Our L-Shaped Tiny House With Aging in Place Design

In 2015, I had a life-changing heart-related medical condition. And realizing how short life is, we decided to hit the road and travel full-time. I have never seen two tiny houses connected to make one living space. We discovered Durango and built the tiny house of our dreams. Come check it out. Welcome to our tiny home. It's a 10 by 40 built on a gooseneck. We built it and designed it this way for flow. We wanted a living room that was inclusive, that we could both sit on the couch, watch TV, have a fire. We wanted a connecting kitchen, so that when one of us was in the kitchen cooking, we could also relate with whoever was in the living room. We have an addition that we're going to show you later. We'll get to that. But we like the flow with the upstairs area being private, the living room comfort and cozy, the kitchen attached, and the bathroom separates. So when we thought about what would we want in a living room, we wanted it tied to the kitchen, separate from the bedroom, but a place that we could actually just relax and recline. We have a cozy fireplace. So that's how our nights goes in this area. After a meal, sipping a glass of wine, just enjoying a documentary. One question that we had to consider, and that you may be asking yourself too, is in such a tiny space, how do you entertain? We, by nature, are entertainers. You'll see more of that in the video later with our outdoor area. Can it be done in this small space? Again, that's why we built the couch in this fashion. We can seat multiple people in here. With the kitchen being attached also, you have a more open feel. It's not just a cubicle. It's an open concept, even in a tiny home. We also went with vaulted ceilings. Even though we're only 10 foot wide, it gives us the idea of an expansive space with the vaulted ceilings. Another thing to consider if you're going to live in a tiny space is storage. As humans, we accumulate things or we have items that we need to use on a day-to-day basis. Where do I put those? We found that by designing the couch to fit the space perfectly, we have some room underneath. We actually have totes that we can pull out from underneath and store extra shoes or blankets or whatever we want. We also took some of our ideas from living in a motorhome full-time on the road. We have this ottoman that we use to pull in as a footstool, but inside there's storage. You can see my wife has additional shoes, et cetera, in there. So storage becomes an issue in a small space. Totally doable, though. When we first started talking about living tiny or living in a tiny space, the first thing that comes to mind that I feel is a misconception is that you're going to be cramped or you won't have some of the luxuries. As we go through the house, you'll see some of the things that we were able to incorporate into our tiny space. So I guess for me, when I first thought about living tiny, I almost had the idea of living in a dollhouse. That isn't the case at all. You can make it whatever you want it to be. This space, we're really building it for not only today, but for our future. When we settled on this location, we decided we wanted to stay here. So with that in mind, as we age and age in place, we had to take some of those things into account with the design. So being able to pass through this area, if we need a walker or handrails or anything down the hallway in later years, it gives us that ease of access through the house. Even if we had to turn this into a bedroom or something later, have a caregiver live upstairs was our original idea that we could actually have a bedroom or something here for us for separate living quarters and kind of convert this from a living area to a bedroom area in the future. We tweaked that idea a little bit with the add-on, which we'll get to later. Why did we design the kitchen this way? We looked at a couple of different ideas with more of a pass-through kitchen with an island. We liked the idea that the kitchen was set aside, so that when one of us is in here cooking or preparing a meal, someone can still pass by the kitchen, not through the kitchen. So while we were designing the space, in a 10 by 40 overall, you only have so much space to dedicate to each area. The master bedroom, of course, you can sort of use the dimensions of the bed to figure that out. The living room, you can throw a couple of recliners or a couch. The kitchen is a different animal because there are static sizes to each appliance. Most tiny houses come with a smaller version of a stove. I wanted that full-size range. So how do we pencil this out? How deep is a traditional cabinet or a countertop? So as you start laying that out, we know that the base cabinets are so deep and the top cabinets are also so deep. So as I started adding that to the grid paper and opening it up, I really could see the vision of how much space was enough. By nature of design, the golden triangle that they talk about in a kitchen just happens. Easy access to the food storage. I can cook here. You can see I'm not moving very much. I have room here to work. I can check on the protein simmering over here, check the microwave. Oh, need some spices. I can reach in here and grab this stuff. There's still plenty of room to work. In fact, we added a fatigue matting in the kitchen, give it more of an upscale feel and comfort while we're cooking. You could argue that it's a one-person kitchen. Totally agree. That's how we cook. I'll cook for her on a few evenings during the week. She cooks for me the other evenings or we cook together with guests. I might be outside grilling while she's in here doing some of the prep or