Tiny House for $30,000! 500sqft on Working Farm // See Inside!

Sometimes I think we've gotten away from what a tiny house used to mean. Downsizing, being more intentional with the way you live, and being financially free. Well, I think we're getting back to that here. The family built this tiny house on their 70-acre working farm, and they rent it out on Airbnb, and it helps them pay the bills. And this is a fantastic tiny house. They built it for a great price themselves, and I think it's a great story. Let's check it out. Oh, you didn't even tell me you had a cat. Cucumbers. There's a few, a few born cats. Yeah. If you have a barn, you gotta have a cat. Well, that's his name, or her name. That's Sammy. Sammy. So this is our 70-acre farm, Buck Run Acres, that we decided one day, my wife decided one day, that we were going to do on Airbnb. We put in all the infrastructure and did it all by hand, and then this year we finished our first cabin. Well, I'd say definitely the inspiration really for just the cabin itself was, I think starting we did a lot of church events at the farm, people love to be outside in nature and with the animals, and we just had great response from family and friends, and so we have just been so blessed to have this farm that we just wanted to share with others. So this is Pumpkin. So a really cool story with Pumpkin. We had a local artist from the Lebanon area, and she found the farm, and she paints for a company that presents to big box stores like Hobby Lobby, TJ Maxx, and so she came out, took pictures of the cows, and recreated a painting with Pumpkin primarily, and that painting got picked up by Hobby Lobby. So they printed that painting on a pillow for Christmas two years ago. So I was just in Hobby Lobby one random day, and I think doing some Christmas shopping, and I look over, and I'm like, that's my cow. So I was shocked, and so I called her right away, and I'm like, did you realize that they picked up, you know, that painting? And she's like, yeah, but I didn't know they've done anything with it. So it was so cool. So she was our famous cow. Pumpkin has some clout. Yeah. And how big is this? What's the square footage? Around 500 square foot. It's 12 by 38. Purchased the shell, correct? And then you did everything on the inside. Yeah, we designed everything from the outside. I mean, it was really just a blank slate. We sat down with an Amish builder, a company that contracts with Amish builders, and we said, this is kind of what we want, and they helped us design it. And you guys built this and designed it just in your free time. How long did it take? About five months from start to finish. I'd say solid five months. The 14-year-old definitely can, he's mastered the tape measure and all the saws, and so it was a great project for him too. There you go. So it's a family bonding experience. It was a family affair for sure. Now pulling up onto the property, we'll begin this tour. We go down the driveway that has fence on both sides. We go through the fields. We're pretty far back off the road here. It's a very picture-perfect farm setting, and we have the tiny house right off the road here. Outside though, we have the deck space up top with some outdoor seating. There's a grill over there. There's an outdoor fireplace here. We have a tree line right here in front of us. But the cool thing is we are surrounded by these fields, and sometimes they move their animals here. They have cows you can view. They also have goats, which are right behind me at the moment. So if you're into the farm life, you can do that here. Continuing, the exterior is green. I love the wood trim around the windows. I also love the transom windows up top. That helps out a lot with the look of this tiny house. It's about 500 square feet of living space, which is just absolutely perfect. Let's walk inside. The inside, the hosts did a fantastic job. This is a very cozy country farmhouse aesthetic tiny house, and I think you could definitely be comfortable inside of here. The flooring is real hardwood oak flooring. Definitely stained to give it that darker tone, but I was surprised to see real hardwood flooring in here, and the host told me they laid it themselves. They purchased it secondhand from Facebook Marketplace, and the whole flooring was about $600, as well as the walls. They purchased that from Facebook as well from some local people, and that definitely drives the cost down. There's so many ways to just think intentionally about building a place to make it cheaper, to make it more practical, yet you get the same outcome as these crazy expensive places. I love that they did all of that. Anyway, the kitchen and living room is where we will begin. Stop before we continue. I'm back in my office. Check it out. I was out of commission for a few months because my barn burnt down a few months ago, but we're back in here, and if you want to be part of the coffee club, well, you can't. Unless you're on Booking.com, which is the sponsor of today's video. Do you want your