Her CusTom Tiny Home W/ Main Floor BeDroom & Large WinDows

Hi, I'm Pat. I'm going to show you how I moved from a 2400 square foot house into a tiny home. Come on, let's go. Let me welcome you to my home. You come in the front door, which is on the side, and some of the parks do not allow side entries. I have a side entry, and you come in, there's the living room, the kitchen, and then the bathroom. Further down the hall are the stairs up to the loft, washer dryer, and the bedroom. The dimensions are 11.3 feet wide and 33.3 feet long, and then it has a deck that is another 12 feet long. The interior living space is classified as 399.9 square feet, so it qualifies as an RV. I had a lot of customizations with Platinum that one of their dealerships was very open to allow happen. An extended countertop, I have more windows, a lot of woodwork, cabinets that aren't typical in a model home. So if you're looking for a model home, a tiny home, it would benefit anybody, everybody, to ask if they can do some of the customization that you would like, because not all of them do. This is my living room. It's been rearranged three times, and it finally works. My windows are standard, except for all the wood trim. That's an uplift from Platinum. The furniture I already had, and I repurposed it here, including this movable island, tea cart, whatever you want to call it. When I moved from my house after 25 years, which was a four bedroom with three baths, all my kids had already moved out, and then my husband passed, and it didn't make sense for me to be in the house anymore, and it was very expensive. And so I moved to a condo, which was just as expensive because of the HOA fees, and the association fees, and all the other fees that you get with a condo. Moving into this home caused me to downsize more, but now I have the essentials of what I need. It was an adjustment to move into a tinier home, but it works perfectly for me. It's not too big, it's not too small, and it sure in the heck is much less expensive than anything else to live in. My tiny, not so tiny kitchen is fabulous. I don't have a range, so you don't see any burners. I have a microwave convection oven. It also does air frying, and everything except broiling, which is okay because I have something, another appliance to do broiling. Now for a cooktop, I have these portable ones. I have two of them, and they're much easier to keep clean than regular ceramic cooktop. These are induction, and they heat up right where your pan is, and you can take your pan off, and the edges are not hot, so it's very safe. One of the things I did when I had this home designed, I opted for a dishwasher. The standard is an 18-inch, which is two-thirds the size of a regular dishwasher. The company that I worked with, Platinum, at that time did not have full-size dishwashers. However, they plumbed this cabinet, and I bought the full-size dishwasher. My kitchen is great. However, I am going to replace my sink because I need to be able to wash big items like my stock pots. A double bowl sink, even though this is a fabulous one, it's deep. It doesn't accommodate a roaster or some of the other things, even a full-size cookie sheet. As part of my kitchen design, this cabinet had cabinets above, and then it had this little space 12 inches deep, maybe 14, so a perfect coffee bar. And I put all my dishes here, my glasses. One of the things I've always done is had my stock visible, so if people needed a glass, they knew where to go find one without snooping in all the cabinets. And so, this works wonderfully. And no, they don't get all dusty because I use them all the time. In my kitchen, the cavity for the refrigerator, although I bought this refrigerator, the cavity is designed and built for a full-size refrigerator. Now, this builder, their best-of-the-line refrigerator they have is a side-by-side, and people like side-by-side. I don't because I wanted to have the space to put a turkey in my refrigerator, so I bought my own. My home is a custom-built home. It actually came from a standard plan, but I had some changes made, a lot of changes. For example, this area was actually upper cabinets with a countertop all the way around, and I changed it to be a pantry. Kitchen has two additional banks of cabinets, so I have a bank of drawers, and I have this cabinet that has my garbage in it. Lots of counter space. Now, I have 12 feet of counter space. It works for me because I wanted storage and the ability to run my kitchen. My sister and I were looking for a place to park our homes, and we had looked at various parks previously. I did a search online. We wanted to stay in the state we're in, and this one came up. We came here, secured our lots before our houses were even built. There are tiny home communities, but you need to go look at them and see if it's one that you want to live in. This is one that I wanted to live in. My lot rent is $750 a month. In my old home, my house, it was just shy of 2,400 square feet. My electric bills were running about $400 a month. My electric bill here may be a little more than my neighbors because I have central heating and cooling, but my electric is $125 at the most, and I don't have a water bill, no property tax. So, let's see, property tax was almost $7,000 a year. I'm probably saving at least two grand