Retiree Designed Her Forever Tiny House with a Downstairs Bedroom

Hi, my name is Susan and this is my tiny home, the Blue Sky Casita in Bayfield, Colorado. I've been living in my tiny home for four months. It was built here in the Bayfield area by the Corrales family and it's 10 feet wide by 36 feet long. I live in Marlin Village in Bayfield and the lot rent here is $650 and that includes everything except electric propane and wi-fi. On the outside of my house you'll notice a few unique features and one of them is the chevron oriented siding as well as the blue roofing material carried down on one side. When they were going to do the skirting around the bottom of my tiny home I had an idea that I'd like to be able to access some of that area for storage and so Danny was able to build two storage doors that open in the skirting so that I can slide my ladder and a few other things underneath there. That's about it for the outside and now I can take you inside. Welcome to the Blue Sky Casita. It's 360 square feet not including the loft and most of the features in here were custom designed by me and the builder. Having worked with the Corrales to make this house exactly what I need was an absolute pleasure and I feel like it's something I can live with for the rest of my life. In anticipation of retirement I absolutely wanted a first floor bedroom and they were happy to accommodate that. As you walk this way you come into my living room which has storage space on one side and a fireplace and a television set which were both important to me and then in the living room area I also have this sofa that I bought specifically to fit the space and it rolls out like a futon so I can have extra space for guests as well. As the Corrales were building the house the measurements were really important to me so that I could order the right furniture to fit and so before I ordered the sofa and the bed I had the measure to tell me the exact number of inches of space I had so that I could make sure that what I was buying was going to fit and work in the space. One thing that I didn't really take into account when I was doing the measurements was the space that the wheel wells take up on either side and Danny was able to come up with a solution on the closet side. He elevated the closets and left the bottom part open so I can put baskets under there and then on the other side under the window I included a kind of a sofa shelf behind the sofa that kind of makes up for that empty space and I use all of that space for storage. On this side I have a lot of storage they're prefab cabinets that Danny was able to install pretty quickly and one of them is used as a utility closet and the other one is used as a coat closet and they both are right below the upper windows and so I can have plants and things up there as well and then in the center I wanted to have a fireplace and so this is a gas fireplace that will actually be able to help heat the unit and also provide a nice warm feeling and then there was again the exact measurement between the two cabinets was determined by the size of my television set. Everything fits because we designed it that way. Overall this space works great and I've been able to really make it feel like a home and I brought a lot of decorating things with me some fit and some didn't but again you just make the choices of what's going to work best and you find ways to compromise. One example of how I compromised instead of having family pictures all over the walls which I did in my old house I have an electronic photo frame that sits on my mantle that runs all the time showing all the pictures of my family so I don't miss out on that. I'm parched. If only there was a way to make drinking water taste better, more convenient, and more fun. Well hello Circle. Now that's delicious. Introducing Circle. Making healthy hydration easy peasy. Their innovative bottle allows you to flavor your water sip by sip. Go from drinking plain water to drinking your new favorite beverage and back with a turn of a flavor dial. Choose from over 140 all-natural flavors. No sugar, zero calories, simply delicious. But how does it work you may ask? Just fill with water, add the flavor cartridge, turn the dial to adjust flavor strength, snap the cap back and lock the strap in place. Now time to drink. I appreciate how affordable it is. Each Circle cartridge contains the same amount of flavor as six 20 ounce bottled beverages. Finally water can be your favorite beverage so you can stay hydrated. Use our link in the description below or the QR code on the screen to get up to 35% off your first order. Leading into my bedroom I have this interesting barn door that Danny built out of blue pine lumber and it has a really nice angle. So again it has an architectural element to it and it doesn't take up any space because it just slides in next to the sofa. As we go this direction you'll walk into my bedroom and the important things that you might notice in here is that the dimension is exactly right for the bed that I ordered. And I could have had a loft on this end of the house as I do on the other end but I wanted the high ceilings to make it feel a little bit bigger and I'm really happy with that decision. On this side of the bedroom you'll notice I have a large wardrobe for storage and then I have a shelf unit which is basically my office. It has my computer and my printer and everything on it and those were like conscious choices. There's storage drawers under the bed. Pretty much when you do a tiny home you have to incorporate storage in whatever spaces you find available because you don't want to waste any of your valuable space. One interesting thing that I found is they make sheets that the fitted