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[Music] hi I'm Kevin and this is my renovation story I grew up in PSO Virginia I'm was a regular childhood to be honest with you um outside all day come in on the streets likes come on I had a great upbringing um a very supportive family it wasn't the easiest but hindsight made me understand that it actually made me tougher and uh pretty much built me for what I'm doing right now growing up in pman Virginia as far as after you left High School the options were limited it was limited to working at the Ford plant going into the military or if your family could afford it going to college the only opportunity I saw for myself is get a good job go to work save your money buy a house so when I was 22 I joined the merchant marines I saw it as the most viable option in order to get paid a lot of money just for simply doing hard work the Merchant Marine is so far from the military it's a civilian Mariner me personally I worked on container ships for the most part uh transferring goods from um Belgium Germany the Middle East China everywhere and bringing those back to the United States uh the first time I came off the ship I decided to teach myself how to build houses so my first house took me about 2 years to complete um in the process of me building the house I would actually come off the ship and sleep in my car I would spend uh 4 to 6 months on the ship and I would come home and I would work on the house until I actually um would started to go broke pretty much so every time my funds got down to about $5,000 I would head back on another ship for 4 to 6 months I started to pay more attention to the the items that we were shipping which just happen to be uh shipping containers and I just after teaching myself how to build at first house I started to look at containers differently as a simple box or a simple aesthetic after you cut the windows and doors is pretty much a house at that point I thought this house would take six containers um the city actually only allowed me to use two on the first floor which is why this house is a hybrid container house so this house is two containers on the first floor the second and third story are stick built so to start off building a container home you need a solid foundation so we poured a 8 in monolithic slab uh we also use rebar and fiber to give it the strength to hold the structure of this size the build was very difficult because everybody was new to it it was my first container home um my framers it was their first time working with metal my welder so we had to get a f for each other so it was a learning process with this first house so once the foundation is pour I call my hot shot drivers and get them online to deliver the containers um this is where it got tricky because they had to drive in reverse all the way up this Street uh probably about a half a mile just to get to this job site because this neighborhood is so tight it so we had to have all the RADS closed and we had to have enough space for the 100 T crane to be able to lift the shipping containers and put them in place on this Foundation that day was very terrifying I was actually scared hopefully everything will work out and it actually did this is two containers uh the first container starts at the far end and comes about to this point this is a 4T gap which we Bridge together using stick frame and our traditional welding and the last container is from this far in to that side of this window flare I decided to cover most of the container I actually wanted to add a lot of detail because the front elevation of the house is so flat which is why I added window flares to give it a another texture and also why I used uh 1x4 Hardy trim to give it just some notes of some something different just to add a little texture to the house people who didn't see the early process still to this day wouldn't believe that it was actually a container house so come take a look at the house this is the first floor of the house this is the actual container portion is 8 ft wide uh 40 ft up and down so this is the actual size of a one one bedroomroom container essentially so this is the first guest bedroom I just wanted to maximize the bedroom space to make sure you didn't feel closed in um cuz containers already naturally have a somewhat of a lower ceiling large windows and White Walls make the space feel enormous in comparison to how big it actually is you have to do a few different architectural tricks to make it feel different or feel bigger you want to use 8ft doors instead of the standard uh 6 Plus feet you want to do very large Windows to bring in a lot of natural light so this right here is the Jack and Jill bathroom I kept the colors pretty much the same um I still wanted it to feel bright this is actually an entire container right here so when dealing with such a small space you want to maximize it so I went with white walls white ceilings light floors um these cabinets are actually upper kitchen cabinets so it gave me a depth of 12 in so I can maximize this walkway these are floating vanities which gives me a feel of more space it's a little bit of trickery when you're dealing with container HS so the next space is the second guest room which is same color scheme white ceilings white walls light floors and this looks out into the front yard through these large windows so right now we're headed actually upstairs to the stick frame portion of the house this is the living area on the second floor because I wanted to capture all the views of downtown