Couple Builds Light & Airy $35k Tiny House w/Incredible Murphy Bed

thanks to our video sponsor boy one the boy one wombat portable power station is a versatile tool to power your electronics on the go and as reliable backup power in a disaster situation is super powerful with an output of 700 watts in 600 watt hours capacity featuring three plug types in supporting charging of seven devices simultaneously saves ten percent with code tiny house link below [Music] hi i'm sarah and i'm joel and this is our tiny house it's 26 feet by eight and a half feet we're parked in northeast portland we've been here living in it for about a year and a half now this is our neighbor's cat printer who likes to make himself at home here pretty often we like having a foster kitty around something we have in our house that we haven't seen in a lot of other tiny houses is a murphy bed we knew we didn't want to sleep in in a loft i was too worried about bonking my head on the ceiling so we saw a couple designs and kind of ran with that and we like it a lot it frees up a lot of floor space when the bed is up and so we have that to do yoga or spread out a project or whatever we're working on we'd been living with roommates for a while and we were looking to get out of that situation have a little more space for ourselves but we weren't ready to buy a house portland's expensive and it wasn't really feasible for us to to make a big down payment on a house so it's like well maybe a tiny house is something we could do and i think we both initially talked ourselves out of it and then after kind of batting the idea around for a little while we're like you know let's do it and then then we got pretty excited about it and started doing research like you know this this is feasible we could we could build it ourselves we could find somewhere to put it here we are we both like projects too we're both just big project people this is probably the biggest project either of us have ever done but i think that was partly what excited us about it is you know i'd love to build a real house one day and like i think having larger scale projects like this is just kind of like opens you up into that world and it's exciting to know that we can do something of this scale this is our deck we knew we wanted to have some outdoor space and we're in western oregon so rain cover was going to be essential so we built this deck and we we finished it about three months after the house and it's it's been super nice to have we're out here under the heat blankets on a cold night sometimes and nice to be able to have friends over and and have a little bit more space to share with them we put back doors on the house so it opens right up to the deck here in here this is a shed we built it's over the tongue of our trailer just some extra space for that you know we could think of some things to put in here so this is all our camping gear and some ski gear and stuff um we both like doing things so we end up with a lot of stuff and it's kind of stuffed in here and elsewhere some of it's under the trailer what the labels say almost matches what's in the bins so we have our electric panel on the outside here we're hooked up to 50 amps we wired the house to be able to plug in just to a 20 amp plug if we needed to since that gives us a lot more accessibility but we have 50 amps here and so we we use that but most of our house is like pretty energy efficient so we could could do with less and then in the back of the house we have our hot water heater and propane tanks and water hookup so this is essentially the back of our house we have two sets of doors on our house so we hang out here a lot and often come in from the garden on this side but our main entrance is on the other side and that's where we have our bike storage and it's where we can put our shoes and coats and it's our main entrance so this is the front of our house front door is right here and over here behind you we've got a bike shed we both ride bikes a lot so we weren't really willing to pare down the collection so we've got five or six bikes in there we do a lot of bike commuting in portland but we also do some bike touring when we can get away from from work and we just did a big bike tour around oregon from here out through the gorge through central oregon and back up through the willamette valley that was probably a 500 mile trip just did that over the last week let's head inside [Music] welcome to our tiny house we're kind of in the the great room right now kept it yeah really kind of open and had lot have lots of windows we really like natural light and we built it ourselves we've got a entryway here not much of an entryway but the door is actually about eight inches outside of the of the main wall it kind of hangs off the side of the trailer that gives us just enough space here for some coats and some shoes and it gives you a place to kind of walk in um separate from the the main the main room not a lot of space but it's nice this is our kitchen um one of the things that we really designed a lot of the house around was having kind of a kitchen island that we could sit at we found that in previous houses we've lived at that's where we tend to spend most of our time whether it's eating breakfast or hanging out with friends doing crossword puzzles we tend to sit here a lot and so we wanted to put make a lot of space for that and also prep space for cooking we do a lot of cooking and some baking so we just wanted a lot of counter space and also space to spread out to do projects and yeah all kinds of things i feel like this is kind of like the the heart of our house and has been in in most houses we've lived at so we really wanted to prioritize that yen of course with tiny houses you really have to prioritize storage so we did fit some storage down under here we have kind of our a lot of our kitchen appliances our vitamix