Tiny House Concept Adapted Into Amazing Modern Home

as the tiny-house movement continues to gain momentum it's really interesting to see more small space design principles being incorporated into more mainstream projects today we've traveled to wanaka to visit a really interesting tiny house that's actually being constructed in a modern subdivision [Music] good a well good to meet you mate let's do it yeah hye-jin how are you it is so cool to see this incredible house that you've built for yourselves I thank you very much tell me a little bit about what you've done here we were living in the countryside and we wanted to build a tiny house and we thought why not the one in town which is sort of moving to town it's basically 33 square meters but that's the outside because it's built out of six panels which has got really thick walls so inside it's 29 square meters and it's quite an unusual thing to see a tiny house like this as part of a new subdivision isn't it when we looked around at buying a section there's so many subdivisions that we couldn't have built this house in because they have a minimum house size whereas the developer for this subdivision was thrilled when I winked women see could we build a tiny house here kind of thing because he thought it added to the subdivision you've done a really great job of having a lot of outdoor space here haven't you well yes dick has bigger than our house and it's impossible to stand out here without mentioning the incredible mountain vistas that are surrounding us yeah that's one occur so pretty much you know yeah it's hard to build a house anywhere in this area without a good view of the mountains now tell me a little bit about what you've done here on the exterior of your house is this actually a bitumen finish yes bitumen plating yeah which is normally a roofing material and once we sort of started thinking about building a tiny house you sort of throw out all the norms of building and so we started thinking well why don't we do something a little different a little more sort of avant-garde and actually wrap the house and the bitumen and the shingles and then at the front and at the back is latch and originally we thought we'll do that and seal it because that's just if you look around there's so many cedar houses in this area but again if you're going to do something a bit different it's do it and latch so we ended up with that nice combination of bitumen shingles and latch wood we also went for the sort of white look of the of the windows and doors because I think conventionally people would think that they should be dark-colored but again sort of doing things a little differently well I would love to have a look on the inside and check it out Joe come on after you oh this is lovely thank you it's a conventional home but it's got all the feel of a tiny house doesn't it well it does I think the main difference between this in a tiny house on wheels is that because we were a static build we could go wider and we could go higher and I think the extra width so inside is four meters wide and that just makes it feel so much more spacious and of course the extra height gives that feeling of space even though you can't stand up there it doesn't make it feel claustrophobic what was it that actually originally just made you fall in love with the idea of having a tiny house we didn't have a Eureka moment where we thought let's build a tiny house it was lots of little seeds that get planted in your head and then about five years ago we were in cycle touring in Australia and we cycled for two and a half thousand kilometres and cycle tourists renowned for trying to save weight because everything you've got with you you have to bike up those hills so cycle tourists will do things like cap the labels out of their clothing and put them in a little pile and weigh them and then feel sort of chuffed that they've got rid of that excess weight that does no no use to use of the thing or chop their toothbrush handle in half because they because you don't need that extra bit of toothbrush in order to still brush your teeth and so that sort of almost the ultimate minimalism isn't it and that's that's sort of the philosophy that we sort of started to sort of seep into us from from cycle turn and then when we decided we wanted a just a bit of a life change and do something differently we had twenty acres of land on the outskirts of wanaka or the beautiful house and we thought let's sell that up and build a tiny house and if we're going to build a tiny house let's just go completely opposite where everybody seems to want to move to the beautiful bucolic kind of views let's move to tap and do so and build a tiny house in town and there's been a really fun experience of the design of the house and then moving into it so tell me about the home and its layout and design well pretty much this is the lounge part of the design was to think about what part of the house you use the most so if you use the lounge the most then bear got the most space in the house and this this is I work from home building websites and so the my computer area really so that's that's our TV but also my computer monitor and then I can fold these doors open and put a desk top on here and then bring a chair from over there and actually sit here and work so it's a sort of dual use of space this is the kitchen and a lot of just enormous amount of design and thought went into the kitchen so you know a normal sort of house kitchen nowadays here's a toe kick or which is about sort of that high and that's just because that's the way they build kitchens nowadays and so by taking away the toe kick it means that that we can utilize the space all the way to the ground and we've actually gained the equivalent of eight cases of wine by of space but 96 bottles