21 Yr Old Turned His Dad's Old Shed Into A Tiny Home For $16K
703 Video Views·Aug 23, 2026
At just 21 years old, Stan turned an unused $12,000 shed on his family’s land into a fully functioning tiny home—and three years later, his monthly bills are only $262. Working alongside his dad, Stan spent roughly $4,000 on materials and learned many of the skills himself, transforming the basic shell into a comfortable home with a kitchen, bathroom, queen-size bedroom, workspace, attic storage, and plenty of DIY upgrades. The property itself has an even deeper story: the land has been in Stan’s family for generations, dating back to his great-great-grandfather, who was a sharecropper and preserved it as Heirs Property for future generations. For Stan, living tiny and rent-free isn’t necessarily the final destination—it’s a stepping stone that allows him to save, invest, and work toward his dream of eventually buying land and creating a homestead of his own.
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Hey I'm Stan and welcome to my shed converted into a tiny home. The way my family acquired this land
is from my great-great-grandfather. He was a sharecropper back in the day. He set up the
family land as heirs property so that way the family in the future wouldn't be able to sell
the land easily. My dad had bought this shed years ago and wasn't really being used and I mentioned
it to him that I could make it a house. So the shell itself was in good condition but it definitely
needed a lot of work on the inside to make it livable. It looked a lot better than it did when
I first moved in. I'm not a pro. You will see some imperfections. I just learned as I go. So my
monthly bills come up to $262 a month. That includes my water bill, utilities, and my wi-fi.
Hey I'm Stan and welcome to my shed converted into a tiny home.
When I moved into my tiny home I was 21 years old and I've been living here for three years now.
I was living in a two-bedroom apartment by myself. The rent just kept going up. It sparked the idea
in my mind to just brainstorm and think of a way that I could avoid paying rent. My dad had bought
this shed years ago and wasn't really being used and I mentioned it to him that I could make it a
house and he was all for it and as soon as I told him we went into action to start making it livable.
Remember what it's looking like right now. It's going to be a whole transformation.
I'm moving into a tiny home man. So as y'all can see it's a whole lot more work to be done before
I can move in but once it's done it's going to look way different. So the shed itself was in good
condition but it definitely needed a lot of work on the inside to make it livable and we did need
permits before we could start doing any work on the inside. That was $500 just to get started and
then once we got started for every stage we had to get an inspector to come in and inspect to make
sure everything was good and up to code. So to completely convert it into a shed and make it
livable it took us about three to four months. So before I can live in it I gotta go through a
whole lot of motions like getting inspected and today I'm about to install some GFCI receptacle
man. You gotta have at least three of these in your house to make it legal to live in the state
of North Carolina. Me and my dad was the main two. He helped me with everything from the drywall,
insulation, electrical, plumbing. The tiny home itself when my dad bought the shed was
$12,000 and he financed that and paid it off and then the building materials like lights, drywall,
wood and stuff like that was around $3,000 to $4,000. So to completely convert the shed it was
around $16,000. So my monthly bills come up to $262 a month. That includes my water bill,
utilities and my wi-fi. We're on the outside. As you'll see we got the flood light right here so
when I walk around it's motion sensor. It lights up the porch right here so I can see where I'm
going. We got the gutter right here above the door. Before I installed this gutter it was a lot
of rain just dripping down right here like a waterfall when I walked out the door when it
rained. So I definitely had to get that fixed. I went ahead and installed a gutter. It doesn't go
all the way down yet. I plan on putting gutters all the way around the tiny home eventually
but I just wanted to get this up just to keep that water from dripping around the door.
The downspout right here goes down and under the porch and it comes out at the end of the porch.
Runs the water away from the porch and doesn't allow the water to stand under the porch and make
it soggy and mushy under there and rot the wood. As y'all see we got dark gray paint that I painted
on the tiny home. The whole tiny home was solid brown but I feel like the dark gray and then the
white trim brought it to life. It looks a lot better than it did when I first moved in. This
is my new deck that I just built. I built it all myself by hand. This is my first big big project
and I feel like it came out pretty good. So now we finally got a space outdoors that we can come
outside and chill and now we have the gazebo above it so we have some shade outside and we're not
in the beaming sun out here and I got this gazebo from Domi Outdoor Living. It was a sponsorship on
my YouTube channel and we just got this set up a couple days ago and I've been out here ever since
all day changing up the scenery from being inside the tiny home all day. It just feels good to be
able to come outside and have somewhere to chill out. Inside the deck as y'all see I added these
lights, these recessed lights in here. I just wired them together, plugged them up and now I got them
running all the way around. This definitely lights it up and gives it a modern look at night time.
