After a year of hard work and dreaming big, Daniel, Ashley, Sweet Pea and Carlos (husband, wife, dog, cat) were able to move into their homemade tiny house, which Ashley notes online included a surprise bonus compared to her previous home: “Less to keep clean!” she announces in her online blog, Tire Swing Photography.
Like many tiny home projects, this one started with a romance (the couple eloped to Puerto Rico in 2014), and a shared passion, in this case for photography. Daniel and Ashley have been together nine years and have spent five of them “in the industry,” their website says. They run Tire Swing Photography, an all-purpose events-oriented photo business. But they found a direction, too, when they decided to build a tiny home.
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When we asked them what does their tiny house mean to them and why, this is what they told us: "To us it means freedom! We are free from a mortgage, free to pursue more things we love (like travel), and free to create a home that fits exactly our style and our needs (since we also work from home). Freedom to pursue more things we love is probably our favorite aspect though. We are able to spend more time outdoors enjoying life now! At the moment, our tiny house is parked directly in front of a lake that Daniel loves to fish in every morning. It is little freedoms like this that are much more attainable by living life in a tiny house."
Let's take a tour and see what we see. Look out, especially, for the novel bathroom sink that isn't really a sink, because it has no drain. So, it's a basin. But, it's beautiful, anyway, as you shall see.
This home is simple, yet elegant, highlighted by the cherry-colored siding and the white trim. The dog on the stoop: That's Sweet Pea, who manages to make the house look enormous. Well, it's all about perspective, after all.
Here's a look at what turns out to be a theme of this tiny house. That theme: "Home is where you park it." In this case, parking it next to this serene setting is about as good as it gets.
This is the home's living room area made comfy with that beautiful rug. Sweet Pea looks to be contemplating which square of that rug to occupy.
Here's a look at the same room in a photo taken from the loft. On the left is the front door. Behind the interior sliding door is what looks like a cat box on the floor. But to the right of that is the human bathroom.
Here's a closer look at the room that functions as a huge, walk-in closet on the left. To the right, behind the curtain, is the bathroom.
And here's the bathroom sink, which is really a faucet and an ornate basin with a mirror leaning against the wall.
The photo above is actually a snapshot of the home's staircase. In the next photo, you can see how the staircase progressed from one stage of building to the next.
How to build a set of stairs in five steps -- pun intended. The first photo on the left is just the frame and it progresses through five photographs until you see the painted version on the far right.
Carlos the cat appreciates a good set of stairs as much as anyone.
The multi-purpose table is between the living room and the kitchen. You can catch a glimpse of the microwave oven on the right.
Here's a better view of the kitchen. Kudos for the full-sized refrigerator. Not every tiny home has one of those.
Here's a peek at the upstairs loft above the bathroom. "Home is where you park it," is a sub-theme to tiny house living. The tiny house community boasts of living within their means and putting less emphasis on collecting stuff and more emphasis on living large. The pillow sums that up nicely.
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And here's a view of the bedroom loft with the window shade drawn down. As you can see, the window shade is also a map of the world, so you can pull down the shade and plot your next great adventure.