of wine Meijin their sort of thing that's the equivalent space that we've gained in here by removing the toe kick and are you using that space to store close to 100 bottles of wine you know we're not but but but there would be fun if we deadly but there's things like our washing machine which you know it's pretty normal in New Zealand to have a laundry but saying in the UK it's pretty normal to have your washing machine in your kitchen so that's what we've done but a washing machine we've got a single dish drawer so we've got a dishwasher and then we just got lots of other storage it's usually absolutely everything you need yeah there's things like you know an extractor fan in a normal kitchen you might have life sort of an extractor fan under here and you open up the cupboard above and there'll be a big kind of cowling up here with a motor which is where the extreme defenders and it seemed really wasteful of a cupboard to me so way our extractor fan works is it sucks down and there's a motor under the floor and then sucks the air out that way and so that meant we had to create this sort of little cavity here for that thing to go down and so we sort of utilized the space by actually sort of putting all of our tea and coffee kind of gear in there and to do that having a swinging door meant that it was sort of we had to sort of think about differently about the size of our kettle so we've got like a little 3 cup kettle instead of a normal key tool and then we've got like a skinny toaster as well and it's just sort of finding those different form factors of of appliances means that we've gained in bench space as well because if we hit a big kettle in a big toaster it would have sort of used up more space and then over here you've got this lovely breakfast bar it's air-sea singing for heating obviously perfect for just the two of us and also plenty of room we had considered all sorts of dining situations but this is what suits us and works really well yeah well that was part of the reason of sort of moving to town was being closer to socializing and things like that but we did manage to squeeze 12 of us in here for New Year's Eve and that's the maximum number of head in the house where they would work well well should we check out the bathroom and see what you've done in there sure well this is the bathroom very cozy space in here it is it's a 900 ml wide we had sort of lots of backwards and forwards in about how wide to make it but really we made just wide enough the showers the same size as a normal shower it's just a little bit tight coming through this gap but it seems to work for us so we did things like the toilet there's not a not as bigger than normal toilet seems exactly the same to sit on it's just not as big as a normal was they're easy to source it wasn't hard I think the thing about bathroom stuff is that many people have quite small on sweets and so there's actually quite a lot of of compact furniture for bathrooms and so the whole bathrooms been done as an open wit room it has yes we also have you notice a bath spout down there I do and we did that for two reasons one is that when you go to Asia for example it's pretty common in the shower days you have a tip and that's for filling buckets and things like that and so not having a laundry we can fill both hot and cold water into a bucket using that but also we have an inflatable bath because they're just there just wasn't the room to have a bath in our tiny house no and so we bought this inflatable bath and pretty much we've designed the bathroom we just need to make sure the bathroom was wide enough and we've got room under this cabinet there is such a good idea I have never seen anyone do that before I blow up bath no blow up bath but that just makes so much sense doesn't know what a great idea it's the tits are sort of if you don't use it very often why have it taking up space and it's big enough for you to fit in your 6 5 yeah there's two sorts of doubles there's the normal travel in a double compact and we got the tunnel compact right but I can't fit in most normal bars either I have that same problem dude fair enough great well should we check out your upstairs sure it looks like you've got some storage they're built into the stairs it's right just trying to make use of all the extra bits of space but um we have many things stored in them but this bottom one is our shoe storage obviously I have a new piece of shoes then we'll but I take that most of the drawer but it's perfect we have computer gear and things like that as well works from home so they're all very useful great space very nice and it looks like you've used a really high quality hard earn them too because that just seemed to close by itself we were very conscious of the fact that you wouldn't want to leave your drawer open at night and then trip up on the way down the stairs so actually after they were put in will has put big springs behind so we knew when you open it it's reasonably firm to open but closing it always closes itself so just for safety what a clever idea and you're right no night falls because that could potentially be very dangerous and I'd never thought of that before one of the things about building a tiny house that's a static house like this is you have to comply with the New Zealand Building Code and so many tiny houses have wonderful things like climbing letters or or crazy stairs or stairs without handrails but we had to fully comply with the New Zealand Building Code and so consequently the stairs were probably the hardest part of the design of this whole house I bet that it's kind of interesting as well because while many of the tiny houses that we visit they do adhere roughly to the building code there are little things like the stairs the ladders even things like the bathrooms