hey there welcome to my channel where i take you on tours of tiny and alternative homes
today we're taking a tour of an adorable homemade truck bed tiny house that was built
using reclaimed materials for under four thousand dollars and we're going to meet the couple who
built it and has been living full time in this truck bed tiny house for over two and a half years
before we get started make sure that you're subscribed and that you hit
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make this house
hi i'm shane i'm kelsey and this is dixie and we're love hut for life
we wanted to do something weird it was just time to do something fun in life we wanted to see
all 50 states one year which is an ambitious goal for anyone traveling the country we already had a
truck so i drew the love height on like some grid paper and we started building three days later
yeah there was no planning there's just none whatsoever it was fly by screw there wasn't really
a lot of information out there about building something like this every bit of it we made up
it was 43 days of very very hard work my neighbor rolls over with this sliding rotator and
it picks the house up and he sits in the back of the truck for us with this thing
i was just having a panic attack after putting so much effort into this thing to see it swinging
in the air and uh i was like i was like i know this guy's doing us a favor so i'm gonna
go inside so he can't hear me screaming as i'm watching it once it was on that truck we threw
all of our gear inside and drove out like it was within a few hours we were out of there
under 5000 has been invested into the rig but the original
build we kept it under 4 000. it was like 3 900 something
we had a lot of free stuff i did a lot of dumpster diving we spent as little as possible anything
free we could find there was a place next to the bar i was working at that was pulling these
awesome pine pallets out of dry storage but we just tore them down and that was the idea of using
pallet wood to finish everything coming out here was an awakening there's a lot of people that need
help they need someone they can trust someone that can help them repair their rig or turn it
into what they actually want it to be versus the best that they could do because maybe they just
they couldn't get to that point that they're dreaming up and they needed someone to listen to
them that is how we've been supporting ourselves since we've been on the road is helping the
nomadic community and that's a lot of fun for me i help others and build whatever needs to be built
we have been on the road for 851 days
we meet these people like someone working at a gas station and they've never left that town
the idea that we have been across the country three times blows their mind sometimes
i think that it is hard for anyone who knew us before to look at us now and not see the vast
difference not realize that we are very much happier and healthier now than we've ever been
this is the love hut the house and the truck are rather independent from each other all of this is
just strapped into the back of the truck and we went with that design in hopes that if something
were to mechanically happen with the truck we could trade it out for something else and
it wouldn't be an end-all versus like a bus or a box truck where you're kind of stuck with it all
in one package the truck itself is a 2015 chevy silverado with a 6.0 liter gasoline motor in it
it's rear-wheel drive instead of four-wheel drive the four-wheel drive option cost you hundreds of
pounds of cargo and we were already pushing our limits to be honest we haven't actually weighed
it i can't tell you exactly how much it weighs i did the math on the lumber when we first built
it so i'm comfortable where it sits i do run an air suspension underneath it to help combat the
inevitable tilting of it going back and forth as we're traveling around
as far as height goes we are about 12 10 so we round up to 13 even and that allows for us to not
come too close to hitting some sort of obstacle these horns are a gift a lot of things on this
rig are all gifts from somebody a close friend of ours we've been making jokes about finding some
some big horns like boss hog off dukes of hazard and he found these in a thrift shop so he brought
him back and we bolted them to the front of the truck like it's nice having a memory every time
i look at them i think of my friend the windows in the love hut are a bit different a lot of people
ask about driving down the road with a piece of glass at the front it's not actually glass it
was a whole sheet of plastic and we got it cut to dimension and we were able to put windows all the
way around the house for almost no weight and it allows a lot of natural light coming in combined
on the house we actually have six windows as far as conducting heat and cold through
these windows it's awful it's not a design i would go with i would do something else but
and the idea of moving around quickly and just being able to let light in it was a great solution
to the problem but longevity speaking not so much the roof on the love hud is very unique we came
across a technique called poor man's fiberglass and you basically use latex cloth and glue to form
a membrane across your roof so our roof is all plywood with that membrane over the top covered it
in elastomeric over our time on the road we also have solar panels strapped to the top at opposing
angles which in the beginning served enough purpose to keep the batteries sort of charged
it's where we wanted to put them but now we've added two more huge panels on the flat section the
exterior is bead board we used it to cover whole sections and then the insulation we repurposed
some fiberglass insulation which is not ideal when you're doing this type of conversion you
don't want to use fiber glass but it's what we had and once again it suited our needs at the moment
if you look at the corners of the house it's supported by a jacking system these were a diy
version the strapping for the house is numerous places but you've noticed these two here they go
through the frame rails there's also turn buckles holding it down holding the front up as support
arms we basically used a bunch of scrap metal that was laying around welded up this contraption so
it bolts to the running boards and this is bolted to the bottom of the house and it just allows for
support up here to suit our needs having to take a shower outside a lot of times we're so remote
that a covering is really not necessary but every once in a while we are capped around other people
so we have a water source that comes out of the house and we can direct connect a shower head to
it or we can connect a propane water heater out here and shower either in the tin or wherever
so the back of the house has a lot to look at we use the battery operated light
up top outside to give you that homey feeling it runs off of solar
we put two signs up top and the signs are our state flags so one is texas and one is alabama
and it has served a great purpose on the road and that's we meet people from our home states
when we're all over because you see those state flags and a lot of times you don't know a lot