sheet zips onto the bed so you don't have to lift up the mattress on all four corners which would have been very difficult in here but I still am able to make the bed and change the seats pretty effectively. Well I'm 65 and I retired in March after a long career in the engineering and construction business and I had two kids that I raised in the Denver area and lived in a townhome and had always had the idea that I wanted to live a more minimalistic lifestyle when I retired and so I was able to sell my townhome and have this lovely place built and move to a beautiful part of the country. I think that this was the best decision for retirement that I could have made because it is so compatible with my values of only using the space that I need and of course the financial side of it it made it a lot more comfortable for retirement. I absolutely have exactly what I need. I spent years cleaning a 1600 square foot three bedroom three bath townhome and once my children left I only used a small amount of the space but yet I had to maintain and clean the whole thing and now here I have one bathroom and I can clean this place in an hour and it looks ready for company. I worked for the last 20 years in the engineering and construction business most recently for a large construction company where I did proposals and research. It was a very busy urban lifestyle and I was raising two daughters by myself and trying to juggle everything and when you're doing that you just put your head down and keep going but in the back of my mind I was also planning the rest of my life because I wanted the second act you know after I raised my kids I wanted the second act to be what I wanted for me. Walking back this way into the center of the house is my kitchen and you can see that I have a breakfast bar and again that was a custom designed space underneath my breakfast bar I have additional storage space in the cabinets so all of that space is used. I didn't want upper cabinets but I still wanted space to display my dishes and have them be convenient and so we put in these floating shelves which allow me to have my fiesta ware on display and make it really convenient. I chose a really pretty tile for the backsplash and we carried it up on the whole wall as kind of an architectural feature. I think this feels like a high-end kitchen even though it's in a small space because it has all the features that you would have in a high-end house. As we move this way into the kitchen I have these beautiful custom cabinets which have pullouts and all the storage amenities that I could want and I chose those specifically when we were doing the design. I also have a smaller kitchen sink it's more like a bar size but I was trying to keep everything to scale and to use the space most effectively and this small sink works out really well. I have a small sink in the kitchen but I also have a larger sink in the laundry room which allows me to clean big pots and pans or if I'm doing projects around the house I have a place to clean up and I don't have to mess up the kitchen. On this side of the kitchen I have a small refrigerator but that allows me to have a large pantry which a lot of tiny homes aren't able to have. I'm really happy to have that space. The stove again is only 24 inches wide and it's gas but it has four burners and a complete oven and then I also have the microwave with the exhaust fan as well. On the way to the bathroom slash laundry room I have another beautiful barn door made out of the same pine as what the other barn door is and so it's kind of a balance on either end of the living space to have these doors that I can close off. Stepping into my bathroom slash laundry room on this side you can notice the custom shower which the tile was something I picked out and the corallises were able to incorporate it into the design. I love this shower. It's four by three so it's bigger than most and I know some people are insistent on having a tub in their tiny home. The tub wasn't all that important to me. It was more important to me to have a really nice functional shower. On this side you'll also notice I have a cabinet that encloses the hot water heater and below that I have a toilet that I picked out. It's smaller so that it fits the space but still is very functional. So recently I had a friend over and I mentioned how I was struggling with where to put the toilet paper and we came up with this great idea to add pegs above on the rafters here and so all my toilet paper is stored right up there so it's nice and handy but kind of out of sight. On this side I have a large utility sink instead of having a vanity because I wanted the capacity to wash large pots and pans or if I'm doing craft projects I have a place to clean up and you'll also notice that I don't have any enclosed cabinets here and I'm perfectly fine with having my toiletries and everything out. These are all magnetic so they stick to the dryer and everything is convenient. I had the option of having a combination washer and dryer and that would have had more space for storage but my preference was to have a full-size stackable unit and so that was what Danny and Alyssa included for my purposes. At the end of my laundry room you'll notice I have a spiral staircase that is as a bump out to the end of the tiny home so it doesn't take up any floor space in my tiny home and that was a unique design that Danny Corrales had come up with and one of the reasons that I really was impressed with his work to start with. So now let's check out the loft. On the way up the stairs you'll notice that I have an egress window on this side that's to allow easy access out of the loft in case of an emergency and it was a perfect place to hang my stained