Retired Couples Beautifully Designed Tiny House - The Perfect Layout

we've always I think been content in a smaller space it's about how much is enough in terms of how much is enough living space how much is enough vehicle how much is enough you know you know income and you know you can make your resources go a long way when you you know a scale back your your living footprint it just allowed us to do you know what we want to do for I think I'm very reasonable only you can love the idea of something but you have to get in touch with your relationship with stuff because so many of us you know who have you know lived a lifetime of you know families and and working and you know moving from one house to another you accumulate a lot of stuff over the years and you know what are you gonna do with that or how are you going to stop bringing stuff into the home if your all of a sudden living in you know 400 square feet rather than 2,400 square feet telling you step back things can't be different until you can imagine them right living in a small space just invites you to look at a lot of things in a light that perhaps you haven't before we just appreciate that we have so much flexibility and for people who are retiring I think most people will want their life to be less complicated not more complicated and when you have a small place it's it's less work period which means you can sit on the deck and read your book you can get on your bike and go for a ride you can go to Joshua Tree for the day life is the little things and if you miss that all of a sudden you wake up one day and you realize the big things we're pretty far and few in between so what what have you really been waiting for hello my name is Kathy and welcome to our tiny home in the beautiful Coachella Valley this home was built in 2013 by a company in Salem Oregon called idea box which is a wonderful wonderful builder we worked with them extensively over pretty much six months all at a distance we met them once on our way home from California and then everything was done online it's it is a 400 square foot park model which is what is the requirement in this community and it's quite unique for a bunch of reasons first of all when we were looking for a builder we wanted someone who was going to build to a very high standard who was concerned about fit and finish about environmentally-friendly building methods about energy efficiency there's a lot of windows in this place they're all low e double pane windows so they're very efficient windows it has extra insulation in the ceiling or landscaping plan included shading this and wall with the vegetation and Jim and Cindy are the couple that own idea box and and they were so tremendous to work with we essentially met with them and explained what our lifestyle was what our goals were for this home and they managed to accommodate everything really perfectly and on a pretty tight timeline I think it was probably about six months total perhaps and then of course the unit was moved from Oregon where it was built to California the deck that we had built we had all of the deck and awning built of course after the fact by a great local contractor here and we chose a trex deck model or deck deck material simply because of the climate here there's wasn't really very much that would stand up to the Sun here in the summertime other than a concrete deck which we didn't want and so we have storage underneath it which we really don't use for very much so when we bought this lot it was an RV lot so the pergola was here as well as this shed and it's really quite big I don't know the exact measurements of it we've had 30 people here in the pouring rain so it's a whole other way of living or expanding your living space the heating system and cooling system that we chose was a Fujitsu mini-split which we knew absolutely nothing about of course and it is just tremendous it it was more expensive than some types it's very efficient it's so trouble-free you know you clean the filters a couple times a year it requires virtually no servicing and it's super energy-efficient I think the highest power bill we've ever had here in the summer with the air conditioner on and we also leave our fridge running is about $30 a month so this is this is the bunkie we call it the bunkie and it's kind of our multi-purpose extra everything we do a lot of different things with this space right now I have a friend here from the Yukon and and so it's set up as a little spare bedroom but we I use it as an art studio sometimes I have a massage table that I set up in here sometimes and when we leave in the fall everything that's out here has to be Jenga inside the shed when we leave so it's a it's a great it's just really a great multi-purpose room and I think that's one of the things that you kind of have to do if you're gonna live in a small space you have to be creative about how you use what you've got welcome to the inside of our tiny home this sub course is the living room which is also our dining space and I think the first thing that people are always blown away by in here is how wow this feels really big and it does there's a lot of a lot of vertical volume in here and because of the shed roof design it's 11 feet on this and nine on the other side and so there's a lot of space in here and there's a lot of vertical volume in here and there's a lot of windows so you don't feel like you're in a small space you get a lot of outside space that you're able to borrow and so it makes it feel like you're kind of inside outside which was the whole goal we did kind of have a hard