Why This Single Mom Left Her Dream Tiny House - Exciting New Chapter!

After living in some pretty tiny apartments in Vancouver and realizing like, hey, tiny living, I see the benefits of it, but it would be way nicer to be living tiny around nature rather than in a little box or an apartment. I think it was kind of in layers of recognizing, oh, like living small is something I could do. And then as I explored different options for my daughter and I's living situation, when we moved back here, and getting into watching videos and tours and seeing how other people did it, it really kind of reignited that real interest in it and looking at it as a really viable option for us. Hi, I'm Rhianna and this is my tiny house. I lived in it with my daughter, Maude, for just over three years. We are on the Seven Tails Cultivation Farm in Saanich on Vancouver Island. My tiny home was built by Teacup Tiny Homes out of Alberta. It is 30 feet long and eight and a half feet wide. So I lived in it for just over three years and when I moved out of it I needed to find a new sort of use for it and it's now being transitioned to a short-term rental and agritourism setup on a local farm that we partnered with. So the farm that we're at, Seven Tails Cultivation Farm, is a local hemp farm. They grow hemp for CBD and they've been in operation for a few years now. On the farm we have two tiny homes here, the one that I used to live in, as well as another owned by the farm, and we are managing them, my sister and I, as short-term rentals. And then we also have a sauna behind the house that we're just setting up, so soon that will be available for guests to enjoy too. So that's it for the outside. Why don't you come on in and I'll show you the inside. All right, so this is a Margo 2 model from Teacup Tiny Homes, which means that it has two lofts in here. The square footage in here is just about 390 square feet, including the lofts. So it's quite big for a tiny home. Working with Teacup was fantastic. What I really liked about it was the fact that I was really involved with the design options and things like that. And then the other thing that's really great is that they give you a full guide of how to take care of your tiny home. So how to set it up, how to maintain it. So they were really thorough in making sure that you get everything you need to really live comfortably. So to kick off the tour, let's start with the kitchen right behind me. So we're going to start with this giant sink, which I know is hard to find in tiny homes sometimes. So it is a wonderful feature to have. The other thing that I like from this spot exactly is the massive window here. This is a great feature about this house in general. There's just so many windows, which adds so much light and makes it feel bigger. We've got a big sink here, a dishwasher, which is something that I asked for specifically. When we moved into the house, my daughter was three and I work full time. So having the ability to put the dishwasher on before we leave when it's such a small space was really, really nice. There is a bit of open shelving here but another thing that I will say about this kitchen is it has so much storage. Honestly I've lived in apartments with way less than this so we've got drawers which is nice but we also have A pull-out pantry, which adds so much room and, you know, I think having so many different options, so big cupboards in here and another one down here. Honestly like the biggest things I'll say is tons of storage, love the dishwasher, and just that it feels open in here. Like I think the fact that you've still got the big ceilings that are really high up adds to the feeling that you're not in eight and a half square feet wide in your kitchen. And even used these stairs as like Extra space if I'm prepping food, that kind of thing. So it was nice to have on both sides here, more working space, depending on what you're doing in the kitchen. The oven here, honestly, like I was able to cook almost anything I wanted in it. Didn't feel too small. And the three burners here, it is a propane RV stove. So it works quite well. Honestly, like no complaints from having lived in it. Definitely worked for the two of us. I have to show you this really awesome extra storage space. It is meant to be a laundry room, like it's got the hookups for it. When I lived in here, I used it as my closet for my clothes. So it has like a double clothing rack in there that you can hang things up. I had a tiny dresser in the bottom right now is just sort of a staging storage, throw everything in their area. So it doesn't look pretty, but it is super nice to have like a giant closet in here. Then you can come back in here to the bathroom. So I mentioned before, it's got the bay windows here, which adds a ton of light. Now that we have it set up as an Airbnb, we did add privacy film. But when I lived in the house, we had just like trees and plants out here, which was fantastic. So tons of light, really nice storage in here, too. So there's storage. cupboards on both sides here that go all the way back to like the sides of the house which is awesome, I feel like I'm always losing stuff back there because it goes so far and then under sink storage too so again no complaints with storage in here, a nice big mirror and medicine cabinet One thing I will say that I learned after I moved into tiny house is mirrors. Like it's funny. It's something you don't really think of. But when you're living in a normal house, you have like way more walls to put mirrors and things like that. So I'm glad I chose one that was quite big because really there wasn't many other places to put one. In this bathroom, I have a composting toilet. So it's a separate villa, which is a urine diversion toilet and lived in here for three years. Honestly, it was really easy to deal with. Even my daughter had no issues with it. There's like a little toilet seat for kids. But yeah, we've kept it like that. Our guests also haven't complained about it. And it's really nice like I think it really helps you visualize your use of water and things like that in a typical home and not having that same kind of usage in the bathroom is great. I also opted instead of just a shower stall to have an actual tub in here. So it's a apartment size tub and shower combo but like a lot of people when they find out I have that in here are pretty surprised in a tiny home so it was really nice especially for my daughter when she you know could have baths in here and stuff and not just showers so really really happy that I decided to go with that too. I put