They Built a Gorgeous Tiny House, Urban Food Forest & Mini Village

thank you hey I'm Kevin and I'm Sarah and this is our tiny house in Portland Oregon [Music] one of the pieces of advice we were given when we said we were going to build this house together was you're gonna break up and multiple people say like build a house lose a spouse or something to that effect I think is the phrase and um I can see it's very very hard I think that kind of helped us flag that as a possibility going into it and knowing that this is really really hard to do together and you need to be on each other's team and if it means stepping back and reevaluating and moving forward again that that's okay at a certain point we decided to do couples counseling which I think was hugely beneficial in us getting the house finished and still wanting to be together at the end of it yeah the last like six months of the build did couples therapy and just kind of worked through a lot of the friction we were feeling and collaborating with each other and you know I think that really helped get us through yeah huge and we collaborate better now because of it that was really really a game changer for us I'm a software engineer been doing that a really long time I was working remotely when we moved to Portland and then just continued through covet and and now still work remotely from our desk in the tiny house I started a career in theater originally and props and so it got really into making furniture and and building things like that and then when we moved to Portland transitioned to doing legit Furniture industry full-time so I do Upholstery and have done Furniture building as well have a lot of experience building all sorts of strange things too for theater so I think that helps with a tiny house because like little weird details are creating one thing that kind of looks like another thing that actually has two different uses is like right in my skill set this is our tiny house we built in 2019 and 2020 it's on a 10 by 28 trailer and it's parked in the backyard of the house we own in Portland Oregon so the tiny house is situated in the backyard of a long half acre property with the main house in front that we rent and in between the tiny house and the the main house is a really large garden and Orchard area and a couple other plots for other tiny houses the property is kind of laid out as a permaculture Food Forest and one of the reasons for situating the tiny house in the back is when we come home every day we're walking through the garden in the food forest and can check on things really easily we're growing everything that Portland can grow a bunch of fruit trees apples apricots pears Asian pears plums and then a bunch of bushes as well with blackberries blueberries blueberries things like that and then we have a large annual Garden as well the nine of us on the property all share the food that we grow and then we give what's left to the chickens and they turn it into eggs [Music] everything the tiny house is surrounded by is edible pretty much we kind of focus on edible things but also there's a lot of stuff in here with a dual purpose like this row of kiwi berries is kind of acting as a visual break between the next lot so if we have another tiny house that moves over here we have a bit of privacy from them it was important to us with a small square footage to be able to have a bunch of outdoor living space as well so we built a large deck on the front of the house so that we can have people over entertain and eat outside whenever the weather's nice so let's go take a look inside [Music] so welcome inside this is our 295 square foot tiny house inspired by Victorian houses and farm houses as well so we wanted sort of marriage of those two concepts and some nods to sort of traditional tiny house on Wheels stuff as well we decided to go with a 10 foot wide trailer to give us a little bit more room in the kitchen area we also did a extra deep counter on this on the side of the of the kitchen to give a space to have things along the back and still have a full workspace we wanted the kitchen especially to feel very farmhousey and it was important to both of us that it not feel particularly new that it already feel really lived in so like this piece of furniture was really integral in that we found these old beams that used to be exterior beams and cut them down to make them fit in the size and then Incorporated in a farmhouse sink as well and with the open shelving it just makes it feel very farmy which really important we've taken advantage of all the vertical space and it was important that we had open cabinets so everything is visible and accessible so anything I need if I want to weigh out some bread dough or something I can grab for my scale and and grab my favorite book so we do a lot of traveling and this is one of the pieces we brought home and looking forward to adding more pieces like this to the house but these are from Columbia we like cooking in all kinds of styles gas was really important for using a wok so that's what this area is for nearly a full-size fridge not sacrificing too much space for what we need on this side of the kitchen we've got some of the food storage and as you can see we've been using things like the garlic and peppers that we grow as decoration as well and this bowl of apples is here to be dehydrated we've been doing a bunch of that with all of the fruit that we have so we've already got a bunch of apples done and we'll be doing more