Whenever I go on vacation.
I like to book accommodations that are totally unique and there's nothing quite
like staying in a tiny house hotel.
So today I'm revisiting tiny digs hotel where I'm interviewing one of the owners
and designers and she's going to take us through her very favorite tiny house
that they have here on the property. When it comes to tiny house living,
you really need to find a design and layout that fits perfectly with your
particular lifestyle.
One thing I love about this hotel in particular is every single tiny house has a
unique theme.
So today's tiny house is a Victorian tiny house theme,
which is one of my absolute favorite themes by the way.
So let's go take a tour and learn more about what it takes to run a tiny house
hotel.
Hi, I'm Pam Westra and I'm the owner of tiny digs hotel here in Portland,
Oregon.
Tiny digs was conceived a few years ago,
but it took us a whole year to build all the houses that we wanted to start
with. We opened in the fall of 2016 with six houses.
We now have nine houses on site,
so we rent out tiny houses as a hotel so people can try out the tiny house
lifestyle. We wanted each house to be designed differently.
So if somebody came and said, I'm thinking of living tiny,
they would have different style houses to go in and see them.
The cottage tiny house is the ninth house that we built for tiny digs and we
purposely put it out into the future a little bit because we knew we wanted to
do a little bit more detail on this house and have a little more time to devote
to it. It took us four months to build this house.
The cottage Victorian home that we have here that we're in today is reminiscent
of my home in Michigan, which was also a cottage Victorian.
We raised our boys in that home and left it behind when we hit the road in an RV
for a few years, it has a lot of the white features that we had in the house.
Uh, the rosettes on the corners of the window,
the fireplace that was all custom designed and some of the stained glass and
such like in our home back in Michigan.
This is my favorite house at tiny digs because of all the details that went into
it and the memories that I share between this house and my dream house that I
had in Michigan at one time.
So the cottage has a few design tricks to it to make it feel larger and roomier.
It has a low ceiling when you walk in the front door,
your eye travels to the end of the house to this nice big beautiful window at
the back with the greenery outside and then to the chandelier and to the high
ceiling above. People often remark when they come in here,
this can't be the same size as the other houses, but it really is
once you enter the house and you'll notice the fireplace here,
it's a little electric fireplace and we custom designed this surround to fit in
this area. Even though we have heating and air conditioning unit in the house,
the fireplace will really get it nice and toasty warm in here.
The couch here is really a couch bed.
It has two handles on the front and you can slide that out.
Sometimes two women will come and stay here and friends visiting town and they
want separate sleeping arrangements and this does pull out into a nice queen
sized bed.
This quilt that's on the couch looks like it might be an old antique.
It is not. It's a Target find and these pillow shams.
On to the curtains here.
I was at a yard sale and the woman had all these old lace curtains that were in
great shape still.
Then I found this green stained glass window, just a yard sale
find for like $15 who would think that you could find such a beautiful piece of
leaded glass for just $15? And then I found another little leaded glass over here
on the stairway for this tiny window.
And these windows again were specifically made just for hanging the leaded glass
in and some design going up the stairway too.
Then we have the little drop leaf table here. I just love drop leaf tables.
We have them in several of the houses. It's an old antique also.
This leaf is up. The back leaf is down.
One day I was walking through Goodwill and this little lamp was in Goodwill.
It's a old hurricane lamp that was used back in the day with kerosene in it.
I brought it home,
ordered these little additions to it at the table here,
the drop leaf table. We have a couple chairs.
I did do the mismatched chair thing on purpose.
I just think it's just kind of a cool design thing.
I like the eclectic look more.
This one was just on the curb side again in a free pile and I went up and asked
the woman if this was truly she was getting rid of it. She said yes,
if you need some Victorian things come on in the house.
My mother just passed away and we are here cleaning the house out and we've got
several other things from her that day too. She just gave it to us.
She was just totally excited to have her mother's memory live on in something
that was going to be repurposed and reused and so we hope that she comes by and
visits us one day. I really love these plates on the wall.
This was a definite Pinterest find. I saw that. I loved it.
