He's lived n 2 Tiny Homes since 2013! DIY $13k Tiny House & $94k Model

[Music] welcome my name is alan this is my tiny house actually to be quite honest it's my second tiny house so a little bit about myself i'm a farm boy from the midwest grew up in nebraska and that instilled some ideologies we had a small house and a lot of people in it that was kind of my first experience with living tiny kind of what what brought me to the tiny house movement i had a change in my life experience i had a divorce and that made me kind of rethink things things that i didn't need anymore things i didn't want anymore totally could simplify my life i'm not necessarily a minimalist but that line of thought is is very prevalent to those who want to go tiny i kind of did the normal thing after the divorce i had a two-bedroom house kind of did all of that and then in 2008 uh everybody knows that the economical situation kind of went south the company that i was working for at the time closed their doors and that meant i had to find a new job but i was living in a community where work was difficult to find and so when i was finally offered a job out of state i moved out of state to secure that employment but all the time i'm thinking i couldn't afford an apartment in the new town and i still had a mortgage in the other town so i had to do a sale because i couldn't do both and it ended up being a short sale and the only people that made money off of that was the mortgage company and the investor and so i lost money because generally when you buy a house you go into it thinking okay the house is going to appreciate and you're going to have that as an investment and you're going to be able to sell it and make a profit turns out it didn't work that way for me that put a really bad taste in my mouth i didn't want to give other people an opportunity to make money off of my misfortune and i thought well how can i resolve these situations and one of the thoughts that started going through my mind was if i had my own property that i could pay for in cash and a house that i could pay for in cash and how can i do that well one is to go smaller because a smaller house is less expensive and if i did most of the work myself obviously i would be saving the labor costs there and i do have some experience in construction uh that i well grew up on a farm so we did a lot of things ourselves to be self-sufficient this is my second tiny home as i said earlier and it was built by tumbleweed tiny homes the dimensions are approximately 30 foot by eight foot six the parking situation i'm here in nevada and i have some great neighbors that had an available spot where there once was a uh single wide trailer and so it has the septic system it had the water available had the electricity available he was just looking for someone to occupy the spot since it was ready to go and then kind of care for the place so everything's worked out when he's gone doing his sailing and whatnot then i look after the place to make sure that everything's taken care of when you live tiny it's very important to have a place where you can entertain guests and family what i've done is i've kind of created an outdoor space where i can relax and be outside i have had up to four people inside for dinner and a movie night but hey it's tight you got to be real good friends because you're sitting right next to them the patio is basically the whole length of the house so it's about 12 foot from this edge to that edge allowing plenty of ample seating space as you can see there's a table for entertaining and then just a place to relax and to be honest with you i find myself sitting here more often than any other place and just listening to the birds and watching the sun go down in the evening and you know it's just a relaxing thing to do so right now i would like to invite you into that house and so that you can get a look for yourself kind of what it's like to live tiny so let's come on [Music] well all right we're here so this is my house [Music] right now i'm in the living room the lounge and the entire house is about 210 square feet that does not include the loft so in my living room a couple of things that i had done to customize it for me was i knew i was going to get this size of a tv because basically it's the biggest tv that you could put against this wall but i had a little nook created up there so that i could have all of the components like the cable box and the dvr and all of that stuff and then the sound bar goes beneath it so i tried to get all the measurements kind of equal so that uh it was pleasing to the eye everything was symmetrical so anyway what it does is it allows me to like put some bobbles up there as well some knickknacks and things like that a place to show stuff off so and then of course you have to utilize your spaces in multiple different ways this is actually my dining table and uh thus far i can comfortably sit two people in here for meals and whatnot i haven't had more than that in this particular space but i'm pretty sure if we pull it against away from the wall a little bit that we could have someone sit on the couch i can comfortably feed three people here at a time maybe even four haven't tried it one day maybe we will you have to make use of all the space in a tiny house there's some nooks and crannies so in most of the tumbleweed tiny homes they have a front loft such as this even in the one i built i had a front loft pretty much similar to that and i used it for storage so all the little day-to-day things uh you know books dvds uh cds things like that i store up there of course when the cat is bad that gets pulled down and she gets a little squirt once in a while thanks to our video sponsor kamikoto oh hey there do you have a reason to cut big food into small food well then you need a kamikoto knife kamakoto makes great japanese steel kitchen knives using traditional techniques from japan part of the 800 year plus legacy of japanese technology and expertise in creating the steel that makes these handcrafted knives each knife is individually inspected kumkoto is so confident about their knives that each knife comes with its own lifetime guarantee keep your knives in tip-top shape by maintaining the edge of the blade with one of kamakoto's sharpening whetstones from the moment i opened the box i