Couple Built a BEAUTIFUL Budget-Friendly Tiny House!

I'm Morgan and I'm Jay and this is our tiny house in Lapine, Oregon. So our tiny house is 27 feet long, 8 feet wide. Exterior and the entire shell frame was built by a gentleman in Sutherland and we brought that up here and finished out the interior. It's totally off the grid as long as you've got a source of water. It can pump it, heat it. We've got all the electricity, wood fire to stove for heat. I'm gonna go ahead and let Jay give you a tour. Come on in y'all. Hi everybody. Welcome to the tiny house. All 216 square feet plus the loft. We got our closet right as we walk in and yeah and so this is the complete tiny house but as we got it it was just down to the frame studs, no insulation, just the windows and doors. So the build out took roughly two years but that is with the hurdle of a herniated disc in the back so there was a delay that allowed me some learning time to sort of dive in full throttle. So went with the tongue and groove sort of finish on everything. Big fan of wood and just wanted the live grain. This post was actually an old fence post that was sort of here when we first moved in and I just liked it aesthetically and so put it in the garage for about five years to dry out. Also got some nice live edge juniper down here. Just again fan of that live wood and put the closet up here by the front. Just easy access when you first walk in the door. This is the dwarf stove. I believe this is the 3k version. They come in a few different versions and they're actually really helpful if you tell them the size of your space, the square footage, the air space. They'll sort of guide you towards the stove that best fits for your space and they'll even help you with sort of the chimney setup to an extent. They make it really easy. So we normally have most of our wood outside just you know it's a tiny space. It's at a premium but we've usually got some wood down here just to have it on demand and dry and ready to go. It's worked incredibly well for us as far as the wood. You do have to cut it a little bit shorter to fit in there but we've got these heat shields on the front and back. Keep everything within the temperature ranges and well within the safety gaps. So leading into the interior of the house, tried to have a big open living space. The wheel well here we've got some great seating along with a big L bench. As far as adding as much functionality as possible, this entire table is made to slide under the wood stove here and just open up. This is a big communal enjoyable conversation space. Under the bench is where you're going to find all of the solar batteries as well as a chunk of storage space. A couple little sneaky spots here and there also for storage. Some super hidden ones that nobody knows about. So sliding the table over to the wall here it just opens up the whole space. Allows for a super easy pass through. I've used the desk over here in front of the window and then you know Morgan hanging out, dogs running around. But just makes for a really big open space. From mentioning all the different types of wood, one of the feature pieces is up at the top. Found a good 18 foot piece of wood and cut it to length and burned the whole thing. Just kind of wiggling it back and forth through a burn fire and now we have this wonderful charred black look. Covered it in a clear coat so you know it doesn't make a mess. And then this wonderful little lantern is a little custom piece that I made that's on a dimmable switch and at night when that's going it's just beautiful. And then at the front door is a sort of big old monkey's fist. So a monkey's fist goes back to the old sailing days and essentially they'd put a lead weight in the middle of it and it's a decorative knot on the exterior and they would take that and huck it up over and that's how they would kind of get their lines up over the mast and everything. I was taught how to make these as a kid by my mom and lost her a few years back and there's just one little homage that I could do for her. Every time we hold that door open a little knot of the cap. Isn't Jay and Morgan's house the perfect place for a little cozy relaxation? Well why don't you get cozy with me while we play June's Journey. It's a free to download, fun and intriguing murder mystery game that immerses you in the roaring 20s. Search for objects and clues in glamorous settings. It's so satisfying to tune out the outside world while finding hidden objects. Every time I pop in there are new storyline twists and turns that keep it feeling fresh. June is one confident and clever citizen detective. Joining her to solve her sister's murder is a surprisingly heartfelt endeavor. In between sleuthing scenes enjoy customizing your very own garden island. You can even join a club. It's such a great way to connect with others and share ideas. Like what June's doing on her winding search for the truth. Download June's Journey today for free by clicking the link in the description below or scanning the QR code on the screen. It's available on PC and Android and iOS mobile devices. So all the solar battery systems in the bench everything is run off 12 volt and then with that we've got all these great little feature lights. They also have some plugs for charging but we kind of just leave them as sconces for the most part but if you need a little reading light you're ready to go. So under here we have the heart of the electrical system 12 volt solar. It's mostly a Renogy based system as far as its components of the budget. This was honestly a substantial chunk of the build and I think for anybody doing off-grid it's something to take into consideration. While it does give you the independence in the long run, cost-wise in the beginning it does dent your wallet a little bit more. Probably somewhere in the $5,000 to $5,500 maybe even a little bit more range and with that the tariffs are only going to increase prices so go buy and stop now. Buy it now. We've got the 2,000 watt inverter charger so we can charge off of a landline but we can also run and charge our components run a blender and pretty much anything to our needs of electricity you can get larger inverters. We have a 40 amp MPPT charger that's just sort of the most optimized version and it works well with the 400 watts of solar on the roof and then everything monitored by