time finding furniture this scale as anybody who's been shopping for a tiny house knows most furniture is much larger we're really pleased with the overall feel of the home when we first started talking about it it's kind of hard to imagine because you live a certain way in one home and you need to live a different way when the home is different so what we wanted we wanted open we wanted it spacious we wanted it bright and we wanted to feel like we were kind of outside when we were inside we have a random window that was chosen by our architect he's he was he just was really wishing that someone would let him put one in and we said oh do it Jim go ahead and put give us a window so he gave us this great window we also wanted a great kitchen we're big cooks so being able to keep the walls clear again makes it feel a lot more spacious in here and then the footprint of the unit itself is actually a foot and a half wider for this middle section and what that has done is that allowed us to have a full sized kitchen and a really big bathroom which you never get in a park model it also negated the having to have a hallway because you walk through the kitchen and you get to the bedroom so every I think it's such an efficient use of the space in here there's no wasted space in cupboards or closets or hallways where you're just passing through it's all usable space putting these transoms in over the doorway they kind of do two things they bring your eye down to the same level as the clerestory windows and they also facilitate the movement of the air really well we put ceiling fans in both rooms and with the mini split it's very easy the temperature is really constant in here the flooring in this place is actually 2 laminate but it's got such a great pattern and again that's one of those design rules that we broke I they always say oh you shouldn't have big busy patterns in small spaces well I think you can but maybe you shouldn't have more than about one of them so it's it's a laminate and it's pretty indestructible we were and at 400 square feet it's kind of one of those expenses that you can splurge a little bit to get something that you really love I'm all about drawers in a kitchen and so IKEA has the full extension drawers the soft-close drawers this we really fed like 25 people with these dishes it was very hard to find good quality 24-inch appliances in the States this is a Smeg stove it's a European and it's a convection propane stove we can't have electric stoves in the park because of the electrical requirements so this is propane and this is a sweet baby of a stove this was absolutely the right thing for us we wanted to have a range hood mostly actually for the lighting there's task lighting right on the stove and when you don't have top counter tops you don't have that direct lighting on your work surface and the first fridge that we had was a summit model which was ghastly it was terrible and so we ended up having to replace it and this is a GE counter-depth 24 inch with the best thing is the ice-cream drawer of happiness and it's so efficient again because your freezer is in all of your freezer space is drawers so you have full access to it without having to root around and pull stuff out pile it up on your cupboard while you look for something we have quite a lot of food in here but it's also again it's really efficient when you don't have a family of six that you're trying to feed out of a fridge you don't really need a full size fridge anyway we put a single sink in here and no dishwasher because we are those people who like doing dishes sadly one of my most favorite things in our little home is this window that we wanted right on the countertop right at that height and mostly because we don't have a dishwasher when you're doing dishes you get the view into the yard and the fruit trees on the hummingbirds and sadly we only lived here for about three years before I figured out if you open the window you can water all the flowers off the deck through the window which yeah I'm gonna be ashamed to say it took me that long to figure it out but it's great it says and it's and it's an interesting design piece as well because you've got the corian countertops which we chose mostly because of weight I had corian countertops before and I am I'm a bit ambivalent about them we're coffee people we have our our favourite little mister Bialetti guy who travels with us wherever we goes and we just like to have it all kind of in one place we have a dog at home that we can't have here so this is kind of our dog corner dog slash coffee corner we have again this is where we you know keep more coffee and tea things and knives and this is all glassware and cups and then this is no food storage and flour bosses and cool glass things that I really don't know what else to do with so I stick them in the cupboard garbage and recycling under the sink storage is just under the sink staff what is in this one oh yeah just as like pitch and slam sort of things this is dry goods which we really have only devoted to drawers of it there's again you didn't fit a lot of stuff in that square footage or cubic footage I guess when you're using it all and this is again another place where you really appreciate those full extension drawers because often they come out about two-thirds of the way and then you're trying to get your arm in there to get your stuff out this is just all of your cooking tools pots and pans and you know bowls the essential popcorn popper so this is all dishes on this side and spices handy again to the stove and you know those things that you