Hi, I'm Jenna from Tiny house, Giant journey. We're here at Linda's house,
the lucky penny in Portland, Oregon. Let's go take a look.
How are you doing? Hi. Come on in. This is Lena and this is her tiny home.
And what's your cat's name? This is Rafi. Rafi.
Rafi is such an interesting cat. He's a Devon Rex. What's that mean?
It's a special breed
and those of us who are allergic to cats tolerate them.
You're allergic to cats. How does he like living in the tiny house?
Rafi loves the tiny house. We have lived over the last four years,
we've lived in a travel trailer,
three tiny houses on wheels and an accessory dwelling.
So he thrives in this element. He likes little spaces as much as I do,
I think. Nice. Well, this looks amazing.
You have a really interesting style going on here. Tell me about the space.
What's the length? Width? Sure.
So the house is 14 and a half feet long and eight feet wide.
And because I don't have a sleeping loft, we get to go up higher too.
in the open space. So my skylight above is about,
uh, I think we're at 10 and a half feet.
The square footage of this house is a 103.3 so just over a hundred.
Wow. That's one of the smallest ones we've been through yet.
But really it doesn't feel small in here. Why don't you take us through it?
Sure. All right,
so to the left here we have the Tansu and the Tansu is a Japanese storage chest.
This is where I store all the various, you know, things in my life.
So I bought everything from my camera to my craft supplies and everything's got
a space and that is really nice. This beautiful.
Is this something that you purchased? It is. I found it on Craigslist.
There was a couple that was downsizing and decided to get rid of it and I said
that's funny cause I'm downsizing too,
but I think it's perfect for the small space because you can access these high
shelves in the loft. And Raffi figured it out right away.
He immediately climbed up and started using his catwalk and started crawling up
into the storage loft. Nice.
And one thing I should mention too is that one of the things that's really nice
about having the storage loft over the door in a space that's designed like this
is that when you walk in,
there's this roof over your head and it feels kind of small.
And as soon as you walk through that space,
the space really opens up and this feeling of compression and release really
helps to make this part of this space feel bigger.
So that's kind of a fun design trick. And did you design this yourself? I did,
Yeah. You've designed a few tiny homes, helped others design perhaps. I have.
And this one was inspired in a lot of ways by Vardos.
So travelers,
people who are really interested in being on the road but still having a home.
And so having the bed high at the back is a Vardo thing. Um,
and having a kitchen kind of to one side is also really common. Um,
so I raised my bed up at the back here. Um,
because I like perching.
I love being able to sit here and look out the window and kind of take stock of
everything around me. Um,
but it's also really nice because I can use my chest freezer,
which of course I had to spray paint copper, like everything else. Um,
and my countertop as the surfaces from my bed to pull out so I can actually pull
my bed out over the countertop. And you just let the copper, right?
So yeah, these just scoot right over when I pull it out.
And then once I pulled it out of the way, I can open up the bed.
It's a bi-fold mattress. So the bed ends up coming out to this point.
And then whenever I'm done I just slide it back and that's it.
This whole house started with the window. Um,
and I knew that I was interested in building the Vardo anyhow,
so the curved window was really a big inspiration.
And then the curve door came along. The next thing I bought was the sink.
And part of the reason for that was that I knew a lot of tiny houses had
started with their sink. And I'm a little superstitious,
so I decided I better get one. Right. And this one,
because it's hand hammered copper,
I started noticing this theme was going on where I had all these curves and then
copper. And so I also at that point had gotten everything kind of on deal.
So I decided to name my house, the lucky penny.
And from that point on copper things and curved things just came at me,
which was really fun. I started this house on Memorial day weekend.
with the wall raising, the walls are built out of sips.
So the walls went up Memorial day weekend, um, in a day.
And then we did the waterproofing and then started on the roof and I brought the
house here to simply home community in October to continue working on it and
then moved in the 1st of December. Okay.
So you've been in it for four or five months now? Yes.
When I lived in the yurt
I came to really love the way that the light comes through from above.
There was this Oculus in the top of the yurt and I loved the light that came
from overhead. I loved being able to see the trees.
I loved watching the birds and the clouds and the rain.
And it made me really committed to having a skylight across the top of my house.
So the old street cars often had the shape where they would be curved,
but then had this little pop up and they often had windows along the sides.
And I decided to have that curve shape with the popup,
but put the window in the top as the skylight.
So the skylight is eight feet long and two feet across, and it really creates,
I think, a pretty magical space.
I've been able to lay in bed and see shooting stars to watch the rain,
to see the clouds, um,
and to watch this tree leaf out because they're probably fun. Yeah.
Let me show you my table. We can have a little cup of tea. Okay. Sounds great.
You'll pull that drawer out. Sure.
I've just got this cutting board. Oh,
nice. Tucks right there.
Perfect. And then you can pick your favorite mug. Oh, okay.
Let's see. So many choices. I think I'll go with this one. Excellent.