This is my power box right here, my electrical panel. It runs up to the power lines and over
there this is how I get all my electricity inside my tiny home. This is a just a 100 amp panel like
it would be on a regular home. Got the water hose right here. This speaker right here actually used
to be on another side of the yard but me and my dad actually removed it and added the speaker right
here on the side of the house so we don't have to go all the way over there for the water.
You can see right here this is my lines going to my septic. My septic is in this area right here.
The septic was already here from years ago because there used to be houses on this land and it's been
in the family for a long time so it's already septic tanks on the land. The way my family
acquired this land is from my great-great-grandfather Echos Wilkins. He was a sharecropper back in the
day. He set up the family land as heirs property so that way the family in the future wouldn't be
able to sell the land easily. Where my tiny home sits now, Echos Wilkins, he had the chicken coop
and his outhouse right here in this area. The land has been in the family for three generations
now. On the property is me and my uncle and my cousin. She lives across the street in a mobile
home so it's all family on the land still. The main goal of the land is just to continue to
take care of it and keep it up but to be honest I don't plan on living here forever. I feel like
this is more just a stepping stone for me to get ahead in life. Living rent-free in a tiny home
definitely helped me out a lot but the ultimate goal is to get my own land, buy my own property
and start my own homestead I can call 100% mine. Once I acquire my own property hopefully my
little brother or the next generation in the family can come reap the benefits on the family
land of living rent-free. Now we're at the back of the tiny home. This is my garden right here,
raised bed garden. It's not flourishing like it should be right now because I've been so busy with
other projects around the tiny home. We do have some oregano right here. It's a lot of a lot of
oregano leaves. We just harvested some of this and took it into the tiny home. We use that in some
a lot of pasta and stuff like that. Next we have my shed right here. I built the floor for the shed.
I got the metal shed from Amazon. It's 10 by 12. It's been doing me pretty good. So yeah I just
keep all my e-bikes and stuff in there. Living in the tiny home you definitely need extra storage
so this shed came in perfect. All right as soon as you walk in you got the living room space right
here. This right here is my dog's cage. It's a decorative dog cage as you can see. I originally
had a entertainment center right here that I customized myself. When I got my puppy I decided
to take it down and use this decorative cage to save space because I didn't want to have an extra
crate and take up more space in the tiny home. I got this couch from Facebook marketplace when I
moved into my apartment. I brought it here to my tiny home when I moved in. It fit perfectly.
We got the window right here. This window was originally not here. Me and my dad added this
window into the tiny home. I think it brought it brought a lot of light into the tiny home that
that helps a lot. Right here I got a wall heater that I got from Amazon. It's a small heater but
it does the job. I also have a radiating heater that I use for the back of the tiny home and those
two together heats up the tiny home pretty good. Originally this wall was a roll-up door. Roll-ups
garage door and I took the garage door down myself. Then me and my dad we added this wall
right here. You can barely even tell that it was a garage door there. This ceiling fan was already
in the shed when my dad was using it as storage. It was white and it was just sitting here on the
floor so I was like I could probably use that. I spray painted it black to go with the this is my
favorite color black because y'all can't tell the black accents in the tiny home. I think it set it
off pretty good. Right here my YouTube plaque 100,000 subscribers. On my YouTube channel I do
DIY projects around my tiny home around the land and stuff like that. That's my main content.
Now let's head to the kitchen area. So as you walk into the kitchen right before you get to
the kitchen this is my board right here. My whiteboard where I write down all my ideas.
All the things I need to do for my content just to make sure I stay organized and make sure I get
everything done that needs to be done. That's just a message right there from my girlfriend
saying I love you. Next this is my workstation right here. This is where I do all my editing.
My streaming. I stream on Twitch. My organization for my clothing brand and everything like that.
Down here on the floor is my CCTV. I don't have a table for it yet but I plan on getting all this
organized. All the wires and stuff. The CCTV leads up here to my camera system. As y'all can see
we see all around the tiny home. Before I got my window in my living room it was hard to
see outside and see who was outside my house. So when I'm sitting here working I can just look up
and see if somebody pulls up to my house or is outside. Moving on to the kitchen area.
