful. There's also a wardrobe in this bedroom. It has four drawers and a nice place to hang my clothes. This is a wonderful place. I do all of my journaling and I study in here. It's also a place for my daughter to come because the door closes and when you have a pre-teen it's really nice for them to have space for themselves, talk on the phone, be with their friends and I let her use this room just the same way that I do just to get some privacy and some space. Now that we've checked out my little abode we can check out the bedroom upstairs. So I love the staircase because we don't have to climb up on a ladder and once we get up here there's room above my head and it does not feel cramped at all. There's a beautiful transom window that goes across the whole area and when you open the window over there and the window on this side during the summer the breeze that blows through is just really delicious. I also had a special gift for my daughter and gave her a moon roof and she loves it. We lay there together and watch the stars on a lot of nights. So I really appreciate the openness of this space and the view from this space is really great because you just see the whole house is just really nice. My daughter loves being up here and she has little remote controls. She can control the lighting in the whole house so it's really fun for her to be up here. Initially I was worried that River wouldn't feel like she had her own private space but this loft really does feel like it's away from everything else in the house so the time she spends here I think she feels like it's hers. It has enough space up here that we can be together as well so it's it's really working out better than I thought. When I was looking for a place to live I kept looking at places I could afford and they were really small houses on really small plots and they were really old houses with not a very good footprint. I would have to spend a lot of money to to do somebody else's list of things to fix the house up you know just old. I appreciate old but I also have come to realize here in Maine that old houses just use up a lot of energy. Then we were looking at modular homes and while we were looking at modular homes we found Fritz Tiny Homes. I watched every video on their site. I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the design. I would watch their videos over and over again like could I live in something like that? Would that be something I could do? And I started wrapping my brain around it and then we stumbled upon this land. The land was more than we wanted to spend but the location of this land is amazing. I knew that I would have a lot of land to do more with. I could actually build another house on this land if I wanted to. I could bring another tiny house here when my mom needs more help. If she ever needed to live here that would be an option or my dad or any of my family members really. The land was $200,000 and the tiny house was the same and then the excavation on top of that. It's more than we initially set out for but I'm pretty sure that now you can't buy a smaller house in this area for less than that. To have a brand new house that you design that you pick out everything the land is it's an acre and a half. It's just ripe and ready for homesteading. The neighbors are amazing. It's very quiet, very secluded, totally worth it. So we bought the land first then we took out a construction loan. They folded the land loan into the construction loan. We did it through the same bank and then we put down cash. The loan was not an easy process. I recommend trying to find someone who's done a tiny house loan before but we made it through. My ex and I did it together. It wasn't easy. You know breaking up is hard. That part was really sticky but I'll have to say that I completely appreciate the fact that we were able to do it without lawyers. This was part of that process and it wasn't easy for either of us but we made it work. I got rid of a lot of things before I moved in. I call them shrinking pains. It took actually moving in here with all of my stuff to realize wow okay how much of this do I really need? I'm still doing the journey. A co-worker of mine said wow everything you choose to have in your house has got to be precious. That's kind of been my motto. Is this precious? Is this something that's important to me? Does it have a story? Does it have a use? Can I use it for more than one thing? So far it's been interesting and it hasn't been horrible because Fritz builds their homes to store your things. They have used every last inch of this house. Right now everything is a work in progress and probably always will be. I'd like to have some chickens and some bees. My plan is to grow a lot of vegetables. Maine has a very short growing season but I feel lucky to know some amazing farmers that I'm learning a lot from. I've gotten to know the wildlife here a little bit. There's turkeys and deer and I put a hummingbird feeder out. There were so many hummingbirds, so many different animals here. So I want to create a homestead that serves the natural environment as well as creates food and sustenance for my daughter and I. Thanks for stopping by Tiny House Expedition. I'm Alexis and I'm Christian and this is our DIY 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 home page to browse tiny homes by category. And don't forget to subscribe. Hope to see you soon.