What would we do? Like you got up this one. Okay. And then the tea is in
that drawer. Okay. Cheers. Cheers.
All right, come on in. Yeah, it's cozy in here.
So I haven't finished out my shower yet because I don't actually shower here.
I shower in the big house or usually at the yoga studio,
but I will be finishing this all out and then it will be available for
showering. And when I'm not showering,
my plan is to have a little bench across the top so I can sit down,
take off my shoes, um,
and then also store underneath so I can put my backpack in when I arrive and
have that just be tucked out of the way.
And the shower head is here inside the medicine cabinet
and it's just a garden hose. Oh, it's brilliant. I love it. Awesome.
How is it fed?
Do you have a street water hooked in or do you have a pump with the tank or,
yeah, so I have water coming through a hose and then I have a hot water heater
underneath the sink. Okay. Is it propane or electric? It's electric.
It's a little point of use water heater. So four gallons.
So I have to be really good about taking a quick shower.
But the nice thing about using the shower head, um, that is from the spray.
You know the spray nozzle from the garden hose is that you can turn it on,
you know, get yourself wet and turn it off again. That's really easy.
So this material is called Allupanel and it's something that I found
when I was looking for a good material for my under carriage. It's lightweight,
but it's sturdy, it's really thin.
It's only about three millimeters thick.
And it comes in a huge variety of colors. So it's expensive.
But if you're thinking about doing it in a space where it's really gonna pop,
it makes a lot of sense.
I use this copper colored allupanel here in the shower surround as well as the
backsplash from my kitchen. Nice.
And then are these Cedar boards or what are you using up here for moisture?
Yeah, so the boards are Cedar and they've all been sealed and stained as well.
Yeah,
you've got to prepare for that because obviously exactly coming out of here and
there are gaps between them as well.
I know there are a lot of people who've had issues with moisture rising from the
shower area, especially if they have a bed above. Um,
and I don't have a bed above, I have storage, but having the,
the open space in between them is going to enable the air to move out through my
exhaust fan.
And then on this side I have my dressers and these dressers stack nicely.
I've had them for years. I used them when I was in the yurt.
I used them when I was in Bayside bungalow and they fit perfectly in this space
as well. So the way I have this setup is I've got, you know, my little vanity,
I suppose it is with my jewelry and that sort of thing. Um,
and it's nice because I can walk in the door and it's my landing pad.
You know, I can come in, take off my coat, coats hang here.
I can take off my earrings, I can, um, you know,
drop my change and my receipts and everything just has a place which is really
nice.
So my drawers are all organized with little dividers and ever since reading the
life changing magic of tidying up,
I've been folding some of my clothes vertically as well. Um,
and it really does work. So that was kind of a fun discovery.
So the top dresser has all of my clothes. This is my wardrobe.
I do have one small suitcase of off season clothing that I keep above in the
storage loft. And then I have my shoes
and this bottom drawer has Rafi's litter box. Perfect.
And there's actually a little hole that I cut in the side so that he can jump in
and get into that space.
And then I just tuck my broom back there too. You're the smartest cat in the world,
to figure that. He's very clever. That's true.
The porch is made out of Cedar and it actually folds up so that when I'm in
transit,
the porch is here tucked up against the house and then the tongue of the trailer
enables me to drive forward. Perfect.
We're standing on the tongue standing on the tongue,
so as soon as my house is back to the place and the porch drops down over the
tongue, we've arrived. This is by the way, is the chiller box,
so during the months of the year when I don't need to have refrigeration inside
the house because it's perfect refrigeration, temperature outside,
I just keep my food in this little metal box. Very energy efficient as well.
Absolutely. After I found this beautiful door, the rebuilding center,
and had my copper sink and had my arched window and knew that I was doing an
arched roof. I knew that I was going to play that theme up.
And so I found these boards for the lower portion of the house at builders
material resources, which is a great place here in the Portland area.
And I knew I wanted Cedar because it would hold up really well. Um,
and these pieces were actually pieces that were offcuts when somebody was doing
a project and they started out with 12 foot boards and these were the pieces
that were left. So these were the off cuts from other boards.
So I got a really good deal on them.
And then I sealed everything with the help of a bunch of friends inside and out.
So all six sides of everything. And these shingles are,
they call them rounds on the bottom, but they don't actually make rounds.
They ended up looking like fish scales almost if you put them just on top of
each other. So then you get these ones called arrows that have a little point.
And when you put the arrows over the rounds, you can actually make the circle.
It's beautiful.
So I did that for a row and then the regular rate shingles and then I switched
You know what they kind of look like?Pennies.
They kind of looked like copper penny. Exactly.
And another fun little thing is that here I have, um,
a little piece of copper that says home sweet home.
And so every time I come home I tap it and just remind myself to take a breath
and appreciate that I'm home. It's beautiful.
Well thank you so much for taking us through your home. We really appreciate it.
Absolutely. Thanks for coming to visit till next time. See you guys later.