with Plums and things like that as the as time goes on another part of the sort of Farmhouse look is this open shelves with the jars which is really important to us in the look of the kitchen to make it so that you can see everything that you have how much you have of it but it also is just like so colorful and beautiful to look at least a few weeks every summer and winter Portland gets too hot or too cold so we have a mini split and then we've also got a heat recovery ventilator to keep things fresh and Breezy so especially in the winter when everything is closed up and we don't open the windows for a while that keeps it from getting musty or anything in here it's really really useful we decided we wanted to build a tiny house and I think we initially did the thing where we were trying to figure out whether we were going to build it without a place to put it and find the place to put it after or find the place to put it and then build the house we we lived in the Bay Area in California at the time and we looked for a little bit at places to put it there or places we could buy and decided that was not a realistic dream so decided okay well where's the next place that we might want to live move to Portland for a little while before we decided that we wanted to stay here we realized we're in a good enough financial place to take on a mortgage and so started looking for property and found kind of an ideal one for us and yeah I started that whole project yeah and then that project took over with the next couple of years of renovating this space setting up infrastructure yeah yeah the infrastructure of it all I think the vision was always a tiny house Village we both grew up in in suburbs in California where we kind of didn't feel a strong connection with our neighbors or a neighborhood or something and every nothing was really like walkable everything's like a big commute and spread out and I don't know just wanted to recreate the sense of community knowing our neighbors super well and just creating like lifelong bonds folks in the tiny house Community I have a similar mindset around eco-friendliness and sustainability and these sorts of things now for a brief message from our sponsor upside inflation sucks whether you're building a tiny house filling up your schooly diesel tank or just grocery shopping the price increases really hurt that's why we're digging upside it's an incredible easy to use app that lets you earn cashback each time you buy gas groceries or even eat out I'm stoked to be earning cash back from doing what I do you know like eating at my favorite Mexican restaurant and boom I'm earning cash to go towards our shuttle bus conversion to get started download the free upside app in the app store Google Play next claim and offer for whatever you're buying check in at the business and pay as usual with a credit or debit card and get paid and cash out anytime to your bank account PayPal or get a gift card download the free upside app and use code tiny to get five dollars or more cash back on your first purchase of 10 or more the bathroom door is a place that we could use something reclaimed that we didn't have to worry about the Energy Efficiency of it so we were able to choose something really old and funky and interesting instead of the front door where that goes to the outside and we didn't want to have to worry about the weather and whatnot so we were able to choose something really fun and old for that and now let me show you the bathroom we didn't want the bathroom to feel too cramped so we bumped out onto the tongue of the trailer so this is actually the end of the trailer here and the wall extends onto the tongue the bathroom was kind of inspired by a greenhouse so we've got another Skylight up here we've got a composting toilet standard kind of bucket system the vanity comes from India there's another really neat reclaimed space in Portland that we bought that from the vanity countertop is actually the cutout of the sink from the kitchen so we were able to maximize the use of that nice wood the shower is one of my favorite parts uh it's kind of an oversized shower for a tiny house the main house when we were living in there I was bumping my elbows a lot so this is plenty big nice and open the the tile Choice uh both on the walls on the floor were very much inspired by California where we're from foreign [Music] so next to the kitchen is our sort of living room area we have a full regular couch which is really important to me I work in furniture and it didn't seem appealing to me to have a plywood with foam on top of it couch and that also hides one of the wheel wells which is an important problem to solve in tiny home living so one of them is hiding behind the couch another important thing to to figure out in a tiny house is where you're going to hide the um the breaker box which we do in this wall behind one of the paintings feels very much like a safe but it's just the breaker box this area is where one of our design Inspirations really comes through I think which is the phrase Cabinet of Curiosities it was really a driving factor in our design that sort of Victorian cabinet of strange artifacts and travel souvenirs and so this is a place where you can really see that like with the bugs and pictures of like like old family photos and things like that I think this really sort of brings that design together according to our spreadsheet it's uh eighty one thousand dollars uh was the total including the trailer uh tiny