Deceptively Simple Tiny House Hides Brilliant Design

I love city life and I've wanted to live in a tiny house for over a decade now, so when my job moved to the Tacoma area and I came with it, I thought this is the time to do it. 14, 15 months in, whatever I am now, I'm still going like, is this real? Like, I really enjoy it so much. I'm in this tiny house Facebook group and somebody advertised that they had a driveway space available for a tiny house with full hookups and I thought, I'm there. So this is my tiny house. It's eight and a half feet wide by 24 feet long and 13 and a half feet high. I have the living room right here as you walk in the house. You go through the hallway, kitchen, laundry room, into the bathroom on the far end and then there's a sleeping loft up above and tons of storage under the stairs and a full-size closet. So this is my kitchen. As you can see, I have a decent amount of storage. I like the color of the cabinets, especially contrasting with the butcher block countertops. You always think about how much storage do I need, how much do I want to encroach into the living room. The demo layout, as I looked at this at Seattle Tiny Homes, they had an additional cabinet here. I decided that I would rather have that extra space in the living room to give it like a good size floor. So what I chose to do is take that one set of cabinets out and go with this pop-up counter, which doubles as my work desk. So it's plenty of cabinet space, plenty of counter space. This tends to be my prep area for cooking and then this is kind of overflow. And then if I were doing something more elaborate, like a big meal or meal prep or something like that, I need the extra space. I can flip the counter up here. I also tend to use the stairs as a little bit of a spillover space for when I'm cooking. I just need something out of my way or I'm not going to use it right away. I have a two burner cooktop, which is totally sufficient. But if I do need a third burner, I've got this instant pot, which has a saute feature. So it's kind of neat in a pinch. I've got a microwave convection oven and over here at the end, I've got an apartment fridge. Functionally, I can do anything I want in the kitchen. I would say that if I were to add anything, it would be nice to have a conventional oven because like I can't cook a Papa Murphy's pizza in the convection oven or if there's a way, I don't really know how to do it. I can do like frozen pizzas. But other than that, it does really well. In my kitchen hallway, laundry room hallway, whatever you want to call it, it's obviously multifunctional. The storage in it is great. I have a full size closet here, and then I have a lot of like outdoor hobbies. This tends to be sort of my utility bin here, where in the winter, this is like my ski base layers and ski related stuff. In the summer, it's more like, you know, exercise clothes for the various activities I would do in the summer. As I moved into a tiny house, I definitely had to purge, had to get rid of certain items. I had my sights set on this for so many years, though, that it was always in the back of my mind. If I would buy something, I would think, will this go in the tiny house that I'll eventually have? So I mostly stuck to sort of a streamlined path to a tiny house. I've got a big white farmhouse sink. I like how deep it is. I like how wide it is. It's easy to do dishes in. I don't mind doing dishes. I guess in the places I've lived historically, it's been about 50-50. Some have had dishwashers, others I'm washing dishes by hand. I don't really mind it. I have this dish drying mat, which works really well. It's got a special stone in it that absorbs water really efficiently. The other thing that I always consider is I really like the concept of the function of something in my house, but also I want it to look nice. So I really like the white sink and how it contrasts with the color of the cabinets. I asked them specifically to bring the lip above the line of the counter because I think I wanted to bring the sink into play a little bit visually and give it a little pop to the area. And then for the fridge, it's a good size fridge. They call it an apartment fridge. It's sufficient. There are times when it's packed to the gills, but that's not very common. It's a good size for me living solo here in a tiny house. And I have a combination washer-dryer. You do have to do smaller loads, so I'm doing laundry very frequently. But it's really okay because the neat thing about a tiny house is everything's within arm's reach. So I'll be here preparing something in the kitchen and I think, oh, I need to do laundry. Better turn around. Everything I need is here. I tend to hang my shirts because I'm like just barely a medium, but I hang them right there. The dirty clothes bin's here. The closet's here. So everything is very close by, which makes it feel way less laborious to do laundry. I think my favorite thing about cooking in my tiny house is that it's my space. Things get to be where I want them to be. If something's out of place, it's because I left it there. To me, everything has a place, so I know where things are and that makes it, you know, it's fun when you're starting a project of any sort, like cooking a meal even, just if you know where things are and they're easily accessible. So as you follow through the kitchen hallway, we're in the bathroom here. And the bathroom is approximately eight feet wide by about four feet, so I feel like it's a good size. I'm not really wanting for more in it. I feel like I can function and move around pretty comfortably. Also considering that every inch I add to one space of the house is an inch you take away from another space, so I feel like I hit the sweet spot. I have a conventional flushing toilet, sort of standard vanity. I specifically went with a sink with a little bit of a ledge on the side so I can store things. And I have a half bathtub shower that I really like. I've got glass tiles in it, which were actually a housewarming gift from my parents. It's one of my favorite features of my house. I just think it's this beautiful blue that works really well in the bathroom. This house