This Huge Off-Grid Tiny House Cost Under US$60K

Some of my absolute favourite build projects come from giving old materials brand new life, and today the tiny house that we're about to visit is a fantastic example of just how good that can be. Hi Kerry, it's great to meet you. Hi Bryce. G'day Will, how's it going mate? Yeah well thank you, welcome. Thank you very much, it is so nice to be here and oh my gosh, I love the style of your house. This kind of eclectic hodgepodge home is just so interesting to look at, isn't it? It is, I love it and it's got a lot of character. Yeah, certainly thrown together. Yeah, such a great use of salvaged materials as well. Yeah, in this build it's got as less brand new materials as possible basically. The person we got it from had his own ex-demo business and he just had a lot of excess materials and it all got put together on this on the outside and the inside. Right, so how did this house come to be? Well, we were looking at staying in a caravan, a bigger caravan. We were living in two caravans. We travel around Australia in an off-road caravan and then we bought another caravan once we arrived here to live in and then travel in and then we wanted to upgrade that. So we wanted something bigger again and when we were looking for a third caravan and then we just thought, well why don't we look at tiny houses? Just sparked it, didn't it? Yeah, so you got online and I think this is the second or third house that we looked at and went and looked at it and fell in love, as you can understand. The price was right too. That's right, yeah, and we knocked him down a little bit. Yeah, because tiny houses aren't cheap these days. No, they are not. Being such a large home and quite a difficult driveway to navigate, this could not have been easy to get here. No, it wasn't. It was steep as it had to turn in sharp and go down quite deep. It looked like the Titanic going down to the others. You did really well. Amazing tow truck drivers. Yeah, those tow truck drivers know what they're doing, eh? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so this tiny house has actually been made from a renovated single-wide then? Yeah, that's right. So if you look under that, you'll see it's all the plain aluminium and it came from a caravan park originally that lost its license to have x amount of cabins. So it got sold to this gentleman. That gentleman, he ran out of, I guess, effort. And then we took it on sort of, what, say half done maybe? Yeah. And then we also did our own touches as well, making it ours. So we've done a lot of work. We did about six, seven, eight months actually. There's certainly more work than we expected. We thought it was a lot more finished than it was. There's a fair bit of water damage as well we had to rectify. We'll have to take off the entire inside wall. The whole inside walls have to come out. Oh, wow. And then replace. Well, it gave us a chance to put better insulation in there anyway. It's a fun process, but we're sort of in a hurry to get out of the caravan to get in as well. Oh, I bet. You'll see when you come inside. It doesn't feel like a tiny house. It's more like a tiny mansion really. It does look like a big one. What size is it? So inside's 13 metres long, 3 metres wide and then I think it's 2.4 high on the inside. Great. So there's plenty of height for me. That's for sure. The only thing is the doors. I don't know when they built this. You know, it seemed like 1800s. It was like, they're pretty low. They're pretty small. So I don't know who was thinking about these door sizes, but you'll have to duck as you go in. Right. Japanese tea house styles. Yeah. And the parking spot that you've got here. Oh my gosh. This is perfect. It is. It is stunning. The whole property is four acres, but we've got about two acres here to ourselves. And you can't even see the main house. They're up the hills. And yeah, it's just our own little oasis here. Yeah, very happy here. Yeah. Even overlooking the dam. Yeah, we are pretty lucky with that. It's just beautiful. Like we can sit there and watch all the ducks and the plovers and all sorts of birds coming and going. So the roos coming through as well. Yeah. The summer we have the bearded dragons, which are always entertaining to watch. That's right. Yeah. It's nice. It's a cute little pocket here. And it's semi-rural. So we're still close to everything. Yeah. I can still get to work easily. Yeah. Get to the shop. So that's sort of, yeah, we are very lucky to be here. Yeah. Very thankful to the owners of the land for having us. That's right. Yeah. Love those guys. Yeah, we do. Great. And then you've extended your home with this wonderful outdoor area. It's great to have, especially when you are living in a tiny space. It's nice to have an outdoor area. And we like the outdoor living. We do a lot of cooking on the barbecue and a lot of sitting outside. And it's really good. And to have a table we can seat over 10 people. And that's one way we can host here. Because you can't really host in a tiny house. So we do like hosting. And we have people over. And we have a spit going. And yeah, it's really nice to have that space. And are you off the grid here? Yeah, pretty much. We're 100% off grid. Cool. We've got a solar trailer set up. And then we pump our water from the main house, which collects the water to their large tanks. And then we pump down to our 5,000 litre tank. So we are essentially 