up these laundry lines so one thing that I found especially in the winter like in the summer I had I just hang it outside in the winter it was really nice to have somewhere to hang wet clothes and even like rain gear and stuff so we live in the Pacific Northwest, it rains a lot so it was really nice to be able to kind of throw your raincoat on a hanger in the tub and let it drip rather than on the floor anywhere else. So definitely suggest putting one up if you have the space. I was born and raised on Vancouver Island and moved to Vancouver for about a decade and moved back here with my daughter about four and a half years ago. For work, I am the fund development and communications manager for a local housing non-profit here on Vancouver Island actually. So housing and alternative housing have been interests of mine for a really long time. Also, just having grown up in BC, the housing crisis and affordability crisis were really things that I experienced firsthand. So one of the reasons why I chose a tiny was to try and Find a creative way to navigate that. And it really just ended up blending into the work that I'm doing through my job. Maud and I both loved tiny house living for some of the same reasons and some of the different ones. For her I think it felt like we were always really close to one another. I mean sometimes maybe that was something I wished we had a little bit more space just depending on the noise or what activity she was up to, but it really felt like she was involved in everything. Like the example As an example of sitting and watching me cook from the stairs, I think it also helped us understand and get a better sort of like literal visual cue on what we're using in our home. So she helped me set up our gray water system, for example. And, you know, we've got the composting toilet. We're way more sort of connected to what, in most homes, you don't see. So that was really cool. I think as she grew, I really valued the fact that we got to have those conversations and have that be part of our home. I really loved feeling like I didn't have a lot of space to clean, which was nice. It forced me to be minimalist. Mentally, I love having a minimal environment with not a lot of things. I also really like things though, so it was nice to kind of have That constant reminder that you don't need a lot. I think that I really enjoyed about the tiny home and also it encouraged you to be outside. So we really used you know like third spaces as they're called a lot. We spent a lot of time at parks and at the library and it really felt like our lives were integrated with what was outside our front door which was also just a really nice cool way to live. Down the road when my daughter has moved out I want to go back to living in a tiny home. I really loved it and I think if it was me on my own too, wonderful, fantastic. My daughter has really loved having a full bedroom and I think you know it's hard because we both loved so many aspects of tiny living so much but I think it is important to be transparent that it is not always a long-term feasible solution right like as life changes as families change My daughter has some neurodivergence and so being in a loft where she couldn't stand and couldn't move in that way became a little bit of a challenge and even just the limited space in the winter. So I think you know it was hard for me to kind of make that final decision of like you know what this isn't working right now in this phase of life for us, but then there's so many things that we still talk about about living in the tiny house that she's Stairs are fantastic storage stairs as you can see even if we start right at the bottom here so there's a drawer Great for stocking stuff. When I lived in here, I kept like paperwork and things down here. And then there's these little cubbies. They're very strangely shaped to put in like bins or baskets or anything, but I have a cat. So one of these was his little cubby. Uh, he really liked these ones. He could like get right in the back there. So we had like a little tiny little cushion for him and stuff like that. So he hung out in the bottom one. This step here was honestly, it was like the prime seat in the house when we lived here. These little cubbies I discovered fit perfectly these really generic Ikea baskets. So we would shove everything in here. And honestly, like with a kid, she loved having all these little spaces to just fill. So sometimes I would come home and like, she would have made like little, like, you know, figurine setups in these little cubbies and done lots of fun stuff. So it just kind of really felt like, you know, everything's really intentional. It feels already made to be lived in. And it also is a functional thing that goes up to the loft where we're going to go next. All right so this is Maude's room or what used to be Maude's room. So it's the bigger of the two lofts up here. Really bright. It's a nice place to hang out. It's got windows on both sides. When Maude lived up here it was really comfy and she was like the envy of everyone in her kindergarten class. It felt like it was a tree house so whenever friends came over they loved being up here. When we moved out of the tiny house, she was really like, just like me, it was really hard for her to envision letting go of the house. And so now that we have a purpose for it that allows us to still be around it and spend time here, I think that's really special for her. She definitely still feels like this is her space. So here's another pop of Maude's favorite color that she She chose the purple here. So it is a door. One of the things I asked for teacup because this was a kid's room and I knew that obviously she would be going to bed earlier than me was the ability to have a door on here. You know, it's not super common in tiny homes. It has the venting here so that there's more airflow. But the fact that you can close this door is pretty nice. It kept the sound out and kept the light out and worked really well. All right. So before we head up into the other loft, I will show you a couple of things, too. This one's a ladder loft. The ladder slides and actually just fully moves off. So sometimes when I had like guests over or anything like that, I would literally remove the ladder. Cause it definitely feels like it opens it up down here and it's nice that you can take it off. So there's the ladder. And then I also have this shoe cabinet that I've stuck behind here. You know, ideally you'd be able to open the drawers and stuff with the ladder here, but it's not a huge deal. This is shoe