and kitchenaid mixer down there we also have our our weights and yoga mats down there as well right now and we found that to be like a nice storage space where we can kind of tuck things out of the way and not have them be too noticeable we use a floating dish rack that has it has a drain rack here so the drips come into here and then we can empty that it felt like it freed up a lot of counter space to not have a dish rack on the counter in the sink we also chose a really pretty big sink we figured if we needed more counter space we could cover it with a cutting board so far we haven't needed to do that and it's just really nice to have a lot of a lot of sync space we can do a big project i'm not the best at cleaning up after myself while i'm cooking so it's nice just be able to throw things in there have them off of the counters yeah i've really appreciated having a having a big sink i've really liked having the the drying rack up here i could imagine doing this in a big house it feels like it makes a lot of sense there's some things that we store up here all the time and we went with open shelving mostly for access and also just to make the space feel more open it feels like cupboards kind of have a tendency to close the space in a little bit you have to think a little bit more about having kind of aesthetically pleasing things up there but otherwise i've really i've really liked having things open and just easy to grab and use quickly since we don't have a dishwasher we do all of our dishwashing by hand and joel thought to install a foot pedal so that while you're doing dishes you can hands-free turn off the water with your foot so you can be you know washing a dish and then when you want to cut off the water just turn it off with your foot and turn it back on by letting letting up on the foot pedal it's a feature that i just love every time i'm at houses now that don't have a foot pedal i'm like get kind of like how do i turn the water about how does this work i think it just it really saves on water and also just makes dishwashing like just a lot more efficient and and kind of fun to do yeah it's one feature of our house that i've been really pleased with so we custom built the whole all of our kitchen cabinetry in part just to prioritize storage in the way that we wanted to but also because it's over the wheel well and so a lot of it had to be kind of cut out in a in a strange shape to work around that and one of the more tricky parts of that was that we couldn't install just a regular size range i and i i'm not a huge fan of the rv ranges that could have fit in that space and so we went with a cooktop which is really simple to install it's actually pretty tricky to find a one of these insert ovens that's all propane most of them are electric we found this one it's a furion rv appliance it cooks well for the most part i really like it it has kind of a loud fan that can be kind of annoying when you're when you're baking a lot but otherwise um i it works well and i really like how it looks and then a lot of the the drawers are also in front of the wheel well so this drawer for instance we have all of our baking stuff in and it doesn't go all the way back to the back of the cabinetry it just goes up until the wheel well so we put a lot of the baking stuff there we have some some pans and such in this space really like prioritizing using all of the little space we have available this drawer here is kind of our pantry a lot of our miscellaneous food items and cans go in there tea and honey and peanut butter under the sink we have our trash and recycling and compost and because we can't let any space go to waste in a tiny house we also have toe cake drawers which we use the the pushed open slides on them so they start to open at least with just a push and then open them all the way this one i think has some like cookie cutters we tend to use them as just miscellaneous stuff drawers more or less but it's really nice to have just that little bit of extra space and then we have an apartment size fridge which is great for us it's more fridge space than we've ever had we've lived in mostly share share houses before this and so it's just like such a pleasure to have a whole fridge to ourselves and behind our pocket door here we have our bathroom and i insisted on having a bathtub and i'm really happy i think we're both happy that we have it i grew up with only a bathtub we didn't have a shower in our house i'm really used to taking baths and really enjoy it and it's also a nice space to be able to wash off dirty gear and we come in from a muddy bike ride and it's also a shower so we can close the curtains they close all the way around we have a one of these full circle shower rings and it's like just a really great shower space it's really big and spacious both of us are really tall i'm 5 10 and joel is 6'2 so we prioritized having really good head space in here and the other kind of extreme thing we did which was a lot of work was to sink the bathtub into the ground just a couple inches just to give us just two more inches of headroom which in the end was a lot of work and not necessarily a project that we would do again but i do think it's nice to have the head room in the in the shower and we did a corner window here which has been really nice especially in this space we have a lot of privacy we have a fence and then a lot of bamboo back here so that's been it's been really nice just have the privacy to be able to actually utilize those windows and have them open we didn't feel like we needed a ton of space in our bathroom some people have really big bathrooms if that's a space that they really value having we made it pretty much as small as we could um so our sink space is pretty small over here we use an off cut from our main counter in our kitchen to make the the platform for a sink and then the sink is actually