Hi, I'm Jenna with Tiny House Giant Journey. We're here at Bernadette's house,
the Pinafore in Southern Maryland.
Let's go take a look.
Welcome to the Pinafore. Watch your step
This is Alice. This is Bernadette. And this is her tiny home.
So first things first, how long or uh,
wide is the Pinafore do you know the dimensions? It's eight foot,
maybe a little over eight foot wide. And it's 13 and a half. 13 and a half.
The legal limit,
the length 24 it's 24 and then what's the square footage on the inside?
I think 172, not counting the loft. I'm not sure what the loft is.
Maybe another 80 yeah.
And this is an original design by Abel who has the company
They all Vardos am I saying it correctly?
So Vardos I had such a hard time trying to figure out what I wanted and I told
Abel, I said I want something Gothic,
kind of fairy tale kind of European and I just told him, I said,
just build it. Right. I don't know.
There's something about this roof line that it's just like seems so huge and
spacious, you know, to most people it would be tiny, but I don't know.
I don't think my tiny house feels that tiny. No, it doesn't.
One of the things he's really famous for is this particular window,
which is called his moon window. And Abel does a really neat thing with screens.
At first I was like, okay,
how's that going to work? These are on magnets
So there's little magnets here and then they just pop open like so.
Oh, that's nice. And he will also do, um, if you want to,
he will do stain glass in some of these, so see this will just
again nice. Yeah. Just that just stays stable in there with those high powered magnets.
Yeah. So when you open all those up, do you get a nice breeze coming in? Okay.
The only ones that open up this one and this one.
And that's what he does at standard what he does. Yeah.
But you still probably get a good breeze coming. I do I get cross ventilation when I
open everything up. Um,
and the other thing that we did special to where these leaded glass windows.
Yeah.
Those are normally kind of Gothic chapel.
Yeah. And he, you know, I didn't even see the designs for the windows.
It was like I trust you.
I just so trusted him to do it. Sounds like you're really happy with it.
You've been living in it for how long?
Since September. Since September. Yeah. And you've been through, um,
you know, fall and now we're into the deep and darkness of winter.
How has it been withstanding at all? Fine, you know, I really haven't.
The only things have been,
we have had an absolutely brutal winter here,
so I did have some pipe freezing so, but I think I've taken care of that.
It's quite warm in here right now, so it must be well insulated and you know,
he did a good job there. And we can talk about that when we go outside
about how I insulated it. Great. And then we have, um, this interesting floor.
He's got actually going at a diagonal angle,
which I think makes the space seem a lot bigger. It's very pretty. And he, Abel,
um,
he studied with somebody for a long time doing these different kinds of stains
and this is like some kind of old European type of stain that he does on the
floor. Okay. So why don't you tell me about your storage staircase?
Um, this is all Able's design. Also.
The main thing was I did not want a ladder, you know,
and I think I'm tending to see more and more people going with steps versus
ladders and to take Alice up at night and to bring her back down in the morning.
Yeah. You know, you want to be comfortable.
I have a staircase in my tiny house as well and they're coming up with all these
different designs that are actually really comfortable to climb.
And this one I climbed up earlier and very comfortable,
especially with the handrail. And I do like that he has the, uh,
storage coming in from the side here.
It's created shelving instead of pull out drawers,
which is another unique aspect of it. I haven't even used all this space,
but like things that I want to hide are back behind my baskets, you know?
So you get these baskets and everything's nice and neat and then you can hide
other things back in the back. And the Wicker baskets go with the whole theme.
I mean you have a lot of wood in here.
Even the pieces of furniture you've chosen to bring in, have that Woody feel.
And so you can really hide your belongings in a beautiful way in a basket or in
a, you know, a wooden case of some sort like you have here. Absolutely. Great.
Well let's talk about your closet. Nice closet. I was really, really surprised.
I mean, I've got clothes but not, you know, not a whole lot of clothes.
All my boots, everything fit in here. Um, so super closet.
I just put some of these little push lights so at night I can kind of see,
you know, but I mostly wear black, so it's not a, it's not a problem.
Managing things, right? Yeah.