could tell that these were serious knives and it feels amazing too well balanced and extremely sharp cutting through a thick slab of meat is like cutting through butter each knife comes in a beautiful heavy duty ash wood box for safe storing kamikoto has a big new year sale going on right now and is offering an extra fifty dollars off of any purchase you make with the discount code th e there's a link in the description man runs on meat so i've already got some bacon going right here for some guests that i'm having over for dinner tonight we're gonna have bacon burgers i guess someone mentioned jay shaffer and how he was on oprah and i don't remember whether i think i youtubed it and i caught that interview that he did with oprah and i'm like wow this guy's really thinking and he had some of the same thoughts and mentalities that i had he was verbalizing them and i had only been thinking about them but that kind of motivated me i had that great great fortune of the company that i was working for allowed me space in their warehouse so that i can construct my project so every week i would get paid i'd take myself down to the lumber store and i would purchase 50 bucks 100 bucks worth of lumber and materials and then i would spend the weekend doing a bid in a piece at a time of the tiny home so this started in 2010 and i was living in it by 2013 i haven't turned back since uh it worked for me uh i knew someone that had a uh an rv park uh that i had rented an apartment from them before that had an available space in it offered him some money for me to put my rv there said it was very economical for me so my housing costs were roughly 200 a month so that allowed me to actually put money in the bank so that i could start purchasing things with cash which i think is the best way to go this is my kitchen this is actually an rv stove but it works really really well for me i can still get a turkey in there a turkey breast did that with a couple of friends a couple of weeks ago we kind of did a pre thanksgiving dinner so we had you know mashed potatoes green bean casserole anyway um it works pretty good for me and then i've got a microwave this is a convection oven microwave combination in order to utilize space uh you have to be thinking about things and how to better utilize them and i noticed one thing that there's a little bit of dead space behind the stove and i thought wow what a great place if i just put a slot to store my knives so i just took a skill saw and made a cut and then cleaned the edges out with a drill so that i could drop my knives in there and they're handy i don't have to go into the drawers fishing around for them they're right there when i need them and so for me uh storage is pretty important i actually realized i'm a bit of a dry food hoarder uh so i've got like tons of pasta tons of lentils and and legumes uh things of that nature and i'm one of those people that i don't want pests in my house and so i want to at all costs avoid enticing pests to come in the house so instead of leaving things in their original packaging i've opted to put them all in mason jars where they're sealed up tight one they're going to last longer as well and i just well it looks kind of cool too because you get the colors you put the colorful stuff up front and it just adds a little more interest to the kitchen so i've chosen to do that i don't need a whole lot of dishes and things like that so basically almost 90 of my dishes are right here very easy to wash them and then put them right where they belong i have one closet in the house on this is my closet where i have all my clothing again when you live tiny you kinda gotta minimize so i've had to actually donate some shirts and some pants that i really wasn't wearing anymore uh they were perfectly good so i did send them i donated them and slimmed down my uh my clothing to what i really need so you know i've got enough shirts for me i got my work shirts and things like that and well to be honest with you everybody's got a skeleton in the closet i'm no different there's dusty my skeleton in the closet we're actually working right now because uh some of that bacon looks like it might be ready all right so some of the other things that i've done to utilize my space more efficiently as one i got my wine glass holder down here it's where i hang my cups my measuring cups and things like that because there was so much space between the two shelves i thought wow you know i can get more sport storage space if i had kind of something in the interim so this is just a little bamboo dish rack shell thing uh which works out really great i mean you can see that i've pretty much got all my dishes there another thing that i wanted to do i only have one drawer which has basically my silverware in it and some other things that i need on a daily basis but as you can see that's already pretty full but yet i have utensils that i need to use in my cooking and things like that so i opted to hang them above the window i put my spices in jars and use the metal of the refrigerator there's magnets behind the lids so that i can have them one very very available where i can read what the spice is i don't have to go rummaging through some kind of cupboard or something like that but this works out really great for me i mean i really really like that so it keeps everything handy i opted for the bigger sink because i do my vegetable cleaning and things like that and it's just it's nicer to have a bigger sink to work with that and some of the pots and pans that i've got are a little on the larger side and again you got to go vertical with your storage so instead of putting pots and pans in the oven for storage i opted to put a pan rack and as you can see i kind of did it for my own height so if i have a guest here that's a six foot three or six foot four they'll probably be banging their head on that but it's customized to my needs not somebody else's this is on a trailer trailers have wheels wheels mean you have a wheel well so behind this counter here are where my tires are and it's kind of a bump up and a bump out but what that has done is it's also made me raise my refrigerator uh so my refrigerator isn't so low to the ground and for me that's great because i can open it up and instead of reaching all the way down here for my vegetables they're