rental to get seen by more people? Well, Booking.com helps put your property in front of a global audience and travelers that are ready to book a trip. Did you know that 45% of partners received their first booking within the first week on Booking.com? That's incredible. As a host, you don't need to rely on one single platform. You can use all of them, including Booking.com. Vacation rentals represent a very high demand on Booking.com. In 2024, one in three bookings were for a holiday home. That's huge. So if you're not on Booking.com as a host, definitely sign up. It's easy, and it will only increase your reach with your audience. Anyway, let's check out this kitchen space. This kitchen is really, really well done. They extended it out over in front of me for some barstool seating. There's four seats on that side. This gives the kitchen so much extra space. We see a lot of times if somebody were to do a tiny house like this, they would just put the kitchen on the wall here and be done, or put it on this wall and be done. But adding this extra countertop space makes it so cool. There's storage below with the cabinets. The shaker white cabinets is a classic choice. The sink over on this wall with the floating shelves. The husband is a woodworker, so he did the shelves. He also built some other things in here that I'll show you, so that's really cool. And then continuing on this back side, more storage with the drawers. We have a cooktop right here with four burners. Really fancy one here. They didn't just opt in for the typical one we see that's black that just lays in. This is definitely more of a range style. There's no oven here, but that's okay. We have the microwave above us and then the refrigerator over here. LG appliances, which is pretty nice. So even for the low price point of boating this place, they went with nice options. And this is real granite countertop. It's not composite or butcher block. I know butcher block is the cheaper version, even though it still looks nice. This is real granite. It's great. Continuing to the living room. If you're wondering why there's four barstool seats, but one bedroom, well, this couch can be converted into a bed if needed. Just pull it out and you can have two beds here for four guests total. It can also be storage if you want. The extra pillows and blankets are down there, but I like how there's a spot here to lounge and hang out. The host was telling me they're going to be upgrading the couch here soon, so you might be getting a bigger couch. Anyway, this all faces the TV that's mounted up here on this wall, and you can sit here and enjoy your time. Now, this place is definitely not made to sit here and watch movies all day, even though you can make to go out and explore, but the TV is definitely here, and we have a nice chair below here. We can sit here and read. That's exactly what I think. Sit here by the window, look out at the goats, read a good book. It's amazing. Anyway, that's the living room space. The AC and heating units up above here as well. And now we'll walk down the hallway off this front door that takes us back to the rest of the tiny house. The coat hanger right here was built by the host, which is cool. And also this sliding barn door. Look how big this is. It never stops. This is probably about four feet wide or something, three foot wide. Maybe that's a big garage, or that's a big barn door here. The host built this totally custom himself. This piece of wood came from a local barn, I believe, which is a cool little detail. I think this is amazing. And just anywhere that you can do something yourself and use your skills and creativity, it'll save you money. And it looks way cooler than anything you can buy. This bedroom is spacious, yet simple. There is a bed in the middle, nice stands on both sides. More of that country farmhouse aesthetic in here. The pine tongue and groove continues all throughout. We have the fan above, and this all faces the custom barn door, as well as a little spot to hang your clothes if you want to. You can lower this down, put your clothes up, hang it back up to get it out of the way. Overall, a simple bedroom. I think that reflects the mentality you're supposed to be thinking and experiencing whenever you stay here. And lastly, we have the full bathroom. The host was telling me they wanted the bathroom to be a little bit more modern, and that's what they did in here. The tiling helps with that so much. The nice subway tile shower with the black frame of the glass doors. Open it up, beautiful shower space. We can close it, and we also have tiling on the ground. So we got the hexagon tile, and tile is not necessarily cheap. There's definitely cheaper options they could have went with, but they did it themselves, and they wanted it to look good. And they still kept it at that really great price point. We also have the toilet behind us, and the sink here in front of us with a nice arched mirror. Lovely, lovely bathroom. So you built this and designed it. What was, you know, the