100% off grid. And what's the tank you've got under the house there? So that is our septic tank. Oh, really? Yeah. So that can be packed up and taken away, if needed to, very quickly and easily. And we just get it pumped as required. What a good idea. It's a very unusual thing to see an above ground septic with a tiny house. Yeah. So we've got a flushable toilet. So it's really lovely. We've also got a composting toilet as well that we've built before we got the tiny house. So yeah, we've got two options here. Great. Best of both worlds. Yeah, that's right. And it's a nice building that you've built for the composting toilet too. Yeah. Once again, that was all recycled, reclaimed stuff. And yeah, it just means we have the washing machine outside of the house and a chance to have a second toilet as well. Yeah. And what about greywater here? Greywater runs off into a humble little tomato field out the back. Yeah. Good idea. Those tomatoes, they're thirsty. Yeah, they are. And I love the little pond you've built there. Yeah, that was something that I thought I'd like to work on. I love wildlife, but we did consider whether that was a wise decision bringing frogs closer to our bedroom because they can be pretty loud at night. Yes, they can. But it is beautiful. And we haven't had any frogs come there. They seem to hang around the dam. So it's just a nice little feature. Well, I just think this is such a cool house. I love the style of the exterior. And I cannot wait to see what's happening inside. Can we check it out? Sure, you can. Let's go. All right. Now, just watch your head. Oh, this is absolutely fantastic. The timber in here just adds so much character. Yeah, it does. Absolutely. Just rolling on with the same style. All recycled, all taken from old houses, basically, and repurposed. Beautiful reclaimed floors in here, too. Yeah, you can see the old nail holes. So it's all come from somewhere else and reused again and just adds to the charm. A bit of effort staining it, but that was well worth it. That's right. And you're so right about the sense of space in here. It really does have great head height. And you absolutely feel the extra width and length in here, too, don't you? Yeah, the standard ones are 2.4. So this being three metres wide, just that little bit more makes such a big difference to us. It really feels like an apartment. As I said, we've got an awesome view out every window. And the extra size has let you do some great stuff with the layout as well. Like this kitchen just looks so functional. Yeah, well, originally it had like a bit of, what do you call that? A hob, I guess, like this big dark hob. Yeah, and it was just designed quite differently. So we've gone and added an extension here and then added another extension there. And it's really opened up the space. And we thought we'd use that as our dining table instead of having to put a dining table in here. I mean, who has a dining table in the tiny house? Good idea. But we have a separate dining area and a separate lounge area. So that really works for us. And one thing we've done in the kitchen is remove any gas appliances because we've got a good solar setup. We can utilise that and keep our costs down. Brilliant. So much storage in here, too. Yeah, I mean, how do you get that in a tiny house? But yeah, these are all the original cupboards from the 70s. And we've just slapped on a little bit of paint. But if you open up the cupboards, you'll be able to see the age of the property. Well, I just think it all looks fantastic. And you've also added so much character and flair. What you've done with the tiles above the stove there especially looks so good. Yeah, thank you. That was an extra feature that we put in here. Carrie loves a mosaicing. Yeah, so I thought, yeah, I had an idea of putting that in and matching with the cupboards and adding a little bit of an extra touch there with the owl. So yeah, thank you. I really enjoyed doing that. Great. And very comfortable lounge space. I love the way that you've added the mirror wall in here as well because it really adds to the sense of space in here. Well, actually, that was there originally. So we were thinking of removing that wall altogether. But because the mirrors open up the space, we just thought we'd leave it. Yeah. And you've got the television position, so it's comfortable to watch from the couch. But you can also cook and watch some telly as well. Yeah. Well, the TV, it's on a mount, so it just comes out and turns. And so you can do that. If you're in the kitchen, you can see it through the mirror anyway. You can leave it running while you're mucking around or whatever, making a drink. Beautiful use of some stained glass features in this home as well. Yeah, that was nice to see. We weren't wanting to change that at all. I think the owner put that in. Yeah, that originally was a double hung sash. And they've just taken the top one, turned it upside down and chucked some hinges on. And nice little touch too. Absolutely. And then you've got the office here as well. Yeah, that was originally a double bunk bed room. And it had an extra storage in there. And because I work from home, we thought we'd do that up as an office. So knock all that out. We actually took out some cupboards. That's how much storage space we have. Right. So put the custom desk in there and off she goes. Yeah. So the office is a really great space for me, but it's also a music room for