I Built a Tiny Home At 19 & Now I Don't Pay Rent!

I built my tiny house at 19 years old and it's truly such a luxury and it's a lot better than renting. There was this empty space of forest where my house was going to be and then within a couple days there was like a massive structure. Very quickly I got to see the house come alive. My kitchen is awesome because it's pink. When am I ever going to have a better opportunity to have a pink kitchen than right now? My mom built this piece of furniture which is just so insane. She's my DIY queen. Welcome to my loft. It is kind of a tight squeeze but it's worth it. It's my first home and it's a place that brings me a lot of comfort and peace. It's everything I dreamed of. Hi I'm Annie and this is my tiny house. When I was 19 years old I actually moved away from home and I tried renting for a little bit and I realized very quickly that it just didn't feel permanent enough and it was a lot of money just like leaving me and it didn't really feel like it was investing toward my future. I realized I really just need like a permanent place that I can live right now. I just need a small little space and so my parents were like come and build a tiny house on our property and come live with us. Within a couple months we built my house that I'm living in now and I don't pay rent. I can steal my parents milk and eggs whenever I want and it's truly such a luxury and it's a lot better than renting. Before we decided to build a tiny house we were just gonna buy one. A lot of the tiny houses that we were touring were a lot of money and they were really small. That's when it occurred to us we should just build our own because we can ensure that the quality is like a hundred percent. We bought the plans for the house on Etsy. We basically found a little 300 square foot house that had a little loft and a kitchen and a living room dining room all the things that I knew I needed and then we kind of modified it a little bit but the actual structure itself was up within like a couple days. It was so cool because there was this empty space of forest where my house was gonna be and then within a couple days there was like a massive structure and very quickly I got to see the house come alive which was just like so exciting. So my tiny house was $45,000 to build which comparative to the like $60,000 to $80,000 houses that we were gonna buy that felt like a steal especially because it's such good quality and it truly is gonna last forever. We did keep a spreadsheet of all of the costs for the house including all the extra stuff like electric plumbing and then of course furnishing it. We kind of make do where you can you save where you can but then also you gotta splurge where you can. So I've now been living in the house for a year and a half even though it's like a hundred feet from my parents there is an added level of like newfound independence. There are just little adult things that I'm having to take care of that aren't as glamorous and as fun but I really do love just taking care of my own house so I think I've learned just like how great it is to cultivate like my own space. I truly just love this house. So this is my tiny house. This is what it looks like. For the longest time my house was just plain white and recently we redid the windows to be blue and we added these fun flowers so everything is my colorful dream and I just love it. I'll take you to the back over here. If you go up the steps this is my back porch. When we built this tiny house the most important thing to me was having a back porch because I just love to have my mornings outside and so this is just like my dream come true. I love it so much. When we built the tiny house I also really wanted double doors because I just love the experience of opening up a slide door and there's all this natural light coming through and then I step out onto the porch and it's just like so magical and that's exactly what we did. Okay we're gonna make our way inside. This is my beautiful blue door. This is the front of my tiny house. This is my little doorway. It's honestly really spacious which I really appreciate. I have a rack for all of my shoes. It doesn't fit all of my shoes but it's typically just my daily shoes and this makes it really easy just to grab the things that I need very quickly. I also have a hook here to hang up all of my bags. Again makes it very convenient. I just grab my bags and go. Then right in the entrance there is my bathroom. When we were first building the bathroom I was definitely concerned that it was going to be a little bit too tight but it's honestly not bad especially after you adjust it's really not that bad. My shower is pretty small. This is how much space there is. It's not a lot. I've never really been the kind of person though who like really looked forward to like a luxury shower at the end of the day so it's honestly not a big deal. I have my little toilet and then this is my counter space. I have a lot of counter space which I really appreciate. Getting ready in the morning is not really an issue. My sink is also really small which helps with the counter space. The only thing that I dislike about this sink is it's really loud. Like it's extremely loud. If you hit something on the sink it kind of sounds like a gong. I'm like oh my gosh it's kind of intense but I also have a lot of storage with my mirror. I have this little cabinet here that I can store a lot of things. Over here is the kitchen. My kitchen is awesome because it's pink and I asked myself I was like when am I ever going to have a better opportunity to have a pink kitchen than right now. So I've had these pink kitchen cabinets for a couple months now and I wouldn't go back to plain old white ever again. I love it. I love color. I have some floating shelves. This is where I keep all of my dishes and my cups. There's a really decent amount of space and I honestly don't use too much so I've never had a problem. These floating shelves are super nice and sturdy. I have a lot of cabinet space as well. These cabinets are from IKEA. We built the whole thing without a top. My mom added this countertop in herself and I really like that it's like yes we have IKEA drawers but then we have like actual wood countertops. It helps it just feel really nice, really finished. We also raised the whole kitchen up about an inch because I'm like 5'8 and I really didn't want to be like uncomfortably bent over when I was using the countertops so it's like a customizable height for me which is just like so so great. In this cabinet right here I have my air fryer oven slash microwave. I never really felt like I was missing out not having a stove because this thing just does so much and I just love it. I have my sink right here and I have this beautiful window above my sink. I love how much greenery I can see from my sink especially on sunny days. The sun comes through and it's so so beautiful. The curtains that we used for my window we actually sewed ourself. I really wanted this specific pattern and I couldn't find it anywhere and so we were like we're just gonna make our own. A lot of this house is very like a DIY. That's mainly because of my mom. She's like my DIY queen and I'm the Pinterest board queen so I'll be like I found this on