so your living kitchen and dining all open concept with two decks actually gives you multiple views of downtown this area is the living room you have your TV right here with your fireplace and everything this space has its own private entrance and its private deck so this kitchen is actually a labor of love this is my first time building a shelf chef kitchen um which is why I did a 36 in dual fuel stove gas on top electrical on the bottom and this backsplash actually it was a design idea that a lot of people fought me on but I did it because I actually wanted the space once again to feel bigger and I know with reflection it'll make any space feel like it's two times the size I did the floating Hood because I didn't I wanted to add texture to every part of the home uh this is something that's not often done usually the range is on the wall but I like to go against the [Music] grain behind the kitchen we actually have the dining room area and this actually leads you to the second deck this is my favorite part of the house this is the the longest deck is 40 ft uh by 7 ft deep this is where I come out like on a nice Friday night have a glass of wine and just pretty much chill out relax you still got the views of downtown not too many houses have three decks and city views of downtown so another fun feature of this house is actually this accent wall the accent wall for the stairwell is actually uh one by one pieces of lumber that they deliver when they deliver bulk objects to to your job sites this is actually trash um and we took it and repurposed it and made it something beautiful I think it's actually the most popular feature of the house and it has this little peeko so you can see who's coming up the first floor this this cost $100 and it was worth every penny upstairs is the primary and the flex room so let's take a look so right now this is the third level and this is your primary room is quiet because we actually use spray foam insulation which helps insulate all of the the noise that you would hear from this city and all the outside elements behind this door is your primary bathroom let's take a look I just wanted to match what we already had uh built on the first level but we went with the Ultra Modern uh fixtures vanity bowls back lit mirrors down this Hall you you have your flex room which is set up as a nursery right now but it can be used for multiple purposes such as an office this house is actually uh for sale and once we sell it I'm looking to keep the ball rolling and do more affordable living spaces using uh repurposed shipping containers my vision for what to do next honestly is to build a commercial structure um a multif family type structure using shipping containers and actually start the affordable housing movement that's important to me because everybody deserves a home I feel like there shouldn't be anybody living under a bridge when I can make them a container home it just doesn't make sense to me everything I went through to get to this point and to to get to where I'm at right now it was worth it I wouldn't change anything because it made me who I am um it gave me the work ethic that I currently have um and it gave me the mindset that I can do anything with this project the thing I'm most happy about is the fact that it's done um it was it took a lot to get to this point but after it was completed I I stepped back and looked and I I was I was in disbelief to be honest with you um because it just started with a simple idea and for it to actually come to fruition through hard work like I wouldn't changing it [Music] when we first were naming our bus we kind of went back and forth for a while weren't really sure what to name it I think the story behind it the girl said like she had a chicken named Bessie and it just died or something so I was like oh that's so sad like the name can live on and so yeah we just decided to go with Bessie [Music] hi I'm Kel and I'm Jay and this is our handmade home Bessie the bus as soon as we got the bus one of the first things we did was got proper dirty and just ripped the whole thing apart we took out the seats took out the ceiling all the sheet metal inside the bus ripped up the floors basically just took it down to the Bare Bones so then we could start AR fresh we had a blank canvas to work off of when you get in here you'll notice right away there's a lot of space and that was kind of our goal in creating this space although it's a tiny space we didn't want it to feel like it was Compact and that there wasn't a lot of room so the first thing we did to kind of help that was raise the roof 20 in we're both really tall so having that extra space is definitely needed it was difficult but definitely worth it one of the things I'm most proud of in this bus is like probably one of the simplest things in the bus it's this table right next to me so actually folds out um to be like this this long um and then you can hide things in it when it's folded up we definitely made the work area like our a focal point in our BS cuz we obviously have to work while we're on the road it's not just all fun and games so this whole area folds out um and we both can have a work space our own area right by the window and it's really nice and then when we're ready to like work out in here or do other things or have people over we just fold it right back up so I think that's like a unique feature in our bus which is really nice we definitely have like a lot more open space than most [Music] buses something that was really important to me as someone who