She built her own Tiny Home for cheap! 9 yrs of living tiny

Hi there. Welcome to my channel where I take you on tours of unique homes and showcase stories of people living alternatively. In this week's episode, we're traveling to Florida to meet Susie and take a tour of her tiny house. What's really impressive about this tour is that Susie was able to build this home for just $17,000 in only 38 days with no prior construction experience. She's going to point out her favorite tiny house features, including her creative storage solutions, artsy touches and plenty of room for her frog collection. So let's hop right in because this tiny house tour is totally riveting. Yeah. Make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you know every single time we publish a new episode. Hi, I'm Susie. I live here in my DIY tiny house frog with my cat bits. Before I lived in this tiny house, I was in a cottage with my college age son and we were in a flood and we lost everything we owned. Nothing survived. Somebody said I should have a tiny house. So the next time there's a natural disaster, I can just pull away. And I was like, I don't even know what a tiny house is, but I researched it. And I was like, that's what I'm going to do. I ended up building my tiny house in an empty airplane hangar. Construction process was really quick. I built my tiny house in 38 days. I had no experience about building anything. I watched a lot of YouTube videos and I had friends with knowledge. I wouldn't have been able to do any of this without their help. I actually built my tiny house under budget. I would go to construction sites and I dumpster dived and I found all sorts of material. My budget was 20,000 and I spent 17. I think with today's prices, I would have spent probably anywhere from 45,000 to 50,000 to build it now. I've been living in my tiny house for nine years. Right now I live on a horse ranch. The very first week I lived here, I thought we were in an earthquake. I'd never been in an earthquake before. And so I ran out the door and there were three horses scratching their backside on my house. I was like, Oh my gosh, that's so cool. It's a great place to be. So my career for the 30 plus years, I was a professional clown, giggled a clown. I did birthday parties and grand openings and kids nights and things like that. I truly believe I was put on this earth to make people laugh. What side of the Turkey has the most feathers? The outside. So frog is sitting on an eight by 16 trailer. It's 13 and a half feet tall. It's 128 square feet. She comes in at 8,140 pounds. The things that were important to me on my build were one, the cedar siding. I was told it would keep bugs away and my windows. I have 11 windows. I had a couple of really big windows that I wanted to put in my house and everybody said I would lose the structure to my house. So I went with smaller windows, but 11 of them. So dormers were important because I wanted to have room in my loft for sitting up. So I put dormers on both sides. I went with a metal roof. My friend had the material and I didn't have to pay for any of it. So it's been pretty maintenance free. It does get quite dirty, especially living under the trees. I have standard hookups. I have 50 amps for my electric, which is really overkill for my house. My dad had a 30 amp cord that was probably a hundred years old and my electrician said no. So we went with the 50 amps instead. And then I have a hose hookup, just like if you were in an RV. My grandma had a Dutch door when I was growing up and it was the coolest door. So I had to have one too. And purple's my favorite color. You gotta have purple. So let me show you what's on the inside. I love quotes and I like inspiring people. So I add my favorite quotes on my door. You don't need magic to disappear. All you need is a destination. How does Batman's mom call him to dinner? Dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner, dinner, Batman. Welcome to the inside of frog. When I was doing the design of my tiny house, I wanted to have my living room and my kitchen just flow together to have somebody be able to be cooking and somebody on the couch chatting to me. This being my fourth couch, we made it actually a little bit wider. We pulled it out some. The catwalk is for a bit so she can go from the sleeping loft to the storage loft to see, you know, all her cool stuff that she stores. That's her favorite spot. So I have some unusual curtains. When my cat was a kitten and my curtains were solid, she would climb them and knock them all down. And I was like, I wonder if I strip some material, if she'll be able to climb them and she can't. So these became my curtains. So this is my pantry. I screwed the lids into the ceiling. So then you just unscrew it. I have learned that you should have two screws in the lids cause then the lids don't spin. And I mostly have food up here, but I do have other things so I don't lose them. It is easier when I can see what's in them. I did used to label them all and one day I was making cookies and I used a cup of salt instead of sugar. That didn't turn out so well. This is my second countertop. My first one were DVDs cause DVDs are the ones with color in them. Me and the cat broke it. So I did five gallons of glitter and resin, three layers. I love my glitter. I'm actually thinking about changing it and doing something with Legos this time, but right now it's glitter. And my cool double sink I got at a RV graveyard for five bucks. So I hired a plumber and then I hired six more plumbers and they can either make my shower work or my sink work. Nobody can make both things work. So I bought a book on how to plumb. I read it cover to cover, and then I did my own plumbing. I have a fridge freezer combo separate. It had an accident on one of my travels and it was on the ground. Needs a new one, but for now it's what it is. Size wise, it's perfect. Truly, if I could do it different, I would get a cooler fridge. I just like them a lot and I think it would take up less space and then I could have maybe a closet here or something. So I do have a shelves that go the whole height of my stairs, which is good. It holds my smart oven and my induction cooktop when I'm not using it. So I have this really cool pocket door. It was not an easy thing to do, but it works really well. And then I have a full size shower with metal surrounding it, but it's perfect. And I did the plumbing here too. I have a DIY composting toilet that I made myself. The one thing in my house I forgot to build. I'd never even crossed my mind was a closet. Totally forgot. So I have this Ikea shelf that's screwed in and my little cubbies and it works perfect. The cat likes to climb in and nap in there. Why'd the scarecrow win the Nobel Peace Prize? Because he was outstanding in his field. I love my stairs, but they're in upside down. When I first put them up, they came out to way over there. And I was like, well, that can't be right. So then I flipped them and attached it to the wall. My friend came to see how my stairs were doing and he said, they're upside down. And I said, that's okay. Cause they're my stairs. So I wanted stairs that had like the drawers that pulled out, but I couldn't figure out drawers. So I just made shelves for all my books and frogs. As you know, the name of my house is frog. And, um, so, which means fully rely on God, if you didn't know. And so of course everybody brings me frogs. I have probably 350 of them, not all out because it's a tiny house. My favorite one is this one. Gotta have the big lips. If you have a cool frog and you want to send it to me, I'd love to have it and I'll add it to my collection. Let's go up the stairs and I'll show you the loft. So welcome to my sleeping loft. Normally there's a queen size bed up here. Recently I bought a new mattress and I forgot to measure the height and it was six inches too tall. I couldn't sit up anymore. Right now. I just have a twin size, but it will fit a queen. And then I have storage that goes all the way around my loft with lids on it to keep the cat out. If I could do anything different, these two windows would open. I'm missing, I think a huge cross breeze and I would have a slide going down. Knock, knock. Who's there? Super. Super who? Super Susie. The biggest change for going tiny is it's given me financial freedom. It's changed my life completely. My kids will call and say, mom, can we borrow some money? And usually I can help them. So, um, where before there was no way that was happening, but it's just, it's changed my life. It's just made it simpler and easier and less stress for sure. Really. I, I love my house. Thanks for watching this week's episode. I hope you guys enjoyed it. 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