Will. Cool. What kind of music do you do? Just acoustic stuff, I guess. Depends how I'm feeling on the day as well. Nice. Very rock star. Hey, great to have a space for it. And what do you do working from home? I day trade. Wow. Yeah, it's a bit different. I'll say. It can be stressful at times, but it's well worth the ability to be remote and work whenever I like. Yeah. I've tried a little bit of day trading and I think I've only ever lost money. It's not easy, is it? No, it's not. Day trading requires a lot of time sitting there watching charts for hours on end. And it's a very low success rate with trading. So I think it's about 80 to 95 percent of people fail at day trading. Right. I can imagine. And how about you, Will? I'm in construction. Okay. It's easy where we are here in the scenic room. We're sort of halfway between Brisbane and Gold Coast. So my work moves around a bit depending what's going on. So I can sort of get to each major city in a reasonable time. Yeah, great. And having a hallway is a bit of a luxury in a tiny house, isn't it? Yeah, it is interesting having a thin hallway. We do need a giveaway sign here and there. But other than that, it's a great path to the other parts of the house. Yeah, it's great. And further down that way, we've got your bathroom. Can we have a look in there? Absolutely. All righty. Let's go. Hey, this is a big bathroom for a tiny house. I know. I mean, who has a bath in a tiny house? Right. And I love the design of this as well. The combo bath shower just works so well in here. Yeah, it does. And it's beautiful with all the reclaimed timber as well. So it's lovely to come in here and have a shower. Yeah. Is this your work or is this the original design? No, it's the original setup that was in here. Just all the timber's being put on around it. We had to redo the sub floor. That was a bit cooked. Yeah. And then we changed the vanity as well. I had like an old farm style vanity with the two separate taps. Right. So that's just a modern feature we wanted. And a bit more storage in the cupboard as well. And again, the use of all of the reclaimed timber in here just totally elevates this. Yeah. The whole place has its own theme altogether. Yeah. Come together nicely. Very cool mirror you've got here too. Yeah. It came with a vanity, but we got rid of the vanity and just replaced it with a nicer vanity and kept the mirror because we thought it was such a nice feature in here. Absolutely. And this jut out that you've got in the bathroom is actually storage, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. So we've got two sliding doors there and we've changed all the shelving in there. So we've got an area where we can put really tall things like brooms and vacuum cleaners and stuff like that. And then just shelving for all our other purposes. And then there's more shelving at the top. So it sort of reaches right up to the roof. So it's great. Very nice. And next up is your bedroom. Can we check that out? Yeah, sure. Cool. Another great size room in here. And hey, how nice is this with the view right onto the pond? Oh, it is nice to wake up in bed and just look outside. And again, no shortage of storage in here. Yeah, it is great to be able to finally hang my clothes after living in a caravan. Will did a bit of renovation on the cupboard space. Yeah, we took out one of the doors. Just it was a bit too much trying to slide multiple doors here, there. And then we just put a cupboard off marketplace in there and raised the shelf to make it fit. And we've got more than enough room for all that stuff now. Yeah. And again, having the huge mirrors there just adds such a tremendous sense of space. Yeah, it does. And it's also nice to be able to see myself in a full mirror. Again, something that I haven't been able to do for about three years while living in a caravan and traveling around Australia. So yeah, those little things all add up, don't they? Yeah, they do. So yeah, we're pretty happy. And I can see some more great reclaimed furniture finds in here too. Yeah, we got them from marketplace and painted them. And then I just sanded them back to give them that aged look. We're even using secondhand forks on the thing as a roof. On the hangers. As a hook. Oh, right. Oh, gosh. Okay, there they are. Yeah, what a cool idea. Old forks from an up shop. What a great use of them. Yeah, I guess when you've got a house like this, you can be a bit creative. Does give you a bit of license to experiment more, doesn't it? Yeah, it is nice to have that creative freedom and just think, well, it's not perfect. So we can just add our own touches and if it works, it works. If it doesn't, we can just change it. Yeah, good to have fun with it all. