hi there welcome to my channel where i take you on tours of tiny and creative homes in today's video
we're going to meet hannah and take a tour of her train car trailer turned tiny home which she
purchased for under 400 and the inside is full of budget saving design elements and artistic touches
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hi my name is hannah daus and this is journey my
tiny house on wheels she is a vintage railroad travel trailer she's from 1985
every time i'd move it would be to a new state i wouldn't know anybody there and so i was finding
my roommates off of craigslist people that were renting out a room basically in their house
i had a lot of interesting experiences with my craigslist roommates and i finally was like you
know what i'm not doing this anymore and so i was like a tiny house that's my only hope having
something small my own walls that i can go maybe park in an rv park and afford that rent
my dad did 20 plus years at the railroad so he knew of these railroad surplus auctions they
are open to the public and so i told myself if i can't get this for 350 i'm not going to get
it somebody bid right up to 350 with me and then stopped bidding and there there was she was mine
this trailer when i initially bought it was in pretty good shape it's got an aluminum
shell so that doesn't rust we gutted all the wood and then replaced the wood
once that was fixed and we ripped out some old wiring it was pretty easy to start building back
took us three months to kind of renovate it in my parents yard i had just gotten done with a
master's degree so it was pretty poor i was hoping to spend about six thousand dollars on this entire
thing but it ended up costing me nine thousand dollars to completely renovate it and furnish it
the labor that would have cost about ten thousand dollars if we had to pay somebody else to do it
so i've lived in journey full time for four years right now i live in here with my boyfriend and my
dog they are both great tiny house companions i rent this rv pad for 39 a month then my electric
is in addition to that since i work for california state parks i do live in the employee housing
residence of a park i live in a beautiful place a mile from the shores of lake tahoe somewhere
i would never be able to afford if i worked a normal job and actually had just pay for a spot
journey is 29 feet long and eight feet wide she weighs about 11 000 pounds
there are a lot of obstacles to overcome with where do i park this thing
a lot of rv parks have regulations like they only want rigs that are 10 years old or newer
the shell of journey is from the 80s but she's completely renovated but still i got a lot of no's
it did actually take me going to an rv park showing them the trailer for to be approved
it was really important to me to have a lot of windows letting in natural light into the tiny
house so it didn't feel claustrophobic so we did cut in six windows that are larger than the
ones that were initially in it we have insulating blinds as well so that it also helps to regulate
the temperature inside the house one of the things that i love about the outside of my tiny house is
this mural so i'm an artist and it was important for me to have art on the outside of the trailer
i have a friend who's an artist as well and he's really great with spray paint so i did a sculpture
and traded him for this mural i love this old man in the mountain with this waterfall beard
all right let's check out the back side of the trailer my dad and i installed this ladder when
we found out i was going to be moving from vegas to tahoe where there's a ton of snow the roof is
flat so the snow does need to come off once it gets to be about a foot and a half of snow
up there which is awesome 34 feet of snow on average is the snowfall here in the sierra it's
pretty labor intensive in the winter here come with me and i'll show you the inside
so welcome to the inside insider journey we are at the front of the trailer now this is called the
loft or the upstair because i only have one chair to get up here this is just a really cozy space
it's the warmest space in the house as well so great in the winter time
i love vintage things and i do have some vinyls here
i also have a really cool drum there in the corner for entertaining the company
all of my cabinets i actually got off craigslist for a hundred dollars it came with a lot of
cabinets and i used about half of them refinished them and then sold the extra cabinets for a
hundred dollars my cabinets here are full of art supplies that's my main hobby when i'm not outside
the story of journey has inspired me to also write children's stories about it so started to
kind of make a rhyme about transitioning journey from a railroad car to a tiny house and how that
must have made her feel and how scared she must have been at auction and illustrated it myself
so i'm a plant mom and this window ledge was purposely me my mom built
it so that i would have a really nice sunny spot to put my plants and
they thrive you know i love art so i had to sneak in a little statue of david in there
the brick behind me is actually paneling that is so that the weight could be cut down because you
know when you have a trailer you don't want it to be too heavy so this is just red brick paneling
you can get from lowe's and then my mom and i german smeared it so we just took sheet rock dope
and just kind of spread it over there over top of the red brick to quiet down that that big
bright red color and give it more of that aged look to hide the electric panel box we actually
made a removable spot of brick here taking care to cut in the grout line so it would hopefully blend
in more than being cut like right in the center of a brick but then we put magnets on the back
there and so yeah there's my panel box and it blends in doesn't look ugly
over here is some really great outdoor equipment storage that i use we were
like okay if there's gonna be any negative space in this house it has to be storage
got my outdoor gear my climbing gear i have my packing list right here for every camping trip so
i can just look at my list and pull from my storage here