loves to cook is having a full kitchen here we have a full kitchen we have tons of storage space again cabinets with food um Jay and I are huge Foodies so it was really important for me to have a full kitchen be able to have a stove an oven just everything that you need to cook we have a huge sink here as well so we can just throw our dirty dishes in here and not really have to worry about them especially if for traveling or moving this sink has come in clutch for for things like that one thing I did not want to compromise on was the shower so so we kind of went back and forth on this but I just wanted to have a fullsize shower not have to worry about having to go to gyms or not shower for a few weeks this having the shower and 100 gallons of water has really made it so that we live pretty much the same way that we were living [Music] before over here is our bed it's a queen-sized bed uh it's a little bit tall I'm about 5'11 so put that into perspective how tall this thing is but it's nice because on the other side which J will show you we do have a lot of storage underneath our bed which is the whole reason and purpose for making it so tall this whole design back here kind of feature headboard wall Jay and I made we just started putting 2 by ones together mixed and matched them and just created a headb which I think it turned out pretty nice all right guys so that's pretty much it for the inside of the bus Jay's outside so let's go meet him out there and he'll show us around outside this is what we call the garage here we have all my tools so if we need to do repairs while we're on the road um I'm a carpenter by trade so I like always just have my tools with me um we store both of our bikes in here and this is like how kley said the bed is so high inside we did this so we could fit the bikes under the bed from this way um and then up there is where we store the basketball hoop which hangs on the side of the bus another unique thing that we have in our bus is the bath bball hoop on the outside I don't think anyone else has anything like that that's living in their bus so it's actually regulation height we were in Joshua Tree just like in the in the desert like no one for miles and we put the hoop up we're just in the middle of the desert sand sand all around us and we're all just playing basketball it was kind of kind of [Music] surreal so the paint job on our bus it definitely like stands out it's it's one of the the first things people notice I mean we don't blend in when we're driving down the street and the inspiration actually came from the shoes I'm wearing right now I don't know we kind of just held the shoe up to the bus one day and we were kind of like how about we do that we did a whole a whole base coat in in white uh we sprayed on white and then we taped off the the geometric design and kind of just went to Home Depot bought a bunch of colors and then just just had fun with it so the same as what's written on my t-shirt is written on the side of the bus if not now when and this is just a slogan that we live by Kelsey painted this on the bus just before we hit the road one year ago and it's kind of just always stuck with us and it's really nice cuz it's on the left side of the bus so anyone that's overtaking us which happens all the time they get to read this little quote and hopefully it resonates with them for whatever reason before this I'd barely picked up like a hammer honestly I'd help my parents out with little projects but nothing on this scale for sure yeah I had barely even painted before so I was very new anything with this school bus is so unique because of the shape of it so like you could he could build a house in like 3 weeks with two other guys but like building a school bus is such a different and unique thing and there's always like different problems that you face along the way I'd say if you're considering this lifestyle definitely just go for it I feel like if you overthink it and think about all the wh if and all the things that can go wrong you'll just stop yourself from from doing it I think the first and biggest step for us was just buying the bus so once we had that we were like okay well we can't go back now we're all in now so I think just like start working towards making that this lifestyle come true cuz it's it's definitely doable all right guys thanks for stopping by and we'll see you in the next one hi I'm juwel Pearson and this is my handmade home in Charlotte North [Music] Carolina I've lived in the tiny house for 7 years I designed my home from graph paper and um have expanded since that time and just adore my tiny house born in Brooklyn didn't live there very long but I love big buildings and mid Rises and moving traffic and people moving and that's kind of where I feel like I get energy from and I can honestly say I would not have been able to live in this area when I first started my tiny house Journey because I was still so connected to needing that energy from the city but over the course of seven years life change energy change so now being on a friend's Farm is the piece that I didn't even really know I needed so I was young um my early 20s and the responsibility of motherhood single motherhood you know at that point it was often balancing the checkbook to the penny and I just knew that once I got her okay I wanted to get to a point where I could decide no I'm going to just you know buy this frivolously not I've got to pay this bill and pay this bill and now we've got $20 left like I wanted to be in a a where I've always felt like