of state flags but you always know you're on so you get to meet a neighbor sometimes
our fridge is a little unique we decided to not go with a 12 volt option because we
were only going to be on the road for a year i managed to locate an old-school poly cooler
and they're basically foam all the way around versus a lot of dead space and we insulated
about six inches all the way around this cooler and we're able to hold ice for about six days
we also built in storage underneath so the floor of the interior is here everything below there's
a storage drawer that comes out and we can store our jacks as well as propane cooking stoves and
anything else i can fit in there having what i know as a dutch door this door is actually 2.0 for
what we had here originally it was one single piece of plywood that we kind of
hodge podge together but this one we put a little more thought into it's actually a
one piece of three quarter inch plywood doubled up because it's such a small size buying a real door
and cutting it down just wasn't really economic and the window is a piece of art we got from a
flea market and we just put plastic over it to create a window out of it come on inside
as you can tell it's pretty big in here everything was definitely built around shane and him being a
rather large guy which means there's tons of space for me it's more of a cabin feel
we wanted it to be very very homey inside even though our adventure is about what's out there
and experiencing all of these new things we wanted to surround ourselves with
things that made us happy and comfortable so that we always had
a place to come home to and there's little mementos of important people in our lives
it's really just our little nook of personal items that make us feel at home wherever we go
this window and really all of our windows are a big part of what makes this space having so much
natural light just coming in from all angles we like to sit here particularly if it's cold
because we can have our diesel heater running and talk to the people who are shivering outside
as we're nice and toasty sitting in here but yeah this is kind of a social space we
really didn't build the inside of the love hut to entertain people so this allows us
to still be in our house and talk to people out there which is always really fun for me
this little corner over here has a whole lot crammed into it we've got family pictures and
loved ones here our map here shows everywhere that we've been not just in the love height actually in
our entire lives so there's a blue for shane pink for me and then green for everywhere that we've
been together which is most of the country now not quite all of it but we'll get there
this is kind of where we put some of our our favorite finds on the road as far as rock
counting goes purple pastel light and this nice little quartz tower here and darlene darlene is a
new addition to the love hut and we are very much hoping that we can save her there's certainly
enough flies in this lifestyle that she should never be hungry and then up here we have shane's
skateboard he has maybe used it a total of five times but it makes for a really great hat rack
both of us really enjoy cooking so the kitchen area was really important to us because we weren't
going to skip on our meals at all so as much at counter space as possible was really important
so that we had the space needed to prepare those big meals but we also wanted to make it
multifunctional so in here is where we keep all of our dry storage food and then we have a two burner
stove we've gotten really talented at making meals on just two pots that's a skill i never thought i
would need in life but i'm really grateful for it now and then up here we've got all of our dishes
knives plates bowls so over here we have all of our personal jewelry pieces that i've made
i have been making a whole lot of jewelry on the road basically it's a way for us to justify all
of our rock counting trips more than anything but these are some of our more personal pieces
just like with the kitchen we wanted to double utilize anything that we could and
the staircase is a great way to do that in our bottom step we have a toolbox and then
in the middle step we have all of our electrical stuff so our inverter any plugins that we need
uh easy access to our charge controller is in there and then i'm actually sitting right now on
a recliner slash toilet so when all of this comes off we have a toilet hidden inside here as well
the bedroom once again was a built around shane so for me that means without the mattress i can
actually stand up completely in here but it also means that there's plenty of space for
storing the things that are most important to us mainly my instruments
they're all over this room so my gym bay stays down here we've got the didgeridoo that
we harvested and created in sedona that one's a lot of fun and then both of my ukuleles stay here
we have our tv here so that we can lay in bed and watch tv although i will say that that is the most
useless thing in this entire house everything else in here gets used more than that tv for sure
and then it also leads into this little bench area where i sit a lot and just play music and look out
into the beauty of whatever is in front of us because we take a picture out that window every
morning we generally have it pointed towards the prettiest part of whatever camp spot we're in so
it gets utilized quite a bit we have these these deep we call them our captain windows because
it's kind of like a boat and it actually allows for storage so a lot of times like i'll throw
you know things that right there that i need easy access to
the ceiling has worked out really well for us for the most part the purpose was for
us to reduce weight on the build because we were already getting pretty heavy and
it was one of the last things that we did all it is is just insulation shoved behind sheets
part of living on the road is not having access to laundry facilities all the time
so there's those clothes that you put on for 10 15 minutes or maybe a couple hours but don't get
dirty and you want to wear them again before the next time that you hit a laundromat which might
be next month and so we use these nets as a way to do that so shane's got some sweatpants in it right
now and i've got some shorts that i wore once but that really allows us to stretch our clothes
and just be more economic with how we use them and for those clothes that are dirty and definitely
need to not be seen again before the laundromat we do have a hamper built in so it's able to hold
almost everything that is in our drawers so when it's full it's definitely time to go
we definitely are not trying to convince anyone that it is a good idea to build a
big house on the back of your truck and travel the country in it it was a good idea for us
because it makes us genuinely happy every day if you're spending all of your time putting fear into
doing something that would potentially make you happy because you just don't know what that means
that's a waste of your life there's really not enough time in life
to spend it doing things that don't give you this joy
thanks for watching this week's video i hope you enjoyed it please make sure
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