made by a friend of ours in montana his name is ryan ryan at gangbusters pottery we couldn't have there we don't have a ton of wall space in our tiny house to have artwork and so we were excited to include as much um just kind of works of art from our friends as possible in the build and so the sink was one place where we were able to do that and he made this special for us put some fireweed in the painted fireweed into the basin and it's just such a joy to have that in this space and on the other side we have our nature's head composting toilet we plumbed the urine diverter on that toilet so that the urine runs into the gray water it just makes it a little bit less of a hassle to use we also recently installed a little spray nozzle on onto the wall here so that we can essentially flush the toilet after use which we found that really cuts down with how much work it is to clean out the toilet and in this corner we are planning to have a washer washing machine but the property we're on right now has a shared one and so we instead just use this space for storage we're still planning at some point to build kind of a bigger storage unit into this space because it's a kind of a lot of space that we aren't currently using as well as we could and i would like to i do i do a fair amount of sewing and so right now i have some of my fabric stored down here just kind of it's kind of a miscellaneous shelf and it'd be nice to to build in kind of a more thorough storage for that [Music] it's about two years of building all told that was mostly us working weekends three day weekends for for a lot of that i was working three days a week and then four days a week for part of that time mostly it was it was nice for us to have the weekends because we'd have all week to figure out what we were doing and round up supplies and answer questions and we kind of needed that time just to to figure out how to make the best use of the actual work time we had we rented space in a on a farm just outside gresham so 20 miles from here it was under a big old pole barn so we had a dry space to to build and make messes and we were able to keep working all winter even though it was cold and dark the first winter we were out there before we had lights and stuff on in here those were dark times but yeah it was it was really nice to have a large space to to work and not worry about making noise and messes and dust building a house with your partner is a really big relationship challenge for sure i think it's definitely our biggest challenge in our relationship but i think overall is really positive and in the end like we learned so much about each other and how to work together which is important for us like there's plenty of couples who just decide not to do projects together and to not work together and they're happy to have their separate spaces but i think for us that's really important that we're able to do big projects together and in like thinking about future projects like building a home or having a kid like knowing how to communicate and how to work through challenges has been yeah i think overall it's been like yeah hugely positive thing for a relationship a lot of people do storage stairs but we at sort of the last second in our design process decided we wanted to have a desk instead probably just as a place to throw mail you know clutter just get it off of the kitchen space we didn't really plan it with a pandemic in mind but i've been working from home for the last um going uh 15 months or so and so i've been working here i'm a graphic designer so i get to sit in front of that all day so instead of having the storage stairs we framed out the stairs with this um this metal beam that i welded up so we get a little bit of light and a little bit of air coming through here it doesn't feel quite as much of a box as i think it would if we had had kind of enclosed the space a little bit more so we've got a few more shelves on the front of the stairs here we use this one for baking ingredients for food below here we keep some fruits and vegetables it stays a little bit colder down here so food keeps a little bit longer and then here we keep our toaster and our bread basket and then inside here is this has been just kind of a catch-all drawer this was designed as a shoe drawer i mean the unit is so it has these kind of funny tip out shelves and we use it for rain gear and grocery store bags and cleanings like cleaning supplies and stuff and then here's our stairs we thought this would be a good seat so we made this third step tip up and it it latches to the post like that and so you can sit here good place to put on shoes or visit with somebody while they're cooking but mostly what we use it for is is putting down a couple bags of groceries just when we walk in the door we have a murphy bed at the front end of the house and so we just use the loft for storage and for hanging out and we can go up and take a look we didn't have a whole lot in mind for our loft we knew we weren't going to be sleeping up here but we've used it for you know storing extra stuff for watching tv we keep our art supplies and some stuff up here and we've also used it as a guest bedroom and we've had people come stay with us so it's it's been really nice to have a little bit of extra space that we can kind of use for whatever we need at the time sort of a luxury that we we built in for ourselves knowing that space is going to be pretty tight in the rest of the house i think we originally hoped it would be around 25 000 and it ended up being around 35 000 and that includes like appliances and all of that yeah i think we're happy with that in the end we definitely like along the way made a lot of decisions to have nicer materials and prioritized prioritized that that felt important to me in such a small space to like really like all of the surfaces you're touching and the things