it was lighter and I stumbled on a story of a woman who had built a tiny house and it was her story of of kind of rebuilding after divorce and losing things and you know that wasn't my journey but more resonated with me like this is me this is doing it for me I'm starting over over and at that point I decided I'm building a tiny house this was 2012 201 13ish and there wasn't a lot of information about tiny houses like there is now the movement at that point was so focused on minimalism and you don't build a house bigger than 18 ft and there were like so many things about what a tiny house wasn't but for me it was my retirement plan so I'm doing all the things so this is the Crown Jewel if if I might say that this is the original tiny house space this is where the dream started I knew I needed to have Windows all around so that no matter where I put my house that I'd have light coming in you know um a sunr a good sunrise and a sunset just like make my entire life I've got a full-size bathroom it's got a washer dryer combo unit in it a bathtub and the funny thing is I don't use it as much as I imagined that I would most of the time that I use it it's nah getting a bath and not me um but yes one of the important things for me and it's one of the things that I say for people interested in Tiny Houses make it your own make it include things that make home for you so I have a beautiful floating staircase and at the bottom of the staircase there's a landing which can be used used for seating I don't have a lot of multi-function things in the house um the original flip up desk that was in the corner in the nook I've I've taken that out completely a lot of tiny houses have storage where they'll put their clothes in the couch and the couch lift lifts up and you get your clothes out I didn't do a lot of multifunction I wanted to think through so I wasn't moving stuff out of the way all the time and you know renava the space because I I knew longterm that would get old for me one overhead loft is my sleeping space and then the other is kind of a plant Nook chill space and then coming through Pantry storage and then this is my kitchen and I can cook I just don't like to cook so I didn't um devote a lot of kitchen space but I have a very functional kitchen this is a microwave and a convection oven so I can bake and do all of those things to burn a cook toop and then back here is the [Music] closet the original tiny house had a very small screened in porch here and an overhead Juliet balcony and so this is all new um it is built on a foundation and this is dedicated office space and then just having the the living space and room for my plants really it's a room that I built for my plants so this is you know original tiny house this part that you see right here is original tiny house and Ione covered up um I felt like it would be beautiful as part of the design I don't know that I have a design style like it's just kind of like by eye feel like the mask a part of who I am generationally like the the core of my existence it's the a connection even though you don't as a woman of color black woman I don't really know my roots that is something that I'm working on now but it feels it still feels like home for me it feels like part of my connectedness to to who I am and I wanted all of that to be part of my [Music] home so this was just like kind of the beautiful open space and then I realized oh it's Coyotes out here so we need some some a little barrier um so that was the purpose of the screen and I used like the polycarbonate overhead so I still will have light in here right now it's my most favorite space maybe it's because it's the newest space it's so in my mind you know as I was thinking like the lighter lifestyle I saw myself traveling and I still thought I was building a tiny house space that I could travel with and then when I bought the trailer and started building I was like what were you think thinking you can't travel with this and so um it is like homebased it's going to stay stationary it provides my lifestyle of freedom but I still want to have the opportunity to travel with home and so that's the travel trailer it also has a bathroom a shower bathroom in it so it's small enough that I can manage myself but it's also big enough to be self-sufficient so that's kind of my next project it's all really budget driven but um I'm thinking hoping that I can get it done by the end of this year so advice for people who are thinking about getting into tiny house living I think from the beginning you need to really evaluate how you use your space the things that you have to have in your space that are important to you and I always say you know go from a list of must have um nice to have and in the wish list you really got to to know you and know yourself and and the things that are going to make you comfortable in that space my initial parking space was in an RV park um and I was there for I was there from May to October RV parks aren't always safe spaces for people of color black people and I ran into some issues there and so that kind of forced the move um and I've had that issue another time in a rural space so it's it's kind of where can you put a tiny house is is one of the issues and then there's the the challenge of where can you put a tiny house as a as a black person as a person of color that you have to think about safety unfortunate but the reality there's some statistics I think it says the tiny house movement is either 97% or 95% white and so a lot of my work in the movement is