Single Level Tiny House 3 Brilliant Design Choices

Hi, my name is Noah. This is the first tiny home that I built for myself. Come along for a little tour and I'll show you some of the things that I learned along the way. This is one of the smaller tiny homes I've ever built. It's 20 feet long, 10 feet wide, so about 200 square feet, and basically just has a very simple open concept layout. I knew I didn't want to climb up a ladder to get into a loft every night, so I'd have to kind of squeeze everything into this small space and managed to do that with a pretty effective and functional layout. So this is the kitchen space. Relatively small and compact, but still pretty functional. This countertop itself is 8 feet long and basically have two 24-inch banks of drawers with a propane cooktop over top of it. Another 24-inch cabinet with a 23-inch sink, which is extra deep as well just to provide a little bit of extra space in there for dishes and things like that. And then just a basic little mini fridge. And at the far I have this piece of Arbutus that works as a beautiful bar top as well, just so you have a little bit of a space to sit and eat there. And originally the plan was to have a toaster oven underneath the bar top as well, but so far I've just used that for book storage. And then just a couple small upper cabinets here that I trimmed down so that they're about half the original depth just so that it wouldn't stick out into the space as much. And then I installed LED strip lighting underneath them. It was really important to me that I would have a few different zones in here so I could really adjust and dim the lighting to my needs. I'm not a big cooker. For me, this kitchen has been totally sufficient for my needs. One other consideration is that I did just install a small bathroom fan above the stove rather than a full hood fan just because I wanted the space to feel a little more open. So if you're someone who cooks a lot of meat or something like that, then that could be a consideration for the design as well as adding a small oven underneath the bar. That would be a good addition to somebody who likes to cook a little bit more. Due to the fact that I lived in vans and smaller spaces than this before I moved into the tiny home, I actually shop less now than I used to. One recommendation or consideration that I would have for anybody going tiny or transitioning to that would be to have like an exterior deep freeze where you could keep things stored so you don't have to have a big freezer inside and you can just kind of do less shopping that way. So in terms of the sort of aesthetic decisions around the kitchen, it was all pretty straightforward. I had a few different kind of color tones and palettes that I was working with throughout the start of the build which I knew I wanted to have incorporated into the design with the dark gray and the black and then the darker wood tones as well. So I just kind of stuck with that and then when it came time to do the floor, I just tried to find something that had similar tones to these darker tones in the countertop and then along with the stain on the ceiling as well just to draw all those components together. In order to keep things organized in the small kitchen but really just in the tiny home as a whole, it's just important that everything has a home and goes back to that home when you're done using it. It's very easy and quick to cause the place to get cluttered so when I'm cooking or kind of reorganizing or doing anything, it's just important that things go back to where they live and you're just almost forced to have a tidier house in that sense as well because you just can't function when there's things everywhere. This is sort of the closet area, I guess you could say. I custom built this whole cabinet with the drawers and everything to fit the space and then I just bought the faces off of Ikea so that it all matched the kitchen cabinets. I got lots of hanging storage up here and then yeah, just two large deep drawers for all my clothing down there. I also have storage underneath the bed as well so kind of seasonally I can change what I have in here and as long as I stay on top of that then this is kind of more than enough space for all the clothing storage that I need. And then just to my left here as you come in the front door there is also hanging storage, shoe rack. It's one of the things that are often missed in design of tiny homes is that when you walk in the door there isn't somewhere to like hang your jacket and put your shoes and things like that so just adjusting the the door location and everything to ensure that there was easy accessible storage there right as you enter the space. In terms of the overall feel of the kitchen, for myself as someone like I said who doesn't cook a whole lot, it's worked quite well and to be honest there isn't a whole lot that I would change. If I was building this design for somebody else I would definitely take into consideration how much and what they like to cook and then we could kind of tweak the design accordingly to accommodate their needs a little bit better. This is kind of the living room seating area. Pretty straightforward, pretty simple. I wanted to maximize storage as much as possible in here so these are basically just boxes built around the wheel well. The cushions lift up and then there's cubbies underneath there so you can access all that storage. There was a consideration to put drawers in underneath here. Ended up just going for cubby storage mainly because drawers just reduce the quantity of storage that you have with the hardware and the drawers themselves so a little bit more work to kind of get your stuff out of there but you are left with maximized storage capacity. So just moving back to the bed, we've got a full-size mattress that was kind of the largest mattress that I could fit while still having enough space for the bathroom. Nice large four foot by four foot window. I really wanted to feel like I was sleeping outside and so it's really important to me to have a lot of glass next to the bed. And then above the bed we just have this really sort of pleasing ambient light that comes from the led strip that's embedded in the cedar 4x4 up there and that's on dimmers as well so I can really just kind of like tweak that just how I like it and it just gives the the whole space a really nice ambient light. To the right there's a small cubby where I'm able to just keep like a glass of water and things like that and in that I also hid the light switch for the bed light as well as a plug to charge your phone and stuff. I wanted to keep this space as clean as possible when you're kind of standing out here looking toward it so I didn't really want to see the plugs and the