Tiny House Gives Financial Freedom In Expensive City

Vancouver and British Columbia are a place where people are really struggling with the cost of housing and today we traveled to the outskirts of the

city

where one family has completely freed themselves from the housing market and all its traps by building a

tiny

house

. on wheels good eye look how you're doing great night thank you you're fine thank you what a beautiful little

house

you have here thank you how long have you been living here? It will be a year, I guess the end of August and what The size of this little house is not thirty-four feet long by eight and a half wide, 13 and a half feet high, right, sighs, what was it that inspired you to move to a small house on wheels?

Basically, we get tired of living forever, you know? for mortgage and life, what's the norm and we thought you know, once their kids moved out or at least graduated, which happened last year, we thought you know, let's take the plunge and sell everything and do our dream, and this has been It has taken five years to get KERS to take this great leap of faith and we still have no regrets and we are delighted. We recommend it to anyone who wants to take an extreme jump. We regret not having done it sooner. Yes, totally. It's wonderful, it's super interesting to hear about moving into a small house as a leap of faith.

What were you worried about when you decided to downsize? Just the fact that you know how to go from, say, over 2,000 square feet to just under 500 square feet. feet and come on, you know we're going to have to downsize a lot of our stuff and are we going to trip over each other? We have a dog and four cats, you know, and our teenage son still lives with us, so this is going to be no problem and no problem, it's worked very well and can you tell me about the materials that this house is made of?

Yes, it's just made of cedar siding. We added the corrugated metal to give it that industrial look, but you know, it's just corrugated metal with a natural wood stain. we just wanted to keep it simple very nice now i notice you have some solar panels on the roof and there is a good size water collection tank here as well as this off grid house it is on grid as we speak with the potential to go out off the grid once we figure out the solar system and whatever and get it up and running and the parking spot.

This location is absolutely stunning. Was it difficult for you to find a parking spot here? This location. No, I fell. our laps, but before this place came to us, yeah, it was a real challenge that we were finding in the Lower Mainland, it's very difficult to acquire property to put a small house on, so we were very lucky, we searched for probably about six months and, honestly, we almost threw it away. the whole project, but yeah, we were getting to the end and we were committing to, you know, getting a contract and putting up money for this build without actually having a place to put it, it's a big gamble, but it worked out in the end, so we're so grateful for the place we have to put it, such a beautiful setting couldn't ask for much more and you are doing some beautiful landscaping around here too, yes when we first moved here it was practically empty.

Blank slate, lots of over grown blackberry bushes and just swampy parts in the backyard so we had to wait until the weather cleared up after winter where we could actually hunker down and get in so we got the backyard done in about about 90% but Yes we are very happy with the way it is turning out, we have quite a few bears that come around the property so we have to be careful to make sure my fruit plants don't get eaten before we get the chance. eat them because the bears are happy to help themselves, so you also have the cat running around to make sure all the cats are safe.

It is very important for us because we are great animal lovers and we like it. We said we have four cats and a golden retriever, so you know the cats are always willing to go out, they listen to the birds and they love all that, but it's not safe here with the amount of wildlife here, so they are like your children. So yeah, the things we had done when we first moved here was build the catio so they would have that safe space where they could come and go, so yeah, well the house looks great from the outside and I'm very intrigued.

Look what the inside is like. Can we check absolutely everything? This is absolutely beautiful. Yes, I really like how you immediately enter the kitchen space. Yes, it was one of the most important things with the design of our house. What we decide is you. I know originally our plan was to have our master suite downstairs because we thought, you know, we want to be hunkering down in his bedroom and then after a little bit of thinking and doing a couple walk-throughs, we realized it wasn't a big deal, our main focus is. We would love to cook and be together in the kitchen, so having a nice open kitchen space was very important to us, that's how this kind of concept came about with the open space here, so we have a gas stove, which it is wonderful.

