This next Tiny House tour is brought to you by
Vikings. If you've never played Vikings before, now is the perfect time to join 10 million other players and start.
The new game version is epic! Dominate by destroying cities, build giant fortresses, or use a more diplomatic approach to rule the world.
Personally, I'm all about carnage.
Support our channel. Download Vikings using the link below and get your initial protection shield for free.
AND my special bonus of 200 gold for a fast and successful start.
Portland is an undeniable Tiny House hotspot here in the USA,
so it should come as no surprise that it's also home to a lot of innovation. Today
we've traveled to see an incredible tiny house project that's packed with some truly ingenious ideas.
G'day Whit. -Hey. -Good to meet you, mate. -Welcome. -G'day Cody. How are you doing? -Nice to meet you.
Guys, this house is off the hook. -Thank you. -What actually inspired you to build a tiny house here in your backyard?
We couldn't build a tree house here. (laughing)
Seriously, we want to, we just want to build and we thought building a tiny house would be cool, so we went for it.
Yeah, we wanted to buy some land and build a tree house
but neither of us had enough money for land,
so we already had the backyard, already had the cement pad and
started building. -Two friends building a tiny house together, that can definitely make or break relationships.
What was it like working on this project together?
Well basically, I'm an engineer and he's more of a creative type,
so if anything looks good you can blame him, if anything works well, it's probably my fault, and if something doesn't work well,
it's probably his fault anyway. -Yeah, that's true.
So one thing that happens with us working together is a discussion can take a long time, and if I don't feel like
waiting a long time to figure out how we're gonna do something
I don't talk to Cody and I just do it by myself, and then he comes back, and he's like, "okay
I guess this is how we're doing it." -You know friendships are built on shared experience, and it's hard to have
more of a shared experience than
building something like this with just the two of you and a little help from your dad.
Yeah, and your bedroom's, like, right next to my bedroom now.
-Yeah. -So we both come out of the same house to work on this house, and it's like 50 feet away, but
one of the things that's been fun is that we, I think we complement each other in the way that we work and
we definitely both respect one another. I'll speak for Cody that he respects me. I have no idea, but it sounds good. -You'll never know.
That's probably because Cody doesn't talk very much
and he can, he has, like, a lot of patience for me who talks a lot and he's
ridiculously awkward and I'm, like, really patient with awkward people. -Yeah, and I need some entertainment so that's why I have him.
So how big is this tiny house actually?
Well, it's on a 24 foot trailer
and it's the legal width limit of 8 and a half feet wide, so it's about 200 square feet with a footprint,
but we've got a six foot loft on the back end and a four foot loft on the front end and a net going between
the two, so we more or less double that square footage. -It looks like you've used some super interesting
woods in this project as well. -So this is all cedar that we got from
this woman who actually gets
her cedar from the mills nearby, and so if you look around, there some spots that have little dings in them and
for that, we got a full pallet -Pallett, yeah. -for a lot cheaper than you would at your local hardware store and
We 'shou sugi ban' the whole thing. -So I think it was you came up with the 's'more life'.
Yeah, we sort of have this theme 's'more life' and so
everything's supposed to look like a marshmallow
that's being held over a fire so this ends a little darker and it gets lighter on that end and then it's just cedar over
there, and then we burnt all the edges, but it's already taken a lot of sun so it's harder to tell. -Awesome, well
I absolutely love the way that it looks on the outside. Can you show me through the inside? -Definitely, come on in. -All right,
thank you!
This is
seriously cool. The net, what a cool idea.
Yeah. -What actually gave you the idea to do this?
I came across the net at another Air
B&B or a rental house in San Francisco years ago and always thought that I wanted it somewhere in one of my houses,
so when Cody and I started coming up with ideas, I said, "we need to have a net." He said, "okay,
we can do that."
and we've literally designed everything around the idea of that this net was gonna go here. -And just from a design perspective
it works
so well, as well, because you can still see right the way through the ceiling so you don't lose any
perception of space inside the house, but you've actually gained a lot of usable floor area.
Yeah
It's basically like having a really big hammock that you can lay down anywhere on there and instantly be comfortable.
And so we've entered into your kitchen space
but you do have two potential entrance ways in the home. -Right.
So can you tell me a little bit about the design of the kitchen?
Yeah, we wanted a big kitchen, just a lot of space.
And I don't know there was something about the bathroom being on one side
and we knew we wanted to have the dining nook on
the other side, so that kind of left the kitchen being on this side.
And we just liked how it turned out. The long kitchen's just a nice space. -Yeah, and then we also found this
gigantic window at a
discount window place. All of the windows here are overstock windows, including the skylight, so we got a great deal
and
we designed around the windows basically, so with this big window here, made sense to put a counter here, the stove and the
vent there, and yeah. -Yeah, we sort of
knew that we wanted this space over here to be a lounge area.
I'd come across a picture of a small space that I really liked and
designed a lot of the house off of this space and then transitioning into this space so
we put in this bench to kind of connect to the countertop and
my dad's helped a lot with some of the cabinetry and whatnot so he helped us put in this table which flips up at the
neck.
And
then, from there, we made the lounge area, which also turns into a dining nook.
But it has a lot of different functions.
