Cute tiny home built inside of a box truck (budget: $14k)

hey there jenna here welcome to my channel where  i take you on tours of tiny and unique homes in   today's video we're going to meet a young couple  that transformed a box truck into a gorgeous   tiny home i think you're going to be really  surprised when you step inside to see how spacious   a box truck can really be and they've come up with  a lot of clever ways to expand the space including   a multi-purpose room that includes their bedroom  living room office and a bedroom for their cat   if you like these kind of videos make sure  that you subscribe and hit that notification   bell so that you know every single time  i publish a new video but right now let's   step inside this box truck that's  turned into a beautiful tiny home make this house hi i'm courtney and i'm sawyer  and this is our box truck lp so the experience that got me familiar with  tiny living was my sophomore year of college   my room was like an eight by eight and i  spent a year in that room if i could do it   with the same view every day then i could make  it work on the road van life was really taking   off at that time the opportunity to travel  was what got me excited about tidy living i was running a 5k and had a heart attack  two firemen happened to be running behind   me and were able to uh give me cpr and save  my life i got the phone call from his brother   saying that everything's fine but sawyer  had a heart attack and died for 15 minutes   it really just drove home like the fragility of  life and like the importance of time so we really   like committed to we want to live on the road  and like see as much as we can so that was a real   catalyst for our decision to  find the truck and get started all styles of things that we could  actually like be in looked at party buses   everything once we had chosen a box truck we  were basically just doing the waiting game on   craigslist checking every day a couple times a  day and eventually this one popped up locally it   was only 10 miles from us and it was for 3 500  so a very affordable deal we were balling on a   budget so we needed to find the cheapest vehicle  possible that was in good shape and we found her when it comes to the time of a build i feel  like there's two ways you can do it you can   do it slow and cheap or fast and expensive and we  did the slow and cheap model where we were just   waiting for materials to come along we were in  a really fortunate position where i was already   working as a carpenter and my sort of style was  with reclaimed wood material so i had a place   to store things he actually took the reins from  most of the building which is really incredible   but he's also a carpenter so i don't think my  craftsmanship would have been as comparable so the truck was 3 500 and then the total cost of   the build would be 9 000 10 000  between 12 000 and 14 000 total welcome to the outside of elfie she is  a 2003 isuzu npr she's about eight feet   wide and 23 feet long bumper to bumper so  i painted the mural on the side i was super   excited to have such a big canvas to work with  sort of my thought process for why i chose her   was i wanted to give our truck a face so i  like to say this is elfie also i just wanted   it to be unique and stand out because she  really does stand out so i had to add to that   right here is our inlet valve to our water tank we  have a 45 gallon tank it lasts us about a week if   we're showering we think it's sort of the perfect  size for us because it does fit inside so when we   are in the colder months it doesn't freeze so for  our truck we have a 4.8 liter turbo diesel engine   and that was something that was really reassuring  to us when we purchased the vehicle was that even   though it has 247 000 miles at the time 90 of  these vehicles were functioning normally at 310   000 miles so it still has a big chunk of lifespan  for us to enjoy with it we tend to not do the   math on mpg just because it's rather painful we  can achieve 10 if we're driving really careful here we are on the passenger side of the truck  one of the first things you're going to notice   from the outside is just how tall the windows  are so i'm here at 6-2 so it's just really nice   when we are in like a parking lot and have to  be there for the day you can have your curtains   open and not feel like everyone's just looking  in at you also on this side of the truck we have   two propane boxes and we can hold four standard  five pound barbecue tanks that's two up here and   then two at the back this box runs our oven  and holds the spare tank the two at the back   run our water heater and our traditional heater  through the winter we did about one tank a month   all right so here we are at the back of the house  and as you can tell one of the things that was   really important to us was making it feel homey  even though we are living in a vehicle we kind of   wanted that sort of cute front door appeal that  you can get from a traditional house so some of   the features we wanted to