representation showing black people and people of color as part of the movement um talking to the concerns that you'll have as part of the movement in addition to just the overall where can I put a tiny house but what does that look like for me um and then also I think it became important for me early on to show tiny house living as a viable option versus people just thinking tiny house people were weird um the racism in conventional home buying it's it's a known issue you can look at cities and know exactly how the red lining was done because of the way people are located the rate highways are run at the bottom of the list for Home Ownership the percentages of black people is it still remains year after year at the bottom of that list um the conversation around tiny houses is one of the things where it's an opportunity to get to home ownership quicker it is an opportunity for wealth building even if it's not the traditional equity in your home um conversation that so many people say you know buying a conventional home allows you to build equity and a tiny house doesn't but there's still the opportunity of I own my home and so that income that I would be using to pay for a mortgage I can invest that I can save that and so there's a non-traditional opportunity for wealth building and if we are challenging the status quo of housing with tiny houses we should challenge the entire thing um the inequity I want the people who have not had access to housing to be included in this conversation and to be at this table that is kind of where I feel like um my work what my work is thanks for checking out my house people question my choices but I don't question my choices my name's Donna mcneel and this is my renovation story this church was built in 1852 by a man named General hyram Barry who sadly lost his life in the American Civil War but he also was involved in the lumber industry and this house has no Nails it's pegged together and the beams are H and it's remained over all these years pretty Plum which says a lot to the quality of building in that era and of course Rockland's famous for ship building and I think some of those ship writs came and worked on this house and so it's it's incredibly wellb built I don't know the date on this but it was sold to the Salvation Army they dropped the ceilings they created a bunch of little rooms here and there they made little offices up where the choir lot s is they used cheap materials the integrity was destroyed you know God bless Peter Davis who came along and bought it from the uh Salvation Army he was had a high aesthetic he was a he was an artist he was a guitar maker and he came in and let this place breathe again he repaired the tin ceilings he put in new windows a heating system all the kind of grunt work that doesn't interest me too much but really saved the place I feel like I really continued the work that Peter Davis started and and honored what he his vision for this place when I first looked at this place there was a refrigerator plugged in over there and there was an old pool table that was serving as a dining room table there was a stove plugged into the wall there was no Cabinetry at all first thing I did after I painted the floors was make a kitchen and I really wanted it to feel like a bar because I knew I wanted to have events in here and I wanted people to feel comfortable I wanted it to seat a lot of people so people could sit down and have a drink and feel like they were in a both a private and a public space it's all Ikea this looks like Coran but it's um it's actually a abouted at Lowe's it's it's a sort of an imitation version I'm so happy with it it's been here for seven years and it doesn't have a single mark on it because you can sort of buff them out and I made this very thick you know you could go with the thin stuff but if you make it thick then it looks more expensive even when it's really not I saved money by going on Ika but I think it looks pretty high-end and I bought really nice appliances there's a Barone stove Fisher prael fridge and this beautiful double drao dishwasher you can do a little bit save water or do a larger wash or do both of them if you have a dinner party so but the sink and the and everything this is still all Ikea you know I think you can find super high aesthetic with nage cost if you look around these are antiques they're hammered somebody downtown did them I found them in an old junk shop stuff like that I just kept collecting and made a kitchen I didn't work with a designer um the everything is is just my idea I'm not also not one of these people that sets up a Pinterest board and you know thinks about what everybody else is doing I've never do that it's just all sort of H comes from inside I've been a curator and a a supporter of an art of the Arts my entire life so I have a keen visual uh sense I can just imagine it I I you know we all have our stuff it's undoubtedly a space that I created and it's of me and my aesthetic but I want other people people to enjoy it and I have made different spaces that I think different personalities if you will will respond to the downstairs guest room is more masculine the upstairs is very I call it the princess room it has a very high bed it's very Victorian it's got some Chach keys in there and I really wanted this downstair space to be a library but it it's kind of not working like that so I'll I'll change that eventually but that is also a very auster space with a kind of Donald Jud inspired debed in there and a collection of Turkish ears so there was