vice versa. One of the things that we considered in building a tiny kitchen was storage versus appliances or what would we sacrifice? Which one goes? Which one stays? For us, hand-washing dishes, we did a lot of that on the road while we were traveling. We decided to go with an 18-inch dishwasher. Plenty of room. It's super efficient. We went with a single deep sink. We found that a split sink for us, one side or the other is too shallow and non-usable anyways. So we like the use of the single sink for vegetable prep, et cetera. We like the idea of being able to cook multiple things at the same time. Some of the tiny houses we saw had a single burner. We like the idea of being able to boil pasta or have something in the oven at the same time. Full-size oven. So we sacrificed six inches of counter space on either side for the convenience of having a turkey at Thanksgiving. The microwave on top for quick and easy meals. In fact, we use it for storage. We have a basket inside that we keep all of our breads. So again, additional storage in a basket that's easy to take in and out. Food storage, we decided to put in a pantry area separate, which we'll see later on in the tour. And the refrigerator. I didn't want a small dorm size or college sized or tiny house refrigerator. So we built it so that we could actually go a little taller. Six foot, full size, freezers, top and bottom, plenty of storage. I like construction. I like building. And I designed the house. I gave several renderings to Durindy. She would edit them and say, I like A, F, and number one. And I would put them together and represent them to her. But to her credit, she let me do the designing with her editing content. She completed the home. So I designed the house. She completed the home. The design aesthetics on top of the framing was all her. One of the things you'll notice is the brightly colored terracotta tile. I had went with a more neutral tile before I placed the order. She said, what do you think about color? We like spice. We like color. And I said, you choose whatever you want. To be honest, when she first showed me the orange, I thought, well, that's a bold statement. And to her credit, it is a bold statement. And I love it. I think this goes back to the idea that the advantage of going tiny is the economy of scale. We can afford to do higher end features, a marble countertop terracotta tile, because you have less surface area to cover. Again, if you're considering tiny, it's something to think about. You can actually afford to do some higher end things, higher end appliances, higher end finishes, because it's a smaller space. As you can see, we've squeezed a lot of amenities into a very small space. For us, the importance of being able to prep meals. Some people don't enjoy cooking. We do. So we wanted that area that we could come in and work and prepare meals to our fullest with the multiple burner range, the dishwasher feature to clean things up at the end, storage for fresh food in the refrigerator, a microwave for convenience. That's the kitchen in a nutshell. Going back to 2017, I had experienced some medical issues. To be candid, I had some chest pains and stuff and was wondering what in the world was going on. Went to the doctor. Make a long story short, I had a blockage in the lower descending, 95% blockage, which required a stent. It really forced me to refocus where I was in life. Along that same timeline, I met Durindy. Considering what was going on with my health and the things that we were dealing with, we decided to make a change and really downsize our life and pursue traveling. Securing this spot specifically, we're in a 120 unit mobile home park. It is a co-op. So by buying into this, by buying what was on the site or building what's on the site, you're 1 1 20th of an owner in this location. How did we find this? We had a connection with friends that were already in Durango. The spot became available. We jumped on it immediately. So now that we've decided to build a tiny house, who do you use as a builder? Most of the builders here only want to build 8 foot wide and 32 foot long. And we wanted the 10 foot wide by 40. And through internet search, we found just the right builder in California. The next step was that I flew out to California and met with him. And in meeting our builder, he built custom homes, full size homes before he built tiny homes. So he had an eye for design, an eye for construction, an eye for the finished product. When you're building custom and spending that money, you don't want cookie cutter. We didn't want cookie cutter. We wanted something that would meet our specifications. And for us, he was the right guy. Yeah. So we pay $800 a month for this space. So even with the tiny house, if it's paid for, you still have the $800 a month. For us, that's completely doable based on the location and the amenities. With those things, space rent, the trash, the sewer, the water, it comes out to about $835. I feel like it's fair. Separate thing that we'll talk about is if you don't have cash to come out of pocket for the tiny house, can you finance a tiny house? Absolutely. It was one of the things that we discovered. The 10 by 40, after it was all said and done, we were at $160,000. We didn't have the $160,000 to just pay up front. So we had to finance it. But we didn't finance the $160,000 full on because we gave it a little over $40,000 as the down payment to the builder. So that's kind of where it's different than buying a house. So our down payment went to the builder and then we financed the remaining of that. So financing. In a traditional home, you are looking at a piece of property with a house attached. Most