total cost of this? So we have a little over $30,000 invested. That's incredible. Just the building itself. The building itself completely finished out. We've got about 12, 13 in the building itself delivered, and then the rest of it was all, you know. And we would just do it a little bit here and there. The return on investment has to be really good for you guys, because this place is booked out on the weekends and through the week. We like meeting new people and, you know, just sharing our farm and stuff with people, so. Yes. That's the inside. You can opt in for the farm tour here at the property, and the host will take you around their daily life taking care of the farm. So this is your garden. What do you got planted here? I did flowers in here last year, so these are all just volunteer that have come up. So it just makes it really pretty in here. They sneak in. They do. I see you got different types of tomatoes, right? What types you got? So those down there are all cherry tomatoes. These are aroma tomatoes, so I do a lot of canning. Spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, salsa. So those are great canning tomato. And then some just regular larger, like slicing tomatoes. Down here, some heirloom tomatoes. Tomatoes is your thing. Just a couple of different varieties. I always say I'm going to cut back every year, and then I end up with a greenhouse full of tomatoes. Of all varieties. Of all varieties, yep. And you use all of them. I do, yep. This is a ton. We give a lot away. We love to bless others, so we do give a lot away. But these are my beautiful sweet potatoes. Oh, I see. So, and they, of course, love the heat also. So can a lot of sweet potatoes. The kids love them, and they'll last us a good year, year and a half with canning, so. How many pounds will you get here, do you think? Oh gosh, a ton. I mean. 2,000? No, probably close to 100 pounds, probably. Maybe 200 pounds. Yeah. These are jalapenos, which, I mean, are doing great. We've picked a ton already of those. These are, the rest are carmen tomatoes, so it's a good, like, Italian frying pepper. So I usually will just slice them up and freeze them, and just pull them out for, like, fajitas, and just cooking with peppers. So here's a question. Does growing peppers, like the hot ones, if you planted something else around it afterwards, will it make that vegetable hot? Yeah, so you have to be careful with the peppers. So I usually will do, like, a space from, like, the regular peppers before I get to the hot peppers, because they will, yeah. I knew it. I had hot peppers, and I planted radishes right afterwards, and those radishes were so hot. Yeah. Like, what in the world happened here? These are just like a regular sweet candy onion. Wow, that one's ready? Yep, yep. We've already harvested the garlic for the year. That is a lot of garlic, and why is it just sitting out here? So it can dry out. You can eat this now, but it's best to let it dry out for a couple months. And then these, you can just break off the little cloves, and then you'll just replant these in the fall, and then you'll harvest them again around June for the next year. Wow. So, yep. All right, so you'll see them all day long. They'll be coming in and out. I think we had somewhere around four gallons of honey out of these, out of two, out of the three hives. Wow, this year? Yep, this spring. So we'll harvest once in the spring. Typically, we're doing it around the first of May, and then we'll do it again sometime around October. So these farm tours can be kind of educational. You're telling me that, like, a 10-year-old was here one time and learning. Tell me about that. Yeah, so it was really eye-opening for us, too, and one of the inspirations to wanting to bring more people onto the farm that he had never seen a cow in real life before. So that was really neat. So he had a great educational experience that day learning all about the cows and what we do with them, and from the breeding process to, you know, the butchering process, too, for some of them. So it was a really cool experience. The hosts have an incredible story here. I was inspired way more than I thought I would be arriving here. I loved every minute. I loved hearing the hosts talk about their life here, taking care of things, and the reason they built this tiny house and the success story that it is. And I hope this inspires you that you can do this. You can build a tiny house. You can do your dreams if you want to. Don't let a price point stop you. I know some tiny houses I feature are like $300,000 to build. Here's a proof that you can do it for much, much cheaper and the same quality and maybe a better quality of life because we're here on this beautiful farm in rural Ohio. And how much do you charge for a night? So right now during the week, we charge $130 a night, and then the weekend, so Friday and Saturday, is $150 a night. Man, that's a great price point. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you guys for having me. Absolutely. Thank you.