So the table flips out and turns into a bed. We can flip this back up so now
we've got it set so two people can sit across from each other and enjoy a meal, but we've also
built it
so this piece goes up through
and connects here for four people. - That is a very clever design
And what a great way of just completely opening up the space and
really, just creating a comfortable space to hang with friends. I love it
Yeah
And as with any tiny house of course everything has storage in it so all of these lift up for storage.
In the stairs there's a lot of storage.
Storage everywhere. -So we've got this lath art. The lath comes from inside old Portland houses.
And we needed it for our outside siding and we use the leftovers to build these art projects which you'll see in the bathroom and
Here and there, so should we go take a look at the bathroom? Let's do it?
That looks really great, can you explain to me a little bit about this lath art and what it really is
Yes
So lath is what used to be built into old houses if you've heard of lath and plaster
What they did it's got wood with little slits in it, and then you put plaster on it hangs there
So now we use drywall and so when you take out lath and plaster
You put up drywall and all the lath comes out and here in Portland a lot of
people try to save this stuff so other people can reuse it so this likely came out of a house that was built in the
Early 1900s and I like that it's being reused and it's being visible instead of inside a wall
It's outside a wall, and can you tell me about the layout of your bathroom? Well we have a
32 inch square shower pan and that had to go in one corner and
toilet in the other and you put a composting toilet in yeah, it's a nature's head, it's
Most tiny houses that I know of have composting toilets and that seemed like the best option excellent well
I am dying to get up there and that's net a try can we move up yeah, let's do it, okay?
Wow
this is
seriously, cool especially having the skylight there it just
Completely makes this feel like a luxury space doesn't it yeah?
It's really cool, and I'm glad you guys came on a rainy day
Cuz it's pretty neat to get to lay underneath the skylights under the rain so when you were designing this space
What were the elements that you absolutely had to have in here?
I think the biggest - maybe the the only thing that we absolutely had to have was the net and
Trying to figure out how to layout this space and how to create the openings and how?
that was all going to be attached and secured and
A nice big open space yeah one of the fun things to figure out was how?
People at our height would walk up the stairs without hitting their head in the net so we had to get this exact
Cut out and the angles you can see go
You know climb up from the loft and then climb down on the other side because one Loft is slightly higher than the other
So this isn't just a rectangle net with two
Holes in it is designed specifically for this space so as the space is potentially gonna be used as an Air B&B
It's a really great design because you could actually sleep a lot of people up here couldn't you we could I?
Don't know that we want to
Open this place up to having a group of eight or ten people were staying in here
You know it is a tiny house, but you can definitely. You know we built this loft to be able to hold a king
We'll probably put a queen here
We carpeted that side, so it could be sort of a lounge, but it can hold a twin
and then you can definitely have a
Person or two sleep out on the net if you wanted to how many do you think this could actually hold?
I think safely it could easily hold up to four people
I'm sure it could hold more, but I wouldn't want to push it more than that
Spoken like a true engineer. Yeah, I think it can hold like twelve
Everywhere I look there are really nice materials and really clever design elements
What are some of your favorite aspects of this space?
I really like the floor even though it took us way too long to make
the floor is actually made out of an old rain cover that used to be over this RV pad so he
disassembled that and then did end grain cuts
and then hand sanded every single tile and then stained it saved sawdust turned it into grout and
laid the whole floor down
Sanded that down and then stained the whole thing so it was a long process
We probably wouldn't do that again, but it was cool. Then the ladder over
there is made out of the first salvaged wood that we got before we even got the trailer and
We just put it in so it was fun. Actually getting to use something that we saved from so long ago and
The countertop is a door that came from my house that we weren't using and we cut out a spot for the sink and then
We did a layer of cement over that to build that
the cabinets I started to build them my dad came and saved the day and said I'll finish these for you and did all the
Cabinetry all the doors the drawers
including on the stairs
I
think that's all the things that I really like there's no question that a
Tremendous amount of time and effort has gone into building this space
What about the cost of a project like this? - Well the biggest cost is absurd waiver?
But in terms of materials, I've been doing the accounting and I think we're about
a bit under
$25,000 for all the materials including the trailer that is a really astounding result considering not only the finish
But also all of the innovation in this space
Yeah, it's all about I guess finding the materials that you can at a good price from
the reused materials at the rebuilding center and the restore and then
figuring out once you have
The materials what you can do with them
So having now almost completed this space is there anything that you'd want to change about your design
I don't think so
This is it's functional in the way that we want it to be I think it feels like a place that
You'd want to come to stay for a few nights. It wasn't designed to be somebody's home long term
I think it could transform into that for sure for somebody, but this is definitely a place that I'd want to come visit
This whole space is
Super creative. I love all of just these ingenious elements like this hammock that you eventually put in this house
I want to shake your hands for this amazing project, but honestly. I'm just too comfortable right here in the hammock so
Congratulations to both of you on this amazing project. Yeah. Thank you
I wish you could stay forever, but I'm sure you got other places to be well
I don't know if you guys can pay for a couple nights of rent. We could use the cash
recoup some of the build cost.
This tiny house is a great example of teamwork really paying off
The loft net for example has to be one of the coolest things I've seen in a tiny house so far and I think it
Really goes to show that just because you're designing a small space. It doesn't mean you can't include some really big ideas