Retired Woman helps to build her own Affordable Tiny House - so cute!

[Music] hi I'm Cheryl this is my tiny house that I help build I'm here at the bird's nest tiny house community in East Texas I've been living in my tiny house for 6 years going on seven I lived at tiny Lots on the Prairie in decar for 5 years and I've been here starting my second year this is an 8 by8 house built at a workshop at incredible tiny homes in Tennessee at the bird's nest I pay $450 for the lot rent it includes the septic water trash pickup the only thing I pay extra is internet and electricity and during the worst part of August my bill was either $50 $60 and I kept it cool it was very [Music] comfortable starting on the front is my porch area let's go have a look because the pads are 30 ft long and my house is only 18 ft long that's the turkey and the dog that leaves me quite a bit of room here in the front and I spend a lot of time sitting on these steps talking to people or knitting or anything else it's a nice place to sit I have a flower garden it's usually filled with sunflowers but sunflowers get pretty ugly in the fall so we pulled them up and other things are coming in now that they can get some sun we have it all wired off to keep the Ducks out of it but the turkey can still get in and take dust baths every once in a while well that's it for the outside let's see the [Music] inside come on [Music] in welcome to my tiny house it's about 140 ft 18 by 8 and everything in here is custom designed just for me and my size starting here in my living area I have a TV that's mounted on the wall so that I can also watch it from the bathtub it's this size because I Googled how far you have to be back from a TV for each size and I cannot get any further back to have a bigger TV so this is the TV I have this is my living sleeping area if you're the only one in the house I thought when I was designing this I'm the only one in the house if there's something I won't be doing at the same time like I won't be sleeping and you know crafting hopefully at the same time so if I can combine those two functions in one space then I've saved space so this is my bed and my couch and my chair it's a twin and I nailed crates to the back wall to make shelves cuz I I don't move when I sleep I'm dead to the world when I sleep so that's all the space I needed and everything I need is in here at night I pull down the Shades and I have blackout fabric so it gets totally dark in here I like it dark when I'm sleeping I have a lot of my craft stuff is in here so this is my watercolors I have a warm and cool temperature of the primary colors and a black and so that's all I need I have knitting needles in here this is my yarn bowl for when I'm knitting and then this is my corner where I sit most of the time is here I had them build this window lower than the other windows and with a wider window sill so that I can put my cup of tea right there and so I'm perfect right here the remotes go in this little basket over here and everything's Within Reach I ended up putting siding on the house white siding on it and things were so dull that I painted like a stained glass window on the shade so that part of the day it's down and my stained glass is on the bottom window and other times it's on the top half and it matches this stained glass window that I have here I had it for 20 years in my regular house and never had anything I could do with it it just kind of sat Gathering dust and I have two of them and this is one and the other one is up in the Loft but that's one of my favorite things is my stained glass window so I did the two shades on this side of the wall just Sharpie against some craft paint this is what I use for heat instead of the mini split because the mini split is up high on the wall and so it would have to heat the whole top of the house before the heat came down to reach me and if I need heat it's because I'm sitting not moving around so I just heat this little area here the heat rises and hits the bottom of the Loft and this one makes a little fire effect so I can sit there and pretend I have a fire fireplace and I don't run it at night but it has a thermostat and shuts itself off and that's all I've ever needed so I don't use the mini split for anything but air conditioning it works great for air conditioning and underneath the bed is where I store the majority of my clothes I only have a few things I put on hangers but everything else is in the front half usually of these um I just roll things up I watched a Marie condo video of different ways of folding things and so I've got things rolled up in there the other good thing about this is to make a bed that was high enough to have storage underneath it it had to be higher then my legs will reach so I can pull these out and put my feet on them when I want to put my feet down like if I need a lap you know to work on something I'll pull it out and put my feet on that so that worked out perfectly I had somebody build this platform for me because it has to go over there's a wheel well that runs along that [Music] side I'll be 65 in April I taught school for 30 years I've been retired more than 10 years about 11 years now yeah a lot of people aren't