Hi, I'm Jenna from Tiny House, Giant Journey. So, little over four years ago I
was working at a job that I wasn't passionate about. I had gone to school
for film-making and I was working at a movie studio in Hollywood, but I felt
stuck as I think a lot of people feel stuck in a job after they've gone to
college for and gone into a lot of debt. My partner and I at the time we decided
to live a more minimalistic lifestyle something that would free up our
finances and with the savings that we had, we decided to build a tiny house, and
spend one year traveling on the road doing photojournalism and blogging.
We were just in way over our heads and it took us a year. I was working on it
mostly only on weekends for the first six months and then I quit my job and
started helping him full-time. So I traveled for one year with this tiny
house and we went about 25,000 miles which is huge in one year. We went all
the way up to the Arctic Circle in Alaska and all the way down to Florida
Keys at Key West.
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So this is the hitch end of my tiny house. It's been raining here a lot in Oregon so
you can see that my reclaimed siding, it's 75 year old wood siding from an old barn
in Wisconsin, is looking really dark right now. It probably weighs twice as
much as it normally does because it's just soaking up all that rain. Where I
keep my propane tanks so I have two 15 pound propane tanks. In the winter I
like to use this heat blanket because helps with efficiency I also had trouble
with when I was staying in Colorado not getting enough propane pressure to my
water heater and it actually broke down so this was a must. I've also put on a
winter skirt this year. Just learning from my time in Colorado. I'm in Oregon
now so it's not quite as cold. It definitely has made the floor a lot
warmer in my tiny house. It's the coldest part of the tiny house, heat rises, and
with all the wind and cold air coming underneath the tiny house this is
definitely made it so I don't always have to wear slippers.
So this is the front or the license plate end of the tiny house. We found this on the side
of the road. At the time we just thought wow this looks really cool with the old
reclaimed wood so it's not structural. It's kind of a nice handrail in a way
because we don't have a handrail. It's just been aging with the tiny house it's
been on here for about two years now and every day it looks a little different
and I really like it. I'm parked at an RV park in Oregon and this is my setup. I
have my electricity here, it has a little meter on it. I just plug in right here as
you do. This is my sewer line but since I don't have a black water system, I have a
composting toilet, it's really just for grey water. Hello Oregon *laughter* and this is my
fresh water line so this is going in with an RV hose and a filter into my
fresh water system. I also have a 46 gallon I think freshwater tank in here
so when I am off-grid I can just fill and I have a portable gray water tank as
well that I hook up right where the sewer hose is hooked up when I'm off-grid
and then I can dispose of that, however.
I also do movie nights out here so I have a projection screen inside the tiny
house and it can hang right here, that's what these cooks are for. I bring my
projector out here, it's battery-powered, and everything works off my Wi-Fi. "It's
hailing now" *laughter*.
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So, now we're inside my tiny house! This first little area is just
like this tiny little mudroom area where I put my boots. It's also where I keep my
dogs dishes. Directly to my right in the bump-out area so because we have the
porch it creates this little bump out is the living room slash office slash spare
bedroom. So I spend a lot of time here cuz I work from home. It's constantly
evolving. Have outlets back here cuz this is where I work a lot of the time.
There's USB plugs everywhere throughout this tiny house. The whole motif of the
inside is very rustic using reclaimed materials, like this is all reclaimed
wood that's exposed here from a barn in California that I was able to get on
Craigslist. This is sort of my desk area. I'll sit here if it's just me having
coffee in this morning to maybe move this ottoman out and do some work or if
I have people over... this is the full
table so when I move these Ottomans, which of course has storage inside. So
right now I have my snow gear cuz it's still winter and I go snowboarding just
up the street. You can have seating for four comfortably. I've had actually six
people, just really close together, three back here three there. And since
this is a pretty thin table I really have to think hard about what I want to
cook if I'm gonna have a dinner party. I don't want everyone to have a big plate
so I mostly do like chili night. Chili is a great tiny house food because you can
make it all in one pot and they go in little bowls or mugs or whatever cuz I
don't have six, I don't have six bowls. Underside and bottom side is painted
with chalkboard paint. This also turns into a spare bedroom this is a futon
mattress that fits perfectly I was able to find it on Amazon. I flipped this
piece of plywood over and then this would be like a full-size bed I call it.
