reflections on building a tiny house (and actually living in it) after a month.
For those of you tuned into the tiny house journey, welcome to another stop on the clusterfuck express. For those of you tuning in, let me catch you up to speed.
I’m Amanda, and I’m 21. I was, in a previous life, having a terrible childhood that gave me lots of housing insecurity. Growing up, I decided to become a developer: but not a rich one. A developer who wants to build and run a non-profit. And yet, my hubris didn’t end there. I wanted to run a very untraditional nonprofit to my exacting ethical standards.
It’s led me to a 6+ year journey of bootstrapping my non-profit, and taking a bunch of jobs within the startup industry. And this stop, building a tiny house of my own, was intended to be a deeply fulfilling and healing journey for me.
After dreaming of having a tiny house (I literally have sketches dating back to 2017) for years, I finally got the chance to build a very low cost one after being on the receiving end of a 4 car pile up.
In return for a lifetime full of back pain, I received a sum of 25k and called it even. What did I do with that 25K? Well, I made the very sound financial decision to buy a vintage jail trailer that had been used to grow weed for the past 10 years off of Craigslist for $750. And then, I spent the next year and a half tearing it down, and rebuilding from the ground up.
I wanted to make an honest reflection of the build, how it’s affected me, and what life is like ‘after’, given that tiny houses have become more expensive and sensationalized more than ever. Then, to continue doing it at the 6 month mark, and then whenever afterwards I feel like it.
How does it feel to be done with the build, and how did the build affect you?
I don’t know. I honestly think the entire build has really frazzled my nerves. During building, I was in a terrible spot mentally and just wanted out every day. I almost considered throwing the whole fucking thing on Craigslist and walking. It felt, honestly, very isolating and absolutely terrible.
There was some absolutely amazing friends who showed up whenever I needed, and then there was people who ditched me left and right. One guy also tried to have an affair with me, (which, offer declined) but that’s a story for a future time.
It strained my relationship with everything (and everyone) else I loved. I was working 3 jobs while trying to also finish the tiny house. A lot fell through the cracks and I had no down time. I had to figure out how to do everything, because I couldn’t afford anyone to help me.
Sometimes in the middle of the process, I would break down crying in a pile of building materials and power tools, or I would power tool through my tears. A lot of crying, being stressed as fuck, and covered in construction adhesive and various chemicals. I was living on fast food and Dutch Bro Rebels (which is basically Red Bull).
The moving process, was terrible. My dad was responsible for towing it up from Oregon to Washington and he backed into a semi-truck and busted the corner of it on the way.
A small gap between the floor and the shell opened only while we were driving, and the rainwater from the truck tires came in and completely demolished my beloved book and extensive record collection, which was at the front to add tongue weight. I thought my fish died, but he was just pissed off and a little cold.
When we first arrived, the electrical system that we originally had tested had broken a lot of things in transit. My overhead strip lighting didn’t work, 2 of my kitchen outlets didn’t work, and my bedroom breaker kept on throwing the main one.
My vintage front door frame with custom dimensions broke, and now it lets a bunch of air through the front, and my cats have figured out how to open it and escape in the middle of the night.
I cheaped out on flooring, and got peel and stick which got destroyed in the process because the adhesive didn’t stay, and now I have a bunch of half-broken floor stickers everywhere.
I didn’t have a working hot water heater, so I showered in the freezing cold Washington water for a couple of weeks before figuring out it was a very easy to fix breaker connection issue. Now I lobster boil freely, and energy efficiently.
I also didn’t, and still don’t have HVAC. I can’t afford to get it installed right now, and I’m just so over the idea of having to fix more stuff.
So, it feels lived in, but not completed. It will probably be another 6 months or so to get it to where I want it to be. Honestly, it feels incredibly mentally devastating and draining, like I’m constantly living in a half finished project even though I put in all I could financially, physically, and emotionally at the time. It’s taken a giant strain on my mental health in a way I didn’t expect.