this room up there that was like a mystery Room it had a an old timey privacy window but you open the door and there was no window there was nothing in there was just this dark space because my bedroom's up there I wanted I didn't want to have to come downstairs to to use the bathroom in the middle of the night so I thought well I'll make that a bathroom to relate to the size of the space I put have very long counter in there I've been working with a carpenter throughout this whole thing named Steven Hall and he put a hole in that wall and created a window and then I situated a bathtub so you look out at this gorgeous maple tree and in the fall it's just bright orange so bathing in general is very ceremonial and it's also so metaphorical for birthing and cleansing and purifying and ever since I put that bath in I've become a devoted bath person I think I've made some pretty nice bathrooms this it's quite a small space I can pretty much stretch my arms across and touch the walls so I made it a wet room and I put in all that beautiful small marble Stone so that you uh won't slip in the shower and then I got that tiniest sink in the universe like I had a friend say what is that thing in there pretending to be a sink but because it's a wet room it doesn't matter if it splashes all over and I fell in love with it as an object I like squares and there's a square toilet and people like what you know people question my choices but um I I don't question my choices so when you have such a large space to work with you have to think about scale things objects and people uh can feel easily diminished if you're up to it it's quite expansive and creates your personal largess and your your kind of upward feeling awesomeness of a space Which churches are intended to do right you walk in them you're supposed to feel toward heaven but you put a small object in here and it becomes smaller you have to build a space in a way where it relates to the scale of the architecture and that's that's the challenge so I had this huge table uh built actually for a former large space but it works beautifully here and it an anchors the space as do the rugs and they create little rooms if you will and divide the space they're not typical living rooms but people seem to gather and and use space in an original ways there's some quite large pieces and then there's some more intimate intimate pieces and I think if they play off of each other then it can work in a large space like this people always ask me how I heat this place Peter Davis put in four Rai heaters in this big space and then zoned all the other spaces they were also beige and I painted them black um so that they would sort of go away I can have the heat very low and come back from work and have it at you know 75 and half an hour you know it's nice and warm in the winter surprisingly and really Pleasant in the summer I've never air conditioned it or Peter also put these fans in which I think help Heating and Cooling they go with the sort of more contemporary aesthetic that that I brought to this place so I LIF them and you know you feel like you're maybe sitting Tangers or something and I spent quite a bit of time 3 weeks putting enamel based oil uh three coats on the floors not just this floor but throughout the whole house the high gloss then reflects everything and you know you have a mirror effect going on which also brightens a place and it always makes it look clean and fresh and if the sun comes out you can see how brilliant it it all is when the sun Graces the room changing from the gray it just brightened everything and yeah I'm I'm very happy with it people you know are daunted by the thought of keeping it clean but I'm like yeah well you know you have to pay to [Laughter] play this place is particularly in because it Embraces community so beautifully when I first started living here there was a young woman uh who was staying with me who she was a chef and she started a practice called radical Hospitality which is an ancient concept uh coming out of the monastery where you would open your doors and uh welcome everyone and feed them she'd make a big pot of soup and and bake a bunch of bread and it was just gorgeous and it really sort of was the housewarming it was the initial definition of asking Community or or letting Community know that this wasn't just one woman rattling around in this huge space but that it was a space to share and that was my intent in getting this enormous space uh is to really have it be a community uh asset and to welcome folks in so uh in keeping with my theme of welcoming community uh after I painted the floors I wanted to build a table and feed as many people as I could and these pews were actually here I wanted some things that were remnants of the history of this place I kept the pews and I painted them and I built this table to fit the pews exactly I am obviously not a carpenter it's pretty rudimentary but you put a coat of paint on it and sort of sort of worked it's used all the time and I'm very happy about that and the pews this other PE I bought in Ellsworth but I thought the more pews the better the outside of the of the church was so in need of a paint job that I thought I just might polish the aluminum siding and have it turn into a big tin can I mean it was really down to the metal pretty much I decided to paint it black that was seven years ago black houses have become more in fashioned but actually black churches are traditional in Iceland so I wasn't that weird but um but the neighborhood I had a guy all