the screen in the kitchen. So as many times as I've mentioned wanting to save power and just keep it when I don't need it, honestly the battery has more than enough juice and this battery at 200 amp hours is plenty for us. Right now it's saying 48 weeks. Morgan and I went as like a actual test 30 days only on solar never plugged in a generator and ran laptops and everything in between and never really had any hindrances and with that I would say we weren't parked in the best place for solar. So if we had full full sun we probably could also pop the window AC unit in and been super comfortable and just run it off the solar. Well we've been together over 15 years. Five years we've been in La Pine here and about two years ago is when we decided to buy the tiny house frame and get that started as far as a project and we've always kind of liked doing projects together. I think that's the general theme of life yeah. I'm not always super helpful with projects. I'm more of the idea person right? The general contractor she gives the thumbs up. We're adventurers we like to build stuff and get outside so I think that's why the general theme of having this as an off-grid build sort of was most attractive to us. I think it made the viability of just putting it anywhere seem really attractive. We've got a good chunk of land out here and then we also have another lot sort of down the street from us that just has incredible river access but you can't build build there so anything on wheels is sort of a more viable option there so that sort of was the first door we opened into the tiny house world. Fun place to put friends and family, cool place to cook out of while we're hanging out by the river and then it also led into some income revenue as well just being able to rent out our big house as we call it on Airbnb and then from there we could crash in here. So we lived in here for 30 plus days yeah it was a great summer honestly. Having semi-lived in a van for a little bit the transition wasn't too bad honestly this is way more square footage than the van so that wasn't too bad. I was surprised at how quiet it was I thought like it was going to be noisier having two people in here and like oh we're not going to have any like separation space or space but it was really quite easy and nice it did help I left to go to work during the day but made this kind of like our summer clubhouse and like we paddleboarded you know from the river out of here mountain biked. We were able to do everything we wanted to do it's just a smaller square footprint. As we work our way back through the tiny house we have some of my wife's wonderful art from Mountain Fiber Designs. She loves to feature it here and there we've got some plant hangers and the macrame and it just sort of fits with our western off the grid motif. Coming into our kitchen here we've got some more live edge I've put some nice little puck lights under here just for you know over the kitchen sink. The sink here was something we were quite excited about it's one of those super fancy ones that honestly is probably a little bit nicer than the one in our house and it's just something that we grew to appreciate. The functionality of having additional counter space as well as draining whether it's for cleaning vegetables or even drying dishes it just added to the utility for us. In comparison to quite a few of the other tiny houses we wanted to make sure that we had a lot of counter space and ease of use so we've got just it's galore it's everywhere when we need to we pull out either a little butane stove or one of those little electric plug-in stoves. Usually cook right around here if it gets hot crack open the window but we do have an exhaust vent over this way too so that's worked pretty well for us. So in the kitchen for storage we've got all these beautiful cabinets I was lucky enough to find them at our restore still flat packed brand new but at a heavily discounted rate so everybody go out there check your restores and other resources all soft clothes really nice stuff tons of storage that really allowed us to fit everything for our needs as far as cooking and pantry. On this side we've got our Dometic CFX3 75 dual zone works absolutely fantastic I can't endorse these enough we have one in our van also and it's been going for five years down bumpy trails and so this one's been sitting pretty and doing great this runs off of 12 volt electricity hyper efficient in my opinion and barely makes a dent it turns on and off as needed and even beyond that the compressor the little fan that goes at night hardly hear it doesn't really bother us at all. I left this space as something that can be removed this table pops out and the next person I believe they may be putting in a full-size fridge so that's something that I left in the modularity of the build this can come out and they got a full-size fridge freezer situation they could even do a little under deal that runs off of propane but for me 12 volt and Dometic. Back here we've got the bathroom went with a nice easily vented pocket door coming into the bathroom again I hit my local restore this was a complete unit it's got the nice soft closed drawers beautiful fixtures this and that and I think for like 70 bucks filled the need where if I think I tried to do this it'd be a few hundred at least some nice finishes and I tried to go with black hardware for the most part this sneaky little spot here is where you control the water for the outdoor shower that's on the tongue of the trailer and I just put it in here and had it insulated so that in the winter time when we dry everything out don't have to worry about it on this side we've got sort of the wet bath I guess is a good way to put it went with the largest shower pan that I could I want to say the shower pan is around 40 to 42 inches to fit this space and then went for a full height toilet with a foot flush that kind of standard for an RV we could have gone a number of routes with the toilets you know composting cassette for us we in the van have done composting and we've done cassettes and in this instance just wanted to be able to flush it away and not think about it so that's kind of where that came from we hook up a 36 gallon tank take that and we can dump it in our septic as needed so the shower is as basic as I could make it there's some nice finishes for sure