mortgage companies are willing to take on that risk because there's a piece of property to lean against and a permanent structure. With a tiny house on wheels, in fact, which this is, a three-axle RV, basically, there are only a handful, in fact, less than a handful of companies that are willing to take on the risk of a loan for that. We went with one specifically based out of Texas. We put a down payment on it and we make monthly payments towards the original structure, which for us opened up another can of worms because this is not a mortgage loan. I would liken it more to a vehicle loan in that the unit has a VIN number like a vehicle and it's registered and titled through the DMV, Department of Motor Vehicles. Has a license plate affixed to it. So even though we've made it a permanent structure, it still has a license plate and it's a vehicle. So the next surprise playing off of that is we built a house in California. It's licensed in California, but we want it to reside permanently in Colorado. So we move the house to Colorado. We take our title and we do a title transfer to get it licensed in the state of Colorado. Just like you would any vehicle. Right. So we take it down there and we go to register it. I've never owned a vehicle for $160,000. He's never owned a vehicle for $160,000. So you can imagine what the cost was of the registration. It was $4,998, so $2 shy of $5,000. We had no idea that was going to happen. That was a learning process for us. We spent an additional $2,500 to have a professional mover hitch it to a semi and bring it and put it in place. Something to consider when a home is being transported is find a builder that's a little bit closer to you because our builder is 1,100 miles away. If you notice in the house, everything is heavy on the left side. So when leaving California, before they even got out of the state, they blew a tire. Actually, the tire fell off. That was a little bit scary because there were some issues with it getting here. So even that was a little bit of a doubtful moment. If this house falls over or wrecks or whatever, how do you do that? We have a loan on it, but we don't have a loan payment yet. I would suggest try to find a builder as close to you as possible. You need to set money aside for not only the unexpected during the build, but because with any construction, it seems like it always goes over budget. For us as a percentage, it was another 5% on top of the build. So you could go 5% to 10% additional for transportation setup and licensing. That would be our advice. So we had $175,000 total into the first build. We have $60,000 into the second build. So you're at $235,000 for the structures. May seem like a lot, but that includes the foundation of the trailers. And then all the construction materials and the labor, the fit and finish may seem excessive. But if you look at property prices in Durango, you're not going to touch a two-bedroom in Durango for less than a million dollars. So for our location, location, location, our build, high-end fit and finish, the outdoor living was a good number for us. Leaving the kitchen, coming down this hallway, how do you design a hallway? What width do you need? How wide do you really need it? We made some sacrifices here. We went 28 inches wide so that we could still pass through here. In fact, in our older age, we could actually put some handrails here if we needed to. We made it just big enough for both of us to get through, no problem, one at a time, but not sacrificing area in the other parts of the house, the kitchen and the bath. Let's take a look at the bath. There are things that are essential in the bathroom. You need a sink or a vanity area. You need the toilets and you need a shower and some storage area. This may seem small, but for us, it was perfect. Vanity is 30 inches, plenty of room to set stuff on the side that you're using. The shower is four foot wide, plenty of room for one person to get in and out of, no problem. We also included a window so that it can be opened and allow pass-through ventilation. Across from the bathroom in the hall is another window, so we can actually open both windows and allow cross ventilation. We don't spend a lot of time in this room, so it was easy to design something big enough to accommodate the necessities, but small enough to afford us room in the other areas. So now we're at the back of the original 10 by 40 unit. This is our laundry room, obviously, with a washer and dryer front loading on both. Again, full size, not stackable. A lot of the time you'll see a stackable single unit. I like the idea of two separate units. If something breaks, you're replacing half of the component. Additionally, in here, we have storage to my right. We have a cat, so we put her cat litter box down there. I cut a hole in the cabinet so she can go in and have her privacy. Keeps everything concealed in one place. Originally, we had a cabinet in here with a bank of nine drawers, and we had a marble countertop and overhead. We decided to take this cabinet out. We put a bench in, which has storage for all of our extra linens, etc. I built a coat rack here so that we have our winter storage for coats. Living in Colorado, that's important. You can grab a coat and go. And then the closet area became a pantry area. We have utility storage on the left, food storage on the right. So this room has evolved from more of a walk-in closet to a laundry, mudroom, pantry storage area. And on to the most exciting part, the addition, the master bedroom. And here it is, the master bedroom addition. We wanted a space that as we age in place, we have room to move. So we built this space to accommodate our California