so this is my art wall it was really important for me to have space to hang art these two were gifts
i love old religious art i studied abroad in my senior year of college and went to different
museums in london and sketched art and so a lot of their art is old and religious and so just
really is kind of a sentimental memory thing for me this light here thought it would be really
cool to kind of you know church it up make it more cathedral like so the ceiling is actually kind of
like a cardboard with a photo of wood on it to try to keep the weight down it was a little bit pricey
but it looks great so it was definitely worth it i got pretty creative with my window treatments my
curtain rod is just a stick from my parents yard the curtains themselves i got the fabric from a
craft store and cut them down i wanted something really pretty and artsy these curtains my mom made
and she put lunchbox insulation in the middle of them so that they can really help insulate
and they also really act as like blackout blinds so it gets can gets really dark in
here when the blinds are down if you hear that kind of crinkle that's the lunchbox insulation
then we just put a rod through the bottom and then you just roll them up and tie them with paracord
so this couch is also actually my bed it's on wheels and it slides all the way out into the
kitchen so it's in couch mode right now it can go all the way flush underneath but i do like to
leave it out so you have some seating but i'll show you what it looks like when i take it out
so this is bed mode and it's a full size mattress or so the reason i didn't pick a queen was because
i did want a little bit of travel space around the mattress in case i needed to
move around while the bed is out because you can see it definitely maximizes the use of space
and rolls right out to basically my kitchen table
so now that we're back in couch mode i'll show you the kitchen
this is the kitchen it has a microwave here an oven here i have a apartment size
fridge only thing i don't have is a dishwasher but hey these come in handy
the counter space is kind of hard when you're trying to meal prep so i did install this
countertop and it does pop up that has come in handy and actually adds also another eating space
these cabinets are off of craigslist i refinished them the countertop was donated to me from a
neighbor who was redoing their kitchen and so i just got a countertop paint and experimented
with tinting it to be the color that i wanted painted the countertop the kitchen faucet was
donated to me as well the sink i did buy brand new this backsplash is that same brick that
is up in the loft except for i painted it copper right across from the kitchen i do have this small
table it has a swing leg so it will swing in and then it can collapse the table down
a friend gave that to me so i just kind of chopped it down to make it fit the space
and attached it to the wall it's a great spot for eating you can sit two people at
it decently comfortably and enjoyed many a meal here with the big great view out of this window
here at the back end of the kitchen i do have a apartment size fridge it came out of a time share
unit that they were replacing all of the appliances so i got this for like 150
off of craigslist and it's been great i have a lot of family photos on there inspirational love notes
from my mom my dad my sister and also some vintage photos of people that i don't even know but
i like when i go into an antique shop i feel like they need a home so i'm like you're coming
home with me you're going on my fridge here is my closet i got the doors out of the landfill
and refinish them so they cost me ten dollars for the closet i do take up a lot of it myself
i do live here with my boyfriend he does not get as much closet space as i do i was here first
so um we do use a little shed that came with the property to help store his winter clothes
it can be challenging to live in a space that's about 232 square feet but as soon as you get
that minimalist mindset it it can be pretty easy so now that i've shown you the kitchen
and the closet let's head back to the bathroom and where you can see where i get ready in the morning
it's great to have your own washer and dryer in your unit
definitely worth the space in my opinion this again i got used for about 150 dollars
and the toilet is the most expensive part of this entire trailer one thing that i really like about
it is it's tankless so i don't have to think oh i've got to drain the back of the toilet before
i can move it so there's not any water going to be sloshing around when i am on the go with journey
we built a box behind the toilet made out of just pallet board that we found had a great aged
patina on it to hide the wiring and the plumbing that exited the toilet because it is electric
so this is my sink it's actually in an antique riding desk that we bought at an auction that
helps benefit a pet shelter and so it's nice because you flip it down and then
you have all this counter space we just cut a hole in it put a ten dollar sink in it and
it works we built shelving in the bottom and then just put a curtain over it to kind of hide that
stuff so it has a good amount of storage it was important to me to have a shower that was decent
size because my shower is like my relaxing part of the day so i didn't want to feel claustrophobic
in the shower and then we lined the shower with roofing metal because it's super lightweight
pretty affordable and waterproof the shower is actually more spacious than some homes
i've been in and pretty much every rv i've been in it's bigger than that so do love my shower
these days it's really hard to get ahead and if you're renting you're just
throwing that money out to somebody else and it's not giving yourself any assets back building a
tiny house even though it's hard it's definitely worth the grind i love this space and i never have
to leave it like i can take it with me that takes a lot of the stress out i've learned from living
in a tiny house that you really don't need a lot to function and be a happy human i love the fact
that my possessions don't own me kind of puts more into perspective what's important in life
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