To most people choosing to live in a tiny house might sound like choosing a
life full of compromise. But in today's video,
you're going to meet one couple who found a way to fit every luxury that they
enjoyed in their 5,000 square foot,
former home into a high end tiny house on wheels.
Are you guys ready? Because I guarantee you this tour is going to blow you away.
Hi, I'm Julia and I'm Robert and we are tiny living,
living large.
Watching on one of the channels, the tiny homes. And we were like,
we looked at each other and we said, we can do this. Yeah,
we certainly can do this. We thought,
what if we built our own tiny home and we would
be able to stay in one place for a month and
get a sense of the community. And so that's how the idea started.
We took a tiny home building class that sort of also validated that
there was nothing there that we couldn't do.
But we also learned some of the fundamentals, the fact that, you know, Hey,
you're building a house, that's going to go down the road. What does that mean?
The previous home that we lived in was over 5,000 square feet.
We enjoyed it thoroughly.
I mean, people would say you went from 5,000 to 300.
Maybe that doesn't even make sense, but again has not been,
it's not been difficult at all
There definitely were people that were questioning the motives
of why would you do this? And it almost to them was a downgrade.
Why do you have to do that? And they couldn't see the benefit of it.
They only saw the negatives of going from large to small it's just because
we want to go tiny because we want to live more of that sort of lifestyle and
being on the road and so forth. Why would we have to compromise it?
And I think that was one of the key reasons we chose to do a tiny house versus
maybe some of the alternatives. Yes. This tiny home is on the upper end,
but there's absolutely, there's no compromise.
Makes a difference from a sustainability perspective.
There isn't the waste that we have found in our
larger home with this smaller space makes us feel better
that our footprint isn't so huge and extravagant.
The question we often get is what's the cost of this tiny home,
because we have so much in it.
It's also hard to compare because we didn't have it built for us.
We built it ourselves. You know,
you can't count the labor and the sweat and equity. If you will,
that we put in and you know, a material cost,
we are probably somewhere just North of $125,000
from a tiny home. It's a lot, there's This is a high end,
tiny house people that perhaps we sort of associate with,
which are sort of the empty nesters, if you will.
And on the road that have now worked and so forth, that want to move in.
This is quite affordable.
Welcome to the interior of our tiny home.
When we started thinking about the design of this home,
we wanted a lot of space to entertain.
My favorite part is the kitchen.
One of the features I love in this kitchen is my baking station.
I have a tiny mixer.
And so this comes very handy when I am doing my gluten free bagels,
my gluten free cakes. Love it.
Another feature that I absolutely love is my coffee station.
We have an expresso machine the glasses here, the cups,
and then I also have my toaster.
Another feature is the refrigerator, plenty of space,
more space than actually we need,
but always good to have another feature that we didn't want to give up on the
dishwasher. Lots of room in the dishwasher.
It's a full size one because we wanted to host.
We wanted to make sure that all of our appliances were full size.
So the refrigerator is full-size.
The dishwasher is full size.
Our stove is also full-sized four burners.
But since I love to host,
I felt that there was a lot that I can do with four burners,
the pot filler, I consider it a necessity.
So we did put a pot filler in here.
The steam oven is also a great feature.
We bake breads in there and it's artisan breads comes out.
Absolutely perfect. The timing for dinners is great.
Since I love to cook, I had to the spice rack,
a sliding spice rack.
Another feature that we designed primarily for myself
is this sliding ladder. It's nice and slim.
And I just take it out and use it to reach the
pantry.
So our fan is actually quite powerful just because we didn't
want the smells of cooking to be absorbed by the interior,
the tiled back splash.
We get a lot of questions with regards to that because we're mobile and we
didn't want the grout to crack.
So we took a lot of care into researching.
It's a flexible grout that when we're moving, it doesn't crack.
So our tiny stove, you notice it right when you walk in,
it has a oven.
I do a lot of pizzas and breads in here.
It keeps this tiny house, very warm, very cozy,
works great. We love it.
And thinking about a fan for the tiny house,
we knew that we wanted the air to circulate.
I just didn't want a very loud fan.
We purchased this fan is actually very quiet, does a great job.
And it looks good.
I'm especially proud of this shower because I built it myself.
I knew that we wanted to go with a tile of sorts.
However,
the typical tile weighs a lot and the
mother of Pearl is very, very light.
So one of the features in the tiny home that was a must for me,
was a toilet room.
And it works wonderfully because it has its own separate
space has doors that close for
discreteness. And it is a nature's head.
We've been using it for about a month now, no issues at all.
It's been working very, very well. We have storage in the ceiling,
which is more storage than we ever need, but it's always nice to have
in terms of the washer and dryer,
it is a Mila very energy efficient let's head up onto the
bedroom.
I thought at first that it would feel claustrophobic here,
but actually it doesn't. There's plenty of space.
It's a queen size bed.
We have lots of storage for clothes.
We have storage on the floor
and then we also wanted windows on both sides so
that there's air ventilation very important to get a
very well rested sleep.
One of the things that was key in our design was to have office space for us to
both be working this year is my working space at a standard stand up
a working space.I just pull this out of the base if you will.
I have my mouse, I have my keyboard below.
And then I used a screen for my daily work.
This is also then use for a TV in the lounge area so
we can move it to the side. It will go up and it'll spin around.