We got my mini fridge right here. I could fit a full-size fridge in here but this is what I
went with when I was first moving into my tiny home. It's been doing me good for three years.
The only downside about a mini fridge is that I got to make a lot of grocery store runs.
So I do eventually plan on upgrading to a bigger fridge sooner or later. The stove right here.
This stove was my dad's. He had this in his shop and he wasn't using it at the time. So when I was
moving into my tiny home I was trying to find every way to save money. So he allowed me to
take this stove and use it in my tiny home. It's been doing great. Next we got the countertops.
Like I said we save money every way we can. We got these countertops from a house that was
being remodeled. I decided to take these countertops and utilize them in here. They're
not the best as you can see. They're not even all the way. But I wrapped them with a countertop wrap.
I feel like it made it look a little bit better. But like I said I do plan on upgrading a lot of
things in the tiny home. But yeah everything is working good for now. So right here I have a water
purifier. The system is down here under my sink. It's from WaterDrop. It's a three stage filter.
Yeah we got purified water right here from the tap. As you come down the hallway you see we got
the AC unit right here. I have this one and I have one in my bedroom. They cool the house down a lot
and it feels pretty good in here. That's really all I need. I do plan on adding a mini split
here soon. Probably this week. And I feel like I'll be able to I feel like I'll be able to take
these AC units out of the window and close my windows up and not allow bugs to get in here.
Flies and stuff like that. So I feel like a mini split would definitely help a lot and save energy.
So now we walk into the bathroom. First thing you see is the glass shower right here. I redid
all these towels myself because I had mold behind the towels and I just had to break all the towels
down and redo it myself. That was my first time doing any towel or anything and I just learned
as I go. I'm not a pro so you will see some imperfections. As you see the floor right here
needs to be redone because I had a leak in my shower and it was going up under the floor right
there. So that's a project that I need to work on soon. Right here we have the hot water heater.
I know it's pretty big. Takes up a lot of space but soon I plan on getting a wall mounted water
heater. Utilize this space. Probably put some cabinets right here or something. Like I said
it's a lot of stuff that I want to redo in my tiny home because when I was first moving in I
didn't have as much experience as I do now. So I plan on replacing this sink with a sink that has
storage up under it so I can get all these bottles and stuff out of sight. I just got this right.
This right here was from my old apartment. I just utilized it. Put some stuff in there in the
bathroom and this is what I use for the door right here. It's just a fabric door from Amazon.
One of my subscribers also sent me this and I appreciate that. It is magnetic right here.
It just clicks just like that. So after you leave the bathroom right here is my attic space. More
storage space. I made this door myself. It was just a big opening right here before I did it.
Brainstormed up a way to where I could close it off because when it was open there was a lot of
cold air coming down and making the tiny home cold. During the winter time I couldn't really
deal with that so I had to come up with a way to stop it. It's just a twist lock right here.
It just comes down like that and I put the insulation on there to block that cold air from
coming down. The way I get up there is just this ladder right here. Extension ladder and just walk
up. So as y'all see I just use this as a basically an attic. I know a lot of people have a lot of
junk like this in their attic. Got Christmas ornaments and stuff like that. Just a lot of
miscellaneous stuff that I don't want just sitting around in my tiny home. This area right here
definitely comes in handy. Put the ladder back up and close up the door just like that.
Moving on to the bedroom. You see we got my bed right here. It's a queen size bed and as y'all
see we still have a lot of room to walk around in here even with a queen size bed. So for it to be
a tiny home this is definitely a good size bedroom. My closet right here I added this. I built it
myself. I do plan on building a door or maybe I just use a door like we have on the bathroom.
But yeah this was just a blank wall right here going straight down and I added this
closet. I just framed it in and then I added a rod right here and a shelf to put all my clothes in.
This is my first time actually like framing anything in and I feel like I did a pretty
good job. Like I said I learned as I go. So this trim around the the closet right here was
originally white. I sprayed and painted that black to add that a bold outline look. I think it came
out pretty good. I feel like tiny home living shared conversion is definitely the way to go
especially for young people. A lot of young people move out of their parents house and start paying
rent immediately. Sometimes when you're paying rent it could feel like you're working just to
pay rent. Being able to save money and actually spend money on things like traveling and investments
other than just paying rent every month definitely gets you ahead. If you like this week's episode
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