Our beautiful tiny house built w/ leftover construction materials

I have over the years come to him and said okay I have the craziest and as soon as I say that he's he'll be like okay what are we building? It's a mating call, it really is. Roughly 80 percent of our whole project here is reclaimed wood. I've taken down houses, barns, you name it. Whatever we can get our hands on that look like it could be reusable, we've done it. We have no mortgage. I just think the quality of life we have is so much better than ever. Okay let me show you the inside. Hi I'm Trish and I'm Rich and this is our tiny home. This is my hometown, this is actually my neighborhood from childhood. I was born in this area, I grew up on a farm just a couple miles down the road. I grew up in a family of builders and farmer and so doing projects was something just normal out in the country. So we had a house in town but our dream has always been to come back out in the country. We bought this little 1800 square foot house in town that no one else wanted. We bought it for $20,000 and we lived there for five years. Five years. I cocktailed too hard in our pool one day and I posted on Facebook because everybody was selling their houses like immediately and so I said to him, hey I'm going to post on Facebook that I'm going to sell our house too and he said okay. So I did and within 48 hours it was sold and we had nowhere to go. I had to call my best friend's dad who has farm ground and I asked him if I could come out and talk to him and I got really nervous. We sold our house, we don't have anywhere to go, can I buy a couple acres from you? He goes sure. How much you need? How much you need and a couple months later we were out here in an RV. I've worked construction for the last 25 years so I've collected things over the years. I seen a house a couple years ago that had been empty for a little bit and I asked the owner what he's going to do with it. He said well I'm just going to tear it down. I said well how about I just tear it down for you, it won't cost you anything and I can reuse the wood. So we're always looking for the next thing that we can take down. I have over the years come to him and said okay I have the craziest and as soon as I say that he'll be like okay what are we building? I have the craziest idea. Here we go. That's how we date. It's a mating call. It really is. This is our tiny home. It's 20 by 24. Our front porch is actually made out of a bridge. It kept getting washed out so we pulled it up and used that as our front porch. Roughly 80% of our whole project here is reclaimed wood. I've taken down houses, barns, you name it. Whatever we can get our hands on that look like it could be reusable, we've done it. Here are the, actually I had to use regular treated lumber for the outside post but underneath we have full 2x10s. They're not like a 2x10 now. It's only an inch and a half wide. These are full 2x10 oak boards. Then we did actually have to purchase our back deck. That is something that comes from one of the big box stores so that was not repurposed. That's one of the things on the house and the siding comes from a big box store too. So here on the back deck we used old pallets to make our daybed. We spend a lot of time out here in the summertime when it's not cold. This is our fire pit area here. This is where we spend most of our time during the summer. Fire pit is in constant use. It's just me and Trish that live in this space here. Though we do have enough room for extra people to come out. That's why we're building all this so we can have our friends out with us. Started out with a silo for my bar and we said well it's too small. So I just kept adding on and adding on. We got the exterior siding from the Amish crew. It's just their slab wood. Got it for practically nothing. It's like $20 a trailer load full of it. This brick walkway here from a friend of mine. I a solid sidewalk and he was getting rid of this. So I repurposed that for our sidewalk here. So this is our little bar area. We choose to come out here and just relax instead of being inside the house or being in our fire pit area. We do come out here. When we built this, this comes from the house I tore down about a year ago. All this exterior siding. She just polyurethane it and made it dress it up a little bit. The flooring is just some laminate flooring that got off from another job site. So another place I didn't have to spend any money. This tabletop right here, this comes from her grandpa. It was a dresser that they had had so I used it to make the bar. And this would be my wife's room for the pink carpet. Then one day she said I'd like to have me a deck raised up and on that deck I'd like to have me a tub. And on that deck I'd like to have me a couch. So here is another place where she likes to come out here and just be at peace. Now this area we come up on here. At one point my wife wanted a pool here. Then we put the pool up. She didn't like it. This is the only spot in the yard that gets full sunshines. That's why I put the pool here. So anyway I took it down. Then another friend of mine says I got some work for you if you want to do some work. And it involves taking down a block wall. And I said okay. So anyways I went with him. I took down the block wall and that's what you see right here. So that's more repurposed material. And we're going to use this as an outdoor theater. We're going to hang up a outdoor tv out here. So this is going to be a nice little area out here for that. Okay let me show you the inside. This is just pretty much one big room. This is our living space. It is a pull-out couch so if somebody wants to stay with us they can. Our wood stove it was a gift from my aunt. She went to an Amish auction and got this for $35 and it heats the whole house. So this is what we use in the wintertime. So I wanted to talk to you about the wood though because this is from a barn. And this is like 250 years old and Rich took it down. And so that's what this wall is made of. This is the actual floor joist that I tore out of the barn. Actual two inch floor joist that's made a shelf out of it. This is what our house is set on are these joists here. The loft, the floor joist in it is actually made out of this same floor joist. This is my kitchen area. Pretty much everything is out on the shelves. I have everything that everybody else has. I've got an oven. I've got a microwave and then I just have a little cooktop that I pull out when I want to cook something. I've made probably 50 loaves of bread in that oven since we got it. I cook a lot and I am a from scratch cook. And then I can't show you my shower because I didn't clean it but I'm going to bring them in here. This is sort of work in progress. This is our bathroom. It's a full bath. We have a stackable washer and dryer in here. We have a full size walk-in shower and some storage space up there and of course on top of there and down here. Okay so let me take you to our loft. This is our loft. It has a queen-size bed in it. This is where we sleep. I wanted it to be kind of like we felt like we were outside. So this is where we keep our clothes. I have my side. Rich has his side down here and so typically off-season clothes is what we'll put up here. Sweaters for now and things like that or extra blankets and sheets so it's nice to have that storage. If you have the ability, if you have the determination, you can do what we've done. I think if you're willing to think outside the box. Yeah. You know just a couple acres in 45 days and we have no mortgage. I just think the quality of life we have is so much better than ever. And we've been together 18 years. The quality of our life is chef's kiss right now. Chef's kiss. Don't you think? Yeah. Yeah. 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