we got an exhaust fan that's built in here just get that moisture out but it's kind of convenient having the toilet as a seat you know it's fully allowed to be wet so might as well I'm sure Morgan for shaving their legs enjoyed it and the last spot that we haven't yet discovered is the loft really comfortable space again finished in the tongue and groove some puck lights fully dimmable and then towards the back side we've got some nice reading lamps where we can also plug in and charge in the evenings currently there is a queen size bed up there but from my measuring you can just squeeze a king if you really wanted to go for it so the ladder again wood coming from Levi's sawmill here in Lapine we wanted something that was easy for us to not only ascend but descend and then we are some of those people that have our dog in the bed so to have something that's a little bit more like stairs than a ladder made more sense for us our little river guy he can crawl right up this he can't get down but he can go up and that's what counts for myself I've always been a very hands-on sort of engineering mechanically inclined person I've worked construction but I've never gone to this extent and this detail and you know I've done framing and this and that but to go through every step of the process was definitely something to wrap my head around and at times it was you know you just got to take one baby bite at a time and not think too far ahead of yourself and just kind of get done what's in front of you and I hand hammered every single nail on the tongue and groove which some people would say is probably a little bit crazy but that's what happened and you know at one point I did herniate a disc in my back sort of in the middle early construction that definitely hindered the development but it also gave me a chance to just solely focus on developing the electrical plan and the plumbing plan so then I was able to do a lot of youtube university get my head fully wrapped around that aspect so as much as it did slow down the physical progress of the build it did allow me to go into that next stage just like ready to go a speed bump that I think just accelerated things in the long run and then seeing the final product I couldn't be happier. So the shell we bought from a gentleman down in Sutherland Oregon and he built out the whole exterior you know dried it in windows doors we ended up paying 20k for the shell from there estimated build cost beyond that I put at about 20 to 22 so all in on the build it's probably about 40 to 45 maybe and you know there's all those little trips to Ace Hardware we don't really think about that do add up. In your time but yeah what's that value dad? No but also I see the value in the learning experience. This tiny house we found a new home for it it's headed to Olympia Washington to be on a farmstead the woman who purchased it has a kid that she wants to travel with but the farm has a lot of responsibilities so there's a gentleman that'll be living in this and taking care of things on the farm when she's out and away and a part of that deal was a 1965 Airstream Caravel all 17 feet of it and currently ripped that down to the frame and that's the next project in the books. I don't know how Jay thought about that in the listing but he's like I'll just put willed partial trade for a certain Airstream you know and I don't know how it just perfectly matched up this woman had an Airstream had the right amount of funds and matched it up meant to be. I've always wanted to do an Airstream and serendipitously just worked out. Tiny houses would be great for flexible housing. I think just having the ability to have a place for your family to stay that's maybe not in your house or for additional income I mean there is a housing shortage like why not make it available to people that need it and people that have the land to offer that and obviously the resources this isn't affecting the environment in any way shape or form we have sewer septic everything or you can be completely off grid so I think that flexibility in itself is huge. They just offer a lot of options for people and fill I think a lot of needs whether it be additional income or a roof over your head. Unfortunately not every county state what have you allows for that flexibility so hopefully in the future we'll have more open mindedness in that sense and more tiny houses in the community because I think it definitely would benefit from it. So I guess one of the ways that we realized we couldn't utilize the tiny house as much as we wanted or we're limited limited how much we can do with the county. South Deschutes county requires you to have five acres of land to short-term rent or long-term rent a second dwelling or an ADU. I mean we have three acres it's plenty of space but we don't qualify. You've now limited your pool of people at that point who can provide housing to a very large pool of people that need it because if you only are limiting it to five acres that's probably only maybe 10 percent of properties in South County. I mean we're on three acres and it's too many acres really. I mean it's not all usable. It's a lot to take care of but it's also wouldn't it be nice if it was all usable land and going towards a function of sorts. For anybody who is thinking about building a tiny house or living in one like don't be afraid of the learning curve. We all are you know willing and able to learn we can do it even the person who takes on this will you know have to learn about solar and how to operate it and this and that and I think even just a lot of the misconceptions about you know not having enough space or like refrigeration or a hot shower all these different things like it's very comfortable as long as you're comfortable with the idea of it and I think for a lot of people that's probably the biggest hurdle. Thanks for stopping by Tiny House Expedition. I'm Alexis and I'm Christian and this is our DIY tiny house on our homestead in Oregon. Looking for more tiny inspiration? Watch these videos. But if you're looking for something specific visit our channel home page to browse tiny homes by category and don't forget to subscribe. Hope to see you soon. Download June Journey today for free by clicking the link in the description below or scanning the QR code on the screen. It's available on PC and Android and iOS mobile devices.