Why would you build and live in a tiny house when you could simply buy an RV?
This is a question that I've been asked a million times since building my tiny
house five years ago,
and the answer I've always given is that they're completely different.
RVs are typically mass produced and made with cheap and lightweight materials.
They just don't have that same feeling of home that you get with a tiny home.
That is what I used to think at least until recently.
I've come across quite a few renovated RVs that have completely blown my mind.
In today's video,
you're going to meet a newlywed couple who decided to gut and renovate an RV
into a gorgeous tiny home and I think once you see the inside,
you're going to get that same feeling of home that we all crave.
We're the Remingtons and this is our tiny house.
Caleb and I actually grew up 15 minutes away from each other,
but met out here in California through a mutual friend.
Caleb has a condition called cystic fibrosis.
CF is a genetic disease that affects the lungs and digestive system.
Diagnosed when I was one told I was only gonna live till 19 when I turned 19 the
life expectancy went up to 29 and then when I turned 29 it's up to 37 so kind of
just live this life of having this disease
for him to kind of come into my life and bring this new energy in light.
It changed my life for the better. So long story short, fell in love,
got engaged in Hawaii and then decided to put on the greatest wedding ever
donated,
which is a charity gala and benefit concert hosted in place of our wedding.
Our tiny home is about 300 square feet and we've been living in it for
just over a year now.
We bought it for $20,000 we put about 10,000 into it and we just started ripping
everything out.
This place kind of felt claustrophobic and that was goal number one was to open
it up and give it more space. After that.
That's when Tiff really got to flex her creative design brain and really bring
this place to life and make it feel like home.
We had like no idea how to do tiny living or how to use
really a hammer and any kind of tool and we're like, wow, yeah,
we'll figure it out.
Welcome to our tiny home. Come on in.
So this is living room
and this is our amazing couch that folds down into a bed.
We'd love to host people here.
So this generally is the place where a lot of people put their little rump of
bump bumps,
and here we have some storage. This is where we put our containers.
This is Oso's special cabinet. Where is food and brushes.
we also have extra storage underneath where we have blankets and also any fun
little tinker toys that we have. I actually do a lot of work here.
So I sit in this corner, I sit in this corner.
We also use this space for our TV watching time.
It is cornered to the TV, so it's perfect.
So this is the front of the RV and this is the captain's chair.
This is where Caleb loves to sit and take his little lounge-y time.
Also right behind it is the steering wheel and that is how we actually move this
whole motor home. We have the curtains here that we made ourselves.
They're just regular curtains from Ikea.
We folded them in half and then latched them onto the original hooks that came
with the RV and also in front we have insulation that keeps us cooler in
the summer and warmer in the winter.
Here is our day bed that also acts as storage.
There used to be another co-captains chair that we ripped out,
but we figured since that chair was collecting so much,
just random stuff we're like let's build an extra storage space so this is
bolted to the ground and we also have hidden seatbelts that come out when we
move.
I'm going to take you to our kitchen, which is my favorite spot.
I love to cook.
We completely gutted this.
We just kept the lowers.
I just took out the upper cabinets and put floating shelves in.
I know it's something that a lot of us tiny homers love to have cause it opens
up this space and we have so many beautiful dishes that have been collected over
time. So we wanted to showcase that off, over here
we kept to our original oven and stove just financially it just made sense for
us and everything was working and it seems like the previous owners didn't
really use it that much. So it was a big win for us.
We also use it as extra storage for some pots and pans and this is something
that we absolutely love. We just built a box,
kind of like a faux vent over it just to hide our microwave.
And what we have is a little metal magnetic at the bottom and it just sticks to
the top and this is where we can access our microwave. But yeah,
we just felt like this was such a nice little modern and kind of open touch.
And something else that I love about our kitchen is these faux brick walls.
So we got this thin sheet of faux brick from home Depot and we mortared on top of
it and then just painted it.
And again it gives that really rough kind of texture,
but it makes it look a little bit realistic and again,
more modern and the white always opens everything up in here.
Here is our fridge. This is something I'm always curious about.
When we were looking to live tiny, we were like, how big are the fridges?
Because we like to eat,
we can hold a lot of things and we have a couple of drawers at the bottom for
our fruits and vegetables. We have little meat stations,
but we try to keep everything as organized as possible.
