Life In Our Traveling Tiny House

Now that we're back in the States, we thought this would be a great opportunity to give you an update on our little

house

and let you know how everything has been going. Welcome to our

house

, so this is a 16ft

tiny

house on wheels. so it's about 16 by 8, about 11 feet tall and this is one that we really designed to be able to travel with. We wanted it to be small, compact, lightweight and perfectly suitable for

traveling

on the road, in saying that at this point it has actually been mostly stopped, we took it on tour, we drove with it through Georgia to Florida which it was an incredible experience.

We have recently road tripped with him from Tennessee to his current location, which is in Missouri, now. We're only here in the US part-time, which meant we needed a really good, safe place to be able to store the

tiny

house when we're out of town, but also a place that would be a great base for us when we are. Here in the US now we are very fortunate in this regard because I actually have an aunt who lives here in Missouri, she has a 5 acre property here and on that property there happened to be an empty RV pad, so this platform actually used to be busy. for a double wide trailer that the trailers have already been removed and has become a perfect location for our little house on wheels.

We have all the necessary connections here. We have an electrical connection. We have the water that comes from the well, here on the property and we even have sewer connections for our gray water and what I like most about this place is the location, it is really lovely here, in fact we have been able to park in front of the forest. there are all these beautiful oak trees behind us, so it really is a very special place. I'm still very excited about the look of this small house overall and the overall design, especially from the outside, the house is completely clad and made of steel.

I know it really looks like a wood product, but it is actually a steel siding along with the standing seam in the middle. I chose those materials to keep it lightweight, but also because I knew we were going to be

traveling

with it a lot and I wanted it to be very durable when we went. on the road and so far this house has withstood the pressures of

life

on the road and house

life

in general. I still think that after a year the little house looks new, which is great, it shows that it is definitely standing the test of time.

I'm so happy that we decided to include this porch area that we've been on here and some pretty crazy rain storms and really crazy weather and even though it's only two feet by two feet, we just get that little break. The weather when you walk into your house has been very nice at times, so for anyone designing a small home, I would totally recommend that if you can, make sure you have a little bit of covered area before you walk in. house, let's go inside, so welcome back to little Zen. In fact, I called this house little Zen because for us it represents a little bit of solace from the storm, it's a place where we can really retreat and have a little bit of quiet. and peace of mind when we are traveling, we travel all the time and life as digital nomads is not always easy, sometimes we are in really stressful situations and the simple fact of having this little house on wheels has been an incredible experience.

An example: We were actually traveling with this tiny house from Tennessee to Missouri and our truck broke down, so we broke down with the tiny house in tow, which was a hectic and crazy experience. Before leaving on this trip, we took our camp to Ulan Sand. get a full service so everything was in top condition and not even six hours and on our road trip we completely broke down. I have no idea what's going on, we just got off the interstate and here the traffic lights went out. I can't get us started again, we have a towing company on the way and we found a diesel mechanic who is about three miles from here, but honestly, I feel very deflated right now.

You know, when you break down, you're in a huge vehicle like this, you're towing a little house on wheels, everything gets a lot more complicated and I was really looking forward to this road trip and I'm definitely feeling a little heartbroken right now, Hey, fingers crossed, this is it. Our towing guy had to send us two tow trucks, one for the truck and one for our small house. Luckily, we managed to find a towing company that can actually hook up the ambulance and then there's nothing. of a second vehicle to connect the tiny house and they will tow us to a mechanic where apparently we can spend the night there in a tiny house so that's a small closet or at least we end up in an auto repair shop that was in the middle from Kentucky and they, the owner of the repair shop, lost power and water, so we were able to be completely contained and live in our little house on site while they repaired the truck, so it's times like that.

I think it really showed that this little house stays true to its name. It was a little zin place for us in the middle of something that was actually super hectic and super stressful. We love life in this little house and for those of you who haven't seen this little house before. There's another full walkthrough in the canal that we filmed when we first built it, but I can give you a very quick rundown of some of the elements here when you first enter on the left side. we have the toilet here, so we're using the Nature's Head composting toilet, which is fantastic in the bathroom.

Here we have also included a small sink for washing your hands and there is also a nice LED backlit mirror which is fantastic for when I am shaving or for when Russ is doing his make up, that has been a very nice addition and gets used quite a bit and once Plus, you know we've been stopped at these truck stops and places like that where this little house has been. Like our little apartment and you close all the windows and you really don't even know there's this world outside, which is a really nice experience now that the shower has gotten a little better since the last time we filmed what we did.

Actually, what we have included is a stainless steel tray. The vinyl floor we did before was a little experiment and didn't quite work, so having a custom stainless steel pan overall has helped to really improve the functionality of the shower. but again, the visual aesthetic we've cut into this beautiful tiger wood and I think it looks great for the size of the house. The shower is huge, but it's been really nice to have this space. I think sometimes the more compact and smaller you create spaces even though you're saving space in other areas, if you compromise the space too much it can actually become unpleasant to use and then you stop enjoying these things.

For me, part of coming home is being able to have a hot shower and feel clean, and in fact, being able to take a good-sized shower even in a small house like this is a luxury that I'm very glad I didn't compromise on. By moving here, we have our workspace. It has been a fantastic area for us to do our work. I have written a lot here. We've both done a lot of editing here. It really is a lovely place to sit and contemplate nature and rest your eyes. I also have some drawers in here, so for example, this one above is just for some electrical knick-knacks.

