Her Cleverly Designed Tiny Home - Custom Upgrades.

We had a three-story home that was 3,300 square feet. This bathroom actually exceeds the square footage that some of the bathrooms I've lived in have. When Michael became ill and passed away, I continued to stay there for a year. I haven't really seen any other tiny homes that have this much storage. We have these fabulous cabinets that go clear up to the ceiling. I put the house up on the market and moved to Spokane with the idea that I was going to live in a tiny ADU. So I was already hatching this plan. Hi, I'm Lulu. Welcome to my tiny palace. Come take a tour with me. Welcome into my tiny palace parlor. As you see, there's a little bit of a theme of a lot of old things in the house. And I love the way it is placed with this ultra-modern tiny home. I love the combination of really old pieces and new. So I have my beautiful umbrella stand, which came from the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. The chair right next to it used to belong to my dad. Right behind the chair is a couple of panels that came from a Chinese temple. And those are about 400 years old. So behind the temple panels is a Sherwin-Williams paint color called Expressive Plum. I'm a purple girl, and I had to have purple in my house. We have this chair. This one's one of my favorite pieces. It's an 1880s Victorian Eastlake platform rocker. So I have this wonderful little fireplace. And what I love about it is I can have the flames for ambiance, or I can turn the heat and set timers on it. So I usually have this on at night when I'm watching TV. Clever Tiny Homes thought of everything. They put a really nice plug back there, so there's enough space to actually plug the TV in, and also this Alexa speaker that plays music. So it's my entertainment center. When I first started looking at this house, I discovered an app that was on the Clever Tiny Homes site. You put the mouse around in the room, and it tells you you can measure all the areas. I was able to figure out that these things would fit right here. This beautiful chair used to be part of a giant living room set that belonged to my grandparents, and I just recently redid and restored this chair. And now it's my favorite chair to put with the ottoman to watch television and sit in front of the fire. I have this gorgeous Chinese cedar chest. It's all hand-carved. It belonged to my grandmother, and she used to keep all sorts of little treasures in it. And now it's the perfect place to store all my extra blankets. On this living room wall, as you can see, it's very, very tall. I put this big shelf system up right along the top of the French doors so I could hold some of my treasures. Each one of the things that I put in here have a story. I could probably go on for hours about each item, but I won't bore you with all that. I love this living room space. It's very comfortable. It's small, but there's a certain level of spaciousness to it. When I moved in here, it was no big deal. I didn't feel cramped or inconvenienced or anything. I walked in, and it was perfect. I lived for 14 years in the greater Nashville metro area in Tennessee. We had a three-story, all-brick home that was 3,300 square feet, and all of it was loaded with stuff. They always say when a spouse transitions from this earth that you should never do anything rash in the first year, like marry somebody new, buy another home, move to India, you know, all these kind of crazy things that people do. So when Michael became ill and passed away, I continued to stay there for a year, and then I put the house up on the market and moved to Spokane with the idea that I was going to live in a tiny ADU. So I moved to a smaller space on a farm, but I didn't own that. I had planned to stay in Spokane longer, but it really was time to leave, and there were a lot of signs that it was time to leave. So then I said, nope, I'm going to get a tiny home. So now we're moving into the kitchen. Clever Tiny Homes has a very clever thing with this island. It is actually movable. So in some cases, some people might want to put it all the way here to the window or move it out somewhat to accommodate a larger space in the kitchen. But the way I did it is I put it this way so that I can have the table and a good walking space and the counter with two stools. So here's my little breakfast spot right here, and then my coffee spot right over here by the window. It's only a 30-inch table. It's an antique oak ice cream parlor table that turned into my dining table. This is my grandfather's lamp. It used to be an oil burning lamp, and many years ago it got converted to a regular electric. It's perfect on my dining table right next to the window. So right in here is a beautiful roomy pantry, and this is all wraparound storage all the way around here. There's another huge cabinet back there that I keep all my office supplies in. So moving into the kitchen further, this is a flex space in this home, and right underneath here is the wheel well. So I decided I needed to put something here to create more storage space and another kind of living area. This is an IKEA unit. So as I said, this is a flex space. There's nothing here when you get this house except the wheel well and the mini split, which is right here. Some people would probably put some furniture in or cabinets. People put in a whole big pantry system, which is similar to this piece. So from here, we're going to turn the corner and go into the body of the kitchen space. So I'm 4'11", and guess what? We have these fabulous cabinets that go clear up to the ceiling, and that's what I use that beautiful ladder for so I can store things clear up to the top. So here we are in the heart of the kitchen, and I'm going to start with the most important thing, the stove. This is a two-burner induction stove, which I keep covered with this teak cutting board. It gives me more counter space. I've got this fabulous oven. It's a 24-inch oven, and it works beautifully. I have kind of a loaded kitchen with all the bells and whistles, which makes me very happy. The oven and the dishwasher are both upgrades, and they're fabulous. This dishwasher is one of those beautiful drawer dishwashers. Besides the dishwasher, I have this fabulous sink. It has a garbage disposal, which is a wonderful upgrade, and also a water purifier, and this fabulous faucet that has a spray attachment. These work sinks are really all the rage now. And this one comes with a really nice cutting board, and then I added this silicone mat, so if I want to wash a few dishes real quick, I can drain them right here. Then I have my own vintage retro microwave and my Cuisinart coffee pot, which I downsized to a tiny one because it goes with my tiny kitchen. I also have my two-slice toaster. It's perfect in here, so when I get ready in the morning for my breakfast, I've got the coffee, the toaster, and the stove if I need it. So besides these wonderful upgrades, there's also a ton more storage down below. In this movable island, we've