Our Tiny House Experience

Hi, my name is Morgan Woltersdorf and this is my account of tiny house living. Nearly everything in this blog post is personal opinion unless stated otherwise, so please read everything as such and not as concrete fact. If you have any questions that weren’t answered on this post, please email me at Contactmorthunder@gmail.com and I will be more than happy to update this blog post to include that inquiry.

Timeline/build:

1. It took about 1.5 years to build it on his parent’s property. Ethan was working part time and going to school part time and his dad was working full time so we mostly worked on it over the weekends and whenever we could get stuff done after dinner when I would come over to his parents house.

2. Biggest thing we learned building it…. COMMUNICATE and be patient! Sometimes you’re putting on the roof or putting in a window and if your arms are getting tired you can install it wrong; so you have to tell the other person what’s going on or else you’ll notice months later when you’re installing the siding on the house that the kitchen window is sideways and it’s totally YOUR (me) fault!

How did we start?/ First steps

1. We have always liked tiny houses before we even started dating, so we had been sending each other tiny house videos years before we had the opportunity to build one.

2. We already had the obsession so we just had to fund it. We saved and saved. We knew what we wanted so we made it happen. 

$$$$$

1. If you want to build one, I suggest saving at least $30,000 - $50,000 depending on how many resources you have and where you plan on parking it. Make a list of all the people you know that might be able to help you and in what ways they have expertise. Ethan’s dad helped us the ENTIRE process and I know for a fact that saved us thousands of dollars in labor had we hired someone to do all the things he was able to help us with; i.e Electric, plumbing, framing, working on the trailer, welding, etc. We had other friends who had expertise in: framing, electrical, installing showers, installing HVAC systems. 

2. It cost us under $25k in supplies, this cost doesn’t include unpaid labor from friends and family.

Why? What inspired us?

1. Housing in Vancouver WA is expensive when you’re moving out of your parent's home and you only have a part time job. We weren’t interested in busting our butts to pay for an apartment, so when the option of building a tiny home deemed itself feasible, we jumped at the chance to build something that we could pour our money into for keeps.

Location:

1. We parked our house somewhere in Vancouver 😉 on his grandpa’s land and we pay rent each month to keep it here. There is a house at the end of the property that had the means for us to hook up to water and electricity. We pay for utilities.

2. It’s built to have wheels on it, that’s not really something we can undo. Currently it’s not even resting on the wheels, it’s on a foundation of cement blocks around the perimeter of the house.

3. We can move it whenever we want, we just don’t want to because we would have to develop the land or live in a trailer park with hookups

Moving it:

1. We have only moved it once after we built it, fortunately we made friends with a tiny house contractor and he gave us the number of his truck guy and he moved our house with ease! 

2. MAKE SURE  to do research on where the best place to put your wheels is, this small measure will SAVE your house as it rests and when you move it. BUY PLANS DON’T WING IT

SIZE:

1. 280 Square feet footprint, and something like 330 including both lofts. 8.5’ wide and 30’ long.

2. We crawl on hands and knees to our bed, but can comfortably read a book in bed while sitting upright comfortably.
   

Cramped!

1. I have only bonked my head once while getting out of bed, we are both pretty small, flexible people so we don’t think about it much. I am 5’3” and he is 5’8”. 

2. Sometimes we get cabin fever so we just go somewhere for a few hours or we drive to Hood River. 

3. If I feel like I’m getting sick of the space, I’ll work outside or take Bronte to the dog park to get my open space fix. 

4. Doesn’t happen very often. If we were forced to live here, I’m sure it’d be more prevalent but, we chose to live small so our brains have determined it’s not really an issue. 

5. One time our new couch arrived before the old one was removed… so that was weird.

Organization/Fitting all our stuff/Cleanliness

1. Our stairs are packed with storage

2. VERTICAL STORAGE, shelves and bookshelves are ideal, DON’T just fill your walls up with art, use them for storage. Our bookshelf is only 9.5” deep but it holds LOADS of stuff that would be awkward to store anywhere else

3. We have a shed for seasonal stuff like christmas lights, winter clothes and shoes.

4. Kitchen has LOADS of storage 

5. I’m naturally a very organized person and Ethan and I own very few things. I have everything that I want, which doesn’t mean that I don’t like owning things, I just don’t go shopping very much because I have a dozen books I want to read anyway. Books are the only thing I really need to quit buying and just use what I have… okay maybe yarn too….

6. Our flooring is Marmoleum which is basically a superior linoleum that is very easy to sweep, mop and clean. 

7. Compared to a larger house, I’d say it’s the same amount of effort to keep it clean, if not more because the smaller the space, the more walking happens per square inch.

Sorry if this image is really dim, it’s hard to capture a decent balance with the abundance of windows… although they do help make our electric bill much lower so I don’t mind the dimness.

Space/People:

1. How many guests can we have over at once? Most we’ve ever had for an evening was 5 people total including us.

2. If we had to, we could sleep up to six or seven people. (2 bed, 1-2 carpet, 1 couch, 2 -3 secondary loft.) Comfortably we could sleep 5 people total.