The second bottom drawer is where I keep some of my clothes for easy access. Third from the bottom is Russ' drawer, which is super messy, so I'm not going to show you that when it comes to clothes. Both Russer and I are very used to living out of suitcases now, so that's all the storage space we have for the things we need quickly. easy access to my guitar of course because you can never be too far from your guitar. I'm a bit of a crystal hound and on one of our adventures in New Mexico we were traveling with our new friends Zach and Katie and we went crystal hunting, we were actually hiking in Colorado and found some of these really beautiful crystals on our hike that we used to decorate the house, which I think is a really lovely addition and for me this is one of the things that I'm really excited about because you'll notice that it's actually still a little bit Spartan in here, we haven't filled it with a lot of things and part of that It's because I like the open, clean, uncluttered aesthetic, but also part of that is that I want to make sure that the things we bring here are special and have meaning.

On this side we have our beautiful kitchen, the cabinets in this kitchen are all made of maple and then we have the butcher block countertop, which is what I like the most. In love this year, we've really been trying to move towards a zero-waste lifestyle, eliminating as many single-use plastics as possible. Life on the road is really difficult and it's really been difficult for us to do it 100%, but we are definitely doing our best and our kitchen for the most part is also designed to reflect that, so for example we buy things Wholesale whenever possible we store everything in glass jars which is a really nice way to do it for the size. from the kitchen there's really a lot of storage here we have these really nice deep floors that are fantastic and they just give us the ability to store a lot of things so it's really nice.

The 50 liter refrigerator is not very big as you can see. It is somewhat smaller than even a normal bar fridge and that means that we have to be very selective with the items we buy and ultimately what it means is that we tend to call out a few things that are necessary and buy more things in on a day to day basis, so one of the things with the kitchen in small spaces is that you will notice that I haven't actually built an element in here, there is a very good reason for that and that is that sometimes in a house this size, especially when cooking can really dominate the space there is smoke there is steam there are cooking smells very often those cooking smells can linger and for that reason I am a big fan of cooking outdoors whenever possible we have our induction cooktop that we can use in the house when needed by saying we have all the kitchen essentials and it really is wonderful to be able to get up and make a nice cup of coffee here in the morning so it's a really nice addition also when you're styling. a small house don't skimp on the sides of the sink, make sure you have a really nice deep sink and a good size to work in some of those little decorative copper bowls, they are beautiful to look at but when you try to wash a pan in They will drive you crazy, so I recommend that you go for a large sink to avoid some of those problems.

Now we get to my absolute favorite part of the house, which is our offering. I love this space. It's so nice to hang out here, in fact we got a really lovely organic futon mattress from the San Francisco futon store. They were super awesome and made a really nice cut to fit this space because really, the way it's designed. It's a little tricky, it's a queen size bed in terms of depth, but we actually needed it to be a little bit shorter because this whole thing is actually designed to be pulled up and we have a lot of storage space under here to pull it up.

However, upstairs meant that we needed to make sure that the mattress eliminated some things, like our Lu nasal control and our lighting and air conditioning switches and everything here on the side, so we had to shorten the mattress a little more just to make sure we could fit that in and then here we have the tv stand so the tv stand is designed to hide the tv during the day. I really don't like a big TV in space. I feel like a TV can so quickly take over a room and it's not necessarily something you like to watch all the time, so it was a really good solution that allows us to hide it when we're not using it, but then when we do use it, we can have really enjoyable immersive entertainment.

I also have to confess that I'm a bit of a gaming nerd and in fact the simple fact of being able to play some computer games here has also helped make this space much more of a home, one of the other things that What I really enjoy about this space is that even though it's a compact little house, we're talking 128 square feet, it still feels very big here and one of the things that helps it achieve that is the fact that the entire layout has been kept very open, you'll notice that everything that has been built in the house has been kept very low, which gives us a lot of space up here, it gives us a feeling of height, it's actually a nine foot stud, so it's quite high . walls and that really helps the wholeRoom feels open and bright, which is very important, so let's talk about the cost of this small house.

The vast majority of the materials you see here were actually purchased new as well because we were using a builder. We built this tiny house with the Chattanooga tiny house in Tennessee, so this tiny house has a material cost of around $25,000, depending on your builder you will probably see that cost double in terms of labor, so overall , I would say this little house here costs around $50,000. I know that fifty thousand dollars for a one hundred and twenty-eight square foot house may seem pretty extreme, but the reality is that there are a lot of high-quality materials here and we really haven't compromised on anything.

In this space we wanted it to be a long-lasting space, to withstand the test of being on the road and to truly be a wonderful home for us. In recent years I have become very involved in the world of tiny houses and the house movement small, and I really find it fascinating how much my concept of home has changed and what is really important. I love the experiences I have. share with russer in this house I love experiences on the road. I love traveling and meeting all the amazing and wonderful people I meet along the way and nurturing these new and old friendships and networking around the world.

I'm tremendously grateful for the opportunity to do this and for the knowledge that living in small spaces has taught me, so I really hope you enjoyed this review of our tiny house as always. I just want to extend a huge thank you to all of you for your support. I love that so many of you have been watching us on this channel for the last five years and have seen this massive progression to get to where we are; We are really still only at the beginning of the journey. I welcome all new subscribers. Hello, thanks for looking and thank you all for making what we do possible, so we'll see you again next week with a tour of the new house.