kind of more at a easier place for me to grab so for me that's an advantage and then another advantage i am getting older i hate to say it but my other tiny house i had a ladder and getting up and down that ladder was starting to get difficult so i actually opted to have stairs put in here and what that does is it makes a little easier for me to get in and out of the loft i have food storage up here in here this is where i put my trash and a couple of other things but this is the winner right here washing machine and dryer as you can see i'm doing my linen today they're smaller and i like that you don't have to take your laundry out of the washing machine and then put it in the dryer it's all one unit this one is a vented so it takes all of that warm moist air and pushes it outside for me it works out really well it does take a while longer though longer than a normal washing machine and dryer and it's limited to about 12 pounds of laundry it does that pretty well anyway i'm going to take you upstairs really quick but i have a little bit of room here where i do store my folding chairs that i use for the dining room table so they're kind of out of the way here and don't cause any problem so let's go on upstairs and see how that fits we're up here in the loft and as you can see i've got enough uh head height uh that i'm not really hitting uh hitting the ceiling there so i find it very comfortable it's very cozy i got plenty of windows up here for safety reasons this is an escape window so it's actually designed that if there's a problem you can actually escape and get out of the house through that window got a couple of shelves and then and yeah it's really comfortable my kitty spends quite a bit of time up here she really loves the windows she'll sit in the window and just look out over her domain and see what's scampering about of course you don't have enough room for a bed frame so but you want to have ventilation i have a memory foam mattress and they always say that you just had a ventilation underneath your mattresses so what i did was i installed a system to continually have airflow underneath the mattress this will extend the life of the mattress keeps condensation or anything like that from affecting your mattress well actually they're for floors so you'll go into like a public pool and you'll have the little squares like in the shower room uh and that's pretty much what they are i don't remember what they call them you know like 12 by 12 squares and they clip together and i bought just enough to cover the room for the the mattress so i have a standard just you can find it anywhere kind of a cubbyhole shelving thing and so i've got some additional clothing and some linen and things like that that i tuck in here out of the way so my first house i did all the work myself not exactly sure thinking i spent thirteen thousand some of the items i got were used so i repurposed some items but that's pretty close to what i put into it well yeah i upgraded just a little bit i actually purchased this one through tumblebee tiny homes because i do like their designs they've been at it for a long time i modeled my first house after tumbleweed tiny homes so i just kind of went with it part of it has to do with their certifications and all of that i thought that was very important my other tiny home i tried to get insurance on it but i couldn't because it was self-built that's an issue because we do have uh fires around here from time to time and that that's my biggest fear is is losing a house to a fire or something like that so i thought it was important to get a house that was certified so that i could get insurance on it the one i'm living in now is is about the same width as far as the dimension but it's a 30 foot long and part of the reason for the motivator and i hate to say this i did not have a washing machine and dryer and i never planned for it because i just i didn't think it was that important for my other tiny house and as time goes on i think i lived in the other one for seven years but i always took my laundry to the laundromat and as time went on that just became such a drag and i couldn't stand it you can go to the tumbleweed tiny homes and look at the prices yourself but it's pretty close to a hundred thousand dollars big difference but i did not have the time nor did i have the luxuries that i had before with my tiny house as far as having a warehouse to build it in where i could do it over a long period of time and still have all the raw materials protected from the elements so since i didn't have those things available to me i outsourced them and it costs you money let's face it you got somebody else doing the work for it you're going to pay for it but you take the average typical price of a house in this area it would be bigger because it would be standard stick built house however for me i don't need all of that extra space this provides everything i need but you would pay an average of three hundred thousand dollars i'm one-third the cost of a traditional home and for me that's okay so when you're living in a tiny house one of the things is you want to have good ventilation human beings we exhale we're putting moisture into the air and you don't want to have a house that has too high of humidity so in order to extract the humidity we have a voltronic what it does is a heat exchanger so the air that's coming in is more conditioned so that um it's more effective uh and economical than just opening up a window so very important to have uh like i said you want to keep your your house humidity at just the perfect level and i do have a humidity meter over here which tells me what the humidity level is and as you can see it's low humidity which is just about perfect so and i'm cooking which puts off heat because propane actually puts moisture into the air along with all the people in here and we're all breathing my system is doing a very good job of extracting all that humidity [Music] tiny home wouldn't be a tiny home if you didn't have a tiny bathroom this is my tiny bathroom it suits my purposes and needs got everything i need i got a sink i have a standard flush toilet a lot of other folks have opted for the uh composting toilets however i have always been connected to a sewer system or a septic system for every place that i have lived and