- I'm B.A. Norrgard and we are in my
tiny house in California.
So today we're going to have
three different groups of people,
two couples, and a single gentleman
come in and spend a couple hours in my house,
and see what it's like to live in a small space.
A tiny house is a smaller home
than a traditional home than you
may normally think of.
It's on wheels or it's on a traditional foundation,
and there's lots of sizes and spaces.
It's whatever works for you as tiny.
So, this house is 112 square feet.
The trailer is 8 by 16 feet.
The interior living space is 6 by 13,
plus the loft which is a queen size bed,
it's eight by six, up there.
So you should at least be able to lay
down in the loft.
If you happen to get company while you're here,
you can open this speakeasy and see who's here...
- Oh, nice.
- ... before you open the door cause, you know.
- What would be a good password to
to get in here? Owl magic.
- There's an induction burner for cooking.
Cups and glasses right here if you
want to make tea or anything,
and the tea is right here.
- Sounds good.
- You are in the shower, you are.
- Composting toilet and this has the pete moss and the scoop.
- Okay.
- Pretty self explanatory I think.
- No, explain it.
- Oh! It's not about making it disappear,
it's about making the air not touch it.
- Okay.
- That's what keeps it from smelling.
Any questions?
- Um, can I ask how much it costs to live like this?
- You can. Materials are about 25,000.
Then I did labor myself, if I had had to pay
labor it would have been another 15 or 20,000.
So, this is probably you know, 40 or $50,000 house.
- Make yourself at home.
- Thank you, very much. - Thank you.
- I'm happy to have you here.
- I'm ready to, make this house my home.
- I feel like I'm in Hagrid's hut,
but like if Hagrid had a wife and
she came and spruced things up.
- I'm going to Instagram this moment.
Abe, wave hello.
- I look tiny. - You look so tiny!
- It was a real fiasco getting up here.
- It was a fiasco and I mean this
is part of the sacrifice.
- Start face-timing people.
- [Voicoever] Hi, show us the tiny house!
- You guys want to see the tiny house?
- Should I hashtag this #divorcein2hours?
- Yes.
- Trying to get down, I don't know
where the ladder is, I feel like I might fall.
- It's so unsexy, by like, getting out of
bed like this...
- If you sit in the yoga swing and
the whole house crumbles around you,
I'm going to laugh so hard.
- I will, too.
- You would think, you would never
lose anything in this tiny house.
- Yeah, you would think, but...
- Except I already forgot how to make tea.
- You want a quesadilla?
If I make quesadillas will you have one?
- Yeah, I'll have one.
- Look there are dogs.
This is the best thing
that's happened since I moved into this tiny house.
- Boiling in action, - Let's see.
- Tiny bubbles for some tiny tea.
- I'm sitting here with a bottle of vodka
in my hand that I'm not sure I'm going to drink,
cause I don't want to have to go to
the bathroom again while I'm in this house.
- Tiny house!
- Get in there. - I can't. I can't.
- That's the thing, is, there's basically two rooms.
There's inside and outside.
They should advertise these things as like,
marriage counseling things.
- This is the only place for us to sit, I guess.
I feel like I'm learning so many things
about you that I never noticed.
- How do you not, just from proximity,
get pissed?
Just start tearing apart each other.
- No, you dip, look how deep the well is.
Don't put your fingers in there!
- I didn't.
- Hold it by the handle.
- This is a great time to be single,
while you're living in this house.
I can't imagine what the two couples are like.
- You barely switched the light bulbs in the house,
let alone know how to hang a photo straight.
- Ouch. I'm backing slowly away.
- Imagine getting in a fight in this house.
There's no place to go.
- Can you open this? I can't open this.
- It's tight.
- We need that flavor for the quesadilla.
- It's not a masculinity issue with me.
This is on tight.
- I did a lot of the work.
Okay. A little gloat moment?
- Hey, cheers, we made tea.
- Cheers.
- Cheers to tea, for two, in a tiny house.
- So, hard for me to get down.
- It's not going to happen.
- No.
- I'm claustrophobic, so that's why
I'm keeping my eyes closed.
And doing deep breathing exercises.
Having the roof this close to me,
is a little freaky.
- I'm sorry, we're not wider than the door frame.
- We are.
- How is that possible?
- In college I studied sustainable design
and construction, but I never used it.
- So you're not like running out to
by a tiny house right now?
- I just don't think the tiny house thing is for me.
- Where's my vodka?
- Here, I'm putting my leg straight out.
- Oh, wow.
- I love it.
- Well, have fun baby. - I might divorce you,
and go get a tiny house for one,
and just tour the country.
- Not for us as a couple, but really cool experience.
- I would like to spend more time
and kind of go from place to place and see what it's like.
- I don't know who he's going to do that with.
- I understand to the people that actually
make tiny houses go through with it,
it's not a gimmick.
It's something they actually are doing
as a lifestyle and I think that's very
brave of them, I think it's very admirable.
- I just need one improvement.
We think that there should be a table
in the wall that you fold down,
so you can eat at it, cause we had to eat standing up.
- A fold down table off the wall would be a great addition.
- I mean it's not for me.
I'm too used to creature comforts,
and I'm enormous, I'm 6'7".
This is just to small for me.
- I think you really learn to appreciate
what you do have.
- I learned to appreciate you.
- Yes.
- I think it would be fun to design
somebody else's tiny house, I guess.
Not one that I had to be inside of,
but I really appreciated to Beth Ann,
for letting me experience this tiny house first hand.