And then we will have the ability to watch movies or other things upstairs
as well. Below here,
we have the drawers for the wine.
And then on the other side, similarly,
we have the drawers for the glasses.
I will take this table. I will pull it out.
I will spin it around and then I will lift it up
and I can secure it. And then we have
the table leg that I can put underneath.
And now I have a bar top. So now we can sit, stand around,
talking with people who are cooking in the kitchen. And it's just,
it's actually quite comfortable. One of the,
probably most distinctive features of our home and one of the key design
features was to be able to be sustainable and using solar energy.
But where do we put, where do we put all that stuff? Uh,
the batteries and so forth.
That's always a challenge we knew underneath the stairs might be an option.
And we talked about how do we flip up the stairs to do that? And then, uh,
I think Julia came up with this brilliant thought that,
that we could slide it around.
So this is actually a kind of a neat design where we
can slide the stairs away to really the guts of the
system. So here you see the Tesla batteries.
We have the equivalent of two Tesla power walls,
actually four Tesla model S modules.
They came out of a, a donor car.
If you want to call it that these are 48 volt battery systems.
We have it running to a Magnum inverter and
then a midnight solar converter system.
And we have 1800 Watts of solar on the, on the roof.
All of the lights in this house are led, of course.
And they're also all drawn down to the central hub,
which is using a home assistant. Okay, Google turn on,
all lights,
tying into the automation was a great thing because I can be anywhere in the
world at my tiny is on the internet.
One of the things that is nice with systems is that you can
really create an interface.
So this is just a regular iPad and they have a utility where you
can build a quite customized, uh, if you need it to, or,
or follow their templates.
So I have the ability to control all of my lights in groups or individually.
I have shades in here for,
for the house and I can actually see my battery voltage,
probably I would say around noontime,
this thing was at a hundred percent that I have all my temperatures,
my floor heating, cause I have the radiant floor. Heatings my overall, uh,
AC system. We have our weather station on top.
So we can look at when do we can look at inside, outside temperatures,
and then you can start using automations to do tasks.
Here, I'm sitting in the lounge. Uh,
actually this lounge was originally designed to be our bedroom.
We realized in wintertime, where are we going to sit? You know,
we can't sit outside and where are we going to sit in the,
and where are we going to have friends over and so forth? So we,
we sort of pivoted a little bit and, uh,
instead of having sort of a guest bedroom up, uh, on the loft,
we made this a lounge area where we can actually sit up to
eight people around this table and,
and we can have it in a cocktail configuration, which is sort of the low, uh,
as you can see a little folded up table.
And then when we bring it up and fold it out and we put
our Leafs in it, it becomes a dining room table.
But then the nice thing is that if we do have guests,
we can then take that table,
lower it down to the level of where the seats are and put
the cushions from the back down in the metal.
And we have a full queen size bed here as well.
Yeah, here we are outside. We had to design it with travel in mind,
meaning structurally rigid, but also lightweight.
We chose a gooseneck, the reason for that, but again,
we're going to be on the road a lot and goose snacks are significantly easier to
handle and drive that it's a lot more stable. They're easy to maneuver.
Once we get in, we have a triple axle, the structure of this tiny house,
we built it with steel framing, lightweight, cheating,
saved about 3000 pounds of weight.
We've got triple pane windows. It's absolutely no heat loss.
And it also has a sound barrier if you will back.
So we don't hear anything from the outside. Once we close those doors,
did the sign on the house, as you can see, really accommodates two sets of,
of solar panels and sort of the angle in that center portion will act as
a deck for us,
probably one of the most distinctive features of the tiny house.
And that's the window wall door combination,
tiny homes are small.
It's very easy to feel that you're cramped bringing the outside in was kind of
our, one of our key objectives. Having the ability to completely open up.
It's really a 16 by 16 foot kitchen.
The decking is about seven by 13 feet.
We actually store it underneath the trailer in sections.
So we have brackets that we had the trailer manufacturer put on when we
ordered it.
So we put the sections in over here and then we have stoppers on each side to
secure them.
This is our tow vehicle, which is a converted semi-truck,
it's a Volvo 780. This one has the single axle.
Most of the converted semis that are towing RVs are
usually single axle cause it'll be easier to deal with.
And what people do is they really go through a conversion process.
They buy a used semi-truck and then they have it professionally
done. And there are a few of these suppliers around the country,
and then they build the bed, which you see on the back,
which really provides all the extra storage.
We have a drum box on the back as well, that houses all our skis,
our sporting equipment, some extra tools and so forth.
And you also see we have our car there.
So we have a smart car and electric smart car that once we get to a destination,
we lower it down with the ramps and we can then drive it around
and select it. So it's, it's very, eco-friendly.
These things are used to pulling 80,000 pounds and with our
tiny weighing about, 22,000 pounds,
that is not an issue it's really comfortable. This whole section,
basically up to the back here is on air suspension.
So was an air cab. The seats are air cushioned.
My mileage on this is about between seven and eight and a half,
which I think is actually quite respectable.
It's been overall.
A very positive response.
It makes us feel good because we hope that this inspires others to do
the same.
There is so much possibility and it's just bringing
awareness to people that they can do this.
Should they choose people get inspired just by the tiny house,
down the road.
The more people see it,
that it is a possibility acceptance becomes the norm.
And there's so many wonderful benefits that come from this.
Thanks for watching this week's video.
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