got six gorgeous drawers. Each one is a different depth from the top to the bottom, so you can store different items in each one of them. If you choose not to upgrade to the oven, this is also another cabinet space. Same goes for the dishwasher. There's a drawer underneath the dishwasher where I keep pots and pans, and then there's two giant cabinets here under the sink. And this has the water purifier in it, a garbage can for compostable items, and there's still plenty of space to put other things. I had a pretty big kitchen in my big house that I had, which was amazing, except it was way too big for me. I feel more comfortable in this space. It's compact, and it has just as much storage. So before we leave the kitchen, I wanted to show you my fabulous fridge. It's my little retro 10.1 cubic foot refrigerator. Clever Tiny Homes includes a really nice fridge, also the same size, 10.1, that fits perfectly in this space. And then I had just enough space to put my collection of plates on both sides of the kitchen. So moving along from the kitchen, welcome into my spa. I'm going to start out by showing you that there's this giant eight foot tall pocket door that separates the living space and kitchen from the bathroom area. Then there's another eight foot tall pocket door going here that is from the bathroom, which we'll talk about in a little bit. And then finally, the third eight foot tall pocket door separates the bathroom from the bedroom. This is singularly the main thing that attracted me to this particular house, this amazing shower. It comes standard with a full size bathtub, but I elected to have the walk-in shower because I'm sometimes a little unsteady on my feet. So inside here, I have some ADA grab bars that I put in. This is all tile, beautiful tile, and it has a special kind of epoxy grout, so it keeps it from cracking in the movement of the house. In the area where there's a wheel well is also a beautiful ledge shelf, and the ledge holds all my things. I have these teak pieces, the bench, and the mat, and the container that has the sponge and the soap, etc. So then I added the rain head shower. The shower head that it comes with is perfectly lovely, but I'm spoiled and I had to have this one. There's two powerful fans that keep all the condensation at bay, but I can still have my sauna experience in the shower, and I feel like I'm at some very expensive place. We're in the other part of the bathroom. I did some remodeling in here too. I put some more of the expressive plum in here, but I also painted this whole back wall behind the toilet all the way down the same color that's in the shower area, which is called Caviar by Sherwin-Williams. I painted the wheel well that caviar color, and I put this hamper, which fits perfectly on the wheel well. And then one of the other remodeling things I did was I put these two bamboo cabinets in that fit exactly in the wall, 41 inches. And then, of course, there were these built-in towel racks, so I put those on here. Okay, and then on this side of the bathroom, there's this fabulous vessel sink, which you never see in a tiny home. The same quartz countertop that is in the kitchen with the little glistening stuff in it, and the same beautiful tile right behind the sink. This medicine cabinet with mirror is outrageous. It has enough storage for six years' worth of toiletries. And then down below are two cubby holes that I have lots of stuff stored in. And underneath here is another massive amount of storage space, just so you can put, like, toilet tissue, cleaning products, etc. So I've had in the past some really tiny bathrooms, and this one actually exceeds the square footage that some of the bathrooms I've lived in have. I have also had some giant bathrooms that are like a ballroom. But this is really perfect. I am debt-free. This house is paid off in full. I own this house. The only thing I don't own is the ground it's sitting on. The house still is the same price as it was when it first debuted, which is $119,995. I got it for $109,995 because it was the Founder's Edition. So there was a discount that was there right at the very beginning. I can live on my Social Security if I'm careful with my budgeting. The lot rent here is $725 a month plus utilities. And it's way less than my mortgage was in Tennessee. But the utilities in these little houses, like, my water was only $8. Almost everybody that lives in this park is on this CARES program, which reduces our PG&E by a lot. At the end of the day, between space rent, utilities, and whatever other expenses I have during the month, I can do this on $2,000 and some change. So we are now in the tiny bedroom. So this is my 1880s Victorian bed. This is a full-size bed, and it doesn't take up very much space at all. You can walk around all sides of the bed with no trouble at all. They usually put a queen-size bed, which fits perfectly in here as well. So one other thing that I haven't mentioned yet is this entire house has heated floors, and they're on a program. So when you get out of bed in the morning, your feet are toasty warm. You don't even have to turn the heater on if you don't want, because the floors itself heat the house. Along the walls, I have another fireplace, and it can heat or just provide ambiance with flames. And right above it, it holds my little TV, so I can just sort of hibernate in this room for days on end if I want. The house comes standard with washer and dryer hookups. This is a compact unit, Stacker by GE, and I really love it a lot. If you choose not to put this in, this will make another closet. You can put shelves in and do whatever you want. And then we have this ginormous set of closets. There's a hanging rack in this one, but I put some boxes in with folded clothes. Up here is another hanging rack and lots of roomy shelves. Right now, I have all my summer clothes stored up at the top shelves, and all my winter clothes are ready here. We have three huge drawers. It holds tons and tons of clothes. I turned this into a utility closet. I have a cordless vacuum cleaner attached to the wall and a three-cube storage unit to keep all of the cleaning supplies, kitty litter, and all of that stuff. And then, this is the newest addition to this closet. It came with a shelf, but I needed more space to hang clothes, so I installed this. You just pull this down, and then you can reach the clothes, because remember, I'm 4'11", and so I have to have things reachable. I had seen this, actually, on an HGTV show, and I thought, I've got to put that in here. Close the door, and voila, totally clean. There is so much storage available to you. I haven't really seen any other tiny homes that have this much storage, both kitchen and bedroom. If you really want to see what it feels like, either visit somebody that's in one or rent a place for a little while, even for a weekend. There's a lot of these houses that are on Airbnb. I love living here. It's fabulous. Thanks for stopping by. I enjoyed showing you my tiny home. See you later.