Including tiny house design today we've traveled to Byron Bay

To meet a wonderful couple who have constructed a beautiful zen inspired tiny house on wheels

Good day Kester, good day Bryce. Good to meet you, good to meet you mate.

Hey Nadia, lovely to meet you. Hello Bryce, nice to meet you.

What an amazing looking tiny house you've got here and what an incredible spot

You've found an amazing little nook for it here in this backyard haven't you. Yeah we're lucky to have the two-story house in front so

it keeps a pretty private, so we kind of designed the house around this exact location

We knew where the trees were going to be so where do we put the windows so the whole house is designed around this

exact spot. So what was your motivation for building a tiny house? Well we've actually been living in the big house

downstairs with our friends for about seven years and they've got three kids so the kids were getting bigger and bigger and we knew that

at some point we couldn't share a bedroom with them, so

We wanted to all keep living together and it's a bit of a challenge in in the Byron Shire to

find a place to live so we thought it was kind of the perfect solution to build a tiny in the backyard one of the

things i feel most of all

living in the space is

grateful for the fact that our friends let us put our tiny house here in such a beautiful location

That's the main thing i feel it's just incredibly grateful that we're able to live in our own space and be surrounded by lovely people

you know our chosen family if you like yeah particularly being at a park straight between established trees and looking at this beautiful view

just, feels like home and and you just feel yeah really really grateful

every day

for the beautiful space and and the incredible location that it's in with our beautiful friends and family now this tiny house

it's a little bit bigger than normal isn't it what are the dimensions of the home it's actually three metres wide

Internally but then we've got little eaves on the house so it's actually 3.5 meters wide technically and it's seven meters long

With an extra 50 centimetres on the trailer tongue for the window box so i think

34 square metres including the loft actually having this wraparound deck is an

Amazing addition to the house as well it adds, so much livable space doesn't it yeah it's incredibly functional and

You know we've had maybe 12 to 15 people in this house so they've been a couple of occasions

yeah, more regularly than we thought

And it works so well having a little deck outside and even having it around the this sort of

northwest corner here is incredible it means that cups of tea and wintertime and you know lots of little

spaces for people to kind of come and hang out and we we designed it so that it's completely modular and

Can be taken apart in a day and put back together in two days and popped on the back of a tow truck okay?

So i can move it with the house so when you were actually designing this tiny house

what was the inspiration that went into the aesthetic of it well we were kind of inspired by

a combination of japanese design and

swedish or nordic design so we loved looking at all the swedish lake houses and

Then then we were kind of inspired by the clean minimalistic lines of japanese design so a bit of a combo

how long with the coziness of the scanner

absolutely can you tell me about some of the materials that went into the construction of this it's basically a simple

timber frame design and

When it came to cladding i think we wanted to use you were looking at urban line.we or not yeah we yes we really loved

The look of old silvery wood

So we wanted to try and emulate that as best we could but we couldn't really afford it and so we went with a pretty

eco-friendly option which is this stuff's weather tex it's a australian company and i do sheets

Made out of waste australian hardwood yeah but then we we wanted some contrasting cladding so we got some beautiful

cedar and we did the show sub d bunch on the on the cedar kista got, to buy himself an epic

Flames wrapping torch and have some fun so that was cool so that's on the window box and the?

extruded window about the front unit and of course you've got that very iconic blue door as well

yeah

totally just to give the little

homage to the the skander look we originally painted it yellow and it was just felt a little bit too urban so

we were trying out all these different colors and our friends looked at the sky and he said maybe

Maybe it has to be sky blue

Too to frame into the sky so that's what we went with hmm

we love it

Well the exterior looks great i cannot wait to see what you've done inside can we have a look come on in thank you?

wow this is super spacious

big right it's like the tardis we couldn't believe how spacious it was on the initiative you can definitely see the combination

of

scandinavian and japanese designing this and it's such a great blend isn't it thank you yeah we really really love it we love the the

nice black frames of the windows which feels a little bit deaf and easy and the

Kind of kind and answer type stare and but then the coziness of the sheepskins and that yeah look that's very?

scandinavian over there like houses so yeah

And especially because the design is also so

open it just feels like it has a really nice flow through the home yeah we kind of maxed out on the windows i

Originally had even more windows in the design

My dad's an architect and here to look at the plans and that's kind of the one thing the one?

Suggestion he had was to scale back the windows but, he did suggest is huge

2.5, by 2.4, door so the builder said we couldn't really have gone any bigger with that

but yeah

We love love all the light in the space and one of the things that you're immediately greeted with in the house is

This incredible plug box over here what a lovely feature thank you yeah we hadn't really seen that done elsewhere

um again my dad in all of the houses

He designed for us as i was growing up we always had a planter box and a stairwell

So that's kind of like a little

ode to him

yeah

i thought we loved it it's really nice that it creates a little privacy screen it's lovely having the green inside and

feels really alive and sort of blends in with the outdoor garden really nicely

and of course here we are in our annual living room and look at that window box what a great addition

it's pretty special isn't it it just gives that extra little bit of space and it's the perfect little not

To sit in on a rainy day with a book it's excellent, so what do you do for watching a movie in here well

Brilliant projector on the coffee table and off you go yeah so i feel fine about

cinema it's super cozy and you can have four people lying down watching a movie which is pretty special in a tiny house yeah

yeah

Well that's that's one of our favorite features and then it looks like you've also?