there's something to be said about a smaller toilet the composting ones are pretty big so i've tried to spruce this area up just a little bit so you're going to see that the main theme is yellow when you're in a bathroom you're very exposed and i kind of wanted a warm place and yellow puts off those tones of warm so that's kind of why i went with that also i've utilized some of the space got a great window here with a southern exposure the plants really really love it they're doing rather well and i think every house needs some plants because we exhale carbon dioxide and plants take that in and then filter that and then put oxygen into the air so i like to surround myself with some greenery so standard shower standard size shower i've got some storage uh underneath the sink uh where i put you know regular stuff that you would store in a bathroom and then right here is kind of the heart of the house because this is a twin temp water heater so it's an on-demand water heater but what it also does is in the wintertime it puts radiant heat around the edges of the house so it will warm the house and warm the water it's very efficient and i got to tell you i really like that kind of a system i currently pay 325 dollars a month so that's my living expense and i pay that for rent well what i get is i get two acres and a hoop house and so i now have a hoop house so i can extend my growing season for my vegetables and you know i like that because i like to eat organic i think that's a healthier way to go kind of self-sufficient as well for me those those are important so i'm very pleased and happy and well the neighbors are great too i mean i've been here now for three years and i've had an opportunity to meet most of the neighbors in my area and we exchange vegetables and other produce so you know we'll just trade stuff up a dozen cucumbers for a dozen eggs that kind of a thing you know camaraderie as well so when the weather's decent we'll have cookouts the neighbors will come over we'll enjoy some hamburgers or steaks or something like that and we do quite a bit of that yeah well nobody wants to kick me out at this point in time so i'm all right with that if you notice there's two doors in the bathroom uh the one that's coming in and then the one that's going to the back room uh so these are sliding doors uh pocket doors and so you can you know shut your shut your doors for your uh bathroom but it also leads to the back bedroom well it's a utility room really because you can use it for multiple purposes i've actually had a desk installed so that i can use it as a home office and when i have guests though we can actually set a cod up we move things around a little bit like the kitty uh things and all of that and we can have a cot right here so it can double as a guest bedroom well i'm getting older and so eventually it may come some point in time where i'm not going to want to climb the stairs and go to the loft at that particular point in time then i'll make a decision they make like a murphy bed that you can attach the wall and they fold down and then this will then become basically my bedroom uh i'll still have the upstairs where guests can go so you know it'll work out uh but right now it's in kind of a way that i like and as you can see yeah i got a few screens around here i like to play video games and things like that for one thing i'm a simple guy i don't need a whole lot of things uh there are people who think that guy by going and purchasing stuff that that's going to make their lives happy and they're going to enjoy their life more that's just not the case we're brought up in this society as a consumer you're missing the point if you think that things are more important than what you can do with your time with the people and your friends then you've got it all wrong i would rather spend my time and money with my friends and family than purchasing another toaster or something like that it allows me flexibility so as jobs have changed i haven't had to sell i just towed my house with me and found a new place to put it and i've had some fantastic places uh that i've had the opportunity to be one of them was mount charleston very very beautiful of mount charleston so we were up about 9000 feet and i was a camp host up there for for a year and it's just absolutely gorgeous you know when you can get up in the morning and you look out your window and you've got a deer looking right back at you through your window you know that's kind of cool when you wake up in the morning and you've got five foot of snow on your house and everything's all fluffy and soft that's kind of cool so i really enjoyed that time that i was there but the only reason i could do that is because i had the flexibility of a tiny home security is never guaranteed if you can make yourself more self-sufficient and not reliant upon renting uh purchasing a new house with uh a real estate agent or something like that uh you know you you simplify your life and and that's kind of what it's all about in my opinion and financially i'm better off financially than i ever was my entire life that's another aspect i i pay less for housekeeping for repair and maintenance and things like that living tiny than you would if you had a full-size house and so therefore i actually have money in the bank so if emergencies do come up unlike most of americans today who don't even have in the bank to cover emergencies i've got that covered so i don't have to worry about that kind of a thing so i'm far better off now than i was in the past when i was living a standard life doing the standard things that standard americans do [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 instagram 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: 1,155,192

Keywords: tiny house, tiny house tour, 30 ft tiny house, tiny house on wheels, tumbleweed tiny house, tumbleweed elm 30 tiny house, tumbleweed elm tiny house, $94k tiny house, $13k tiny house, diy tiny house, debt free living, simple living, jay shafer, living big in a tiny house, tiny home tours, tiny house parking, tiny house giant journey, alternative living, affordable home, tiny homes, tiny houses, tiny house with downstairs bedroom, 2 bedroom tiny house, tiny home

Id: gwAf3_zHISo

Length: 28min 8sec (1688 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 07 2022