is built with SIPS panels, which stands for structurally insulated panels. So they're actually built off site from where the tiny house itself was built to the specs of the house. Great thing about SIPS is not only from a builder's perspective, it is really quick to assemble, but from the end user product perspective, they're extremely efficient from an energy and a sound insulation perspective. So taking that into account, there's this little hidden gem in the bathroom, which is my medicine cabinet is behind my barn door. We decided to place it here rather than behind the mirror, like you'd conventionally find medicine cabinets, because with SIPS, one of the key elements is you really need to not break the insulation barrier. Otherwise you'll start to get cold in from the outside because the outside is just on the other side of this wall. You could get moisture and then all of a sudden you're getting mold. So in an attempt to prevent that, we moved the medicine cabinet here behind this barn door. I also really liked the barn door in particular. It's more of like a closet door in that you don't see any of the hardware. It's hidden behind this paneling here. I definitely wanted a sleek, clean, modern look in the house. I didn't really like a lot of the barn door hardware that you see in a lot of houses that's very big and bold. And that's the statement of the hardware here. It's just hidden behind this. So I really liked the layout. It took a while to get into a tiny house. I initially set out on this journey thinking I would build the house. You know, it was meant to be very difficult to do on your own, but totally worth it. So I started saving money for that and then thought about, you know, where do I build it? Where do I put it? So all those head scratchers that everybody goes through in this process. And in the meantime, while I had this savings built up and ready to go or, you know, getting closer, my life just was turned upside down when COVID hit. At the time I worked seasonal jobs and I had a bunch of different jobs that all went away right when COVID hit. I actually was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. My savings turned into debt and my life was just like totally thrown around. And so my world just changed. It wasn't until I took a new direction a few years later and took this job that things sort of kind of leveled out. And I was again in a position to move on this. And in that case, I thought, you know, it's let's get this done. Let's have somebody else do it. Let's have them do it right. So I decided to have the house built. I think the big question for a lot people going tiny is where do I put it? Which one do I get? Do I secure a place before I build the house or vice versa? And for me, I definitely felt like it was more important to know where I was going to put it before I had one built or purchased one secondhand or whatever I would have gone whatever route. For me, I found the spot. And that's as I moved down to the South Sound area for a job was looking at apartments and nothing appealed. And I'm in this tiny house Facebook group and somebody advertised that they had a driveway space available for a tiny house with full hookups, water, sewer, electric, 50 amp power, parking space. And I thought, I'm there. So I drove down from the northwestern part of the state that very night to come look at the space. And I said, I'll take it. I ended up paying rent on it for almost a year before I had my house because I knew I found a jam. I was in an area where I wanted to live. And from that point on, I decided on, you know, going with Seattle Tiny Homes to build my tiny house. The build took about 10 months or so and totally worth it in the end to have it. It was, you know, obviously would have been great to get in right away, but it was, you know, these things just take time. It's a big process, but I'm here now loving it. In terms of cost, I have a mortgage on the tiny house. I put a large down payment down. It's a conventional 25 year fixed mortgage. And then I pay rent on the space of the driveway where I have the tiny house placed. The two of those combined come to $1,600 a month. That includes all my utilities. So my only extra expense is refilling my propane tanks about every three months. That's about 30 bucks or something like that. In terms of what I would pay for rent in this area, I think I save a considerable amount, especially when you account for all my utilities being included in that. The savings are great, but that's definitely not my rationale for living in a tiny house. That's just sort of the icing on the cake. I just really like tiny houses. I think they're cool. I don't know how long I'll live in a tiny house. I've been here a little over a year and it has certainly exceeded expectations. I mean, it's possible I'll live in a tiny house my whole life, or it's possible in a couple of years I'll go, eh, I'm, you know, done with that phase of my life. But right now I'm really enjoying it. We're in my living room. I like that you walk in the house and you walk right into the living room. It's my favorite space. It's the space I spend the most time in, in the house by far. In particular, I like that it's a big wide open floor. It always kind of bothers me when I see a tiny house and they have their counter jut into the center line of the house. So I feel like I'd have to walk around something. I very specifically wanted the layout where the living room is on one side of the house, the bathroom is on the other, both because I don't want like bathroom noises, you know, if somebody's over right next to the living room. But also I wanted the living room on this end of the house to feel like if there is another person here, they can feel comfortable sitting over here and people can kind of walk around the other part of the house and not feel like they're sitting right in the middle of the house and people are walking past them. And I can actually host in a tiny house. I have really great neighbors and we have this cool tradition where each of us takes turn about every three weeks hosting the other neighbors for dinner. And I actually host here. I can get like seven or