Young WoMan Built StunNing Tiny Home To Find PeaCe After loss

I definitely think the easy route would have been buying a tiny house, but being the self-sufficient, strong, independent woman that I was and am, I've wanted to take on the challenge of building it myself. I am capable, I am strong, I know how to use power tools. This is a live edge tree slice that I created into a countertop. I did my own resin pour here which definitely was challenging. A bear decided to come into my house while I was away, threw a window up here, and he completely broke through the room divider I originally had here to get to the fridge. This is the second round of a room divider that I've installed here as part of my bed frame. It was really important for me to honor my dad. The walls and the bones and infrastructure of this house are quite literally built in memory of him to keep me safe and sound. Before I started on my tiny house journey, I was infatuated with alternative housing ideas. Things that could move, things that were affordable so that I could live a life of my dreams versus following the nine-to-five slave job. Just really wanting to create a lifestyle for myself that really enabled freedom and liberation from constructs of society and just living in truth with my dreams. My dad passed away in 2016 and after his passing, I was given a gift from his life insurance. Being who I was, feeling the guidance of his gift as well, I wanted to invest it into something that would support me. And yeah, I really wanted to honor my dad the best way that I could with his gift. And I knew that he would want me to be supported in my lifestyle and supported for my future. And so that's what started the tiny house journey. I've been living in the home for about six years. Once I really dived into my tiny house journey and began the building process, it was really important for me to honor my dad and to include him into this build as much as possible. So in all of these walls, there are pictures of him, pieces of him, memories of him. There's poetry, there's art that he painted. The walls and the bones and infrastructure of this house are quite literally built in memory of him to keep me safe and sound. I definitely think the easy route would have been buying a tiny house, but being the self-sufficient, strong, independent woman that I was and am, I've wanted to take on the challenge of building it myself. I knew that I could build more myself than paying for a house so I could make it bigger and design it the ways that I wanted and get more out of my money if I did it myself versus paying for an already prefabricated and built tiny house. I feel like a badass. It's like one of the most, I'm so proud of this home, you know, like my biggest art creation that I've done yet. It's like creating sculpture from my own dreams and memories and refining it in every moment that I'm here. It's really amazing to be a woman and to like say that I built something and to see people's responses like, you built this? Like, no, you didn't. I'm like, yeah, I built this. I am capable. I am strong. I know how to use power tools. So I'd say it took me at least three years to finish this completely and even still there are things that I could continue to do on it. Altogether in material costs to build this tiny sanctuary was about $60,000. I really emphasized quality and artistic expression over just trying to get it done in a cheaper way, which is also why it took me longer is because I would find the right pieces throughout time and include them. The material cost plus the labor cost is equal to $100,000. Hey, everybody. My name is Cheyenne Raven and I'm excited to show you all my tiny sanctuary. We've got a 24-foot gooseneck trailer by Trailer Maid. It's a standard tiny house. So it's 8 feet wide, 11 feet high with a 7-foot gooseneck topping. That's what this lip is. So it's a total of 31 feet long. It weighs 15,000 pounds, around 15,000 pounds. The roof is a prefabricated roof made with steel studs and corrugated metal. The chimney has arms on it that keep it protected from high wind speed. Up here in the mountains of Nederland, Colorado, we get a lot of 80 mile per hour winds. So it's important for the roofing to have that strong arm of the chimney as well. For the bottom half of the siding here, this is just a pre-made plywood that has a nice finish on the outside. I painted it with an exterior black paint and trimmed it with cedar siding as well. For the windows, some of them were found through Habitat for Humanity. A couple of them were donated like this one. This one was donated from one of my dad's jobs, which is amazing because it's so large. And a few of them were bought brand new by Home Depot. The door is actually a door that my dad brought home from another job. So that's why it has this rustic look to it. We painted the metallic mermaid color because I like the coloring. All right, everyone, welcome to the inside of my house. We'll start with the sink and the counter here. This is a live edge tree slice that I created into a countertop. I did my own resin pour here, which definitely was challenging. I happened to get resin all over the place, so I highly recommend practicing with resin before you decide to build a whole counter with it. But within the resin, I have some mica that I found near my mom's house and some crystals that I found near my mom's house. In the resin is a lot of beautiful stones that mean something to me. I really loved the two double sink, so then that way I can work a lot with dishes and cooking and cleaning and drying without taking up counter space. And something that I really love about my kitchen is that this huge window. I love that while I'm doing dishes or cooking and just here in the kitchen, I have space to a lot of light and a beautiful view. I also have the live edge embellishments here on the window as a windowsill to match the countertop, which I really love as well. And then over here is the other side of my kitchen. This is the second fridge that I've gotten for my tiny house. I originally had a smaller fridge, but I highly recommend the size of this fridge for somebody who loves to cook for a lot of people and have people over for dinners and lunches. And as somebody who buys a lot of fresh veggies and meat, this is great holding space for regular weekly grocery shops, a lot of good freezer space. I make my dog's dog food by hand, so the freezer space is key. Highly recommend the fridge. This stove, I think it's an incredible size. You really don't need more than a four burner stove top. It also has a little