include on the back were  the symmetrical porch lights to me it just sort of   reminds me of a caboose when you're coming up to a  campsite in the dark and you have the porch lights   on it's a really cute feeling to it so here  we have the tool shed and it is sort of a mix   of both the tools that i thought we would need  in case anything did go wrong but also this   is just my passion a lot of this stuff is just  what i thought would be fun to use on the road and then here we have a furion instant  hot water heater and this unit is   really nice for us because it has a digital  thermostat that you can set a temperature on   inside so there's no fiddling with the taps you  just set your digit and then crank the hot water   on full blast for me that's a comfortable  temperature and for courtney it's scalding   one of the things to be aware of if you're buying  one of these trucks is that the roof is a very   thin fiberglass layer that really can't support  any weight it's only there to keep the rain out so   we actually put down a half inch layer of plywood  over that fiberglass layer and attached it to the   rafters we had put beneath that and then she did  the whole thing with a reclaimed corrugated tin so   we actually have a really robust roof layer that  you can walk around climb around on if you need   to do anything to the solar panels on our roof we  have 885 watts of solar and that runs down into a   330 amp hour lithium-ion battery that is 24 volts  that we had reclaimed from a bmw one cool feature   about elfie is that she did come with a liftgate  it's been super fun to have it just as an extra   step to get in because she's a little bit higher  up so let's head up and i will show you the inside   we were really drawn to sort of an open  floor plan which is why we have both   windows sort of mirroring each other we  wanted to feel like we had a lot of room   for activities and to just kind of hang out  without feeling so squished for our heater   we have the wave 8 catalytic safety heater  it's made for a space three times the size   so it heats up really quickly in here  our cat especially loves it during the   winter time she always just kind of posts up  right in front of it lounges and gets warm so when you walk into the house immediately to  your left is our bathroom i'm in love with our   bathroom door the wood is from an old barn that  was built in the 1800s about it was one of my old   co-workers barns that they were tearing down  and they just let us take whatever we needed   we found the handle at an old antique junkyard of  sorts the door is bi-folding accordion style so   it folds out of the way the bathroom is right next  to the front door of the truck and that was a very   intentional decision anyone who  has a composting toilet will know   the reasoning behind that decision really you just  want as short a pathway there as possible so if   you step into the space we built a custom shower  pan and one of the things that we did that for   was so that we could have a much more dramatic  angle in that drainage pan than normal showers   do so that even on varied slopes we can still  keep all the water going where we want it to   so courtney wanted to add a little texture to  the shower pan by painting white stars on there   i thought it would be really cool if we used  actual wooden stars because then they would   actually give us some texture to the pan and give  some grip so that you don't slide around too much   one of my favorite parts about the house is the  fact that i get a full length mirror and the   cool part about it is that it actually opens up  a little bit inside of it is the medicine cabinet   it keeps all of the items that we would normally  have in a bathroom so over here we have sort of   our breakfast bar that was actually just a recent  contribution and we are absolutely in love with it   i don't know how we lived without it it's pretty  cool because the stools fold up get tucked under   there and then the bar closes over them so that  gives us extra space in here and also it's just   more secure while we travel we use this bar for  eating this is mostly where i set up my laptop   and so i'm able to work from home and usually  with a beautiful view so that's been wonderful so just across the hall we have our kitchen  one of my favorite things about the kitchen   is our spice rack the wood that's used inside  of the spice rack to hold all of the containers   is the original flooring of elfie all this yellow  wood that you see in our house is actually from   sawyer's grandma's house when she tore it down  so that's been really fun to be able to get to   use that and have her sort of a part of our home  we have our water tank that is down here it is   a 45 gallon tank the depth of our counter was  determined by the width of our water tank so   when we put in our stove we had this extra section  in the back that we had nothing to use it for we   weren't going to use it while we were cooking so  we decided to use it as our trash can so just the   lid lifts up and