really don't use very often but even have a food processor right in a small space that's that's great toaster and baking things and then the obligatory junk drawer that I just don't know I don't trust people they don't have junk drawers welcome to our bedroom it's actually not a very big bedroom but it has a lot of really functional storage space again I can't to the rescue these are all IKEA cabinets and it's hugely a when you can do vertical storage so this is you know kind of linen closet and everything else that you don't really know where else to put and um this little guy I really like this little cabinet I wasn't sure I was going to until actually saw it and I'm a painter so I have art supplies squirreled away everywhere in this house and they're supposed to kind of be in there but they really don't why we really wanted this particular storage combination was it's not a full 24 inches deep like closets are mostly because we wanted that extra bit of floor space around so these are I think 16 inches deep but again hugely efficient you can get so much stuff in these cabinets and for the amount of the amount of clothing that we have here it's that's plenty of room to hang those few things that you need to hang and then there's lots of space lots of lots of pullout space and shelf space and so they're actually these two are actually bit a bit different but not really Chris got the shoes in his cabinet and yeah I think that I sure don't need any more clothes than this this is a queen-size bed and there's still quite a lot of space in here so I think that that going to the narrower that or the less deep storage system was absolutely the way to go it's especially great having the patio doors here the blinds between the glass means you can have as much privacy as you want and but you can also lie in bed and drink your coffee and look at the orange tree we have a great bathroom this is quite a large lot bigger than you're going to find in most Park models that seems to be where they sacrifice the space and so you're very tight in most bathrooms what we chose we chose a double shower rather than a tub which again I think that was a that was a good call one thing this again this is an IKEA vanity which is brilliant they run the plumbing down perpendicular straight down from the back of the sink instead of straight out front which is how they do so again you have all this storage which in a bathroom is that's a lot and it just keeps your bathroom space really clean and and organized you have to like your partner if you're gonna live in 400 square feet and I think we're a really competent of how fortunate we are you know who gets to do this right no kidding when we bought this place we were still working we had not even discussed the our retirement word it just kind of happened a great painting group here that I have been involved with for a bunch of years now that I feel really fortunate they bring in great instructors they do have access to lots of workshops really and we have a show this week and so that's been that's been a really great add-on for us to have kind of found that arts community here and and we came for the weather we were big cyclists like Chris even more so than me we love being outside we love coffee we love going for walks we are pretty easy to entertain the focus so much or the focus is about the money oh you have to have this much money to retire well you spend how much money you have you know we had years where we made more money so you just spend more money and I think that's what what stops a lot of people from retiring earlier is they just have this oh my gosh I have to somebody gave me this number that I must have in order to retire and I don't think that's true you know you can always make money you can't make the time and so I think it was really great for us to just say oh no we're just gonna do this to be able to go with the flow sometimes and figure out how to make it work when you're your first plan didn't go go as you thought it would people talk about wanting freedom right they want to be free and to us that means you kind of get to do whatever you want to do it's that ability that you own your own time it doesn't belong to anyone else retirement is the luxury of time you and because and we don't always have that luxury when we have so many other commitments well what can how can I reduce my footprint reduce my cost of living to the point where actually I get to have a really great balance of both of those things and for people who are again thinking about retirement you can't put a price on that it's nice to have a partner that support fast and it's just as excited about doing you know taking advantage of whatever you know life offers you we just I think we're both just enchanted with the idea of you know this is what life has to offer and you know look at all this great stuff that we get to do what's this oh yeah dishtowels women very messy sorry online no oh my god I don't even know what tinder yeah that's it I think that's that swipe thing yes he cycled across Canada for his 50th birthday yeah we're especially good at buggering the day away that is kind of our superpower you know

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

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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, architecture 101, simple living, cottage house interior design, alternative living ideas, small house plans under 600 sq ft, small house plans floor plans

Id: 1MG9ndH2mRw

Length: 18min 51sec (1131 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 27 2020