The Best Tiny House Design
We finally moved into our tiny home. We finished it and we’re living in it. It seems unreal. The moment when all of your dreams and ideas come to life and you walk into your DIY built tiny house… makes you speechless.
From dream to drawing to reality
We decided to go tiny in May of 2022. We bought plans that we loved and then decided to change them completely months later. In November of 2022 we had our 28’ trailer and were back to the drawing board on creating a new design for our tiny dream house.
Hi Tiny Houser! I’m Damaris. If we haven’t met yet, my husband Jason and I just finished building our DIY Tiny House in the summer of 2024. We moved in in September and have been getting some finishing touches done to make it just right. It has been an exhausting yet exhilarating experience! We love everything about our tiny home and how it was designed by us for us. No one could have built our dream home with the same kind of attention to detail as we put into it. Even though we started as absolute beginners, we’ve built a house that’s going to last us a lifetime. I want to share our journey with you.
Our tiny home is called Lil’ Bitty. It is 28’ long x 8.5’ wide x 13.5’ high. Jason’s grandma Jean used to call me Lil’ Bit. Since Jason and I love the song Little Bitty by Alan Jackson, the name for our tiny home just seemed to fit. The song definitely made our Tiny House Playlist that we listened to while we were building.
Our design is special because it doesn’t have a loft bedroom. We spent a lot of time figuring out what kind of design would be perfect for us.
Hosting is a big part of our lives. My sister lives in Chicago and we wanted to make sure she has a place to stay when she and her husband come to visit. A lot of tiny home floor plans have the bathroom at the far end of the tiny home trailer. The design we purchased in 2022 was like that. We wanted to have the living room on one end of the tiny house with a main door to enter in and our bedroom on the other end of the tiny house with a secondary entry door. That would leave us with the kitchen and bathroom in the middle of the tiny home. That way we or our guests could use the restroom in the middle of the night without disturbing the other. This plan has worked out really well for us.
The floor plans we purchased also have a lofted bedroom. When we decided to change our design to a custom one, we realized that we couldn’t have a lofted bedroom. Our new design was going to have a subfloor built on top of the trailer instead of within the cavities of it. That meant that we would be losing a lot of headroom if we were to have a bedroom in a loft. With Jason being 6’ tall, a 24” loft was just not going to work. At first, we really thought we wanted a loft and that we wouldn’t like a main floor bedroom. We were wrong. We love having a main floor bedroom with everything being accessible without a ladder. That’s not to say we don’t need a step stool to get to the tops of our cabinets, but at least we don’t need one to get to bed.
The Exterior
Our design has the main entry on the back passenger side of the trailer. The secondary, bedroom entry is on the front passenger side of the trailer. Both doors are on the long side of the home. Both doors are also outswinging so as not to interfere with any interior space. Since we wanted as much light as possible in our Florida tiny house, we also decided to get full light doors. In between the two doors we have a large sliding window for easy pass through from the kitchen to the grill outside. We are looking forward to building a large deck that will expand our outdoor living space and make our tiny home feel bigger. The long side of the trailer also has three smaller windows on the top. One is above each door and the other is in the center just above the kitchen sliding window. In between the kitchen windows and the bedroom door is a beautiful cedar accent wall design. Some people have asked if it’s a secret entry. That would be cool, but it’s not. It’s an accent design meant to break up the white boxy look of the tiny home. The plans we bought from Tony & Char also have a cedar accent design just in a different spot and in a different shape.
You can buy their plans here.
Tiny Living
When you go inside the tiny home through the main entrance you’ll notice the couch first. The entire width of the living room is the width of the sofa. We have a 72” x 38” sleeper sofa in a loveseat style. It’s placed against the wall with a large window above it. There’s another smaller window directly above the larger one. On the left wall from the entrance, there’s a large storage cabinet, the TV mounted on the wall, and a couple of floating shelves for books and decor. Above the floating shelves we have our mini split.
Under the TV is a custom entryway cabinet. As most tiny homes include custom multi-functional cabinetry, our home is no different. The cabinet is a place for shoe storage, for laptop storage, a rotating table/desk and a dog murphy bed. Yep! You read that right. A dog murphy bed for our pup Bessy. It’s one of the coolest features in our tiny house.
Where delicious food is made
The kitchen starts to the right of the entry with a stunning quartzite countertop the entire length of the trailer fender. We have a galley kitchen with shelves and storage above the kitchen counter next to the windows. The stove is built in the countertop next to the apron front sink. On the other side of the kitchen there’s more storage. The storage in this kitchen is unbelievable! My dad is a custom cabinet installer and he has skills to build custom cabinetry. I put him to work with our tiny home and we couldn’t be more pleased and grateful with all of the work that he did.
My dad built a custom closet for Jason’s suits and dress shirts as well as a spot for our dirty laundry and some paper storage. Next to that Papi put a custom-built pull out pantry with space for my spices, oils, and canned goods. The mop and broom also fit here. He and I worked on building a pantry at his house and we brought it to the tiny home and installed it later. The customized pantry houses shelves on the top with doors coming soon to cover them. Under the shelves we decided to place our gorgeous Cafe Espresso maker with room for hanging mugs and displaying coffee things.