house custom trailer and then yeah all the materials um and labor and I think a lot of that um I don't remember the exact number but I think 20 or 30 grand probably in in labor costs just the folks that helped along and then the stuff that we actually just hired out we ended up hiring out electrical because we weren't really knowledgeable in that and that felt scary gas plumbing tiling the shower a couple of those projects yeah we both had a lot of experience in small spaces in doing a lot of travel we lived in a van for like a month or two I think because of that comfort and building the house to exactly our needs and our lifestyle I've been super surprised by the fact that this space has never felt small yeah it's never felt tiny it feels like a normal sized house in terms of like what I need to do to live comfortably and that's yeah super rewarding we're both really good at being able to have alone time without having to be in separate rooms like we both have nice headphones and so you know when you're like I need to be alone just pop in headphones and watch a different TV show and we're really good at being able to um yeah come together and spend time apart even when we're sitting on the same couch together yep and I think it very much is not for everyone um and some people need more space and that's fine and I think if we had literally only this house and no other space at all it probably wouldn't work out super well for us but because we're on this piece of property that has a garage which is a wood shop we have another building that's like a sort of rec room sort of vibe and then we have a huge Garden I think without all that stuff it would be different having that extra space means this isn't our only living space and then across from the couch is the entryway so we have this entry closet which we really wanted to have a place because it rained so much here to have coats and things like that sort of a mud room but the tiny house version of a mud room and this is another way that we're hiding the other wheel well it's all the way tucked under there but this gives us a space that feels different than the living area to be the entryway so this closet was this is one of my favorite pieces in the house this was a vanity mirror from the east lake period it's like built some 1900s early 1900s so this top part was surrounding a mirror that we bought in a vintage shop we took the whole thing apart changed the size put it all back together and then built this closet around it to make it feel like a vintage piece of furniture even though it's actually built in in very specific size to the tiny house so it's this part and then there's some details as well on the bottom to to sort of tie the whole thing together so the front door is a place where we wanted to go vintage and we tried originally I think the front door was one of the first things we actually bought for the house and then ended up scrapping that one and going with a brand new one instead to get the right weatherproofing and Energy Efficiency we decided to go with something brand new instead but we really again didn't want to feel brand new so this doorknob was something we found when we were living in Oakland we actually found it on the street in a pile of stuff someone was getting rid of we've had it looked at and it's about the same time period as the closet and a bunch of other stuff sort of like late Victorian and I really think it gives the door such a cool vintage weird feeling and we are also able to find a deadbolt that matches the style exactly because deadbolts didn't exist in the early 1900s but because we got this matching one we were able to have that kind of same modern security with a vintage feel another thing that's really great about having that step up for the entry is that it can become extra seating when we have people over so we have these really beautiful meditation cushions that you can put on here and then it becomes a total chair height seating so we can have a couple of people sitting here across from the couch and it becomes like a really nice living room feeling the floor in the house is a place that we were able to use reclaimed stuff as well so this floor was from a deconstruction company that took it out of Fort Vancouver in Washington and it had never been painted before which was really huge for us so we didn't have to remove paint but we did have to sand and clean and fill and stain a whole bunch to get this floor looking how it does but it was something that I really really wanted for the house was for the floor to feel incredibly warm and inviting that it was already had scratches and nicks in it so you don't have to worry about messing it up or anything that it just it feels very lived in since we don't have a loft in our house we were able to take advantage of the full height to make the roof feel very spacious and open and I think that really helps with our house not feeling small we get so much Headroom which also allows us a bunch of interesting vintage pendant lighting which I really really love and we're able to bring in stuff from different areas and different time periods to make each section of the house feel a little different and another thing that we're able to do with this big vaulted ceiling was put in a hand hewn beam that we got from a deconstruction company which mirrors the color of the floor and makes sort of like a rustic again a sort of Farmhouse feel to the house another Victorian detail that we were able to bring into