able to retire that early but I worked straight through I didn't take any time off when my son was born um I couldn't um cuz I had to support him and me so I was able to retire relatively young and I did I loved teaching but I love being retired too to wake up every morning and just think what do I want to do and I I love my house so much that sometimes I wake up in the morning I Pat the wall tell it I love you so much I now know what home feels like it's when you you walk in the door and you feel like this is [Music] yours I live in about 10% of what I used to live in and so when it was time to go tiny I had to get rid of 90% of my stuff and I did and it wasn't hard it was very timec consuming and hard to find places to take all the stuff but it wasn't hard to let it go because all of it felt like a burden and so everything I got rid of lightened the burden until I was down to my little 10% and it just felt like okay I can handle [Music] this this is my kitchen area I built these shelves they come out further as you go up because when you reach if you're short like I am your hand comes towards you doesn't just go up but it gets shorter as it goes so they are graded from narrow to wider here I keep you know things that come in bottles is the category for this old it's some kind of storage thing from an old refrigerator my Cutlery is all in here I don't have a drawer for that so this is where it ended up I have little PVC pipes in there so that I can separate it out I know even if I can't see if I'm in this little thing there's a fork in there somewhere rather than having it all jumbled in together the one thing I really wanted was a farm sink and a lot of people have said oh I'd never do that it takes up so much space but it's very handy you would be surprised how many dirty dishes you can fit in this sink when it's not holding dirty dishes it's its own kind of work space so I can do things in the sink but I just always wanted one so I got one and this area is where my mixer her name is Lucille and my electric kettle named Irving that's where they stay and I don't really use that for much work other than making a cup tea I have the Corell dishes cuz they are very light and very thin so they all fit in there well because I don't have like a support I just have this brace holding the shelf so I can't get too heavy with plates and things and then I have one piece of my China here if I make toast I have it on this plate and I also asked that this part be recessed so I could use it for storage and on the top I have things from the collections I used to have it's called Hall China and it was big in the 30s and the 40s and I kept a picture and these two little tiny teapots and I have some red ones that are up on the Shelf up there that's all that I kept from my great big collection I measured everything out and had somebody build this exactly to fit the refrigerator and I did have a microwave convection oven combo and it didn't cook well it microwaved great but it didn't cook well and so I got rid of it and this is a little brevel toaster oven I've made pies in here I've roasted things it was the one that they said kept the temperature the best so so I bake anything I want to in here as long as it's not bigger than this and then I have the smallest microwave I could find up here and the thing that I like about it is that it has a button where you can turn off the light so it's dark at night it doesn't shine cuz I like dark at night underneath the ovens is what I use for my fining cabinet it's just three hanging files and everything fits in there and then I bought this little box my sewing machine fits in so I can just slide it out I have a table that's underneath the TV it's a circle table but it's a gate leg so you unfold the legs put the circle on top and then I can sew and then just slide it back in there and this is my second refrigerator I originally said I needed a separate freezer cuz otherwise it's just a colder part of the refrigerator it doesn't freeze I made sure that it was big enough to whole Blue Bell ice cream and a package of green beans that was my limit you know I have all kinds of paper and craft things in there my cookbooks all turned into this and this you know I tore Pages out I copied things on to notebook paper in here and got rid of the rest so anything that wasn't like my grandmother's chicken and dumplings I got rid of I can just look it up on the internet next to my refrigerator this space here is is about a foot and my hanging clothes are in there beside it is the telescoping ladder that I use when I have to get to The Loft it looks like this and you just pull it up the feet are kind of slippy so I use a bath tubed mat to make sure that it doesn't slide out from underneath me and this is my short Loft my big loft is over the bedroom space and that's where I keep all my Fabric and all my yarn kitchen is much smaller than my kitchen in my big house but it's easier to work in because it's better designed well it's better designed for me I know I can't really use the back of the counter cuz my arms aren't that long so I use that for storage I measured my pots and pans and then had them build drawers that would fit my electric skillets