Pinterest can you make it and she'll be like yes. So I love that she's so awesome. This is where I keep a lot of my food. I don't know how I've managed to keep my pantry down to just three cabinets but I have. It's kind of crazy. It's not super organized but like this is kind of what it looks like. Lots of boxes, lots of food like any other pantry. Then I have a little mini fridge here. My only problem with the fridge is that it doesn't have a freezer. I don't really use that many things that require a freezer so it's not that big of a deal. On this side of my kitchen I have this amazing coffee bar. This is actually the latest addition to my tiny house. My mom built this piece of furniture which is just so insane. She's like the most crafty woman I've ever met. She built this coffee bar for me because I actually used to be a barista and I missed the experience so much. I miss like actually making your coffee in the morning rather than just clicking a couple buttons so we recreated that experience at home. Down here I have storage for extra glasses and mugs and then I have more syrup and more coffee beans. I'll probably fill this up more as time goes on but right now it's pretty minimal. Then over here I just gotta say I love how tall the ceilings are. We added this window. This is unique from the plans that we bought. We just knew like with this much open space we've got to have an extra window. We've got to and I'm so glad we did that because it makes the natural lighting just so much better. It's already a little bit dark in the house sometimes because I'm surrounded by trees and so without that window I think it'd be really dark in here. So my dining area is so so nice. I have this beautiful amazing wood table. My mom refurnished this a little bit. It used to be like a heavy dark orange and now it's like this light birch wood which is just so pretty. Some amazing farmhouse chairs. I got these on Facebook Marketplace for $20 for all three of them together which was like the steal of the century because they're so awesome. Then over here is the little living room area. This is where I get to do all of my editing. I do a lot of my work here. I read here. It's just so cozy and so comfy. I have this singular person chair. This is one of my favorite chairs ever. It's like the perfect mix of comfy but also like firm so I don't feel like I'm just falling into the chair if that makes sense. You know when something's too comfortable and you feel like you're just gonna sit there and rot all day. This is like a good productivity chair. So I started posting on YouTube when I was nine years old and now I'm 20. So that is like a big chunk of my life that I've been a YouTuber. Being on social media has helped me have so much freedom financially and just in my lifestyle. Growing up I always remodeled my bedroom like every single season. So like basically four to five times a year I was completely redoing my entire bedroom and changing the style. And so when I built my tiny house at 19 years old it felt like just kind of a natural progression of how I've always lived my life which is like with a lot of change and a lot of color and a lot of house design. It's been really fun documenting the experience of like building my tiny house, living in my tiny house, and then remodeling my tiny house whenever I feel like it on my YouTube channel because it's just so similar to who I've always been and what I've always done. So then down here I have another little piece of storage. This has a lot of clothing in it. Sweaters and Ugg boots and comfy socks and stuff stored in here. I just don't want them taking up space in my closet while it's not the right season. Also in my living room I have my closet. It is really sturdy but it's not connected to the house so like if I want to switch it out or redesign it at any point in my life I can but it feels pretty permanent. This is also for more seasonal stuff. It doesn't really open all the way because of the couch but I have a lot of extra jackets and sweaters. I would say out of 10 it's like a 7 organization wise. Typically it's messier so I had to organize because I knew you guys were coming. I have these awesome pull-out drawers. They have so much space like truly so much space. I'm also really good about like when I know that I'm done wearing a piece of clothing I'm like I do not wear it anymore. I pretty much move it, put it in storage, or put it somewhere else so it doesn't get too cluttered here. Okay this is the ladder that goes up to my loft. I love having a loft bed. It's so cozy. It's so awesome. I think everyone should do it. Truly it's so awesome. The ladder itself is so pretty. A lot of people are scared to go up the ladder at first but once you get in the hang of it like I forget that I'm going up and down a ladder every day. It's like not a big deal. Welcome to my loft. It's so cozy up here. I like the color scheme a lot. It's honestly kind of a fall vibe which I feel like is pretty different from the rest of the house but I feel like for sleeping this is so cozy. It is kind of a tight squeeze especially when I'm trying to switch out my sheets or like clean my bedding. It's kind of a workout and I'll make vlogs about it and like the whole time I'm just like huffing and puffing and I'm like this is so much work but it's worth it because waking up here you just feel like you're so protected and oh my gosh don't even get me started on when it rains. It's so cozy. I have these big windows here. This is what I was like the most excited for is to wake up and just see the outdoors. It's everything I dreamed of. So then over here next to next to my bed this is comfy. I have a little organizer here. I can keep some books. I have this lamp that's very cozy. I have a room spray because I'm extra and I like to put room spray up here. I also have this little board. This is where I write down all of my prayers and just kind of the things that I'm hoping for and thinking about and it's really fun because I'm a very visual person and I like seeing everything and a lot of times when I go to look at it I realize that something's kind of been answered or something's been fixed and so I'll take it off the board because I don't need to keep praying for it because it already happened and it's just nice to have this visual representation of like how my life is moving and how it's going but it's very very very cozy and anyone that I've had come sleep over with me they love it. If I was talking to my even younger self I would probably say build a tiny house right now because the sooner that you do it the better. It's such like a creative adventure. I would also say don't be limited by your thinking like if buying a tiny house is going to be too expensive then you can just build one or if finding the right builder is too hard just keep on researching like you'll find all of the things you need to make your dream come alive. To me my tiny house is just comforting like after a long day when I've been gone I come home and it smells like me and it's exactly what I want when I go out in the world. I have like more of a calm and a peace in me. It's my first home and it's a place that brings me a lot of comfort and peace and I just love it here. 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