Gorgeous DIY Tiny Home with Elevator Bed and so Much Storage

hello we are blaine and janae russell and we'd love to show you our tiny home welcome to the kitchen i'll show you a few things around here that we like yeah so we have these quartz countertops and we really like just elegant touch that they put on the kitchen they're really easy to clean and i just love the color and this is our sink and it has a nice little nozzle that comes out so you can rinse out the sink so i love having a deep sink in the tiny home i do a lot of cooking so lots of dishes go through the sink one of the really neat features is that we have a double trash can so we have one just for the trash and then we have a recycling bin as well in the back and then really nice deep drawers for linens and things and some more for containers so there are upper cabinets i have all my plates and water bottles and bowls and stuff in there and then these cabinets we have more glasses and mugs and all things for coffee we have more storage than we even need and we definitely took that into consideration when doing the design process yeah we have a full-size fridge and freezer in here and it holds a lot of food so usually go grocery shopping once a week and it holds plenty for the two of us so since i knew i was going to be doing a lot of baking i wanted a full-size kitchenaid and i wanted it handy so i like having it tucked in this little corner over here and i use it a lot and then lots of utensils i love having the space for that but it's still out of the way and then we love our propane oven and stovetop and it's big enough to do 9x13 pan so that has been super nice and then we have vent hood up here and then just storage for tea and cookbooks and that kind of stuff up above yeah so we're really glad we put the vent hood in because it helps keep the house cooler when you're boiling water or cooking different things it also helps with the scent and the tiny house a little bit too so one of the main things i like about this big area is just having a lot of countertop for cooking and it's usually full of things when i have a baking day and then i really like these lower cabinets i have a big instant pot i have a juicer i have a full-size food processor waffle iron all the things that you'd normally think you couldn't put in a tiny house but there's plenty of room for all that in here so i wanted all my spices to be really handy and my husband blaine came up with this great idea so there's no glass in front of it or anything you can just grab out your spices and i have some different things in court jars i use more often and then this is our pantry and so i have five gallon bucket down there and some two gallon buckets and then i make kombucha so that's there and then just all the other pantry items so lots of space there yeah so in the buckets we have oats and black beans and pinto beans so the things i use more of yeah so this pull-up bar that we have in the kitchen is one of blaine's favorite things and i don't mind watching him do them either so it's pretty fun so one last little feature in the staircase here is our utility cabinet and then i just have some space for jars and cat food and things like that so we chose this walnut countertop here just as another accent with the darker wood and then you think living in a tiny house that you need to be minimal with your shoes but we are not because we have this wonderful shoe storage cubby here [Music] yeah i was a little hesitant at first about living tiny but once we moved into the tiny house i've really loved pretty much every part of it i think what's made me like it the most is just the amount of storage in the house because i like to cook a lot and can and we have a garden so the kitchen was the biggest thing to me and so since i've had that space that's been really usable i've been happy with the house and i like the coziness of the loft and the elevator bed and it's just really been everything that we've needed so for me there haven't been a lot of cons yeah no there are there aren't a lot of cons for us um but there are definitely a couple that you can't ignore and first of all i would say that is just um if you like entertaining people um i mean you've pretty much got to wait till the weather is right so that everyone can be outside so especially little kids spring and fall get togethers if you like larger group gatherings that's definitely a big con because it's definitely it is difficult welcome to our living room and office areas over here is our office or desk we've got a nice little floating desk here with the rollout keyboard and mouse in there and then we're wedding photographers so we do a lot of photo editing so we've got our editing console here and plenty of storage up above here with these cubbies and we like listening to our tunes all the time so we've got some speakers up there we also have a lot of office storage in these stairs we've got some steps here we've been cleaning things out but for demonstration at least here we are we've got some of these steps to open up and then we also have these drawers in the faces of the stairs and then moving into the actual living room here we also use it as our dining room and as another workspace with our laptop we have the table here couches have storage built in these are really nice deep drawers they each have three drawers as well as a cubby underneath the cushion and then there's another vertical cubby behind these cushions and then of course we have all the shelving in the back of the living room all of our board games card games we love especially dominion we love playing games in the evening so we built this tiny home ourselves i built it with the help of my dad and a couple of my brothers so it has evolved a little bit over time as well these shelves that you see in the back of the living room used to be a murphy bed and we tore that out recently put in the shelves and we love the layout we have a lot more storage but we still have this elevator bed up above all of the window finishings here were actually made by janae my wife before we were married when i was building the house she wanted something she could do to chip in uh before we got married and so she made those curtains and did a great job really finishes the windows out nicely our mini split and hrv unit are up here at the top of the wall and we have a 9000 btu pioneer mini split if i were to start from scratch with this home again i would probably put in a 12 000 btu unit and probably go ahead and spend the extra money on a samsung or mitsubishi or something like that when the when the days are getting hotter here in summer and we get this western sun hitting the house head-on it definitely can get a little bit warm and the extra juice from a 12 000 btu would really come in handy so a nice aesthetic point to the house here when you're in the living room sitting on the couches or on the bed is this beautiful beam going across at the top of course it um houses the ceiling fan but it also gave us a way to run all of our electrical across from one side of the house to the other when we were building so designing that in was not just for aesthetics but also very practical and made our job a lot easier when we were building it so those are good things to be thinking about [Music] yeah so we have a lot of people ask us if we ever feel like we're too close to each other in a tiny house and if we need more space but we really love being together he works away from home part of the time and so whenever he's home i just want to be with him and he feels the same way so we really enjoy living in a tiny space and he can work on the computer and i can be making dinner and we can still have conversation and you definitely couldn't do that in a larger house yeah yeah we still have separate spaces and