Hey guys, we're here in Boise, Idaho at a famous tiny house.
This is the mini motives, tiny house designed and built by Macy Miller.
Let's go check it out.
Can I come inside? Yeah, not sure.
Okay. So this is Macy. And this is your daughter Hazel.
Correct. And this is your tiny house. This is my humble abode.
So first things first, tell us about the size of your tiny house.
So originally my tiny house is about 196 square feet,
just recently added on and it is now 232. 232 square feet.
So what's the length and the width? The heel on a flat bed, you know,
a flatbed gooseneck trailer. Um,
so the flatbed part is 24 foot and then it's got a five foot dovetail.
So the full length is 29 feet cause I built out over the dovetail. Um,
and then I went the full eight and a half foot wide. So it's pretty big.
Tiny house. Yeah. You have quite a few people living in here, right.
Hazel. My partner, James, myself. And soon to be this little munchkin,
hopefully in a couple of weeks. And are you expecting a boy or a girl? Boy.
Boy. This time. A little boy. A little girl. Yeah,
How big is the Great Dane?
He's a two year old, 150 pound Great Dane
She's trying to show you her room.
Yeah. Where's your bed? No, it's over there.
That's my bed. That's your bed.
So this is just a repurpose the co-sleeper that I used up in there.
I just kind of dissected it and reuse the parts.
She moves around in her sleep a lot, so I wanted her to be safe in there.
What's this? This is her table. Your table. We just built this,
this is our last week's project.
Originally I was going to have like a dresser here,
but as I was building it she really liked kind of having the floor space and you
know playing around here. So I was like,
well I could do like one square foot and have clothing and diapers and
everything for both kids, right? Yeah. Storage space.
Each kid has two things.
And then diapers and wipes and whatnot.
And can you describe what this used to be? This, yeah, this used to be my patio,
so the trailer had the dovetail,
which is kind of a slopey part on the back,
is used for loading like heavy equipment a lot of the time. So it's structural,
but it's sloped and I didn't really want to build it up and make it, you know,
part of the tiny house at, at the onset of the design.
So I kind of had the option to cut it off or build a deck on it. And then I,
I wanted to do the deck,
so I go kind of this nice covered deck that had a little reading nook in it.
And I loved my patio, but I love my kid more.
Um, it was kind of always meant to be expandable. You know, when I started this,
I knew that, you know,
the time I want kids might overlap at the time I'm going to live in the tiny
house. So I wanted the flexibility for the future.
So it was always a two year experiment. And quite honestly,
I thought it would be difficult to make it two years, you know. Um, but I,
I set myself up. I took one year's worth of rent payments, built this house,
and then I lived in it for two years so it pays itself back and then
some, and uh, we're at two and a half years now that we're living in it. But,
um, with this addition,
we're going to try to get another three or four years out of it.
And James and I are both in architecture, so kind of our passion is, you know,
alternative construction. Um,
and so we've got plans on this lot that we're on to build a shipping container
house next, which is cool. It'll still be pretty small, but it's,
it's definitely up-sized. She's going to grow out of this
Eventually. They're going to want a little more. This is a back door. Yeah.
I wanted access, the most problematic things in the house are most likely to
happen in the kitchen.
And I didn't want the kitchen to be between me and my kids.
So this was critical for me since this is an extension,
it actually has different siding than the rest of your house. Yeah.
I wanted to keep the integrity of the original design and there's actually about
a lot of people that have told me they're bummed.
I didn't keep the sighting and I intentionally offset it.
It's a little bit smaller than the rest of the house.
And then I changed the material so that you could see the original form.
And this is, you know, not trying to be a part of that.
It's something totally different cause it's cool to see how life changes.
When I was building my house,
it was important to me to use the furniture I had existing already.
And I had a King size bed and it was brand new King size bed.
So I fit that into my tiny house. Um,
I built the loft part up over the gooseneck area and then I also designed it in
so the dog could get up to the bed cause he used to sleep up there before we had
kids. Um,
so the stairs are actually designed for him and he still sneaks up there
constantly. Um, but yeah, so I, uh,
the King size bed loft area, just, you know, pretty simple.
Light I keep my laundry up there. I've got a couple of laundry baskets.
This wall didn't use to be here. Um,
originally I didn't have kids when I moved in and so I wanted the nice open
space but then when the kids came, um, I, I did co-sleeping with them.
So uh, or with Hazel and know she had her little co-sleeper up there,
but as soon as she started to move I needed some sort of safety device for her.
So essentially this is just making the bed a crib. Yup. And there was,
there was a lock on it and you know,
we could just close it off but she can maneuver the stairs just fine.
Now we did have little bumpers on there cause she's still kind of spastic and
she'll run her head into, if she's not careful. Right.
So I kept the living room pretty open. I like to rearrange.
I've actually had this living room re-arranged in about nine different
orientations. So I purposely didn't do built in furniture. This is all just,
you know, flexible stuff. But also I can stuff stuff underneath it.
when I need to, which is handy.
So I built in this kind of bank of clothes storage and this is like the hanging
clothes, dresses. Um,
and then yes you can pull all of those that we've seen it happen.
And then all of the drawers for, you know, my folding clothes,
pants and shirts and stuff.
Obviously my favorite parts. So these,
I actually made this with my brothers.
Yeah, we took a glass blowing class. So each one of these,
like I made this one and my three brothers made those. That's so cool.
It was originally Mason jars, which I liked also,
but they were always just temporary and I've always wanted to take a glass
blowing class.
I rented a lot of apartments and houses that I really hated the kitchen.
I like cooking. Um, so I actually do use four burners quite a bit.