storage. All right, so here's the second loft. It's cozy up here. When we lived in here, this was our living room. So we had a little TV up here. Maude would hang out up here a lot and like she built little forts or did activities and whatever. Now it is a second sleep space. There's the slats here that add a little bit of sort of like visual separation, but it is open. I figured it's such a small loft that if it was completely enclosed, it would feel really claustrophobic. All right. So before we do the final room, I was talking about entries and this is a great feature that has really helped with mine. So it's literally like an entry closet right now. It is also a storage spot, but it has a little bar in here to hang coats. And then cubby up here, we put like summer hats and stuff like that in the summer. In the winter, it was mittens and gloves and hats and stuff like that. And then boots on the bottom. But having that little kind of extra space right there, really, really nice. Now I'll bring you into this room here. So this room used to be my bedroom. When I got the house, it was a fold-down Murphy bed. I really loved that my room felt like it was just a bed for me. Like, I have the option of working from home, which makes it really appealing to be able to do, but the fact that I couldn't have, like, my work computer or anything else in my space except things for sleeping was really, really nice. Now that it's a short-term rental, we've transitioned this into, like, a dining room. It's nice and spacious in here you can obviously stand. It's got windows on both sides so it feels really bright and I really really liked having the option of a ground floor bedroom when I was looking at plans. I just felt like for me it was nice to have a space that could be a bedroom for me or also if I did want to resell the home eventually. Some people really I don't want to have to climb up a loft to sleep, so it was really nice to have that as part of the design for sure. So my tiny home cost all in about $200,000, which is a little bit on the higher end for tinies that's $200,000 Canadian. And I financed it through an RV loan mostly. So I had a down payment and then a lot of it came through that loan. Where I live, housing is so expensive, so it was still, with that loan, cheaper than the cheapest apartment I could find. It kept my costs down, and then it was something I owned. So it is something that I'm still paying off slowly over time. For most people with tiny homes that own them if you don't own land that's a tricky thing so finding somewhere to put the tiny house is really the biggest barrier. I was lucky I had parents that had space for me but it was a grey area right and because it's an RV it adds another layer of grey because here where we are you're not allowed to live in an RV year-round technically. So, no one really knows how to classify tiny homes like this from like a zoning or legal perspective because you could argue either one. You could argue it's a vehicle, you could argue it's a house. So it's kind of a funny one. On a farm where we are now, you don't really have to worry about that because farms are allowed to have these structures that are used in unique ways. Airbnb, we're just getting started. The way that we're structuring it is we've partnered with this farm. They receive a portion of what we bring in and then the rest goes towards covering the expenses of the home. The hope is at some point that it's going to surpass that. We'll see. We literally met through Facebook Marketplace. So... I was looking for literally just storage to put my tiny home temporarily when I needed to move it from where it was sitting and this ad came up of this farm that was renting out some of its extra space. So contacted the person, met them and we were just chatting and it turns out that she also owns a tiny home that's here on the property that a friend was living in and I told her a bit about about mine and she let me know that this was sort of a vision that she had. So, it was bringing people to the farm to get to learn about how hemp is grown locally and experience that and also help support her maintaining her operations here. The way it's structured is that we're each our own business. Me and my sister that are operating the short-term rentals and doing some of the tours and supporting that aspect of it, we have our own business. It's called Field Day. And then the farm is its own entity as well. So we have like a partnership agreement. We're thinking of transitioning to having a couple more tiny homes, which, you know, allows people the opportunity to come and stay in one. I think like for me locally, There's a couple of Airbnbs that you can stay at to stay in a home before you purchase. But I think that's a really important opportunity for people to have, right? If they're interested in purchasing a tiny home or interested just in even what it feels like to be in one. So we kind of want to contribute to that. What helped me figure out what I wanted in my tiny home, part of it was honestly obsessively watching tiny home tours like this one and getting really familiar with how people live in them. I know someone who has a tiny home as well. So I had had the opportunity of being in one before. It wasn't my very first time. And then honestly, my builder was also really helpful. So part of the process of the build was having a couple dedicated meetings to design, one for interior and one for exterior. And we went through everything. Like we went through how I like to live in my home. What are my daughter's interests? And so like they helped guide some of those decisions. This was such a unique experience of being able to build something from scratch where I got to make those choices that helped. shape around the way I like to live, right? So I feel really fortunate and really special to have had that opportunity. And this tiny home is kind of like an embodiment of that, right? Like I've got to choose everything in here. So like a dishwasher and having a tub, things that, you know, a lot of people would be like, why would you do that if you're wanting to be in a tiny home? But you get to make those decisions for yourself. So that was really kind of a special part for me, I think. Thanks for stopping by Tiny House Expedition I'm Alexis. And I'm Christian. And this is our DIY tiny house on our homestead in Oregon. Looking for more tiny inspiration? Watch these videos. But if you're looking for something specific, visit our channel homepage to browse tiny homes by category. And don't forget to subscribe. Hope to see you soon.