we're able just to keep a couple  bags in there it's been really nice to just get   it out of the way so i made these tiles for our  backsplash i got this idea off of pinterest so   how i did it was i took some clay i rolled flowers  into it to create sort of a mold and then poured   the plaster on top of that to create these tiles  we wanted a stove oven combo we chose this one   sort of arbitrarily our friend had got it as  well he liked it it was well priced i do like   having the three burners the oven is nice it's a  little funky sometimes but we've figured it out so here we are in the living room and well  actually it's the most amount of rooms in our   whole house because this is our living room our  closet our office and our bedroom all rolled into   one and then in the back is our cat's room if for  whatever reason we need her contained we can lock   her in this little cage there's plenty of space  for food and water if she needs to be in there   the other thing that this does is it pops  out all the way and then we have her litter   box down here so when we need to clean it it  gives us full access to take that in and out   so this was a afterthought addition but we had  this countertop that wasn't being used for a   whole lot i made it so that you can remove  the top you take these two hooks and they   simply hook onto the side and this  is nice because you can adjust it   wherever you need it to go then we have a  simple leg that stores in our closet set that on   get the leg situated and then you  have a nice desk that you can work out   also here in our study we have this beautiful like  platter tray that we got from one of our favorite   stores where we converted the truck and we got  it it was just like incredibly corroded and you   didn't get a sense of all the detail that was  on it and we brought it home and cleaned it up   so down here we have our fridge and we just put  it on a simple box with felt pads instead of doing   any sort of expensive slider and it just pulls  out just like that and it's nice being on the pads   because you have total mobility and we actually  use it as a coffee table and sort of lots of   orientations in this space hidden under the couch  we have basically all of our clothing storage   we each have two really large drawers  that you can fit a lot of clothing in   in the backrest we have little compartments  for like socks and underwear that sort of thing   so in the corner where we obviously couldn't get  drawer access we decided to put our batteries   you can take up the cushion and then you have a  hatch where you can easily access our batteries   and inverter so here we have our bed hoist  system it comes with a hand crank but we   didn't really have the patience for that  so we put it in a drill and then you just   real simply hook it right there and then  squeeze the trigger and it'll come on down one of the nice things about using the drill  is there's no safe speed regulation so you   can really just send it up or down as fast as  you want to the only downside is that it has   developed a bit of a squeak so here in the bedroom  of the house we still have access to our bookshelf   which is something we really appreciate  it's easy to get either in couch or in bed   we have a separate light that works on the back  wall on a dimmer so you can have a nice mellow   lighting if you need to we went for a queen  size bed just because we knew we wanted to be   able to have a little bit of distance from each  other when we're sleeping somewhere really hot it was really helpful for us to have the desire  and the motivation to begin the life but not a   lease ending or a time frame where we had  to be done and we had to start and finish   by a certain time frame we were able to wait for  materials for the right price and things like that   being able to downsize into a smaller space has  really been empowering i think you could say you   don't actually need as much as you think you  do you just enjoy the things that you do have   more living this sort of nomadic lifestyle  there are so many different ways to do it   we happen to have found this specific way that  has worked really well for us but i've met so   many people who do it differently and everyone  really just thrives in what works best for them thanks for watching this week's  video please make sure to like share   and subscribe and i will see you soon  with another tiny or unique home tour you

Channel: Tiny House Giant Journey

Views: 976,508

Keywords: tiny house giant journey, tiny house, Tiny houses, tiny homes, tiny house tour, 2003 Isuzu NPR, box truck living, box truck tiny home, overlander 4x4, diy Overlander, overlander truck, box truck, stealth camping, stealth box truck, ocerlander tiny home, rv life, overlanding, mitsubishi isuzu, conversion, renovation, remodel, restoration, house truck, diy projects, home on wheels, tiny house movement, tiny home tour, tiny home tours, tiny houses

Id: a6arAnI_aF0

Length: 16min 17sec (977 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 05 2022