eight people in here. It's tight, but a cozy space. So it works. I added a little shelf. I guess it's like strong enough to be a separate loft, but it is solely for storage. You wouldn't want to probably put a mattress up there and risk sleeping up there. It's actually kind of nice because with all the height in here, as I'm laying on the couch, it almost creates this like cozy little den area. And yet it still keeps that the height up there. I don't feel too encumbered. Moving in was kind of an interesting puzzle because I didn't have a couch and I had a living room full of boxes that were stacked and I was sitting on lawn chairs. As I found places for things, I had a pretty strong vision of where things were going to go. But of course, when you get into the new space, there's all these different obstacles and opportunities that you don't think of. So it was kind of a neat puzzle. It took about a month or two to really sort of get things in their place. And then as I've lived here over a year, the journey continues. And that's one of my favorite things about living in a tiny house or any space really is just thinking about where do I put things so that they're out of the way, they're kind of easily accessible. There's some some logic to pairing like things together. And I feel like I'm in a pretty good place there, but it's going to continue. One thing I love and has been a big journey in the house is the lighting. I have a ton of windows. So during the day, there's this really nice natural light that filters through these shades in the windows, which are open at night. It was kind of a long journey and getting the right lights for the place because I really don't like overhead lights. They're just even the soft ones are just like really abrasive to me. So I had to find lights with limited space because every table lamp, you know, wants a big side table. And that wasn't an option for me. So, you know, I found this light, which is actually meant to be put on the wall. But somebody I knew had a good idea. I had these little plant shelves and they said, we'll just put it on the plant shelf. And all of a sudden we had a solution. For some reason, somebody manufactured this tiny table here that this little light that casts onto the wall could go on. I also added an accent light below the kitchen cabinet for a little pop of light there. I have probably 15 little lamps throughout this house, and I use them almost exclusively. The only time I ever turn an overhead light on is if I if I'm doing a project and I really need to see really well. This is my sleeping loft up there. I've got a queen mattress that's just placed on the floor. It's pretty comfortable. I do have some extra storage up there. And it's funny. You envision how you're going to use a space and then what happens when you actually get in that space. For whatever reason, I always thought I would get dressed upstairs in the loft because I think my brain thought, well, your clothes go near where your bed is because you get dressed in your bedroom. And then I realized like that doesn't make any sense at all. So I get dressed in my kitchen. But what I ended up storing in the extra storage up there was like towels and extra sheets and bedding type stuff, stuff that I don't access as much in a small space. It's fun to get creative. I had these reference books that needed a home. So I just found that a little monitor stand plus some bookends makes a reference bookshelf. I absolutely love living in a tiny house. My thing that I like the least is lack of headspace in the loft. It's not a huge deal because I typically just sleep up there and that's really all it's used for. But it would be nice to have to not hit my head so much. That said, if I were to build another 24 foot tiny house, I would still go with a sleeping loft because it's just one of those things. What living situation is perfect. And this is the outside of my house. It's an eight and a half feet wide by a 24 foot tiny house. Some of the appliance components are out here, like the AC compressor is out here for the mini split that's inside. And then behind the house is a little cubby area that I call the garage, which houses the propane, which fuels the on-demand hot water heater. I chose a blue paint for the house because I really like blue and I really like the white against the blue against the lap panel cedar siding. I think they contrast and just look really nice. And then I'm slowly adding plants and planter boxes and trees and that sort of stuff that'll probably grow. I think I'm not really a tattoo guy, but people talk about like once you get one, you need like a full sleeve. So I feel like that's my future for vegetation on this place. Tiny living has definitely impacted my life in a good way. A, it's just my space. B, I feel like it is something that I've wanted for so long that I'm, you know, 14, 15 months in whatever I am now, I'm still going like, is this real? Like I really enjoy it so much. I just visually, I love the space functionally. I love the space. One thing that has, that did ring true that a lot of people had said before I had lived in a tiny house was you do get cabin fever. And so it does sort of force you out the door and that's true. And I think that's a positive thing because I do tend to be a little bit of a hermit or an introvert from time to time. And I think there are times where if I'm laying on the couch too much and I just feel like I'm tired of staring at these walls, I got to get outside the house. So I've definitely experienced that. Yeah. People ask me a lot about what it's like to live in a tiny house and like sum it up briefly. And I, I, that's hard to do because it's so many things to me. It's like, I think they did such a beautiful job on my house. I like the things I've put in it. And so it's feels like I live in this beautiful art project, but it also just functions really well. So it's this like sweet spot, I guess maybe that's it. Sweet spot is, is my favorite thing about a tiny house. All right. Thanks for coming to take a look at my house. I hope that anyone who's out there interested in a tiny house, this may have helped you along with your journey.