Hi, I'm Jenna with tiny house, giant journey. I'm here with you,
Derek and his Cypress 18 that he built himself down here in new Orleans,
Louisiana. Can you take us through it?
All right, well let's start in the front.
We have a little sitting area that you've built yourself, correct? Yep.
I have a little bench sitting area right here. So this doubles as storage.
So it's a storage as well as additional seating.
I have my table right along here, so this will be two of the seats
I also have my reading nook.
So with the reading nook and the bench,
I'm able to have four people over for dinner. Oh yeah.
Cause this can move and it creates that four person seating.
So this is pretty nice for dinner. Have four people.
Then in addition to that,
and that stays pretty well. Take that.
In addition, if you lift this up,
did you come up with this design yourself or how did, how did this come about?
Yeah, it's something I've seen on sailboats before.
the sailboats will often have a similar sitting area. Oh, not latches, right?
Yup. So that'll fall in there. And you have a full size guest bed.
So when you go camping it's really convenient. It's tight.
But you can have two people sleep on here for a day or two. Yeah,
I wouldn't want to make this my full time bed,
but it works out really well for that.
Well what I like about it is it actually looks like you have like um,
little footboard, a little headboard and you got the nice window. So yeah,
a lot of breeze coming in here too.
And if you ever decide not to be able to climb up into the loft,
if you're living in this full time, you could always sleep downstairs.
So it was really simple and do just three big hang just to measure it out.
The bench works out perfect.
So it's something really easy to do that gives you additional sleeping space.
So you can use tumbleweed plans. And I can see here that I did as well,
the tumbleweeds Cypress.
I can see here that you've actually done the hipped roof,
which a lot of people don't do. So correct.
How do you feel about your hip roof?
The hip roof is really pretty from the outside and we can talk about that when
we do the external walk around. But it added so much work.
I mean I built it all myself and when building it myself.
I mean that added two weeks of work. If you had to do it again?
I'd go flat in a heartbeat. So you don't have dormers up in your loft.
What kind of bed do you fit up there? That's a queen size bed.
It's a special odor foam mattress that I found so about four and a half inches
high.
One of the things I didn't really think about was head height when I was doing
it. So getting the a thinner mattress was key. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
And your loft is pretty high actually.
If you wanted to. I went a little higher with the loft
than I should have. I could've lowered the loft.
We feel the same way about ours. So it's funny. Well before moving to the kitchen,
he has a closet right here and you're like, ah,
electronic panel in there.
Yeah,
my main breaker and then my breakout is all in there and I have storage and
that's a good bit of storage. Yeah, definitely.
Originally I was storing all work clothes so it was perfect for that. So
exactly.
And then you've customized the rest of the tiny house different than the plans.
Correct. This is the only part that was common to the plannings,
this and the sofa. Everything else is kind of my layout.
So first off I do have central heating and cooling with a little ductless mini
split. You have to have it works out really well.
The one thing I would say to anyone looking at air conditioning at tiny houses,
this needs to be up as high up on your roof as possible.
Having it down here doesn't cool the backdrop. Heat rises.
So what you have to do is you put this here,
you have to put a fan down here to blow air up.
So putting this underneath your bed,
it's definitely an area for improvement. If we go through the kitchen.
So what I have in here is I have a refrigerator.
To me it was important to have a little bit bigger one because where I was
originally living at was about 30, 40 minutes from a grocery store.
So I would stay in here for four days. I'd just work, staying in here.
So I needed food for four days.
I have microwave and then right under here I have a toaster oven,
which is probably enough for. The toaster oven works out great.
If anyone's wondering about a tiny house, these little, uh,
these Frigidaire toaster ovens. I've baked a cake.
I've done all types of stuff in addition to warming up.
They work out really well. As far as stove top cooking, I was using hot plates,
which I don't have in here right now. So those worked out all right. Um,
something I'd like, I wish I would've done is put in natural gas.
You were discussing another,
yeah, an alcohol stove might be good for you, but you know,
and I think you can put those away and bring them out. Um,
I know of a couple of other tiny housers that have them. So yeah,
maybe in the future it's something you can do.
You have plenty of storage down here it looks like.
Yeah. You have plenty of storage. These are cheap.
Home Depot cabinets are really inexpensive. Uh, I'll be repainting them.
I'm not thrilled with this color. I'll probably go to an eggshell,
but it makes her plenty of storage.
I mean between all of these there's so much storage cause I have all of this and
I have underneath there I have underneath the refrigerator what,
when people talk about storage, I don't feel like that's an issue with this.
Yeah. And you have a full size sink,
which I think a lot of tiny houses they have these little bar sinks, you know,
which is unfortunate when you're trying to do a whole load of dishes is this,
it makes it a lot easier for you. The basic sink is awesome because
you can do dishes. I've done clothes in here on a bench,
so I mean there's a lot of storage space. You can do small packs in it.
It's really nice.
This is another thing that I bought at home Depot for like 100 bucks.
I bought the whole assembly and this is just storage now. This is just storage.
Yeah. So my bathroom,
I used corrugated steel for the walls. I have a standard 32 inch shower basin.
So anyone that has a shower at home has the same size shower here.
So you can really by putting your um,
bathroom in this orientation with the house,
you get a lot of run back here and you don't encroach on the kitchen. Uh,
one thing to show you, if you look up at the ceiling, I have polyurethane,
the wood up here for moisture. So that's why I have wood in the shower.
If you don't poly urethane this at least once a year or so, you will get mold.
Yeah. And you have a, a regular flush toilet.
Yeah, I have traditional flush toilets , so nothing fancy there.
And there's some storage above the toilet as well.
18 foot trailer. About how many square feet is that? 126 square feet.
Right. And you don't have dormers in your loft?
There's no dormers. So if you look, I have just the traditional pitch.
If I had to do it again.
I'd definitely do dormers or a shed roof when you go and the dormers give you so
much more room. I mean, y'all have dormers. How do you like them?
I wouldn't have a tiny house without dormers.
It's not something I've thought about a lot.
When you're one person sleeping up top, this is okay. When you get two people,
the dormers adds so much extra room.
But I have a Cedar clap siding. It's beautiful.
And you put a stain on it? Yeah, this is a, I can't remember the name.
It's a Bayer product is a sealer stain. Okay.
So it's one product that does the waterproofing and the color like I like,
yeah. How often do you have to redo that or do you?
I would redo it about every two years.
Anywhere that's high humidity or high sun, you're going to have to do it more.
Um, but it's worked out really well.
We're still in the original coat and we're right at two years old.
Great. Yeah. Awesome.
And then on the back of your trailers where you have your utilities.
Yeah, I have electrical hookup right here, and this is water inlet.
I have sewage discharge on the other side.
And then on the front of the house I have my, a mini split.
And then I have my tankless hot water heater and propane tank.
Okay. Well thank you so much for taking him through your house and you know,
next time you build a tiny house, I'd like to see that one too,
and see all the changes you've made. You can see my next one as well. Excellent.
All right. Thanks guys. We'll see you next time.