oven in it so that you can still bake if you're a baker. The paint on the wall has been a fun experiment of mine. The wall paints have changed colors a lot, but I decided to go with a metallic gold because it brings a lot of vitality and life to the space. Because it is a smaller space, it's important for me to have a lot of brightness. The metallic coloring, the gold really reflects light well, and it's nice to have a darker background. So I did red as the background with gold on top, whereas other walls like this is a bone color. It's a creamy bone underneath with gold on top. All right, so now that we're in the bathroom, I want to tell you about my shower and my bathtub. Having a bathtub was really important to me, so I decided to go with a trough design. But instead of just having a trough, I wanted to have it match the live edge concept around the house. I went ahead and I did a cedar live edge piece around the whole entire trough. I used a shellac sealant for this wood around my bath. So I regularly, about once a year, reseal and stain this wood, and it is completely safe from any water damage or warping or anything like that. I have a normal shower head, a nice temperature gauge because I love hot and cold showers. As a plant lover, I really wanted to have a bay window in my house. I felt like the bay window would also create more space in the bathroom. It's extra storage, a nice place for altar items or plants. The only thing that I would recommend is, I got a used bay window that I found on Facebook Marketplace. It's not the best for cold weather. So during the winter, I do actually have to tape this off because a lot of cold air comes in. So if you're going to do this, make sure that it's super weather safe, cold temperature safe, and double paned. This is a nature's head composting toilet. So originally, I went with a good old fashioned Home Depot bucket toilet with a toilet seat. I decided I wanted something a little nicer than that. So then I decided to get a nature's head composting toilet, which is around $1,100. And honestly, I would recommend that you could probably find something in the middle of those. You don't have to go with a really expensive composting toilet, in my opinion. So this is the living space. Here, I have enough room for a small couch. And I wanted the couch to open up into the hearth of the home. This is my main source of heating. This wood stove is definitely bigger than this house needs. Therefore, it heats it up like a sauna in here. This is a mosaic tile hearth that I made. There's different random stones and crystals that loved ones of mine have given me. I also have placed some runes, different symbols of protection and family in here on the hearth of the home. This is definitely the gathering spot when people come to visit me in my tiny house. What's nice is we don't only have the couch to sit on, but the storage stairs also provide a lot of seating area. And we all love to come and circle around the fire for sure. This framing was done by a dear friend of mine named Steven Newman. He laser cut out a CNC machine, cut this out as a window covering for me. We designed the shape and put it together. Then I came home and I stained it the colors that I wanted. And I really love how it creates an archway, more of like a circular shape of the windows, which really softens a lot of the edges in the house. So I wanted to talk about my room divider. Something that I really love about this is that when I decided to create my bedroom up here, I wanted to still feel like I had separation from the rest of the house. I originally found a room divider just like this that was hand carved, but a bear decided to come into my house while I was away through a window up here. And he completely broke through the room divider I originally had here to get to the fridge. So oddly enough, I found one that is very similar except better. This is the second round of a room divider that I've installed here, a part of my bed frame in order to create space in the bedroom. This is from China. It's hand carved cherry wood. It's super strong, super sturdy. And I just adore the hand carved wood look and the accent of the really dark cherry wood. Just to talk about these steps that I made, I wanted to save space on stairs to get up to the loft. So a friend of mine brought up the idea of having little mushroom steps to be able to maximize the space that I have in the living room while still getting me up into the loft. So here's my bedroom. Originally, I had my bedroom over there. I decided to turn this into my bedroom because I love that I can stand in here. There's more space. It's spacious. It's also got really a lot of natural light. Personally, when I'm sleeping, I really love to wake up with natural light. So being able to be surrounded by the windows, the exposure to the outside world, and also the natural light in the morning is really important to me. I really love that I feel held in my own separate bedroom here. It's nice to have the separation of the wall and just the cozy cave-like feeling. Put in a nice livid shelf here so that I can use it as a bedside table. There's also a lot of storage underneath the bed, which is helpful for extra blankets and things like that. I would like to say that I think that the benefit of having a gooseneck trailer for your tiny house is that you get all of this extra space. It can be spacious and completely separate from the house. Let's head up to the loft. Welcome to the cave. This was originally my OG first bedroom until I moved it over there. Now I use it as an extra loft area for guests. I can put a bed in here. I do tea parties in here, extra little lounge space. The loft here is around three feet high here and three and a half feet high here. You can sit up, as you can tell. I can definitely sit up, but that's about it. It's sitting up and crawling depending on how tall you are. The things that I love most about living in a tiny house is it's incredibly liberating to let go of stuff. It's amazing how much more free time and space, how much more clear I feel without a lot of clutter and things to fill the environment I'm in. If someone was to watch this video, I would hope that they would walk away feeling capable and empowered and inspired to live the life of their dreams. If you liked this week's episode, please make sure to like, share and subscribe and check back soon because we have new Unique Home Tours publishing all the time. And if you'd like to join our team and get access to members-only content and unique perks, make sure you click on the join button below.