She Designed The Perfect Tiny House - 4 Years Living Tiny

There's not a high carrying cost for this place. This is my workhorse storage for pots and pans. Moving the bedroom downstairs has been a good decision. It's a very peaceful existence, and I'm happy. Hi, I'm Brandi, welcome to my living room. The tiny house, dimension-wise, is 26 1⁄2 feet long by 15 feet wide, and the ceilings are 14 feet. So I moved here in 2021. It was a big downsize for me. It's a process that you go through to downsize, and I still am in process. I feel like I'm making progress, and I know that the less I have, the lighter I feel. If you've seen my previous video, you may realize that I've made some changes. The orange recliner is no longer here. I had a big couch over here. They were just too big for the space, so I ended up going with a slimline couch and brought out my old campaign chair, which I love. It really has made a difference. Lessons learned on buying furniture for a tiny house. I had all the specs, the measurements of the rooms. I pre-purchased all the furniture and staged it, and probably would have been wise just to wait until I was in it and had a better feel for it because I wasted a lot of money. I also have added a piece of artwork. This is a window behind here, but I really wanted to get just something else in here, a big piece. If you saw the previous video, you know that I was really mourning the loss of wall space. My father's an artist, my brother's an artist. This is one of my brother's pieces, and so I'm happy to have it. It just feels organic to me. I feel like the changes that I've made to the living room have streamlined and simplified things. That's completely consistent with tiny home living, and I'm feeling good about it. I like living tiny. I like it more than I thought I would. I really had looked at this as a few-year fun thing to do, and I don't want to move. Let's take a look in the kitchen. Welcome to the kitchen. As some of you may recall, when I moved in, I had it delivered without countertops on the island or on this main part of the kitchen, so I added solid stone countertops, and then I went through and did the butcher block myself, added a drop leaf. This is my workhorse storage for pots and pans. Sadly, the oven is storage for pots and pans as well, but I find I end up using almost only my black skillets and those items, so they stay out. I did add a toaster oven because it's so hard to get all the things out of the oven to actually use that, so I use that quite a bit. So that's been a good addition. I do love this sink, farm sink. Never had one before. It's a workhorse. I like the open shelves. I wish that there wasn't so much clutter, but that's on me, and that's part of the process of trying to downsize. I tend to want to keep a full pantry so I can cook what I want and when I want. Despite the challenges of this kitchen, I'm able to cook for myself and cook for my friends, and that's a good thing. Let's take a look at the other side of the kitchen, check out the refrigerator and laundry area. I have a full-size refrigerator, which is great, and then I have the smaller washer-dryer, which are fine. Doesn't accommodate a lot of things. One of the advantages of living in a community is that they have the larger washer-dryers nearby so I can do bedding when I need to bleach. You're not allowed to use bleach in these washing machines, the little ones. That's one of the perks. Full-size fridge, came with the house. Might've been a better idea if I shopped for that myself. With this refrigerator, I can't put a frozen pizza in there, but if I had chosen to get a fridge with a lower freezer drawer, would've given me a lot more flexibility. But I've gotten very accustomed to all my appliances. I was living in Houston, sold my house, was buying a condo, and I'd seen these tiny houses up here and saw a rainbow and decided I need to drive back to Austin and look at the tiny houses again. They had this model on site for the first time and I was like, that's the house that I want. And so I backed out of buying the condo, just completely redirected and decided to go tiny. Just was following my gut instincts. They served me. It's a little less expensive, just in general, than what I was considering doing. I saw this unit and it was priced good. It was $100,000. That was with adding a covered back porch. I added another five grand or so in custom upgrades, $6,000 in sales tax, so got in fairly cheaply. The lot fee has been fairly stable. It's gone from 700 to 750, I believe. Utilities are really low. Water is negligible. Electricity is between 35 and $65 a month. There's not a high carrying cost for this place. I can lock it up and leave pretty easily and be gone for weeks and not have to worry. It's good, because I like to roam. Welcome to the bathroom. This room has always been pretty well designed. It's got adequate storage. Nice big shower with a raised cutout and roof, so you don't feel quite so oppressed. The ceilings are much lower, so that the loft can be taller. So these are, I believe, seven foot ceilings. Again, I did custom cabinets and a custom sink. That's made this a really nice bathroom, very functional. So one of the best upgrades I made was getting a bidet seat. I don't have to worry about COVID toilet paper shortages. I'm okay. The bathroom has two doors, one that goes straight into the laundry room kitchen and the other that goes into the bedroom. So let's move on into the bedroom. This was originally where I had my office, and I just found that it wasn't a very creative space. With the seven foot lower ceilings, it kind of felt a little oppressive. As a part of the creative process, you like to have things spread out and work on something and leave it and come back to it. And I just wasn't doing anything. So I loved sleeping upstairs, but this feels right now that I've moved the bed down. It's as it should be. I did get a new piece of furniture, something that my mother had gotten for me. It's a workhorse. It's just got lots of drawers. I'm lucky that I was able to get this. I also have storage under the bed. It's all completely organized. I have additional storage in the closet. This closet was a customized idea. I didn't want the closet that they had in their original spec because it wasn't very functional. It had a barn door and you had to reach behind the barn door so you couldn't really get at things. So I just used the Rubbermaid closet system for hangers and shelves and put in an Ikea curtain system to cover it all. That's worked out pretty well. Moving the bedroom downstairs has been a good decision. Overall, it's smarter, it's safer and more efficient. So I'm glad I did it. Thanks to all y'all's suggestions to make that move. Now let me show you what I did with the upstairs. So before we go upstairs, I thought I'd point out the drawers in the stairs. They're just smart storage, making use of the spaces that you've got and the water heaters back under the stairs as well. I could probably steal a little more space out of there if I wanted to at some point. Let's go upstairs. Welcome to the loft. It's a lot different. I used to have the nice bed and the shag rug that I did my yoga on, but now it's my craft area. And office. I've got all my storage of all my different items, all sorts of fun stuff. Behind this bank, I cheated the wall and I have storage for clothes behind this bank. So there's quite a bit back there that I can just move these shelves and access. One thing that I really like about this is that I can just roll with my chair anywhere across. Instead of trying to walk bent over, I can stand up and walk. It's 52 inches here at the apex and 48 at the corner. So you can do it without bumping your head. I got a student desk. I do feel like I've been a little bit more creative in this space. I'm trying to teach myself how to do watercolor painting right now. That's been really a fun exploration. Overall, this has been a great move to switch bedroom and office. I can open all these curtains up. It's lovely to be up here. Having lived tiny for four years now, it's embarrassing to think of all the money that was spent on things that just weren't necessary to a quality of life. You know, shoulda, woulda, coulda. I wish I'd done this sooner, but I am at peace in that everything happens for a reason when it's supposed to happen. And I'm just glad I got here and that I've been able to live this life. It's a very peaceful existence and I'm happy. Thanks for coming today. If you want to keep in touch, follow me on Instagram at Bee Beverly, and I'll look forward to talking to you.