in here and I use that quite a bit in here is a cast iron skillet cuz some things just aren't right unless they're made in a cast iron skillet and a hot plate and then this is everybody's junk drawer right there everybody has to have a junk drawer and further into the house this is my bathroom I have a 4ft tub which is plenty big enough for me I'm about a foot shorter than most people so a bathtub that's a foot shorter works out fine I have a tiny sink and my iron learning board hangs up inside here I'm putting another shelf in eventually but you know it's only been 6 years I'll get to it but yeah this works well I have washer and dryer hookups in case I ever decide that that's what I need but I go to the laundromat every two or 3 weeks get it all done in a couple of hours when I had to go into town anyway and I don't think I'd like giving up that much space so it's been a good decision but if circumstances change I've got it plumbed for a washer dryer hookup if I need it I had talked myself into a compost toilet if I had to but I really prefer regular Plumbing so I'm delighted that both places I've been parked they're hooked up to a septic system this is my dirty clothes storage that's the one thing people always want to know behind that is an outlet because a lot of the compost toilets have a fan or something that needs to be plugged in so I made sure there was a plug there if I ever need to change to compul toilet I can just take this out and put one in [Music] there I needed to be able to build it to be able to afford it but you know I don't have death perception I'm very short um I had a shoulder replacement already and I can't remember anything so you know even studying up to build one I wouldn't be able to remember that much information but one night I was on online and I saw a video of somebody who's talking about that he built tiny homes and you could come to his Factory and bring like a work crew with you some friends and the Carpenters there would help you build your home that was incredible tiny homes up in Tennessee so I went up there with some friends in the summer and there were people there who are also interested just in going tiny and they all help me build my my home it was framed out and then you know we did everything else and that was you know like the best and the worst week in my life it was in an old parachute Factory from World War II and it was July and you know you go and no air conditioning and it's an enclosed space so the mosquitoes were you know we just constantly sprayed the bug spray on and it sweat it off and then spray it on again and on the cement floors and you even slept there you had a little bunk house you ate there you slept there it was like summer camp but after a couple of days I told somebody I wish I could cut my feet off and put them in another room so I can't hear them screaming I hurt everywhere but everything was built exactly to my plan because I had spent years planning I had grabed paper where I drawn out you know measured everything and I this could fit here I built it out of Lego I made a little card stock house that even had a little washer that you could open the door and there were little clothes drawn inside it so I spent a long time planning before it was even possible but I've always loved small spaces and so I knew I would be comfortable in [Music] one [Music] I think it was 11 or 12,000 and then I added on some things like the Minit was extra but that was you know that's pretty cheap for a place to live it still is really really cheap and it's not something that incredible does anymore because they couldn't afford to do that it was perfect timing that they were doing that just at the time that I needed a house and it's kind of neat that my son actually lent me the money to buy the house because I hadn't sold our house yet I couldn't wait for the house to sell and even though he was very hesitant about me being in a tiny and the timing of it he lent me money so that I could do it um which you know I still thank him for it I tell him you know any happiness I have is because of you because you let me do this you helped me do this and I'm happy and it's because of you I think tiny teaches lots of lessons probably differs from person to person you can simplify things down to where you can handle them things don't have to be more than you can do you can simplify your life until it's the size you need and this is the size I can handle I can't handle anything bigger than this and that that I can be a happy person that I can wake up happy and go to bed [Music] happy 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: 183,158

Keywords: tiny house, tiny house tour, tiny home, tiny house nation, solo female tiny home, retiree tiny house, affordable tiny house, incredible tiny homes, tiny home shell, tiny home community, tiny house living, cute tiny house, living big in a tiny house, tiny house giant journey, tiny house expedition, $20k tiny house, simple living, tiny house main floor bedroom, tiny house with downstairs bedroom, 140 sq ft tiny house, 18 ft tiny house, affordable home, 15 sqm tiny house

Id: KbV_xgkXv8M

Length: 19min 40sec (1180 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2024