I used to have electri

city

, so this is just a pleasure beyond the delights of cooking with gas. The double farmhouse sink. I highly recommend having two sinks. You could imagine doing it with one, to be honest, little things that I really love about this is that we have double lazy. Susan here, which doubles as a pantry, so that's very important, lots of storage, lots of closet space, it's all soft clothes, so it's a really nice treat. You have to worry about slamming doors all the time. The refrigerator also runs on propane gas. as electric so if the power ever goes out we have the option to switch to propane which is a huge plus so we don't have to worry about anything going bad and then in the stays here it also seems that you've built in a little extra Storage: Yes, the nice thing about this is that because it's low to the ground, it stays pretty cool, so we keep our bread and our perishables that don't need to be refrigerated.

It works very well. The second step also opens up and That's just kind of mystical Aeneas junk, kind of extra storage space here, which is a really nice added feature since they call it a breakfast bar, so there's these little and elegant angled arms and this man closes so we can sit here. having a good coffee, looking outside, observing nature, it's great and then when we're not using it, it's pretty easy to fold up and then that opens up our space from our little hallway to the living room and you definitely have a really cozy place. living room here, yes the second most important place for us, besides the kitchen, was to have a place where we could sit and relax after a hard day of work, but yes, this is our main sofa when we sit and definitely We don't lack a television, no.

The TV is huge, it's a bit over the top and now that we see it, I spoke to the builder. I wondered how big a TV I can put in this small space, so they pulled out a chart and said, "Well, the biggest you can get is 65 inches now in hindsight, but you definitely have a very cool movie-watching experience." immersive. It's beautiful, it's very wonderful, we really enjoyed it, yeah, let me show you it's also cool how you connected the house through this window contraption, yeah, that was probably one of the first things we did one. time and we moved here and they're also very entertaining to watch and you're sitting here watching TV you can look over your shoulder and let some people act like monkeys there it's almost more entertaining than on TV sometimes it really is really it is I got it I think it's a really lovely feature thank you and then we have your bathroom over here yeah we have the laundry room first you come in if you follow me here we have a full size washer and dryer for an apartment. , which is really a cool feature to have in a small house, as well as on the other hand, here my husband built these custom doors and the nice little one.

The hidden secret here is that this is a trap door for one of our cat litters for our cats, so it's hidden and nice in our bathroom. We have this very spa-like bathroom, which was very important for us to have a full bathroom. bathtub so we were very happy to be able to have this bathtub that you know we could both enjoy. We have a composting toilet which is pretty standard in a small house. It is wonderful. Without smell. Very easy to use and clean. with your closet space, I even have a little table to store extra towels and what not, for a bathroom, it's a good size for us, it certainly is, and especially with that deep tub, it's very luxurious, that's our favorite feature, yeah, I think probably twice a day. week we have a nice hot bath and we light our candles, we even put up little twinkle lights, battery operated twinkle lights, so we can have a soft glow in here while we enjoy a nice jacuzzi, so yeah, it's really amazing and then you have two lofts to sleep in this one, right?

It's true, our son lives with us, so this is our son's space for him. The way he stands up is quite unique. He has a ladder that hooks onto this. track that we used for the sliding barn door that also doubles as a privacy door for the bathroom which is a big thing up here you can see these two white walls here they are actually the back of our bookshelves which is really good for him. for his clothes and it also creates a sort of privacy barrier for him, so when he's up there he feels like he's not exposed to the rest of the house, which was very important to him.

We have a skylight up there and in our loft. and a lot of light in there, a lot of space, so yes, it works very well, it's a good space, the diamond window up there, as well as such a lovely feature, yes, the diamond windows were originally supposed to be a traditional square where they would open up but I like the idea of ​​having something a little different and with the way they are shaped into the diamond it actually looks really nice when you're up there or even down here, looking up you see the beautiful foliage outside and it's almost like a picturesque frame for the outside, so it's something a little bit different that I wanted to do with the design of the upstairs windows, very pretty and then up the stairs, here you must be sleeping, yes, this is our humble abode here , so so.

