Guide to Tiny House Living
Tiny house cabin
Tiny House Movement
Have you ever heard of The Tiny House Movement? If you have, then you may know what it’s all about and if you haven’t then I’ll try to explain it to the best of my knowledge.
Tiny house cabin
You might hear the words “tiny house” and cringe at the thought of living like a Sardine or maybe bumping into your significant other all day like a couple of knuckleheads. Well, the truth is that some tiny houses just might make you feel like a Sardine, but for the most part, tiny homes are intelligently designed to maximize storage with minimal space, leaving ample room to maneuver around. Using spaces generally left empty in traditional homes is a common tiny house practice, such as; stairs that open up for storage, collapsible tables that can be easily tucked away or using custom-built benches to double as seating and storage.
What is a Tiny House?
Tiny house cabin
The basic definition of a tiny house is a home that is under 500 square feet. Many different types of living situations fall under this blanket term, but I’ll try to break it down even further.
The most common type of tiny home is usually on wheels and built to a specific height and width in order to comply with highway regulations and local by-laws. This style of tiny house is great for those who are not planning to stay in a permanent location or might be renting land temporarily and want to move their house in the future. Another plus with this type of home is if any issues should arise you will have the ability to pack up and leave at a moment’s notice, taking your tiny home and all your belongings with you. ..These mobile homes are very popular and sold in large quantities and can fit almost any wallet. At the moment you can buy a mobile home in different ways, the most unusual of them is buying it with cryptocurrency. If you buy USDT, you can pay with it to the seller of your future home. There are many such purchase offers on the web.
Exploratory glory YouTube Channel
Tiny House Cabin
Our tiny house
Another type of tiny home, that has been used for many thousands of years, is a basic cabin. Yep, many cabins are considered tiny homes, and the people living in them didn’t even realize they were tiny housers. Living off of the land and doing things the old way is, believe it or not, a reemerging concept and is quite popular within the tiny house community. That being said, not everybody wants to live off the grid and work their asses off for their meals and in fact, many choose this type of lifestyle to make life easier instead of having more responsibilities. Living in a cabin oftentimes means living in the woods somewhere or on a lake, where there’s less of a concern for building regulations and generally no need for your house to be mobile. Wood stoves, outhouses, solar panels, etc. are all ways that make living in a cabin very budget-friendly.
Types of Tiny Houses
Here are a few note worthy options that could fall under the tiny house category.
Tiny house cabin side view
House Boats
Yurts
A-Frame Cabins
Shipping Container Homes
RVs
Garage Conversions
Micro-Apartments
Shed Conversions
Mobile Homes
Pre-Fabricated
Bus-Conversions
Why live in a Tiny House?
Tiny house cabin
Let me start out by saying that there’s nothing wrong with having lots of space and acquiring material possessions, whatever makes you happy, but for some, it can be mentally freeing to give up unnecessary things that clutter up your home and fill your thoughts with burden. Having less stuff can sometimes mean having less to worry about and living tiny can impact your financial state in a positive way, leading to fewer bills and little to no mortgage. Living tiny can also take away the possibility of being house poor. For instance, consider that a mortgage on a house eats up most of your monthly income, along with car payments and other normal expenses you're basically just getting by, living paycheck to paycheck. At this point in your life, you don’t have much in terms of savings, and out of nowhere, your furnace decides to call it quits and the very next day your car transmission craps out. Well now if you don’t have some sort of bailout, you're basically screwed. With all that being said, it doesn’t mean that once you live tiny you won’t go mess it all up again and get yourself back into a heap of debt, but with more financial freedom the probability pendulum swings in your direction.
Tiny House Cabin
Why we live in a Tiny House?
Tiny House Cabin
Our choice of tiny home falls under the cabin/shed conversion category. Four years ago I began to research the subject of minimalistic living and I started to see what was possible. I would see what people had converted into tiny homes, everything from sheds, barns, garages, and pool houses. Well as you can imagine, the wheels in my head started turning and I would imagine what it would be like to customize a cool little cabin, using my own creativity. The only issue was, my wife and I were stuck in a mortgage of an apartment we lived in at the time, so what would any sane couple do? Of course, the answer is to sell it and give up all you’ve worked for, in order to build a shed and live in your mother-in-law’s backyard, right? Well, that’s exactly what we did and it was honestly the best decision we have ever made.
Tiny House Cabin
Tiny house cabin
I would never say never when it comes to buying real estate again in the future, but for now, we are just going to take full advantage of the $600 dollars a month rent we pay including utilities and the internet. It’s a hell of a deal but definitely involves some sacrifice when it comes to space, as well as amenities, and came with some challenges upfront. But eventually, we adapted and overcame and now this lifestyle is the norm for us. The one upside that champions everything is having a yard of our own to use as we please, something we never had in the previous apartment.
Another advantage that we have enjoyed is the ability to pack up and travel any time we please. Traveling is something we have always been into, but having the mortgage before was putting a strain on our ability to vacation, and debt was piling up. In the last two years since making the big move, we have managed to invest plenty of our money for retirement and pay off everything thatt we owe, and boy does it feel good.
Our Tiny House
Tiny house cabin
Our tiny home was purchased through the company Cedarshed that I previously worked for. We went with a 10x16 model which costs just over $4,000, but with an employee discount, I believe we paid around $3,000. It is definitely on the smaller side and being that it is only 160 square feet we chose to go with an extra 1-foot wall extension, which gave us some extra height and allowed us to add a storage loft. The reason we went so small is the concern we had with alarming our neighbors. You see we figured if we kept the cabin a reasonable size, then we would be less likely to run into problems with the local neighborhood.
For sleeping and seating purposes we purchased a chase lounger couch, with a slick easy-to-use roll-out bed and storage compartment, where we put our memory foam mattress and bedding.
Below are some pictures of the process of building our tiny house ⇣
Here you can see we used pea gravel framed with wood and re-bar as a foundation.
Our cabin stacked in prefabricated pieces ready for assembly.
The floor has been finished and we are raising the walls.
Adding the roof gables.
A “little” help anyone? Oh and that’s not his beer I swear.
We built a solar shower for use in the summer months.
Framing of the storage loft and bathroom.
Insulation to protect us from the cold Canadian winters, brrrr.
Tongue and groove cedar for the ceiling.
Recycled pallets as a focal point wall.
Custom made kitchen, with a sweet counter top made by my dad. We used cheap crates from home depot for our dishes and I cut the bottom of a pallet off and used it for a spice rack along with mason jars to keep other spices.
Our tiny bathroom with a composting toilet and hand pump faucet, which are traditionally used in an RV. I used cut up plywood for the walls to create a ship-lap look and got leftover tiles from my parents for the floor.
The outside of the finished cabin.
Here you can see our outdoor shower.
This is what our cabin looks like in the present day. We’ve added a few things in the last couple of years, including a porch.
Conclusion
Living in a tiny house is not for everybody and can be especially challenging for those with children, but it has worked for us and can possibly work for you too. If you are interested I suggest going onto Airbnb($45 discount) and maybe renting one for a few days, so you can see if it’s for you. The idea was very scary and daunting at first, but now that’s just a distant memory and we couldn’t be happier with our decision.
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