dressed in black on a big black Harley pull up and goes you know what are you painting your house black for like well you seem like you seem to like the color black pretty pretty well it makes the space the building less dominant in the neighborhood I think that it quiet it down if I had made it another color or even white it would be larger I think it really works and I love the way that the black works with green so I planted a lot of trees and I also love to Garden so I've had a lot of fun doing that but it's quite a formal Garden I wanted to really honor the Elegance of this building it's and I also love that it's sort of a big Square people thought it you know I had turned this into a place for Satan worship and you know all kinds of bizarre things but I think what's really nice about painting it black when you approach it at night you don't really see the house but you see these long Windows of light these candles if you will my neighbors were very pleased when I put a bright yellow railing on because it sudden that was my bit of humor there's a little playfulness to adding such a bright color I think that gives it a bit of Lev levity and uh lets you know that human beings live in here that you know sometimes smile I did buy this place to share it I like to host people I don't have a family or a partner and so I create one through Community there's been so much dancing and partying in the space and it functions exactly as I envisioned in terms of welcoming folks in I've always told my kids it is all in the Deep details everything you do take it one step further and it makes it even better and it becomes the unexpected hi I'm Grant and I'm Joanie and this is our handmade Schoolhouse in Knoxville [Music] Tennessee I'm from South Knoxville I was born in Oakridge but been in Knoxville basically my whole life we did off and on all through high school and then when we went to the university we decided y this is it so we've been married for I have to think is it 41 years I know we've been together 45 years but whatever capacity when we first got married we lived not far from here and for some reason one day we saw somebody up here and we just stopped in and said would you all sell the place he said oh my dad will sell anything it was totally dilapidated every window was busted roof falling in everything was just full of uh of trash this originally was the kondik school building the neighbors have been so cool because they went to school here and they would tell stories of the window that they broke when they were playing ball or where they got their first kiss we've had a couple of graduating classes that have called and said can we have a reunion there and so we we pretty much open it up and people wanted to to look around as long as they look legit when people walk through the door usually it's a wow we'll have people come in and sometimes we barely know them so yeah just walk around and they'll just look and then the questions start this is our living space this was part of the original two room 1910 Schoolhouse some years back we we added an elevated platform just for living space just to separate the room give some interest so we added this fireplace some 25 years ago just because that is our main living space and we enjoy fires so much we truly live in this space we watch a lot of Television a lot of movies we play cards we play board games when the kids come over this is where we hang out we spent a lot of time during Co creating the dollhouse that was our daughters that never got finished it sat down in the basement for 30 years and we flirted with throwing it away but we just couldn't no when when Co hit you we needed like everybody something to do so we said well let's let's renovate the dollhouse and it really was fun because as an architect and a teacher we didn't want to go buy dollhouse pieces so we either made or or transformed things and probably one of the neatest things was joanny came up with it a a lid on coffee creamer when you take it off and set it down it's got a lid that pops up and it looks like a commode so that's the commode in the doll those are the types of things that we just spent hours trying to do and look for while we were locked up for 2 years travel has really influenced us with our colors and different things we want to incorporate into our living space we have modern we have boho we have a lot of African things we have our camel collection uh inspired by our camel Trek in Morocco I believe that a collection of things needs to live together to make it look like a collection I've always loved Globes maybe it's from my teaching years but uh always on the lookout for a new globe to add to the collection we just wanted this to be a big open inviting space we actually just flowed this into what is the the kitchen and dining area we have a existing wall we took out to bring light in to make this even more open and inviting for where we live and spend most all of our time I have really treated the hallway like a hallway in a school when we travel we take a lot of pictures and I was looking for a way to display those a little differently and uh so that that's all the time changing our kids would roller blade roller skate tricycle bicycle up and down the Halls it's always been a a play Space if you will the floors are kind of rough they're dog scratches where they've stopped and I wouldn't take those out for anything this is our Hilton it is misspelled on purpose come on in I'll show you [Music] around we love to visit New York City and we kind of wanted to