glass piece which I have lit up so at night you can see it from the outside. Here we are in the loft and when we designed this space I had in mind that we would have storage as well as extra sleeping space for guests and so along the wall I have places to store a lot of winter clothing and I also have a television set and then on the other side I have two twin fold-out futon chairs but I also have windows to bring in a lot of additional light. The ceiling is a little higher than a lot of lofts and that was by design and that's worked out really well because you can almost stand up in this loft. So in addition to being a great place to have guests stay I use this room as kind of a reading nook and I've really enjoyed that and I expect in the winter time when it's cold outside this is going to be a great place to be warm and cozy. When my friends and family have come to visit the first thing they say is this house is Susan, exactly Susan and that was an intentional design effort by me and the builder. We made things exactly the way I wanted them. I have a feeling that I was one of their pickiest clients and they were willing to listen to what I had to say and make suggestions and that's what made this house come out as perfectly as it did. I think this is a really good place for me to spend the rest of my life. It has everything I need and really not much that I don't need because you can't have an excess. Probably about 10 years ago I saw an article about tiny homes and so after that I was very interested so of course I did the google research but then I started to go to tiny home expos and meet builders and that was when I realized that yeah I can do this. Number one I can afford it but I did visit a lot of different tiny home villages in other states as well and I visited lots of different builders and that made me know when I went to pick it I knew that that was the right thing to do. I knew this was the right place and I knew this was the right house. I knew that I wanted to be in a community because the other option is you find somebody with land and you put it on their land and you're basically a tenant to that farmer or to that landowner. Here of course I'm still a tenant but it's a village and there's a diverse group of people. Most of them are in the retirement age zone not all and everybody is kind of here for the same reasons and so you immediately have something in common with your neighbors because you've all chosen to come and live in a place like this. The cost of my tiny home was probably more than what most people would think it was but I had a construction background and so I had a pretty good idea and I also wanted it to be exactly what I wanted. I wanted it customized for me to live in for the rest of my life and I have some pretty nice custom features like the shower for example is custom tile and things that I probably wouldn't have been able to afford in a standard home but because I was doing it on a smaller scale I was able to incorporate some of those really cool features. Overall the downsizing process was a lot easier than I had anticipated because I was able to make value decisions about each of the objects that I was going to bring with me. My daughters were able to help which was very nice and we went through boxes and boxes of things and I made an agreement with them that I would rent a storage unit in Denver for one year for the stuff that they had in my house that they don't have room for in their apartments and so as we were going through things I was like well if it's important to you let's put it in storage and then it'll be there when you need it and same for me. I have a little storage shed here at Marlin and so I had a little bit of room to bring a few extra things but primarily as I was going through things I was deciding whether or not it was important to me and if I would use it and need it in the life that I'm going to live in retirement and so I made choices you know and there were things that I loved that I had to let go of but I don't miss any of them. There's not one thing from the townhouse that I miss. Living in a tiny house you're not tied down to the yard work and the gardening and all of the maintenance it's very easy to keep it up and it's very easy to close it up so that you can leave for an extended period of time. So about a month after I moved here I took a 4,000 mile driving trip through the Midwest, visited family and friends that I hadn't seen in years and really living this lifestyle is what allowed me to do that because I could take the time I had the money and the freedom to be able to do that and I'm young enough and healthy enough to enjoy it because that was one of the things is I didn't want to become a couch potato in retirement because it's really easy to do that and here there's no reason to be a couch potato in this part of the country there's so many things to do. I've done quite a bit of hiking because there's a lot of hiking trails in the area and I really enjoy that but one of my goals for retirement was to start reading more because when I was growing up I was a bookworm constantly had a book going but in adulthood I was working and I had kids and if I got to read a magazine that was a big deal. Since I moved in here in June I've read 12 books and sitting out on my deck and reading a book for the whole afternoon is an absolute pleasure. Thank you for watching our video and for stopping by Tiny House Expedition I'm Alexis and I'm Christian don't forget to like comment and subscribe and for more tiny home tours and stories click the videos below and join us on Instagram for bonus content including face-to-face conversations with us we hope to see you there all right thanks guys have a good one