My productivity is just starting to pick up, but now I’m moving into raising a pre-seed round and starting to build an enterprise platform alone with one company and launching a lot of software and resuming public life with another and I have no time to decompress or vacation. Out of the tiny house frying pan, into the bonfire.
This led to me hating the tiny house when I first moved in. When you finish it, and everything is still broken and so hard to live with and now you have to work an insane amount but also come back to living in an ever-spiraling clusterfuck that just seems to get worse no matter how much work you put in: it just fucking sucks. It sucks less now, but I wouldn’t say I’m happy with it.
I wish I would have given myself more padding in between finishing and resuming work / taking on projects, but that’s not possible for the time being. I’ll probably reflect on this more at the 6 month mark when everything evens out and I can see the bigger picture.
How has it affected your finances?
This is really early to tell, and I guess we’ll have to see. I am super lucky that I got a lump sum from my accident settlement, and I used that lump sum to buy all of my appliances and building materials prior to starting. My thinking was ‘if I buy all of my tiny house stuff, I MUST complete the tiny house’.
That saved me from eating the cost of inflation. I imagine all of the materials were around 30k-ish at the time of purchase, including the cost of the trailer.
If someone tried to replicate what I did, I’m imagining they would spend more like $50k+ acquiring a trailer and getting everything ready. I also used a mix of residential materials, and RV materials.
This is partially because this is a tiny house that has RV sized exterior walls, and I have RV windows, walls, shower, and doors. In the future, I want to replace all of those BUT they were very cheap and a big reason why it was cost accessible to me.
I bought most of my materials from a store called Affordable RVing, which has brand new overstock materials from luxury RV manufacturers. My frameless RV windows were all together $450, and my walls and ceiling were also around $400.
For how it has day to day affected my finances, we’ll see. I currently make $42k a year, and my space rent for the tiny house is $600. I also paid in full for the tiny house and have no outstanding debt. That being said, because I am an RV, my insurance is $50/month.
When I was in an apartment, my renters insurance was $100 for the entire year. Insurance costs have bumped up in a way I didn’t expect. I also pay almost $120/mo for internet through Starlink, and it doesn’t always work during video calls because I’m pretty rural.
I was very lucky to get the spot I did, and only found it after weeks of searching. Otherwise, I would have landed in an RV park which usually doesn’t have permanent spots for about $750–1000, so a narrower cost savings.
Whereas I probably spent $1.5k/mo in my MCOL apartment in Salem, OR for insurance, utilities, and internet, I spend closer to $1k all in here.
That’s still a lot of money I’m able to save given the economic situation in the US right now, but I’m treading water where everyone else is drowning. Inflation has really erased most of the savings that I thought I would have in other ways.
Any savings I have is going to go back into the tiny house on QOL improvements, so I doubt I’ll truly start seeing savings until that 6 month-ish round when I finish up leftover projects. I’m hoping to get a USDA rural loan to get land on the Olympic Peninsula, or to get a foreclosed mobile home to renovate it.
How has it changed my life?
I do think it has gave me a better life, but it’s again early to tell. I walk 6 miles every day, which is new for me. I’m literally in the middle of the woods, so I’m very isolated and experiencing less issues with my autism. I’m not really getting cabin fever yet, because I think I designed it with a lot of small spaces in mind, so I don’t run out of areas to be in.
It’s gave me such an amazing appreciation for the houses we do have. Ones with heat, running water, electricity, etc. The houses that surround us are filled with millions of parts, inner complexity, and science that the average person barely scratches the surface of.
It also, although I’m getting out of hating it, does feel like the most gracious act of self care I’ve ever taken on. I literally get to wake up, and go to bed, in a house made out of my hands for myself. It taught me that everything can be learned, and most everything can be fixed.
It’s given me a lot of resilience, and the consistency of knowing ‘this is mine in the truest sense of the word’ really has helped me unlock a lot of my stress.
I have a lot of comfort to know that I can pass this on to friends and family who might need it. My dad is a renter currently in retirement, and it’s been stressing me out quite a lot.