have that Vibe but yet work in here so we created our faux New York City skyline out of wood the Hilton because it is surrounded by Hills that are gorgeous out here and there's not as much color in here because we didn't want to overwhelm our guests but that really started out as our nursery and it became Owen's Nursery then Owen's bedroom and then it became Wallace's Nursery and Wallace's bedroom and and they were not very happy when we changed it over the day after they left yeah yeah they're gone let's FFF throw it out I taught in a school for years that was a happy environment and things were everywhere there were always colorful pieces of Art and works of the kids and so I just thought well we need to do it that way here so we have lots of pictures from places that we have traveled and one of the things that I really like is my book tree that I had seen on Pinterest and we went to an estate sale and they had tons of books they were not really books that you would want to read so I thought these will be perfect to give them another life it stays up all the time but we have lights on it at Christmas and we'll put hearts on it at Valentine's Day and Birds on it during the Spring and Summer and and it it's just been a really fun addition and besides every school has to have a lot of books now we can go into the principal's office Olive come here crazy girl this is the bedroom and we wanted a loft type feel we built a platform up to for the bed just so we could have a little Variety in here and have a little little interest the clock is one of my favorite things in here because Gran's always said if you're 5 minutes early you're late so I found this clock and and I wanted it for his office and it didn't fit but that's okay cuz we ended up putting it in here and I think it's perfect in here it does work but it's loud it came out of a uh an abandoned Mall down in Florida down in Florida somehow made its way up to Knoxville if we ever have a fire or anything ever happens our books back behind me here are the one thing that you're supposed to grab we've been writing books together for years we are on book book number 22 I think now you love to get them out and read them see some of the crazy things that went on unfortunately we didn't do it when we were renovating it was kind of the beginning of our our modern phase we went through and now we're probably adding more to it to make it more of the the boho feel that we seem to be comfortable with our bed is on rollers which has been kind of cool when it snows we like to turn turn the bed around and watch the watch the snowflakes coming around now I want to take you to my favorite room in the house it's my [Music] closet it's odd to say that a closet's your favorite house but this is really one of my favorites totally me way too many clothes so I had all my clothes on the white clothes hangers and I thought those are those just don't really work and Mom's all was all the time looking for something to do so I ripped the Fabrics up into pieces and I showed her and we worked on them how I wanted them wrapped around the coat hangers and then we would take yarn and go over top of that my mother did about 200 of those every piece of clothing in my closet is one that my mom and her caretaker helped to cover me and they are Priceless to me also Al one of my favorite things in here is my pair of lips that Grant and I made from the Barnwood I'm the barn next to us I went down to my neighbor one day and I asked him what he was going to do with his Barnwood and he said I don't know do you want some and it was like yes sure I want some he said what are you going to do with it and I said would you please just trust me and let me show you when it's finished and so we had them hung up um and I went to get him one day and I said here's your Barnwood and he was like I never would have thought that's what you were going to do but uh he was so proud of the lips I'm always interested in what they seem to go through first and there's really nothing that everyone seems to go to other than the bus they they like the bus M we have a lot of bus owners in the neighborhood so I hopped in the car with the neighbor we went down to the bus guy and I told him what I was wanting he said you don't care if it has an engine no I don't want an engine in it he said Well yeah if you want one we got back in the car and the neighbor went what the hell just happened I said I just bought a bus it has a reading area we have a table and two of the original seats uh that we play cards people hang out in it and parties it's great in the rain it's just kind of cool the bus doesn't have an engine intentionally and and when you lift the grill up the front grill up off of the the bus we pull our grill out to to grill so that was yeah we've enjoyed that a lot of people do like that cuz it's just pretty unique if you come to our house you have to sign our bus and we have had a lot of signatures the bus has only been out there for about four or five years yes and and it already has a lot of of signatures that are special this place is our lives I mean we we've been here 40 years and and you know again just because we did the work ourselves we never could let go so no it does mean everything yeah [Laughter] [Music]

Channel: HGTV Handmade

Views: 28,929

Keywords: hgtv, hgtv handmade, hgtv home tours, handmade home tours, handmade home, alternative living, alternative homes, alternative spaces

Id: Ex4kPHMzXbw

Length: 53min 30sec (3210 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2024