Cafe Espresso Machine
Underneath the coffee machine is an equally gorgeous countertop oven air fryer with matching white and rose gold accents to complement the rest of the kitchen.
Café Couture Oven
Below the countertop oven are two drawers. One holds teas and coffee and miscellaneous items. The bottom drawer is the perfect height for a “Woof Bar”. It stays open for our pup Bessy to have constant access to her water bowl and a place for her food bowl and treats.
Next to the pantry is the refrigerator. The fridge is the perfect size for the space. I really wanted a white one to go with the clean aesthetic and I also wanted one with a bottom freezer. This Insignia Refrigerator from Best Buy covers both of those wants. It’s functional and cute for a fridge. We put the fridge on a custom built stand with room for more storage. Below the fridge we have Bessy’s food and her basket of toys. To the right of the fridge sits our stackable washer and dryer. It’s pretty high because of the fact that it’s on top of a box Jason built that stores our whole house water filtration system. This is the one we use.
It’s doing a wonderful job of removing the minerals coming from the well water.
Waterdrop Whole House Water Filter
We recommend having a good plan on where you’re going to store it. It’s quite heavy, bulky and awkward to change the filter. It’s really important to have a water filtration system, just make sure you know where it’s going to go before you start building. We thought ours would go above the bathroom ceiling in our storage loft, but once we discovered that the filter needed to be changed every 6 months, we decided to put it in a more convenient location in the tiny house.
A crucial step to having a good plan is doing as much research as possible. That’s why I’m excited to tell you about Tiny House University. Check out TinyHouse.com and join their membership. If you click here, you will be able to sign up for Tiny House University, the #1 online educational platform for all those who aspire to live in a tiny house. Whether you want to DIY, hire a builder, or buy a tiny home, their courses and digital resources are designed to guide you throughout the process in a fun and exciting way.
Use the discount code SUNSETS20OFF for 20% OFF your membership!
Barn door
The laundry area ends with a gorgeous sliding barn door. My dreams came true when we built this barn door. I wanted wood slats as an accent on the ceiling of the home. Once we noticed our budget and our time wouldn’t allow for it, I knew I needed to incorporate slats somewhere else. The barn door was just the thing! My dad got us a gray cabinet panel to use as the door and we glued and nailed cedar slats leftover from the exterior accent wall and window trim. It brings the outside in for a cohesive look. I also love that there’s an unexpected pop of gray. It matches the quartzite countertop in “super white” since it has gray marbling throughout.
The quartzite countertop was another incredible story. It was a leftover slab from my mom and stepdad. They had it in their garage for 6 years. We couldn’t believe we got this genuine quartzite countertop slab for absolutely nothing.
It’s hard to pick a favorite feature of the barn door, but what can’t be overlooked is the rose gold barn door hardware. The one I got from Amazon was hit or miss on availability throughout the build, so I jumped on it as soon as it was available.
(The rose gold one isn’t available, but this gold sliding door hardware is just as pretty.)
Rio Salto Gold Barn Door
All-Tile Tiny Bathroom
All of my wants in a bathroom were fulfilled in this all-tile tiny bathroom. I wanted all white tile walls and floor with an accent tile shower wall in blue. Facebook Marketplace for the win on these tiles. They were a total steal! I paid $70 for the tile that was worth over $1800! Unfortunately, the astronomical cost of waterproofing material made us go over budget, but the deal on the tile made up for that.
As with every part of this DIY tiny house build, YouTube University came through on the bathroom vanity build. I found a beautiful vanity on Pinterest and used the videos on the blog to build my own. Angela Marie Made was an inspiration. I watched the video over and over and printed out the build plans. With a bit of help from friends and family, this vanity came together better than expected.
When we decided to go tiny, Jason mentioned that he knows how much I love soaking in a bubble bath. So he said I can have a bath tub in our tiny home. After hours of scouring the internet, I found the perfect soaking tub to fit our tiny space. We had 52” of width in our bathroom so I had to find a 48” soaking tub that wasn’t going to completely break the bank. We found the tub for an excellent price considering Japanese soaking tubs can be upwards of $5000!
Woodbridge 48” Acrylic Soaking Tub
The Tiny Cozy Bedroom
Through the pink pocket door is our bedroom. It fits a full bed and a side table/dresser. At the foot of the bed there's just enough room to step out to reach the second entry door. We installed the bed this way so we can have access from our front steps or deck area and be able to get to our bed. The bed has gas strut arms to lift the top up for storage underneath. Much like an RV style bed, our bed has a lot of storage as well as drawers for shoes. Instead of a headboard, we have two overhead lights on the wall under more wall cabinet storage as a closet. The lights were actually originally tealight holders that my stepdad turned into lights by attaching the wiring holster connecting the electrical wiring himself. My stepdad ran all of the electrical wiring in our whole tiny house, we wouldn’t have had any power if it weren’t for him!
Above the side table/dresser is my custom closet. There’s just enough room to fit my dresses, blouses, skirts, and pants. The wall cabinet is where I put my tees and purses. Jason’s clothes are in the other cabinet.
That just about covers our tiny home tour for now. I look forward to going deeper into different aspects of our build and showing you what tiny home life is really like. We don’t consider ourselves actual minimalists, but we do try to keep a simple life. We can show you how to live simply without missing out on the things you love.
Until next time.
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