The thought that I can renovate it for him and he can use it as a temporary cabin or as a home really helps me sleep at night. If I get property with another tiny house, it can be used as a guest house or an in-law’s quarters to put my dad in as well.
It also showed me that I am willing to do crazy things to make my dream happen, and that whatever I need: I can provide it for myself. Those are very calming lessons to carry throughout life. My dreams will happen because I can build them with my hands.
Would I do it again?
In the circumstances I did, with how young and broke I am, probably not. I think it was inevitable for me, because I really did need a lower cost of living to pursue my dreams and a life I wanted for myself.
Even if I didn’t land in this tiny home, I probably would have bought a motorhome or an RV and ended up living in a trailer park. I didn’t enjoy doing it, but I think there’s something incredibly intimately human about building a shelter that you occupy. Caveman brain go ooga booga.
In the future, in a better financial circumstance, I would love to hire out a tiny house builder to build me this tiny house, from Shaye’s. My dream is to buy a foreclosed piece of property and eventually build a second tiny house, or contract someone to do it. I don’t think I would do it soon, but maybe in 4–5 years.
That being said, my boyfriend is 6’3 and I’m wanting us to move in together at some point in the future. He will not fit into this tiny house built for 5'2 me comfortably. I probably need to make a lot of changes to this tiny house (like adding a bump out bedroom), or to build a new one. So, I’m already setting towards a life that will have me outgrow it.
What’s next?
In somewhat of an order,
- Fixing my door (cost: mental sanity)
- Getting my mini split installed (I already have one, I’m just lazy and don’t want to pay for an AC gauge) (approx $70)
- Adding skirting for the Washington winter (approx $300)
- Adding a closet so I don’t just have my clothes all over the floor (approx my mental sanity)
- Installing LVP flooring (approx $600 in materials)
- Getting a TV (I’m sorry it’s boring without one, approx $200)
- Adding more wooden paneling outside to cover muriatic acid damage from the previous owner. I might fully paint the outside, because the shell is very damaged. It’s a 1975, so it has about 50 or less years of damage, scratches, and roughness that are still visible. It looks dated in a cool way, but it also makes me feel very broke and the last thing I need is to feel that more (approx $100)
- Finishing up random carpentry projects, adding trim to my doors, light switches, molding, lighting for bedroom and kitchen, adding a box around my residential fan (approx $500)
- Redoing my RV shower (approx $600–1000)
On the state of tiny houses
I feel a lot of the true spirit of tiny homes has been lost in the mass commoditization. The tiny houses we see now are not handmade projects of passion, but rather highly polished and produced mini-homes on a trailer with all of the amenities you could come to expect from a full-sized home.
Although I hated the process, it feels really similar to what others have shared about their build: it was flying by the seat of their pants, just trying to use whatever leverage they had to build the lives they want.
As a result of the mass-market appeal of tiny houses, a lot of the prices of tiny house adjacent products have become more expensive. Shipping containers and school buses in particular, are areas that I can point to. The broad dream of tiny houses, has in a way, ruined the true essence of their appeal: the cheap price to the live you want.
I was super lucky to have found the shell that would become my tiny house. It had extensive water damage, was a vintage sheriff’s trailer / weed den, and needed a complete subfloor perimeter rebuild and everything ripped out. But comparable Airstreams or other aluminum body shells would probably run 6k-15k depending on the condition.
I did just want to acknowledge in a sense that this journey was easier for me than it might be for many other people because of the initial price. I spent months scouring Craigslist, from California to Oregon to Washington, to end up with what I did.
And I haven’t seen anything similar since, although I still go and look. So, I am incredibly fortunate to have the timing I did and to have a dad who would also pick up a vintage road hazard for me.
Closing
Tiny houses have become an incredibly hot topic recently. So, I just wanted to throw in my experience of what it was like for me. There was somethings I definitely didn’t expect, and others that I did. But overall, people can say I didn’t build a GOOD tiny house, but they can’t say I never built A tiny house.