Then went on the hunt for different shapes and sizes of plates.
During the Victorian period,
angels were a big thing and actually my house in Michigan,
that was a cottage Victorian home.
We called it angel house and I had at least one angel in every room of the house.
I wanted to carry that over to the cottage here at the hotel also.
So we have this little angel above the window and she's the only one that's in
the house.
But it reminds me my old home. In all our houses at tiny digs hotel,
we have little kitchenettes of some sorts so people can make their coffee or
their tea.
And so we chose induction heat plates for the safety factor.
Long ago I visualize in this house of having an old China cabinet here as the
whole kitchen, in this space we are a hotel,
so we don't need, uh, an extravagant kitchen.
We just need a small place to make some coffee or tea, wash your dishes,
maybe heat some leftover foods up.
And so this China cabinet was the ideal thing.
Took me a long time to find this.
We took a galvanized container and made it right into a sink.
Now this has a drain straight down through this. And you know,
we did caulking around here, plumbed it out with faucet,
put all these beautiful dishes that I found at different estate sales and thrift
stores. I was quite proud of myself.
I actually did the lighting in this cabinet all by myself
one day I also put the glass shelves in so that the light would travel down
through to the dishes below.
The chandelier I think was one of my first finds for the tiny house.
It's just from Home Depot.
It was such a good deal and it looks like an old period correct chandelier from
a Victorian home.
The staircase is another thing that I really wanted to put into this house.
These were all spindles that were acquired from odd lots at rebuild centers around town.
With the hotel,
we wanted safety features because it was a hotel.
When a guest comes, they may not be so familiar or comfortable on a ladder.
This has a nice outside railing so it feels more safe and secure for them to
climb up.
This is the loft of the cottage tiny house. As you can see,
it has these dormers on the sides and this peaked roof that goes into a very
center piece here.
And we used one of these rosettes in the very center to cover up where all the
wood came in and matched. Again
that target quilt and pillow shams all our main beds at tiny digs here
are queen sized beds.
I want to show you the design of the bathroom.
So this is a sliding door instead of a swing door,
we use them in most of our houses because they're such space savers.
The sink is around the other side of this. So if you're gonna use the sink,
you have to actually come in the bathroom, close the door,
and then move to the position where the door was slid to before.
Even the toilet has a little bit of design feature of the Victorian area.
Right even down to the floor level here, there's some contours.
All our toilets in tiny digs are flush toilets.
I know a lot of tiny houses have composting toilets. That's great.
We're in the city. We're required to have flushing toilets,
so all our toilets are plumbed out the bottom of the tiny house and go to city
sewers. We are hooked up to city water, sewer and electric.
Just like if you went to an RV park,
so all the houses in tiny digs have a full shower and this one is no exception.
You can stand under it as a rain shower if you like that effect or you can turn
off the rain shower and have the handheld sprayer.
And every Victorian house has to have a cool little front porch with some ginger
breading on it. The front door is no exception.
It has a little bit of bricker bracker here and here on the door.
Took me forever to find this door.
It was not the most ideal,
but it was the closest I could get to what I had envisioned in my mind for this
house. But it is a a hundred year old door, so it's pretty cool.
As you can see in the side of the house here we have an electrical hookup just
like you would do on an RV.
We chose to have 50 amps of service because we wanted an easy peasy for the guests and
for us for maintenance wise,
we didn't want the guests to run out of gas for their heating or their cooking.
All the houses are 16 foot long or 18 foot long depending on the house and so
they're double axle specifically made trailers from Iron Eagle trailers right
here on the East side of Portland. The paint isn't sprayed on them.
It's all powder coated and baked on for longevity and so they don't rust out.
The feeling that the guests get and the feedback that I get,
it's just tremendous. I just love it.
We get people that come to tiny digs from all sorts of backgrounds.
Even if a person isn't going to live tiny themselves,
they get so excited when they come here and see the tinies and get to experience
this. They've seen a lot of the TV shows.
They've read about it and it's just near and dear to them too when they leave
just like it is me. Thank you for checking out my videos.
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because I post a new video every single Friday.