Tiny house? This is practically a palace
Home truths is a series of stories about Kiwis who are living a home life that’s out of the ordinary. This week, Claire French can’t wait for all the extra space her new self-built tiny home will offer. Colleen O’Hanlon reports.
Claire French knows a thing or two about living in small spaces, having spent the best part of five years living in an 8 square metre, self-built gypsy-style caravan. That caravan has been sold to a new owner but not because French didn’t like living small, she just wanted to live a little less small. Her new, also self-built, tiny home is more than double the size, at 17.28 sqm, but it’s still diminutive compared to a standard three-bedder.
So, what motivated the move to upsize? Well, simple things most of us take for granted.
‘‘For me the main things were having a shower and space to do my yoga and a full-size kitchen, and also being able to have friends over,’’ French said. ‘‘My new build has a spare room so I can have friends to stay or for dinner. A caravan is great in summer time but you can’t really have six people for dinner.’’
French was a novice with only basic skills when she first picked up the tools to undertake the caravan build, the first project she’d ever tackled. All her practical skills had been learnt from time working on a farm near Oamaru but French soon realised she had plenty still to learn.
‘‘The first time I went to drill a hole in the steel it took me like half a day to work it out. I was going on YouTube to see what I was doing wrong – I had the wrong drill and wrong drill bit which was too blunt and it was impacting the steel. YouTube was amazing, you can learn so much from it,’’ she said.
The caravan project was finished over a threeyear period, but French was living in it after about six months, finding the simple, peaceful life she had sought.
‘‘You really have to think about what items or things are important to you. Because you’re in a small space, you really have to downsize and start realising that stuff doesn’t make you happy,’’ she said.
‘‘And the freedom. It’s been a cheap way to live and has given me a lot of creative freedom to pursue my projects and do volunteer work. I do lots of stuff in the community – it frees up my time to do those kinds of things.’’
The caravan cost $21,000 to build compared with the steel-framed tiny home, which came in at around $60,000 but includes a spare bedroom, a mezzanine floor, a spiral staircase and the allprecious shower.
‘‘Most people are like, ‘how am I going to fit into a tiny home’ and I’m like, ‘wow, I’ve got so much space, there are empty drawers’. It was the opposite way round for me, really. ‘‘For the lifestyle and the mortgagefree living, it is worth it. The money from the sale of the caravan is going to go back into my build to finish off the stuff I need to do on my new house.’’ The tiny home is on a friend’s property in Wanaka, and French is most looking forward to the social side of her new life. ‘‘Things like having people for dinner,’’ she said. ‘‘I’ll be living with some really amazing
Just go for it, be brave and don’t give up. You get to points when you don’t even want to look at the thing any more but the only way it happens is if you keep going.