a month living here. This house, I paid $125,000 for it. That cedar porch was $12,000 by itself. Insurance is another kind of a challenge because not all insurance companies even know what a park model is, and you want to have good insurance because this is not just an RV. This is a house. Also, hooking it up, the plumbing and the electrical, that was about $1,500 to have that done, but those are kind of, in my mind, pretty typical expenses to expect, but just something else that you need to be aware of. Living in a tiny home works for me, and it works for everybody that lives in our community. We have a small community, and we are very tight, and I would not change it at all. The bathroom is really good. It's about the size of what my powder room was and my house, but it's a full shower, four feet by three feet. It has a bench, and I put my towel rack in there. Downsizing from a bathroom that has a bathtub, you have to think about how much you use that bathtub. You know, I might have used my bathtub, and I had three large bathtubs. Two of them were Whirlpools. One of them was a Roman tub, and I might have used them once a year, and so, yeah, I don't have a bathtub, but the shower has everything. I don't miss having a bathtub. Downsizing was great for me because you have a lot of things that you realize you really don't use, and you really don't need. Lots of cabinets. I have six drawers, an upper here, and a large cabinet here under the sink. It's a great bathroom. This is my tiny home bedroom. It has a full-size bed with two nightstands, and the bed has drawers under it. It has two large drawers on each side, and then two narrower drawers at the foot. I had a Murphy bed. I thought that was going to be great in here, and it was heavy to get up and down, and as I'm getting older, I didn't want to mess with it. Went back to a traditional bed, and so, this is a full-size. Obviously, you can put a queen in, but a queen is going to be five inches longer. I had very large bedrooms in the past, and there was a lot of space that was never used. I did find that I do like to have nightstands. I do like to have the storage of nightstands, but I don't need to have a king-size bed and all the elaborate bedding and stuff that goes with it. You know, make it simple. Make it clean, and it'll be fine. We're going to talk about storage. This design, this model, has four very deep chest of drawers, built-in, standard, and then the closets. Lots of space here, and one of the things you find is you don't need as much clothes as you thought you needed. This closet is a little different. It has an air duct that goes upstairs, so I lost part of the closet, but I put a rack here for my shoes, and I still have lots of space for my clothes. The space in this bedroom is much smaller than I ever had in any master bedroom, but it works. This is my loft, and this is my office space, and I also have my sewing machine, and then I have the other side that is actually larger than my bedroom as a bonus room. This loft was initially designed in the house to go all the way across over the kitchen. That would have made that hallway a total tunnel, and so I only had to make this small piece for my office. I have to admit coming up and down the stairs is a little bit of a challenge. Now there are drawers in the stairs that give you more storage, but the stairs are steep, so it's not that bad. I would love to have everything I have up here downstairs, but I don't have the space, and the upstairs is not counted as living area, so it doesn't count towards taxes. Not everybody is suited for a loft. I would definitely recommend a loft for people that might have grandkids or somebody that you need a little extra space, and it gives them, you know, some breathing room different from the downstairs. This loft works for me, and I would not change having a loft. It's not for everybody, but that's okay. Now you're on my back porch. I had my house constructed backwards on the trailer. This actually faces the driveway, and it's a beautiful back porch. 11 by 12 and has lots of It was an upgrade by the builder. They've made these porches a few times, but this is totally screened in, all rebar around it, and it's all cedar. I spend most of my day out here just enjoying the outside. The basic model of this home had a partial bay window here with a dresser in front of for the bedroom. I asked to have that bay window moved into my living room, so I have two bay windows in the living room, and just to put a sliding door here into my bedroom, and that gave me added space in the living room. It also gave me a better view. In this community, as a small community, the owners of the property were very receptive to allowing customizations. I have a wraparound deck. My unit is in backwards, and I do have a side entry door, but they had no issues at this park. Not all parks are the same. You need to ask. I love living tiny. It's perfect for me. I find all the noise I had with neighborhoods, and after living in those kinds of environments for decades, living in this tiny community and living in my tiny home is just so peaceful, and I am so relaxed. It's just nice to calm down and be rested every day. Thank you for watching, and if you have any questions, leave them in the comments, and I'll be happy to get back with you.