I get that comment all the time. Uh, you'll never use those four.
I do constantly.
I'll cook a meal and have them all going and taking pictures to prove it. Um,
but I also wanted an oven, um, so I could bake things.
And so this area was super important to me cause I,
I needed a functional kitchen.
It has more counter space than any of the rentals I've had. And it really,
it's just kind of laid out perfect for me. It's, it's how I cook.
I've got the refrigerator right here and then, you know, I can do my stuff.
It's a good one person kitchen. If James gets in here while they're cooking,
we battle it out a little. But um, but no,
it works really well. I have, uh, all of my appliances,
my cooking things right here. Um,
I just stuff things in the storage. I don't really even necessarily need these.
I've got some mixing bowls and stuff down there. Um,
but most of what I use is kind of at this level and open shelving makes it look
bigger, makes it look bigger and feel not so caved in. And I actually,
this used to be exposed metal and it caught kind of dark over time and I'm just
painting those white even just makes it feel so much lighter to me.
You have a lot of white in here. Is this drywall? Yeah, it's dry wall,
which is the big, no, no, you can't do drywall on a tiny house. But um,
I used three eighths inch drywall, um, to save on the weight. It's, you know,
if I can build a house, I can patch a drywall. That's my theory. Um,
I haven't had any issues with it for two and a half years.
I haven't had to patch anything. Um,
we did only move it one time about 18 miles,
so it hasn't been on the road a whole bunch.
I don't know that I'd recommend it if you are constantly moving,
but there's no reason you can't do it.
And I actually use quarter inch in the kitchen
I was kind of scared to do that the first go round. Um,
but this was so easy to work with.
We tried it in there and this is my sliding door.
I'm cheap. And so this is what I came up with for, you know,
Bardot hardware's really expensive. This is not,
it's just plumbing fittings on the top.
The panel is on casters and then it's got hooks to hold it to the wall.
If I remember correctly, you were able to build this for pretty cheap, right?
Yeah.
So the goal was one year's rent payments and that was $10 to $12,000.
And I built it for $11,416. Um,
but that I didn't know that would include all the appliances and that included
all of the appliances and everything too.
So we did pretty awesome kind of good deals.
The trailer was used as, you know, the foundation,
but it took about two months to get it to where it was buildable,
which is really defeating. You know,
that that beginning energy when you're starting your tiny house,
you're like so enthusiastic. And so for the first two months of it,
I go out and there was just a trailer kinda stuck, you know? Um,
so it's, it's a lot of work. I got a really good deal.
I saved thousands of dollars. So it was critical for me cause it,
it mattered for my budget. Um, would I do it again? No,
there's a lot of things I did the first time that I'm glad I did once,
but I would never do them again. This, you know,
for me it was a learning project.
I had a hard time going full on to the composting toilet.
I also wanted to live in an urban area and they frowned upon you, you know,
making compost piles in your yard sometimes of human waste. Um,
so this is the most expensive part of my tiny house.
My toilet is $2,000,
and it's because it's past government testing to be certified sanitary,
waste control. Um,
it's not past here because it's never been challenged,
but it's been passed in places like Portland and California. Um,
so the idea being that if they called me on it,
I would have a leg to stand on and maybe could make the argument and then I like
my showers. And so I wanted an oversized shower.
So it's 36 by 42. Nice shower. It used to be black.
I painted it white with special paint, which is awesome.
I like how it turned out. I didn't even know you could do that.
Somebody said that to me. I was like, I want to do that.
And you were just able to paint? Yes, it's tile
And I used a product that's for tile and in showers and it's
super durable, I've been really impressed with it so far. Um, this,
I wasn't gonna make it into a bathtub cause the kids, you know,
they don't do showers, they do baths and we have a rubber made bucket and there,
that's where the kids get their baths.
Okay. So is this actually used to be your porch here? Yep.
So this is a five by eight enclosed porch.
And I used to just have a chair there and we made it the kids' room.
Right. And you know, I use corrugated metal just cause I've wanted to do that.
It was kind of daunting to me. Uh,
for some reason I couldn't picture how to do it necessarily in my head.
So I was like, well, we're going to do it.
We're going to learn it's harder than it looks.
We kind of thought it would go up simple. You know,
once we did the research on it, it took a lot of time to do it.
And this is where I kind of,
I set this well back intentionally so you can still see that corner.
It's weird if it changes materials on the same plane.
So I sent it back a little. It was worth the three inches. Right.
You have really big windows actually for a tiny house.
Did you get these reclaimed around the deal? I had them free. Yeah,
they're brand new windows I got from a company. They said,
come take as many as you want. And so I did. That's great.
What kind of siding is this? This is also free.
There's 83 shipping pallets that I this assemble.
That's one of those things that I wouldn't do again. A lot of work there.
Yeah. I wish I didn't stain them.
It looked so cool before I stained them cause it was all very,
but then I stained them to be uniform and they all turned uniform.
So that's a rain screen assembly. So the,
they're not actually the water barrier. There's a water barrier underneath it.
You can play with the water. Um,
and yeah there's it's furred out a quarter inch so that the rain is allowed to
kind of go behind it and out. Yep. And then your lime green door.
Green door. I just like like green. Yeah. That's where that came from. Um,
and it kinda just became my accent color cause everything tends to be that color
anyways. All right Macy.
Well thank you so much for taking us through your house.
She's also got a really informative website that you guys should check out and
you know, whenever you guys built that shipping container,
we're going to have to come back and do another tour. Awesome. All right,
sounds good. Thanks. Thanks a lot. See you guys later.
give me an awkward hug here. Awkward hug!
I think that was the best awkward hug I've ever had. I actually yelled