Today's one of those days where I get to feature one of my heroes on my channel.
I've been following Kristie Wolf online for years.
And if you don't know who she is,
she's been featured multiple times on HGTV and has created some of the most
unique Airbnbs on the planet, all of which she built herself.
So in today's video, we're going to explore her latest creation,
a house that was created from a giant potato. That's also a roadside attraction
and be sure to come back next week to check out another tour of one of Kristie's
fantastic creations, this one being her most popular,
Airbnb to date a Hobbit hole in central Washington.
So let's go take a tour of a giant potato.
Hey, I'm Kristie Wolf, and this is Dolly and we are in Boise,
Idaho at the big Idaho potato hotel. And we're going to give you a tour.
Let's give them a tour Dolly.
We built my first tiny house in 2011,
I was doing it as an experiment in minimalism.
I found a really cheap piece of dirt in my town of Boise, Idaho,
out on the outskirts. I bought that and then I moved my tiny house there.
And so I started to think that I could do this in another area and maybe
earn a living.
I really wanted to build a tree house and I decided Hawaii would be perfect.
Even though I had not been there,
off the success of it I was able to finance my second one,
which is a hobble hole in the middle of Washington state in Lake Shalane.
And then my third one is a fire lookout up in the
panhandle of Idaho.
And then my fourth one.
Is the big Idaho potato hotel.
I'm a huge Idaho fan. I'm born and raised.
I just talk up Idaho like crazy. Cause I think it's wonderful.
Friends had seen this ad for a job of traveling around with a
six ton potato around America and just basically promoting potatoes.
And they sent it to me as kind of like a haha joke. You should do this.
And then I read it and was like, I'm absolutely doing that.
And so I did that for an eight month tour,
but it turned out that it was so successful. It kept going.
So I actually went on year two and three,
eight years later,
they actually needed to make a more roadworthy one.
I sent a video to the commission and said, Hey, remember me,
I called dibs on this. I can make it into this really cool space.
And luckily they trusted me and they gifted me the potato,
which I totally did not expect.
I ended up removing my tiny house.
I hadn't really been living in it for a few years cause I was on the road so
much.
My crane came and lifted it off the truck and put it on my foundation and I got
to work. It looks like a potato on the outside,
but I was starting from zero on the inside.
And so I used spray film for the walls, built the floor,
added the electrical, the plumbing, things like that.
The potato is 12 foot wide on the outside.
And it is I think 24 foot long inside. You know,
it's not all usable space, but it's about 200 square feet
So the potato hotel is actually a roadside attraction as well.
So up here we have food for Dolly. People can stop by give her treats.
We also have a sign that talks about it.
But back behind this gate is for hotel guests only.
Dolly will be here to greet people.
I didn't know that Dolly and I would fall in love with each other.
She's just such a delight and she's become as big of an attraction as the potato
is now. So we're at the property itself.
It's fenced off from Dolly's field.
And actually when we put in the fence line, it's all used fencing,
just kind of did it incorporating the potato in the silo.
When I saw the first drone footage, it actually makes like a perfect heart,
which is a really fun surprise.
The area for the guests is made up of the silo, which is a bathroom,
a picnic table, some green space, and then a potato,
which is the sleeping living area.
Come take a look inside the potato.
So this is the main space we've got the bedroom, a little seating area.
This is just like the chill zone.
A lot of people think it would be claustrophobic without windows, but it really,
since everything's white and there's so much lighting,
it doesn't ever feel stuffy.
There's a whole venting system that recirculates the air.
So people are often surprised at how it doesn't feel confined.
The walls are a spray foam. And when I got it,
this was just an empty storage, had these huge beams.
So the idea was to get the spray foam out far enough to hide those.
And I kind of like how the lumpy sort of texture looks for inside of the potato.
It kind of all took shape from there
I bought this land about 10 years ago for my tiny house and the tiny house sat
right where the potato is. I ended up taking it apart.
And one of the things that survived was the chandelier.
I actually had that in my tiny house, but I had it painted all white.
We got it back to its bone color.
And I just love that it's from my original place.
And now it gets to live in here.
This is my only rental that has a full size bed instead of a queen,
just because it was too big.
And I actually cut into the foam back here to get
another foot and a half of space. So it's kind of jammed into the back.
There's a vent behind the bed and there's the air pumps in on the opposite
side. So it's constantly going through the potato.
A guest actually left this Mr. Potato head and we kept it.
And then I've got some different books,
magazines that we were in some travel books and then some Idaho books.
These Idaho bars, which people love or hate.
And then I found this like high-end chocolate thing that is pigs
and taters and it has bacon and potato chips in it.
And we also leave everybody with an Idaho potato pin. They have updated ones,
but I love these retro ones because we used to get these in elementary school.
