Family of 5 In Affordable 6X6 Tiny Home Conversion - $80k

[Music] hi everybody my name is Catherine and this is Ray Estelle Evan and Tyler and this is our Overlander Bart well here we are in the kitchen and one of my favorite part of this build is this pass-through so we can access the cab to the habitat at any time we have a 24 volt electric refrigerator it's not quite enough for us to pack enough food for a full week of boondocking if we want to be out and about and so we got a mini fridge that we put in our trailer and between the two of them we have plenty of space to be able to fit seven to ten days of food comfortably for us and we have some storage for water under here we have 65 gallons of water here on the truck with us it's important when you lift tiny space that you have everything organized and put away so I got these baskets so I don't have things on the countertop at all time I have space this is my workspace and it's available at when I want to make a meal one of the things I really like is we were able to fit a four burner stove in this space cooking for fear from near five I do cook a lot and the ray made a nice little pull out countertop here so I would have more access to my cooking station the longest we've been so far with our 65 gallon is eight days we were very conservative to extend our time out and about we have an extra 40 gallons of water in the trailer so I really like having all this light coming into our dinette area this table will be custom made and pour this crayon table because we have kids crayons works well and this table folds down into a bed also it gives us a little extra space for family and friends right underneath the dinette we have two big pull out drawers that have all our storage for Pantry items [Music] thank you everybody wants to know about money how much they cost what do we do so the first question of money how do we fund this dear well in December of 2020 we decided to sell our house and we are living off the proceeds of that and that's it at this point we're using up our savings and we're not feeling too bad about it it's been a good investment in our family for sure yeah we're investing in our family and that's what's most important but then the other question was how much did this cost to build and we I did some math last night laying here and it came out to about eighty thousand dollars now that's just materials the truck everything you see though on Wheels here is about eighty thousand dollars with the trailer too with the trailer yep and so I'm a builder by trade and so I obviously had some skills to put into that but anybody can be inspired to try it and you don't have to do this exact same thing you could do a bus or a school bus or a van or a Geo Metro if you want to so the eighty thousand dollars we spent on this as I penciled it out probably a little bit higher today because of inflation but you can do recycled materials we did a lot of that free materials just just things you can find around Yep this is our living room slash bedroom area this couch turns into the bed for Ray and I um and then we have all kinds of baskets here for our storage all the kids have each one for their toys and their school books and some miscellaneous other things that we have stored up there and this is my junk basket most people have a junk drawer well I don't have a drawer enough so I might have my junk basket and we put some nice storage for books this is raisin little this is raised side of the bed so this is his little Nook for his books and I have mine set up there all right so this is our closet and in there we just hang our coats and extra shirts that we want to hang up and we have our storage for our little vacuum cleaner and some extra extra things that we don't know where else to put these doors and all the drawers are made out of a snowboard cord from a an old snowboarding company and this is actually barn wood from about a 100 year old barn all right so Ray made a door out of a full length mirror and the barn wood on the outside and we have a composting toilet which seems to work fine for a family of five it is we have to keep at it you know make sure it doesn't overfill but it works just fine for us and we put the bare minimum in the bathroom we just wanted to get out on the road so we waterproofed the hole inside of the bathroom and painted it so we do have an option to have a shower we have some shower hookups here if we needed to we've never had to because we just used the outdoor shower these are the bunks for two our two youngest kids Estelle sleeps up here and Evan is right here to make sure that Evan was able to get in and on his bed we rebuild this little step and underneath we have shoe storage and it does close in but during the day we just have it so for him to be able to get in and out all these drawers are storage and they're really deep Out full pull out and then we have clothes we have kitchen items in these drawers and a dirty laundry drawer because I did not want laundry everywhere it just has to go and be put away one of the main feature of this build that was super important to me was to have a lot of light so we went with all these three skylights on the roof and these big windows that lets in a lot of light and we whitewash plywood so it just reflects the light even more foreign [Music] so traveling with kids it hasn't been so bad actually we've all really enjoyed it there it's not it's not pretty every day it's not fun all the time but the what we're learning together and what we're doing is more important than these hard days um and so this is not a vacation I think a lot of people think oh you're going on a vacation no it's real living we have to do laundry and we have to get groceries and we have to clean and we have to do homeschool and all these things are piled in but they don't make this experience the experience is made by how we react to it all and how we choose to be out and about and meet people and smile and be honest and be real um so yeah it's not it's not pretty every day but we're still smiling and it's actually great to be with the kids uh people don't have opportunity to eat every meal pretty much with our family laughing on the table and I'm a pretty motivated person a lot of times so to be able to sit there and actually enjoy the meal and not feel like we have to go out and do something it's wonderful just to see them probably laugh and Roll It on the Ground sometimes obviously there are our tough moments but it's wonderful to learn to those and those take the time to look at your family see them as the most valuable asset in your life and then to from that to interact with them about how you relate to other people you know people that we see we meet strange situations there's a lot of strange situations out there in this world and it's really neat to talk to the kids about it and uh just just to