separate things that we're doing um but we like that even when we're not spending time with each other specifically we're still near each other and i think that's been a really foundational part of our marriage the the first couple years here so so before we take you upstairs to the loft uh we'll go ahead and show you the bathroom so most people are surprised when they walk into our bathroom because it's actually quite spacious we've got everything packed into here we have a nice shower with sliding glass doors over here we have our hampers and of course um the floating shelves for our towels and and such and then we have a double level vanity here um so got a nice set of a nice bank of drawers here in the corner here we have our composting toilet this is a sea head composting toilet and we also have this storage for all the composting medium and anything associated with the toilet goes there we usually change the compost medium every five days or so that's kind of the sweet spot we found for the two of us with the sea head the sea hud toilet is really nice because instead of adding compost medium every time you use the toilet it actually has this little stir stick here and you fill it with composting medium when you have a clean bucket and then every time you use it you just use this little paddle to spin the contents in the bucket just a few times and then you're done so we find that a lot easier than having to get a scoop out and throw the composting medium all over the bathroom every time and it also has a urine diverter and so behind me and behind these curtains is where we keep our full-size washer and dryer not a combo unit we heard a lot about um people having issues with uh the drying cycles um not really getting their clothes dry enough or um just lots more maintenance versus a standard washer and dryer so we made sure to design in a space for these and on the other side we have quite a bit of hanging clothes storage again we try our best to be minimalists but well we do our best and we have a clothes hamper and some extra hats and scarves and things and a tote down there we also keep our broom in this closet and we'll admit the closets can be a little cluttered in a tiny house but we try to keep up with it not let the mess build and and it hasn't been too much of a problem [Music] with my dad doing remodel for a long time when i was growing up um i remember watching him draw out floor plans and so i started designing houses uh way back then at 10 years old or i don't even know but so i've always kind of been fascinated with designing my home and that went through a lot of iterations but i i was obsessed with natural building for a while and hobbit hole type stuff and um so i guess that that got me thinking more in terms of small spaces or unusual spaces unique surroundings and so eventually i stumbled on some youtube videos and some tiny house tours and something just clicked with me and i thought well that's affordable and looks like my kind of space so um i talked to janae about it and at first she thought i was probably a little wonky i hadn't heard about the tiny house movement as much so it was new to me so it took me a little while to warm up to it but we wanted to start marriage debt-free too and didn't want to have to pay rent and so it was definitely the best option for us yeah it allowed us to get a much uh much easier start together um taking control of our finances and our living condition i guess right off the bat so that's been a huge blessing yeah saved a lot of stress yes welcome to our loft we really love this space because if one of us just wants to get away for a little while and have more of a quiet place while the other person's downstairs they can come up here and read or you know just be on the phone watch a movie that kind of thing so it's really handy to have this separate cozy space up here so we have clothes storage in both of those little baskets on each side and then in the blue containers as well and so all of just folded t-shirts and jeans and pants anything like that and then we have floating shelves on either side and we just keep books up there and then we have our lights then we have another hrv unit up top so that it'll work with the other one and bring in fresh air from each side and then we have nice little bean bag area there for reading and for playing music alright so we love this area just because it also divides this room from the rest of the house it kind of feels a little bit separate and if you do use this as your bedroom then you have a little bit of space if there is company staying downstairs or something like that and then we use this for clothes storage we have socks and full of t-shirts and other things like that in each of these drawers and then we have books here and then just places for jewelry and we really love plants so we like this area to kind of showcase them [Music] okay so here we are on the outside of the tiny house it's built with wood structurally and then it's finished with lp smart siding the trailer is one i had custom made for the tiny house it's a three axle trailer with a 21 000 pound weight rating over here is where we have our propane connection so our hot water and the stove our propane both of those hundred pound tanks full i can make it through a little bit over a year using the stove and the water heater so we feel like that's pretty good and it makes it pretty easy to gauge when i need to refill them so i also just wanted to mention uh our source of power so we are on solar power but we decided rather than installing all of our panels and equipment on the house i decided to save the space in the house and just install our own array back here now this is oversized but it's allowing us to uh expand or have a little bit of flexibility in what we put on this lot in the future and we have this nice view over our little garden that we've started all right so once we got the tiny house settled we decided that we wanted a nice outdoor space to enjoy because we love being outside and since blaine's grandparents own a marble business they had all this extra scrap that we got for free so we just had to load it up and bring it here and we had some nice big pieces that we're able to use as well for the grill because we like grilling and we really enjoy this nice seating area around the fire pit here as well we love having company out here too it gives us more space than just what's inside the tiny house so we have couples over that have kids this is a little more flexible as long as it's a nice evening [Music] so if you'd like to see more of our work with our custom tiny home business then you can feel free to check us out on instagram or facebook we are cornerstone tiny homes um we also have a website that's cornerstonetinyhomesok.com and we'd love to chat with you about working through design or even just answering questions about what it's like to live in a tiny house and if it's even a fit for you regardless you can get in touch with us from our website find contact info on there and look through galleries of some other homes thanks for coming and touring our home we hope you enjoyed it and we'd be happy to answer any questions if you have any so you're welcome to reach out to the contacts that he mentioned earlier absolutely thanks guys [Music] you

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

Views: 860,392

Keywords: tiny house, tiny house on wheels, living big in a tiny house, 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, diy tiny house, diy home, tiny house design, tiny house tour, tiny house big living, tiny homes, tiny home living, tiny home village, tiny home tours, tiny homes on wheels, tiny homes for sale, elevator bed, shipping container

Id: Yn1Fpk8UeD8

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 16 2021