you're interacting with um but yeah i think we're really happy with with that price in the end it's many hours of sarah scouring craigslist for deals yeah we did do a lot of like i don't know i mean even like our our faucet is one of those really expensive faucets that you know i wouldn't want to buy new but the we found it on craigslist for cheap and so we ended up with a lot of really nice materials i spent a long time scouring to find yeah which was a fun process i really like that we decided to have a wood stove in our tiny house we both really love having wood heat and it's also just so cozy to have when we're making dinner to have the fire going or when we're sitting in bed it's nice to have that be the only light in the evening and it really keeps us warm we have occasionally brought in a space heater mostly if we're only going to be in the house for a couple hours and don't want to have a fire burning when we leave but otherwise it's our it's our only source of heat and does a really excellent job we have a overhead fan as well to kind of push the heat down and that really helps to spread out the heat throughout the house and one of the reasons we really wanted a wood stove was to keep moisture down in the house in tiny houses especially in in the northwest moisture is just such a problem we use a dehumidifier in the bathroom along with the bathroom fan and that helps but wood heat really helps to dry everything out and not add additional moisture like a propane heater might every little thing feels like it it helps a lot and we haven't had too many problems with moisture we knew pretty early on in our design process we wanted to have a murphy bed so we could free up some some floor space when the bed's up have people over have some room to spread out have some room to work out or do yoga or whatever we also knew we didn't want to sleep in a loft we uh we decided to build a murphy bed and that's what we have here it's a double sized bed so that they give us just enough room on both sides for a little wardrobe [Applause] we have some hanging clothes here and then some drawers here and these are pretty deep drawers so there's actually a good deal of clothes storage here so in the center here of course is our bed and on the floor we we just throw down some cushions and pillows it's a good place just to sit down sarah usually flops down there when she comes home from work it's uh not quite a couch which it would be nice to have a real couch um just to to crash on when you come home but this is the this is what we have room for this is the next best thing and then the bed can just kind of fold down on top we bought the hinges and springs for the murphy bed in a kit and then we customized it a little bit so we created this folding foot here that comes out and latches and then the bed comes down on top of that [Music] and then there's a couple bungees that we use just to keep the bed spread in place and then these usually go back on the [Music] bed one thing i really like about a murphy bed is that it's you know a little bit of work to put up and down not much doesn't take long we also don't really have to make the bed because of that it's the bed's never down when people are over we just have a comforter on here and so we just tuck it in and put it up and never make the bed so behind the bed here we've got a headboard and there's room here for some books and a lamp and we also we keep some stuff behind the headboard because you know there's six or eight inches back there and we weren't gonna let that go to waste so these panels come off and it's not super easy to do but this is um we keep our sleeping bags and some spare sheets back here that we don't use all that often so getting in here isn't too much work [Music] and then on the side of the bed here in the second drawer we've got a little nightstand that comes out and there's a latch that keeps it from from uh scraping your your t-mug off um as the drawer goes back in so it comes out and latches and then that's there place to charge your phone or put down a cup of tea or a book or whatever and then of course there's a drawer behind there yeah we just we we really we love the idea of living in a tiny house and i think they're like really intriguing but we just don't want to be like those you know tiny house people that all they talk about is tiny houses and all their friends live in tiny houses but it turns out like as you build a tiny house you meet so many other people who live in tiny houses and you get to share so many resources with them and you kind of end up like entering into this community whether or not you chose to in the beginning and now like i feel like a handful of our best friends live in tiny houses and yeah it just kind of happened but i think we're maybe kind of tiny house people plus we're proud of it so yeah we love talking about it yeah we do love talking about it [Music] thank you for watching our video and for stopping by tiny house expedition i'm alexis and i'm christian don't forget to like comment and subscribe and for more tiny home tours and stories click the videos below and join us on patreon for bonus content including face-to-face conversations with us we hope to see you there all right thanks guys have a good one

Channel: Tiny House Expedition

Views: 1,019,169

Keywords: tiny house tour, diy tiny house, tiny home tour, self built tiny house, tiny house, tiny home, tiny house on wheels, $35k tiny house, living big in a tiny house, tiny house living, tiny house with murphy bed, tiny house with downstairs bedroom, murphy bed, tiny house build, 26' tiny house, portland tiny house, tiny house parking, tiny house home office, minimalist living, sustainable tiny home, starter home, tiny house with bathtub, simple living, diy tiny home

Id: F89-K4IRG8A

Length: 26min 2sec (1562 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 06 2021