the house is all the different roof pitches so especially above the front door having this Gable that really invites you into the house from the outside and makes it feel like a big entry area was really important and then the bedroom has a different roof pitch as well as the bathroom to make it feel like all distinctly different areas of the house and then the final room in the house is the bedroom so we're able to use this room for a bunch of different purposes um thanks in large part to the Murphy bed we don't have to have a dedicated room just for sleeping we get to put the bed away and then this room becomes the dining room the office a yoga studio all sorts of stuff when we're not asleep over here under the window we have a desk that also doubles as our dining table when it's just the two of us eating here this is made out of wood from a theater that I used to work out a friend put that together and gifted it to us and it's really really special to me then we have the Murphy bed wall also includes a bookshelf that hides all sorts of stuff it's extra deep so we're able to have books as well as all kinds of other Trinkets and things with the Murphy bed we bought the hardware and the plans but then we built the actual structure to fit in the specific space which meant that not only with the bed but we were able to add in these cabinets like this one holds the bed pillows so when we put the bed away we put the pillows up in there and then other ones have towels and sheets and things like that in them so when the bed comes down there's some little blocks that we put as the feet on that side and then you just pull the bed down set them on the blocks the mattress is not even attached it just stays in place with weight and it's super easy to take down take up and down that was one of the questions we got a lot when we decided to go with a Murphy bed was like oh you have to make and put away the bed every day and we've not found it to be a problem at all it's really really simple and then across from the bed is the closet that was something that I really wanted was not a tiny closet in the tiny house still has a ton of space it's an old TV cabinet that we repurposed we actually took the legs off and built in a one extra layer to make it a little bit taller and to have a little bit more space to add in some extra drawers but again that's like a different type of wood and a different feel to make to make this room feel really rustic [Music] this is sort of community 2.0 for us before our tiny house was finished we lived in the main house and there was two small dwellings in the backyard so we were a group of eight or nine at that time and then they all moved out for various reasons when covid happened and then once we moved into the tiny house we rented other spaces out again so we're another group of nine of different people yeah there are a lot of benefits to living together in a in a space and that we can divide up the cost of a mortgage or the property and the utilities and everything so I think everyone's cost of living here is incredibly low compared to neighbors we rent the main house for well under Market rent and don't intend to raise it the folks living in there currently he runs a business and she's a stay-at-home mom and so it gives them the flexibility and freedom to do that I've been able to leave my sort of full-time job and start pursuing other things with my time I do still enjoy the work that I do but it just gives me a lot more options and I think it just works better for us of not having to have too many like meetings and micromanage things and just having more like if you use a space you are part of taking care of it if you want to take things out of the garden you have to put time into the garden if you want to spend time in the wood shop you have to like go through safety training and help keep it clean yeah so we're pretty Loose as far as rules go but I think it really works for us and the people who live here right now my experience is living in community before have been much more sharing the same building with a group of people and I was very adamant that I liked a lot of the the parts of living and Community the yeah the camaraderie that you get and the sort of like being present for each other's lives but without having to ever argue with another adult about doing the dishes I just didn't want to have to deal with that anymore so the idea of having each each family has their own house was very very attractive to me so that you can be together as much as you want when you're outside of your house but if you need to be alone or to have your space in a very particular way you can just close the door and I think that that is helpful for maintaining a good balance with everyone like we're all in really good terms I think and I think that has a lot to do with it foreign [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: 69,611

Keywords: tiny house, 10 foot wide tiny house, tiny house community, urban homestead, tiny house walkthrough, urban ecovillage, victorian farmhouse, simple living, tiny home, never too small, farmhouse tiny house, tiny house parking, alternative living, small space big style, exploring alternatives, living big in a tiny house, tiny house giant journey, tiny home village, permaculture design, tiny house downstairs bedroom, diy, tiny house tour, tiny home movement, accessory dwelling

Id: 6drF6tDXNMQ

Length: 23min 51sec (1431 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 23 2022