So love that. And then our guidebook is always fun.
And to the theme, and this just has everything you need to know about the place,
but in this one, we have Dolly giving like little puns throughout,
tell them little jokes, it's past your bedtime, that sort of thing. Uh,
but that has everything that people need to know in order to enjoy their stay.
Either side of the doorway.
I had this little cubby to work with and these are the only
true walls, two, two by four walls in this space.
And so I just have,
hazardly made these cubbies and then I decided that I wanted to
fridge. Well, I couldn't find any fridge to fit in any of these things.
What I ended up doing was getting a wine cooler, which works for us.
Mostly people are just bringing drinks to chill or maybe some takeout foods.
So we have some filtered water in there and then we just have a few
silverware sugars and things like that for your coffee or tea,
which we keep back here.
On this side of the doorway,
we just have a lazy Susan with a bunch of fun mugs and
a pour over coffee. We do local coffee.
The one in the potato is called Idaho home.
So the other part of the compound is the bathroom.
That's about 40 to 50 feet away over in the silo. So come take a look.
I knew I wanted the bathroom.
It had to be in a separate structure and I didn't want it to seem out of place.
When I had figured out that I wanted to put the bathroom in a grain silo,
then it just took me a couple months to be able to find one that was actually
small enough. So this is only 13 foot wide.
Once I saw this pop up on Craigslist, we drove a couple hours,
disassembled it and then put it back up here. So let me show you the inside.
It's really difficult to design a round room,
but I knew that I wanted to do a trough tub.
And so I got a really big one that can definitely fit two people in there.
And I also got a water heater that was a commercial water heater to be able to
fill up that big stock tank. And from there,
I was able to work with the other components that I needed.
I really wanted when you were soaking in the tub to be able to look at a
fireplace and heat up in the winter time. So this is just an electric set,
but it actually puts off heat.
Here I have different bath salts and each
topper is the scent that it is.
So this one is a Rosemary and you can dump that whole thing in your tub.
Right before the grand opening.
I had no idea what this was going to be what kind of mantle.
We ended up having some scrap wood from the fence posts that we put on the
ceiling, uh, this old round fencing,
the railroad is right here close,
and you can literally just go walk and there's these
nails everywhere. So I ran over there, grabbed a couple,
counted them in to the wood really quick and notched out our wood here.
And it has been the mantle ever since then, I made this light fixture.
These are decorative Chinese fishing traps,
but up top, the silo itself had a metal cap.
And I knew I wanted to let some light in and be able to see the stars at
night. Well, I ended up finding that is perfect.
Is these little bubbles that are supposed to go into like a Cedar fence that
your dog can stick their head in and be able to see outside the fence. Well,
the largest one they have is two feet and that's exactly what I needed.
So instead of a skylight that would've cost me a thousand dollars.
I got one for 60 bucks and it fit perfect.
There was.
A couple of challenges with the shower.
One being that I didn't want to tile it and have like a weird transition.
So these walls are sheet rock.
And to make them curve like this, you just wet it down, wait a few minutes.
And then you curve it around your beams.
I ended up painting this all with flex seal and it's
been a year and a half and it has held up fantastic.
A great idea that I got from staying in another Airbnb was to have the
diverter, not underneath the shower head.
So most houses would have it right here. You turn it on, you get cold,
you jumped out and wait for it to heat up this way. You can turn it on,
adjust the heat,
and then you can get into the shower once it's to temperature,
which I love that idea.
I went with a stacked stone tile for this wall.
I wouldn't recommend tiling anything bigger than this because grouting,
this is a major pain having to shove it in all these little
holes. So I really like the way it looks, but it was a lot of work.
This whole area was another thing that came together last minute and obviously
had already plumbed it for the toilet to be here.
So the shower wall and this wall aren't touching,
there is a gap behind there.
And that's where all my plumbing comes in and where my water heater is housed.
I didn't know what this whole space should look like. What I ended up doing.
And I'd done this in a few of my rentals,
which is having the sink above the toilet. So when you flush the toilet,
two gallons of fresh water fills your tank. So instead of it filling the tank,
it now comes through here, you flush, you can wash your hands to clean water,
and then it uses that water to go out.
Owning a house in a different area that's just going to sit vacant doesn't
appeal to me.
But being able to share that experience with people all over the world is really
important to me.
One of my favorite things to come out of the potato going viral was this
girl's random comment that said,
let this be a lesson that you might look like a potato on the outside,
but you're beautiful on the inside. And that's like, my,
my favorite thing is just the juxtaposition of how light and bright
and pretty it is on the inside. And of course,
a Brown russet potato on the outside.
Make sure to come back next week to check out a tour of Kristie's Hobbit hole
located in central Washington. I'll see you then.