Everything fits perfectly. It is a Kimberley wood stove you can cook on top of it
it's stainless steel so it's lighter than a cast iron and is a double
combustion system so really, really efficient. If you have a nice piece of
hardwood it can burn up to eight hours. I have a stove plate here for the bottom.
We decided to raise it up instead of just having it flat on the floor because
we wanted it to be counter height and so that we could get some extra storage
space underneath. Probably the next thing everybody noticed this when they first
come into my tiny house is my staircase. I call it a hidden staircase because a
lot of times people come in here and they'll ask me how do you get up into
the loft? It's my closet, it's my pantry, and it's also my
staircase. This is my closet. It is a lot smaller than most women's closets. I
think that it's plenty though. Everything I own I care about is one
thing I tell people. I like having stories around everything. I love to
travel so even when I'm wearing right now like I bought this in Peru. I got
this in Alaska, my trip up to Alaska, it's a piece of jade. This is actually Mount
Hood, which is just down the street. This is from Taiwan, this is from El Salvador.
So all of my clothing items or accessories are from stories and
experiences and they make me think of those things and makes me care about
each item in here.
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Plates, bowls, this is my water tank so yeah. And then if you look under the sink over
here, you will see my water heater. It's a tiny water heater. It's propane, it's instant. This is
for burnable trash I live in a campground I have campfires often. Keep
burnable trash in there. I have a composting pile and system outside, this
is my indoor compost. Over here I have my regular trash can and my recycle bin
Over here is my refrigerator. It's a Dometic RV refrigerator. It's a
three-way so it works off a propane or DC or AC. Spent a long time finishing
these countertops they were just big pieces of alligator juniper wood. We
actually routed them out so they look really thick and so that keeps it
lightweight it's actually hollow behind here too. So it gives the facade of
having a thick wood slab countertop without having the weight. I found this
at the restore recently and it's just a closet door, an antique closet door, so it
can fold away. It snaps into place with magnet so just like that. It can actually
open up, felt like my house got really dark when this was closed. So when
nobody's using it I keep those ventilated. I have a composting toilet,
the Nature's Head composting toilet, it's pretty popular in the tiny house world.
This is my shower it's 24 by 32 inches so 32 by 32 is a standard shower. I think
the smallest you can normally put in a regular-sized house.
Mine's a little smaller than that but because I've extended out this curtain
rod and one bonus about having a metal shower is you can use magnets so I'll
magnetize things like even all the way out to here so really the only part that
small is down by my feet. I decided to go with a tub for a couple of reasons.
The dog, mostly. I can't really bathe in there,
it's for her. It's really nice for giving dog baths.
Plenty of headroom for me I'm five foot four. I have a five inch mattress it's a
Japanese-style mattress so it has netting underneath it, which is great,
means I don't have to flip it. I was worried about moisture getting
underneath it and getting mold and with that netting it sort of has alleviated
that problem. This is my dog Solis she has been part of the tiny house the
entire project. Got her when we were building and so she's more comfortable
in the tiny house than any other house I would say. Five windows they all open so
great ventilation, I don't have air conditioning.
So I actually have a third floor, I like to say. This opens up completely and I
can sit on the roof. It's really nice and on a clear night to watch the stars up
here and when I want darkness I have this little shade so if I'm sleeping in
or something like that. If you're looking into downsizing or building a tiny house
there's lots of resources out there now that were not available when I was
building. There's obviously some great YouTube channels as you're watching
right now. I would say going to a build workshop is not a bad idea. I went to a
Tumbleweed Build workshop at the time it was the only kind of build workshops
available and it taught me a lot because I had zero experience. I used to teach
them actually later on after we finished building the tiny house they hired me to
teach those workshops. I'm a big advocate for them because I know what goes into
designing those workshops and what they actually mean and there's plenty of them
out there now.
What can a tiny house do for you you know? For me I have always been a
wanderlust kind of person. I like to travel and I loved traveling with the
tiny house, but now that it's parked I save so much money that I'm able to
travel abroad. I travel three months out of the year. I visit five new countries a
year as a minimum. And my goal is to visit every country before I die. This is
a house that facilitates my life and my passions, not the other way around. I
don't work for my house it works for me. Thanks for watching guys! If you enjoyed
this episode be sure to hit the like button and subscribe, if you're new to
the channel. Be sure to check out Jenna's channel Tiny House Giant Journey linked
up in the description. We did a video on her channel about my van as well so be
sure to check that out and, until next time guys, we will see you later.