As you can see, you have to bend over, but you know it's no big deal for us, we have a king size bed here, which is really exciting to be able to keep the king size bed because we're spoiled that way. In our space we have a beautiful skylight that adds a lot of light and fresh air and the side windows also in the middle of summer we find this skylight and the two open side windows get a beautiful cross breeze so it's actually not as hot as one you might think, as the heat rises to a small space, this is really lovely, especially the color of the wood on the ceiling here, it really makes the space feel so cozy and welcoming, yes, we almost look at the space as if a bit like a tree house you know you get a little bit of your kid up here a lot of people comment that it feels like a tree or dinner in here it's so clean and we really enjoyed that aspect and the monstrous tv downstairs was "It's not enough, you had to have one up here too, yeah, you know, without having a teenage son, he likes to play video games, so like good parents, sometimes we let him have the TV and then we can come here and rest. back in his bed and we still have time to watch TV, so yeah, it works, great, you've been living in the house for a year, how's it going?

You know how wonderful we would never go back to traditional home life. in a traditional house we love this, it's like we still get emotional after all this time, every time we come home we just look around, we smile, this is like us, like it's really us put in a house, they were like our personalities in this. space and we were actually very happy with it when we first moved here. I think for the first three months we thought we were going to have to go out and return it because we thought it was a B&B with air, you know, it's just so amazing, yeah, it was nice and then once you finally hear yourself, if it's installed and it's like, hey, this is every day for us, this is cool, yeah, and then, how old is your kid?

Our son is 19 years old, so when we took this step. On this

tiny

house journey, our plan was always for our kids to either move out or graduate, so our son graduated last year, so yeah, that's when we decided to take the leap. In fact, he is funny atAt first, he was like he wasn't living in a small house. This house is crazy, like you guys are crazy, you know, and all this kind of stuff. I won't have any privacy and once we moved in he was instantly converted. He was like he's designing his own now, yeah, that's what he wants to be.

When he sold it, he said: I want to contain your house. I want to build a custom container home and this is brilliant, like yeah, and obviously we're here in Vancouver. Vancouver is actually one of the most

expensive

cities in the world when it comes to real estate. You talk to me about the cost of building this little house and maybe how it compares to average real estate in the city, so building what was the pasta bar originally with the solar included was about a hundred and fifteen thousand. taxes. You know, and when you compare your average home here, you're looking at starting at eight hundred nine hundred thousand dollars, so you know we're a little bit better off than a tenth of the price, it's a no-brainer, yeah, and I mean.

For this beautiful space that we have, you know we pay $500 a month in rent and that's included right now because technically we're not off the grid, that includes our electricity and our water, so you know it's very

expensive

. Cash opens up for us. to travel and do what we want to do mm-hmm sounds great, so I think living miniature has definitely opened up our future to do the things we want to do. You know, we got married pretty young, we were 19 and 20 and you know, we jumped right into the real world where the mortgage and the kids would soon fall, so living miniature has allowed us to free up time, space and even money to do what we want. we want to do.

You know, our children are almost adults. get up and move on and it's time for us to just relax and enjoy life and travel and see the world exactly as we have done 24 hours a day, we almost feel younger because we are less stressed in many ways, As for Ellie's house, you know there's a lot less maintenance in a tiny house, but doing this whole tiny house leap for us allows us now our game plan is with five to seven years where we want to be able to just pick up. this and move it to a more permanent property and just retire early in life and start having nothing but free time.

There are a lot of Forest Service roads that need to see our truck, so it has places that I go well, it's like that. What a beautiful home and it's great to know it's working out so well for all of you. Thank you very much for sharing it with me. It is a pleasure for me, thank you. Luke and Leah have done such a brilliant job building this little house. Is beautiful. It's functional, but the most incredible thing about this story to me is the fact that this house has prepared them for an early retirement and that is a truly wonderful thing.