Storage for shoes and clothes and you got a full length mirror in here.
You can get ready. Put that there and kind of stand back here.
Yeah, that's nice. And then you have your kitchen here.
I love your countertop. Yup. This was a surprise too.
We had talked about doing a copper countertop and then Abel,
I don't know, he couldn't get the copper for it or something.
And he started designing these. So this is not, he makes these,
he put all these boards together. This is not something premade.
And I noticed he's doing another one on the house he's building right now. Um,
and I wanted a vintage sink.
So he had this really cute little enamel sink that I love and he brought me this
stuff to like touch up the little chips and I'm like, no, you know,
I like the chips. I like the chips too. And again,
with your Mason jars up here, you found a way to hide your storage,
which you know, kitchen storage, all the different packaging.
It's not exactly the most beautiful thing. That's right.
When you take it out and you put them in Mason jars,
it can become a beautiful way to decorate your house. And it's so easy.
It's just so easy to have everything up there.
A lot of people put curtains in front of these.
I opted not to because it's just easier for me to grab things. Right.
Yeah. So you have it's four burner, uh,
Top propane. Full size, little, um, apartment size stove,
which was something that I wanted because I do,
I do like to bake and actually it also gives me, you know,
more hiding spaces. I have to pull every,
pull everything out when I big something, but Hey, that's okay. Exactly.
And you use this area as your desk as well this little lip.
I am right now in the spring and the summer when it's nicer out,
my Mac will go back out into my studio, which gives me, of course,
much more counterspace here.
But for the winter I can't trudge out there all the time. So yeah.
But it's not too bad. It's not too bad having that.
So I have these two stools as far as somewhere to eat.
And like if there's two people here and the Mac's not here,
two people can sit cause it's like a little kitchenette dining table.
I sit here and eat, you know, most of the time. So that,
that works really well for me.
And you said earlier Abel actually asked how tall,
how tall to make the roof of the kitchen and then the loft because you have plenty
of space in the loft. So this is designed for you? For me. Yeah.
Cause I told him I'm like, I'm 5'7 and Allison's, you know,
a foot and a half. So we're good. Exactly. Yeah.
One of my friends is like 6'4 and the first thing he did was come in
here and just bam into the, but it's for me,
the house is for you. Built it for you. Okay,
great shower, full size, great shower. Yup.
And so he uh,
put a metal backing around all of that and a custom shower pan. It looks like.
Nice. And then you have a composting toilet.
I do Abel's design on the toilet. Very cool.
I tried. I don't know what other people have tried,
but I tried a Cedar chips. Didn't work out for you?
It's like you need something dense to work. We use peat moss in ours. Yeah.
So that works really well. A little messy,
you know when I go to put it in there, but you know, it works. Um,
so that's on that side. And this side is storage for um,
toilet paper, paper towels. And you know,
this is funny because one of my favorite things in the tiny house,
I don't know why, I mean it's a gorgeous house,
but one of my favorite things is my fuse box.
I just think it's the cutest thing.
That's the smallest little fuse box you've ever seen. Yeah. Three switches.
It's like how much more simple can you get than that?
And the other thing that I got just so other folks know that have tiny houses is
just to put some things in here. This is a spice rack. Oh, there you go. Yeah.
And a spice rack. And I've even thought about getting another one.
But then we get cluttered. But for the little bit of things that I need in here,
spice rack is perfect because it's small and flat
and I do love the door, the doors, the doors, very special.
That was Han doors, mahogany.
And then this little window, there's been a couple of people say,
well this little triangle was a strange shape for this curve,
but he just got this one little tiny piece of like a hundred year old stained
glass from some monastery or something in Olympia. And he was like,
I got to use it in the Pinafore. Yeah, yeah. Gorgeous. Thank you.
Well I think only thing we have left inside is to check out the loft
When we go to bed, Alice goes up, then we go up
Then what,
what I love about this loft too is that I actually can kind of stand.
Yeah, yeah. And walk around in here. I don't know any other tiny house that can do that.
It's cool. You know, cause I can skoot pretty much everywhere.
And you're not a short lady. No. Yeah. And I have boots on.