switches and things like that so by embedding them in the back side of the little cubby it was easily accessible when you're sitting in bed but it also helped keep the the space really clean. I think I first came across tiny homes 10-12 years ago now just when I had a real interest in alternative housing options, camper vans, tree houses, all that kind of thing and tiny homes were first kind of taking off around then. During that time I was working in residential construction and kind of looking for an avenue where I would be able to express my creativity a little bit more. Ever since I kind of discovered them I had always had my mindset on kind of working toward building a company around doing that one day. It was important for me to not sell the first one so that I could really work through every aspect of it, make sure I had it exactly how I wanted it and then I could use the knowledge that I learned from that to produce an even better product for my first client. So the main sort of design philosophy that I would say that I like to adhere to is obviously very intentional design, very thoughtful use of the space to ensure that everything is exactly where it needs to be but the main desire that I have when I'm producing or designing these smaller spaces is to make them feel large and not small and so an abundance of natural light really trying to bring the outside in and really opening up the spaces trying to keep most of the storage solutions kind of in a lower 50% of the space and keep the upper half empty just increases that feeling of lightness and openness. Always trying to give the perception of space even if you don't have a ton of it. So I built this tiny home five years ago so pre-covid material prices have moved around a little bit since then. It cost me about $35,000 in total. The main distinction between this and all of the current builds future builds that I do is that with this tiny home because I was building it for myself and I was on quite a tight budget I actually used an old RV trailer for it which is a little bit undersized and definitely not something that I would do if I was going to sell to a client but because it was for me and because I was really on a tight budget while I was doing it that was kind of a consideration I was willing to make. In terms of sort of adhering to my budget throughout the process of the build I had a pretty good idea and a decent vision of what the tiny home would look like and the finishes and the fixtures and things like that that I was going to use. I was able to write up a pretty kind of comprehensive budget that covered most things due to the fact that I work in residential construction and I have a really good relationship with the local building supply store and I was starting my company around the same time I was able to get about a 10% discount from them on materials just through as a basic kind of contractor discount. So that helped and I basically just sourced probably 90-95% of my materials through the local stores here on the island. This is the bathroom, pretty small compact space but managed to fit kind of everything that I needed in here. A little 30 inch vanity with a custom mirror above the sink where I put some live edge u-wood around it just to kind of make it pop a little bit more. Nice small window so you still have some privacy but you also have ventilation there as well. Just a standard flushing toilet and then this is the cedar shower that was a little bit of a labor of love but I really enjoyed kind of how the final product came out. I knew I didn't want to do tile because like I said earlier the tiny home was on the RV trailer and so I wanted to save weight as much as possible and I wanted to do something that would be warm and inviting and kind of tie into the aesthetic of the tiny home that I've been going for. Basically you have a plywood backer that's got a map by shower waterproofer coated and then a few coats of just black paint on top of that. The cedar itself is mounted to aluminum pieces that are spaced off of the wall itself so that the whole section can breathe and that also means that each wall is a single panel so each wall can come off individually and I'm able to actually clean it and restain it if I needed to. And yeah so far it's held up really well. I have an outdoor bath so I don't use the shower probably as much as you would if you didn't have that but it's been a nice feature of the tiny home and a lot of people have said some very positive things about it. Welcome to the outside of my tiny home. The exterior siding is just a cedar channel siding and then these are just clear cedar shingles that all were pre-sanded and stained before they were installed. I knew I wanted to have a relatively large deck with the tiny home just to obviously increase your your living space. The deck itself is 18 feet by 10 feet so almost the full length of the tiny home. It was built in two 10 foot by 9 foot or 90 square foot sections so it could come apart easily when it comes time to move the tiny home. And then one of my favorite features of the whole thing is my outdoor bath. I have a on-demand propane hot water heater that I just ran hot water line as well as the cold line to a hose bib on the outside on the back wall there which was originally actually going to be an outdoor shower but turned into just a perfect feed for the outdoor bath and with the on-demand hot water heater you're able to just kind of set your temperature so you don't have to go back with the hot and cold water to get it right every time and that's been a really enjoyable feature of the tiny home for me. One piece of advice I'd give to somebody considering on moving into a tiny home or transitioning into a smaller living solution would be to really just kind of take stock of their life of their their needs their desires the things that they really like to do whether they really like to cook or they really like to entertain. If you're building it for yourself or if you're having somebody build a more of a custom design one then you can really structure the design around your lifestyle and that's something that I've enjoyed doing for my clients as well is is really being able to customize a small space exactly so that it fits the style of life and the values that that client lives and has. Thanks for checking out my tiny home. As I mentioned earlier I do build tiny homes professionally. My company is called Left Coast Tiny Homes and so the link will be in the description if you want to check out the other models that I offer and we are also building saunas and in the future we'll be offering saunas on trailers which is a product that I'm really looking forward to getting out. So yeah head down to the description and take a look at that.