which sometimes don't comply how did you find it sort of taking that tiny house design and actually making it work for code we took it on as the fun part of the challenge as well because while we were looking for small kettles and toasters and things like that you also had to comply with the code and and that mean figuring out what you are in our and to do and sort of trying to make it work in a small space and so that says we actually found it really fun good good to tackle a challenge like that with a bit of positivity sometimes bureaucracy can be fun this is lovely I do have to confess it is rather nice to walk into a sleeping loft where I can stand all of this headspace this is such a novelty we could do that by by the fact that being aesthetic house it didn't matter hair tall we made the house within reason of the subdivision design plains so we had we had the vertical room to make the house taller and that makes us with a more roomy loft and so tell me a little bit about what you've done up here there's a few things like the privacy sort of thing so we've got a curtain here and we went through all sorts of crazy design ideas which involved hydraulic lifts that kind of came up with with it with us sort of a blind or the vertical blinds that would hang from the ceiling but we wanted to keep this sort of sense of space going through and so we actually finally enough came right back to the simplest way of providing privacy which is the curtain so the curtain just hooks out there on those eyelets as does yeah one of the things we had to work on in here as well as storage and so we've actually got to lift that bid would you like to see it absolutely so pretty much it's got hydraulic struts that hold it up there and that means we can sort of have all the things that we don't use very often right was it that way like a Christmas tree there is such a clever option and be honest you've tidied that before we've got hit having you know don't know it normally looks like there that is some very neat and a bit storage you know that's what it normally looks like but we hardly ever go under there so how long have you actually been living in the house now we moved in on the 1st of August last year so what's that nine months and what's your experience like living in the house so far we didn't move in for the coldest part of last winter but for August September and then so far it's just been so warm even today relatively cool outside but we're always it's just always same temperature inside and here in wanaka it does get very very cold so insulation must have been a huge part of what you're doing in here that's why we've built the house set of sub panels and our house is sort of about 80 percent up to being a passive house we use the six panels all taped in the same way our windows are close to being passive grade and that means it's a very well insulated house and and it seems to hold its temperature really well we don't have any heating other than just a bar heater in the lounge and that seems to work well so far another beauty of having such a small houses that is so simple to hate isn't it it is we will look out and we'll see everybody locking their fire on a winter's day and it'll still be sort of will be sitting around in shorts and a t-shirt and so their house and so it's brilliant it's really nice when I come home after work it's such a lovely relaxing space we had the beautiful outdoor space which was nice coming home and summertime glass of wine is sitting on the deep end inside and wintertime it's just always so warm and just a lovely light bright almost eerie feeling space it's been described to us there we look like we're always on holiday it is that sort of holiday feeling of living in something like this the cost of building this home it cost us about two hundred and twenty thousand New Zealand dollars for the build that doesn't include the the land and we could have built the house for a lot less than turning 20 but we wanted that we were building it as our forever home and we wanted to put some of the features into this house that maybe cost more than other things things like the cork floor and the tiles on the roof that rapped down the walls we could have done a lot simpler but that wasn't as powerful well I think this is a truly beautiful home for me it's great to see these tiny house design principles being incorporated into what is otherwise a very modern subdivision thank you so much for sharing your project with me thank you I think there's a lot of people out there who see the tiny house shows and absolutely love the downsizing concept that could never actually envision themselves doing it what's great about this home is that it has all of the characteristics of a tiny house on wheels but it's just that little bit bigger and maybe makes the concept available to more people I think in the future we'll see a lot more homes being designed like this [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Living Big In A Tiny House

Views: 5,139,651

Keywords: small house, living big in a tiny house, simple living, tiny house tour, tiny house build, tiny house movement, small space, small house living, tiny house, small home, mortgage free, tiny living, tiny home, eco tiny house, eco home, sips home, sips home construction, sips tiny house, tiny house living, tiny house design, tiny home tour, eco homes designs, eco homes, sips tiny house nz, tiny homes, small house design ideas, small house tour, small house build

Id: jPBDPcqfCwA

Length: 16min 21sec (981 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 21 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/beast-freak]

I had a quick look on the Internet and found the architect's description here:

• http://condonscott.nz/projects/kamahi-street-wanaka-tiny-house-project/