Actually built a whole lot of storage into this space as well absolutely we've got storage everywhere probably more than we need so

We have all of our puppy gear in here because we've got two dogs which is one of the reasons why we went a little

bit wider in the house we've got like spices and stuff in here this is casters man shed

He's got all of his tools it's a very tidy man ship

and we've got a shoe drawer in here which i'm quite proud of this is where my one little bit of um

woodworking i made the little shelves for our shoes

You, know a tiny house and shoes that's really nice but, we also have nine hundred

depths underneath the window box so you can just lift these up

And it's super deep storage under there as well

so we are not wanting for storage it's brilliant this is my favorite draw this one here a

nice long deep drawer everything they don't have to go digging to find anything there dubillac eat all

the household drawer

This is our bag drawer because you have to have somewhere to put your bag when you come home from work and this is our

other favorite one this is our

Electrical books so that's where we have a la electrical cords and

computer stuff i

just, love how you itemize all of those things because being able to really just type everything away and know it things are in a

Space is part of

Just, basically working for you and your being able to actually living it right i think to live in a small space you've got

to maybe have a bit of a

predilection for being organized and being able to live in

Had things you know organized very well organized it certainly helps there's no, question about there nobody wants to be a tiny house hoarder

And then behind us here we have your beautiful kitchen and all of this cabinetry is just so well done isn't it

luckily the people we ended up going with they had a guy who worked a lot with caravans and

So he was fantastic

He managed to

Do a really lovely job all the finishes that you know really the way we wanted it and he managed to source a very lightweight

ply as well for all the carcasses for all the cabinetry

And i think that's probably saved us an enormous amount away and then tell me about the design of the kitchen we'd love to cook

And we often cook together

But we like space when we cook or we get grumpy so

quick we wanted a galley kitchen and we wanted quite a lot of counter top space for preparation caster was really

Enthusiastic about having as much wood in here as possible so we're so glad we went with the tazzy oak bench top it's it's really

beautiful and really nice to work with and work on and we have a lot of things in jars saying we wanted that accessible

Because it's kind of inspiring to to see your food in front of you to get excited about what you're gonna cook

So we wanted the open shelving

the full stove the full oven because we hadn't had an oven for seven years in our other house

So we were quite excited about being in a bake again and

We wanted everything in drawers so we we kind of maxed out on the drawers and we've got a quite a cool pull out

pantry as well

Which, you can leave open and then that kind of becomes part of the space you don't have to keep shutting it so that works

really well but my absolute favorite part of the kitchen is ridiculous it's this little cupboard here

Which is um the dog food cupboard you know you never have any way to put your dog food so we designed the covered specifically

oh

the dog stuff it's really cute

one of my favorite bits about the kitchen is this big window a big gas lift window that opens

right up some of our friends of

like and our tiny house - a food truck because of it and

it's it's fantastic you can open it right up and you feel like you're standing at the sink and washing up outdoors so

it's great and it means people can be standing outside the tiny house i have drinks pass them right from the kitchen

absolutely we almost went as far as putting like a little

fold down bar outside the window but maybe that can be staged -

great idea and is this the bathroom

through here yes this is it we wanted a few things with the bathroom

We didn't want it to be very different from the house we wanted to keep the floor exactly the same

So there was the sense of continuing space

We wanted the shower to kind of blend in with the walls for the same reason so it's a pretty clean

simple bathroom and we wanted an outside

Of door because

we have an outdoor shower and it's just brilliant we use it all the time and the other thing was we

Often wash the dogs in the shower so we wanted to be able to just

let them straight outside and rather than running wet through the house so we've got a um separate composting toilet which is just brilliant

like no

odor whatsoever and

we really really love it and just some simple

shelving that we we kept open in the end we didn't go with cabinets because we just wanted everything to be accessible and i really

like how you've typed the basin in the corner of the shower there as well yeah we realized without being at

Obviously by having the door here we had to give up having your vanity

Here, so we just went with a little wet room

So we just have the the duct board that we take out when i have a shower?

kester always showers outside so this is my shower

we just thought i would just pop a little thinking there in the corner and then people can watch their hands and it works really

Really well it's brilliant and i have to say that i'm totally with you on that one kiss there because if i've got an outdoor

shower there is no way i'm using the one inside the house

Not a chance not a chance not one you can share under the stars?

Exactly and then you've got a sleeping loft in this home too don't you we do we do sure yeah look you can't the stairs

So we've designed it once you get to the top you go straight onto your knees oh?

i

was not expecting this it's like you've got your own little zen garden up here yep totally

It's so beautiful and we we went with a slightly bigger loft

So that it really felt like a bedroom and we had space on both sides

and that's big enough over there that you can do yoga over there and kassar can sit and do meditation so it

really feels like our entire other space yeah absolutely it's uh

Having the especially having the plants i think you get this lovely filtered light it provides a really lovely screen so that

you can have one person up here i'll often sit up here and read a book and

And i wouldn't even know there was someone else downstairs

One thing which is very unusual about this design is you have no lights in the ceiling yeah we decided to

go without lights in the ceiling mainly we wanted to keep the lighting quite low at night and we actually have

led strip in the planter box as well that you turn on and it lights through the plants so you get kind of a dappled

plant light on the roof which is really really lovely

Beautiful what a great little design feature yeah so how long have you actually been living in the home now we've been here

It's probably a year in three months i think mm-hmm yeah that's better and how are you finding life in the tiny house

Perfect to be honest this house has far more storage than all the other houses we've lived in the space is far more functional and

Everything is right there when you need it you haven't got very far to go and i think when a house is

thoroughly thought through and designed around the way that you live in a way that you work as a couple

It's it makes such a big difference like it's incredible everything is the way

you need it to be so you don't need anything else and

obviously this is not a diy build project you have brought in tradies on this project