3. Is it cramped? Nope! We barely bump into each other. We have been married for 2 years and aren’t sick of being in close quarters. It depends on who you live with and how much space apart you require. 

Family dynamic:

1. This is the first place we have ever lived together so we don’t have anything to compare it to. We both moved out of our parent’s houses before we got married and each of our rooms were about the same size, so this house was an upgrade from the space our stuff was normally kept in.

2. If we ever need to have personal time, we have plenty of options: master loft, couch, outside, secondary loft. We don’t really intentionally spend time separately in the house, it just naturally happens if I’m reading a book and he wants to watch T.V in the leisure loft (which is what we call the secondary loft).

Timeline/now:

1. I think the determinate factor for leaving the tiny house would be if we outgrew it. I’m turning 24 this year (2019) and want to wait a few more years before having kids, so that gives us time to save for a downpayment on another house when we decide it’s time to expand. When I say “expand” I mean it in a modest way, we don’t really want to live in a larger space than we need. All we want is a place to keep our few possessions, entertain some friends, and grow our family. Our motto is: know exactly what you need to be happy, don’t try and live somebody else’s life with somebody else’s standards; create your own standards and live with them confidently.

Pros:

1. $$ More money, more options.

2. It’s big enough to have a dog! 

3. It’s mobile if you want it to be.

4. If you design it well enough, there is plenty of storage, plus we have a shed for seasonal stuff.

5. The house is worth more than the money we put into it, so as much as it’s not an asset, it is still valuable if we want to sell it someday to put a down payment on a house

6. With enough windows, you save a lot of money on electricity

Favorite Thing:

1. The amount of financial freedom it gives us to build my business, travel, plan for our family and for our next home. 

Cons:

1. If you have a hard time living in small spaces and you know this about yourself, DO NOT try and live small

2. Working from home can be a little dismal because there isn’t a separate room to unwind in, it’s all one room. Although I do spend a lot of time outside since I installed a garden.

3. You can’t have bunches of people inside at once

4. It can be expensive if you don’t know what you’re doing

5. Depending on where you live, your county might give you some pushback

6. If you’re afraid of heights, lofts will be stressful

7. You are limited on how big your family can be (or how many pets you can have)

8. You have to have hobbies that can fit inside or come up with another place to practice those hobbies; i.e Ethan loves to drum and we don’t have space for a drum kit.

“Biggest Struggles” = not real problems, but what we like least about tiny home living:

1. I’d like to have more people over at once for game nights, but we have a HUGE YARD so it’s a small trade off to host fun events, we just do it outside!

2. No dishwasher, but it’s not a huge grievance, I hardly ever think about it, we just do the dishes pretty diligently and soak things that might be tougher to wash.

FAQ ETC.

1. How do you change your sheets with a low roof? I am extremely flexible! 

2. How do you keep the smells from the kitchen IN the kitchen? Vents, windows, fans and candles. It doesn’t present a huge problem very often, but if we burn something, we just throw open all the window and let it air out.

3. If I could do it again would I build it the same exact way? Absolutely, we’ve been in dozens of tiny homes and we like ours the best. The plans that we bought were extremely vigilant in utilizing every single square inch and it’s been ideal for us so far. 

4. If we had all the monies to choose, tiny or normal sized house, we would definitely choose a larger house. More space means more options, we could have guests over, have a drum kit and a craft room! But we don’t really require more than this right now, so we are happy. 

Tips:

1. Save Save Save before you build, because if you’ve seen any of those house shows on HGTV, there are always things that cost money that you didn’t expect

2. KNOW where you are going to park it and what codes your house has to live up to or else you’re going to have a hell of a time parking it where you want

3. If you want a mobile one, be aware of how heavy your house is and either own a vehicle that can do the job (it took a RAM with a giant amount of power to tow ours), know someone who you can pay to move it, or move it once or twice and call it good. 

4. Make sure everyone who is moving into it is on board. All it takes is one person to be against it and it’ll make the house feel very very small. We both really wanted this so it wasn’t an issue, but imagine living in a  big house with someone who is unhappy with you for some reason… and then cut that square foot by 1/4 of the size….. yikes!

5. Whoever you live with, make sure you have communication and conflict resolution down STAT, because it’s a pressure cooker and if you don’t know how to diffuse your arguments and disagreements, it will feel much more prevalent that in a larger house because in a smaller house you have fewer options to get in a different room and cool off. 

6. BUY PLANS, DO NOT WING IT. If you just go for it without a plan, it’s dangerous, costly and illegal. Make sure that tiny homes are legal wherever you plan on parking it, we found out after we built the house that Clark County didn’t have legal structure set up for tiny homes to be parked in county limits… so we have had to help pave the way for tiny house living in our county and it’s been a challenging process. We are believing that with God all things are possible and with His favor and wisdom, the old rules will be refreshed with new ones.