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and even the bedhead secondhand, we got it for 20 bucks, I think. And we just painted the blue out of it, to be honest. And it just, it works with our color theme. It's actually so much fun being able to give those items new life. But also, especially when it comes to finding things on marketplace, that process of thrifting and getting real bargains. It actually is a lot of fun, isn't it? Yeah, it is. I really enjoy it. And so how long have you been living here now? Well, we've been in the tiny house. It got delivered on the 1st of May, 2025. Yeah, so a bit over a year now. But we've been on the plot for about two years. We were in a caravan for about a year before that. It's unusual that you've actually upsized into a tiny house from your caravan. Yeah, I think that's... That's pretty funny. It is, you're a bit more appreciative of space. And we'll continue upgrading, I guess, to some extent. But we will never live in a big house again. That's not for us. We've done that before. And it's just, I'm not interested. It's just too much work. Don't need to spend the money on it either. And also, I've done a cleaning job at one stage. And I just like the idea of not having to clean so much. You know, it's just a lot of time. And man, it's big houses. So this place to clean takes all of, you know, an hour. It's great. Yeah, it's a huge perk, isn't it? Yeah. And having travelled in the off-road caravan before this, that must have been so much fun. Oh, it's amazing. Life-changing experience. Going through that process, getting ready for that process, was sort of how we became minimal. Yeah, right. Because we didn't want to put anything in storage. So we just got rid of everything. And then when we're travelling, we just sort of had the realisation that we don't need the stuff. So we've sort of continued that on. And that's why we were able to do tiny house living. I guess you'd get that theme a lot with people in tiny houses, realising that being minimal is freeing. The more you own, the more it owns you. Yeah, the less you have, the more you can do, really. So very true. So for us, this tiny house means opportunity and a good bit of market research to working out what we truly want and what we actually want to live in. And it gives us the freedom to go away and not have to worry about a house that has a lot of maintenance or expectations that normal houses have, I guess. It also gives us the ability to afford travel because we own this house outright. So that's also a really amazing thing to have at the age that we are or at any age, really. Gives us the opportunity to do what we want outside of the tiny house. And how are you finding living in the tiny house now after all of your adventures? Great, yeah. Well, we've got more room. That's right. And we've got, you know, I can yell out to Will in another room now. He's not just in the same room all the time. We've got all the creature comforts of any other house. It's just slightly smaller. That's right. The style of this home is so interesting. Renovating it from a single wide, the use of all of the salvaged and reclaimed materials, and then obviously doing a lot of the work yourselves. Can we talk about the cost that was involved in bringing all of this to life? Basically, the van itself, including all the renovations, was about under $65,000. And then the solar trailer setup was $20,000. So we're well under $100,000 for a huge tiny. Wow, that is a great result. Yeah. Really. It's not often I hear a price point like that anymore. Yeah, we went to the tiny house conventions and had a look around and we were just gobsmacked about the price. I get it. They're amazing. But my life's not completed with soft-closed doors. So we're happy to have all the older style, but just make it our own. I really love that. I love that idea. And you really have done that. You have taken this place and made it your own. Yeah, we have. We feel like it's definitely something that we are comfortable with. And as you can see, there's a lot of areas in the house that are not quite right and a little bit crooked. And I think that's why we named it Tipsy Gypsy, because everything's a little bit on the piss. But that's okay with us, because having some certain personality traits that everything has to be straight allows you to be comfortable with the fact that not everything's perfect. And what's next for you both? What does the future hold for you now? We're still deciding, aren't we? This has been a great little project for us to sit on until we decide what we truly want. We're going through everything, because we're so free in what our choice is. We're either thinking buying another big bush block and putting this on it or downsizing to a smaller sort of house. Anything that's going to be a small place. But we just still can't quite work it out exactly what we're going to do yet. Living in Queensland, I've always loved living in places with pools. And I really like being in the water. And so I want a pool. But then having to maintain that on a property might prove to be a bit difficult, because we want to minimize the time that we spend cleaning and doing work on the property. We want a bush block, so we don't have to maintain gardens and anything like that. And an apartment where we don't have to do any maintenance. So I guess, yeah, it's a hard decision when you've got a lot of choices. But a great position to be in to have those choices, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Well, whatever the future holds for you, where you are right now is absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful home with me. Thank you for coming. Kerry and Will have created a little piece of magic here. I absolutely love this salvaged, eclectic style of this home. And I really love when Will said that soft clothes drawers don't make a home, because that's so true. And this is a space that so brilliantly focuses on all of the things that are really important. It's functional. It's beautiful. It's quirky. It's got character. And most importantly, it gives them a life of freedom. And what more can we ask for in a home?