But it definitely does hold a lot of food.
And this is our pantry as well
this has a little rolling rack where we can pull out,
we have our can food some of our baking essentials and any other little knickknacks
that we have. This is our coffee nook area.
We use it a lot for our Instapot and prep area.
So there's not as much real estate on the kitchen countertops.
So I I like to come here and prep a lot of our foods.
This one is so special to us.
This is a drawing made by my best friend at Kayla Haber.
She also has cystic fibrosis like Caleb,
Caleb and I actually saved our actual wedding day for them.
We got married at UCLA hospital because Kayla was waiting for a second lung
transplant and she couldn't make it to our actual wedding that we had and she
was supposed to stand with us.
So while she's in the hospital she'd do this for us and gave it to us as a gift
and we absolutely love it.
This is where we eat. This is where we work.
This is where we play games. Up here,
we have some storage for our cups in thermoses and on this side is more of
Caleb's medications.
So this table was actually leftover scrap wood that we had from cutting out our
kitchen counter.
block and all we did was just buy some industrial lights from Amazon.
You'll see throughout the rest of the house it has like a modern industrial kind
of feel. We do love white spaces.
It just again opens up our tiny house so uh,
you'll see a lot of those different accents.
We are going to take you to the bathroom now.
This space is actually is a lot bigger than we ever anticipated.
We love how drastically different we were able to transform this small room.
We went with the peel and stick tiles for our accent,
which has been absolutely awesome. This back wall I just added,
I just used a little bit of black paint and a sponge.
The sink is just an actual sink bowl.
We were able to just put a little drain in it, drill
a little hole and then the faucet is from Amazon and it gives another,
again, different kind of metal that is brought into the home.
One thing that we always get asked about honestly is our toilet.
We ended up keeping the original toilet that was in here.
We were kind of thinking about going towards the composting route.
It was just a little bit more expensive,
so just trying to keep budget friendly.
What I love about this space as well is the skylight.
We're able to kind of shower under the stars or have the sun beating on us. Um,
it always just makes it a little bit more of a nature feel.
It's also a tub shower,
so it's really great for when we have to give Oso a little bath time of which
he absolutely hates.
So this is our bedroom in the front
we have our dresser where we put most of our everyday clothes
we have our bookshelves with our essential oils.
That's also another place that we frequent a lot.
We try to do reading every morning and every night about 20 minutes.
This was something that we brought from our old place. We absolutely love.
It was just a easy print that we got off Etsy and we took out the other half of
the cabinet closet here and then made it into a nook for reading and also extra
seating space when people come into the bedroom area.
Behind me is another closet.
This is where we put a lot of like our bigger kind of chunky coats and suits and
clothing wear that we don't necessarily wear every day.
I think our bedding probably changes out every month.
I feel like especially with pillows underneath the bedding is more storage
space.
We're able to lift it up and I have a little bit more storage for clothing as
well as some extra blankets for guests that come over
So one of the things that we had to consider while going tiny, um,
is trying to figure out space to store Caleb's medication.
This is Caleb's vest. We store it on the side of our bed, um,
as well as his nebulizers.
We chose the bedroom to store most of his medications,
um, because it is the least traffic area in the house. Um,
with people coming in and out all the time and especially a lot of the windows
open, there's just higher opportunity for bacteria and viruses to land on things.
In our very near future, we're starting to plan,
hopefully growing our family.
Our kind of bigger goal is to be able to move into a container home.
We're obsessed with them and we're starting to get that same feeling that we did
when we were looking at motor homes and all that stuff.
So I feel like that's something that could definitely be a reality for us in the
next, um, three to five years.
So living tiny and moving into a space that is less than 300 square feet has
definitely brought its challenges. But if anything,
it's brought us closer together.
It's made us learn how to communicate better with one another.
While there is lack of privacy,
there is more of an opportunity for intimacy in a way that you don't have,
like when you're in a big space. If anything,
it's allowed us to grow individually,
which helps us grow together as a couple.
We love this lifestyle and I think it's definitely showed us a whole new way of
life.
Make sure to check out my website for more stories on the tiny house movement,
including renovated RVs, vans, schoolies, and everything else,
tiny living.