have that education and go with go with that it's one of the most commonly asked questions is how much did this tire cost and that's actually a question that I asked somebody as well it was only 325 dollars brand new it's military surplus and there's a lot of availability out here for these tires I can't buy one for my Dodge pickup that cheap so this is a 1998 military surplus Stewart and Stevenson 1088 it weighs about 26 000 pounds as it sits right now it has a CAT engine not real big it's all mechanical it's a 1998 and one of my favorite features is a ctis tire inflation system when we hit rough roads washboards we can down that pressure go through the sand it's really smooth is one of the unique things about this military rig is a blackout you can't have light disturbing or showing the enemy where you are so you have all these safeties to turn your lights on you have to have you know two hands or one hand to open it up no key so you can't lose it you push a button and it starts the one disadvantage gets 50 it goes 50 miles an hour and that's pretty much top speed our cruising speed is 48 to 50. and down here this is a push button to change the ctis the central tire inflation system it's really simple and light flashes when it's done you know you're up to pressure and it's just like driving a school bus it actually has an Allison Transmission so it's just automatic you push the button and it goes a lot of things we had to change before we could build this box and one of them was to establish how we were going to attach our habitat and we have a actual dump bed this would dump up like a dump truck if I wanted to we have a battery box up here with Lithium-ion batteries which is the original battery box I just fit six batteries in there 600 amp hours of battery and then the most important feature this whole habitat build was space for a family of five so we built two 12 foot slide outs so I used a roller system that I kind of came up with and part and parceled from Lippert Components for these bearings but everything else is original this slide out right here weighs about 2 000 pounds with everything inside of it which is as much as some people's uh campers or cars and one of the things I thought about as I was building it was how nice would be to have a hammock hanging underneath of it all right let's talk solar so I have 2600 watts of solar and one thing about solar panels on this big rig is it's so tall I didn't want to put them on the roof and scrape overpasses and trees and just rip it right off so this actually folds down against the side of the truck and those outside solar panels fold against it so it's all protected all right we decided to do this full time we needed a trailer to store things like toilet paper paper towels and garden hoses and a shovel and your lawn chairs and all the miscellaneous things you just can't find a place inside your home for so that's what we need a trailer for and we also have a bunk for my son in there but this trailer is unique because I built it 17 years ago this the frame but I had to cut it apart and build an extendable tongue on it so this is actually telescopic so we had enough room to turn going down the road and in that we had to find a place for our spare tire because that was difficult it weighs about 400 pounds and then we have a box up here with storage for wood blocking just to even up our truck if we're on uneven surfaces the actual top part of this trailer is an NPR box truck off a little delivery truck has a roll-up door but underneath it works really good for storage space we have our brooms and shovels and picks and our stairs actually slide in here as well as a pull-up bar up on the top for my son a little spot for a bike rack and just in here we store like I said extension cords and miscellaneous toilet paper and stuff for the Nature's head toilet peat moss and just stuff you just can't have in your house that smells also underneath here I have a diesel tank and a water tank in the front for some auxiliary we can go out for 14 days and have enough to last a while out there all right this is a diesel rig and this is our puny little diesel tank it's only about 55 gallons five miles a gallon we don't pass any gas stations we also have an outdoor shower here and this is where we fill our water and with the diesel for the hot water you know when it's running because we have a little diesel heater here that also heats the cab and the engine and is plumbed right in the diesel tank [Music] foreign so what inspired us to do this over Landing full-time as a family we love spending time together and I love traveling and we all really like traveling and so for us it was a no-brainer to move into this full-time lifestyle of being on the road it took us a few tries to get to it but once we came up with the idea of a military truck we just were all into it it took about five minutes for me to convince me to do this yeah and then from there we just moved forward and we made a plan and we started building this truck my story is my wife is probably the biggest inspiration for that she loves to travel took her no time at all just talked her into traveling and she's she's in but really we actually bought this rig to just do weekend travels originally and then we decided we like this we're gonna do it full time and kind of change how we approach everything and what we put in it and and we do a few things different just because of that but about five minutes and was really excited about this is it takes us out of our comfort zone and that's probably the most valuable thing just with a family never know where you're going to Camp all the time where you're going to get resources but also the building process and how to work through things that was awesome to to be out of our comfort zone and you know the nice thing is that meeting people on the road you could Inspire them to try it a lot of people haven't tried it they're afraid to try it and it's a great experience get out of your comfort zone that's what I would say if it's building something dig in there's no mistakes there's only learning opportunities thank you for watching and if you want to follow along on our adventures you can find us on YouTube and on Instagram at five tons of Discovery get out of your comfort zone question who defines truth in your life and get out there and maybe we'll see you on the road

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

Views: 918,281

Keywords: tiny house, tiny house on wheels, living big in a tiny house, tiny house england, tiny house uk, tiny house movement, tiny home, small house, small spaces, small house design, alternative living, architecture, affordable home, off the grid, small space living, tiny house life, tiny home uk, diy tiny house, diy home

Id: KVEUGTmAyXY

Length: 12min 34sec (754 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 13 2023