king, our two nightstands, kind of our cozy place. We spend a third of our day in here sleeping at night, right? And it's a space that was important to us. Most of the rooms, you'll see the head units for the mini splits. A mini split is both AC and heating, a little more cost up front, a lot cheaper to run. Our electric bill in the whole unit, the 610 square foot, runs $3, $4, $5, $6, $7 a month. Not very expensive at all. With that, I also need to add that we did R38 insulation in the ceiling, R38 in the floor, and R19 in the walls. Insulation is probably the only construction facet that pays you back every single month. From the master bedroom, turning and looking towards the fireplace, we wanted some coziness. Rindy picked out the arabesque tile. She liked the design aesthetics, which also tie into the same shape and style as the tile in the kitchen. If you'll notice the orange tile that we saw earlier, same shape and style. The walnut hearth in here, which ties into the living room, built a year and a half apart. Same design aesthetics to make it all flow and feel. I think the key to us was even though we're tiny, we want it all to be connected and feel much larger than it is based on some of the features. The same shiplap walls in the original house. We ran it vertically. Here we ran horizontally. The same cedar tongue and groove effect on the ceiling to tie things together. People try to create a stereotype for tiny living. We heard everything you can imagine. Well, if it's bigger than X number of square feet, if you're bigger than 400 square foot, you're not tiny anymore. And it was funny after going through the ideas, who cares? Whose blueprint for life are you living? For us, the 10 by 40 was perfect. And then as we evolved, which is what we all do on a day-to-day basis, we thought living in this area, if we want to stay in this area, how can we accommodate this and age in place? And for us, it was adding on the master bedroom to this unit. Completely unconventional. I have never seen two tiny houses connected to make one living space. 10 by 40, 400 square foot. 10 by 21, an additional 210 square foot. 610 square foot in total. Separated spaces, separated living, still tiny. Much like the original house, it started out on a piece of paper and some design ideas, A through F plus one. Durandy helped with the editing process. Next step, how did that evolve in reality? From the drawings, we re-contacted the original builder for the house. Said, hey, can you build this? Showed him the drawings. I want it to match the original house. Same fit and finish. Absolutely, we can do that. He gave us a price. We kind of put it all together on paper. One more step. We live in a co-op here in Colorado. We have a board of directors, so we had to get approval for it. One of the things that we did, we tackled it all head on in the beginning. I checked with the electric company, the gas company, all of those things to make sure we weren't infringing on any of their, you know, right of ways. We got approval for all of that ahead of time. And here we are. We got approval for this on January 20th. February 28th, 40 days later, and we were tying the two houses together. The next thing we're going to see is the walk-in closet. We passed it on the way through. We're going to check it out next. So let's talk about a walk-in closet in a tiny house. Something you don't see very often. Now, remember with the 10 by 40 tiny house, we didn't have this feature at all. We have the his and her storage with the hanging rods, which is now the pantry. We have the cabinet configuration, which was originally our dresser with storage above. With this, with the addition of the 10 by 21 add-on, we gained multiple spaces, the bedroom area, the walk-in closet, a new pantry area for food storage, a new mudroom concept. It opened up so many more possibilities for us. So with a walk-in closet, are we breaking the rules? Who cares? We have the space. We like the extra storage. And for us, it was a perfect solution. One of the perks that we haven't talked about is why here at the location. For us, Durango, Colorado hits all of those check marks. I mean, we spend a lot of time outside. So for us, in addition to the tiny house and all of the amenities was the outdoor space. As you can see, we built an extensive outdoor space with the deck. We talked about the different zones or separation of spaces inside the house. We kept that same feel on the outside. A part of tiny living for us, something we learned while we were on the road, as we traveled, we spent more time outside than we did even in our motor home. So for us, location became very important when we were deciding where to put a tiny house. This is the spot. We have our outdoor area that we can entertain, eat, or just enjoy nature. One of the things that Durandy said to me, which has stuck with us, is whose blueprint to life are you living? It's your choice. It's your life. Live it the way you want. We sold 98% of our possessions and it was really liberating. It's kind of freeing. For me, there's nothing I've ever owned or possessed or bought in my life that brought more sense of satisfaction than not owing anybody anything. That freedom, that liberation to just do things. So for us, I mean, we're talking about tiny house living, but for us it evolved slowly. Life's a chapter book. There's things evolve. One of our expressions is, and we live life this way, is we do more and we see more, but we own less. A lot less. But the payoff is, for us, worth it. And yeah, we enjoy it. Right. Thank you all for watching. If you'd like to see more content, visit our Instagram, durangotinyhome. Have a great day.