Do you spend a lot of time up here reading. Just at night
Sometimes just at night sometimes. And I've uh,
I probably whacked my head maybe a dozen times,
but I'm getting pretty good about it. Once you get used to it. Yeah.
But you have a lot of head room.
It's really nice and plenty of light up here cause there's three windows,
there's three windows and you have an additional Gable. Yes.
What size bed is this? Um, this is full size. A full size bed. Full size futon,
like organic cotton futon.
And that probably saves you a little bit of space here too,
cause it's not as thick as a normal mattress,
but it's still like very comfortable. It's very comfortable.
And that also helps with not, again,
taking up some of the space and the head room. So,
and I don't think I've ever slept better, right than I sleep up here.
It's just so cozy. I love the view that you get up here.
It's really nice that you can see the whole downstairs.
I mean it really feels like a house. And you know, I think part of that, um,
with my tiny house too is that, you know, I opted to have,
not built-ins but furniture. Okay.
So why don't you tell us about the exterior of the Pinafore?
As I told you earlier, Abel,
I asked him to design me something that was Gothic fairy tale,
right. European just sweet.
And he sent me a sketch and I loved it. And this is,
I mean the sketch pretty much looked like what you say. Yeah.
And I said this is great. Um, Cedar shakes,
all individually put on Cedar shakes. Um, again,
the beautiful leaded glass windows. Yeah.
And tell me about that roof cause it's a very yeah, yeah,
my copper roof. You know, I, I was like, okay gotta do the copper roof.
Wow. It's really unique. And so it's not just shingles,
like it's full pieces of copper that he's overlayed and looks nice.
When he pulled up with it,
it was just this shiny bright copper thing. A new copper penny, but pennies can be
beautiful over time. So your house is just going to age really, really nicely.
Yeah.
We have had a wicked cold winter here in Maryland.
I mean everybody's talking about it.
We've had negative degrees and wind like you would not believe,
which is just brutal in a tiny house being that we're up.
Yeah.
So I was going to do skirting but I don't think I'm going to be staying here
permanently. So I'm like well what can I do?
And came up with the straw bale cause I lived in a straw bale home.
I knew that the insulating was like our 50 got some straw bales from one of the
farmers,
big construction bags that they would fit in,
taped them up with duct tape.
I think it cost me total for everything was about a hundred bucks.
Wow. So I don't think that you could do much better and you can really tell a
difference. Oh, big difference. I mean it's not,
it's not the most beautiful thing right now, but you know, Hey and it's organic.
That's the thing that I like too, when I pull out of here,
the straw bales can be put out for something else. Yeah, exactly.
Or down in my garden and actually the snow around the edges,
this helps some too. Wow. Yeah. It's not, you know, I look at it, I'm like, Oh,
it doesn't look that great now. But it works. Right. It works great. Well,
something we have to talk about is the fact that it looks like you have a second
tiny house here. I have a tiny studio. Would you like to see,
What sort of artwork do you do? Um,
I do photography and I'm doing analog photography.
I've gone back to doing Polaroids.
So that's my main photography that I do.
And I want to do street art. Ah, I want to do like things.
I'm painting all this stuff that you see out here has a purpose and I'm starting
to paint driftwood and then the driftwood will go back to the beach for whomever
finds it. Right. It's very colorful in here. So you have,
I know it's like a juxtaposition, like totally different. Like a woodsy,
rustic, Gothic cabin. And then you have this more
bright and airy. So those are your two Ying and Yang's. Exactly.
This is what makes Bernadette, yeah, that's it.
this is 80 square feet. Okay. So it works for me. You know, it's like,
yeah, I don't have everything in the tiny house. I have the tiny studio,
but still, it's all still, it's all still small.
So you got your work and your play and you know, that's exactly it.
They're both small and quaint and, and you, so yeah, I love it.
Your commute to work.
It's really tough. Okay,
well thank you so much for taking us through your beautiful house.
I'm so happy you get to be a pioneer for the Pinafore. Thank you guys.
Thank you so much. Tiny house people.
Welcome to the tiny house community. Until next time guys, see you later.