Accidentally Trendy: The Tiny House Movement

Husband always tells the story of a time when we were frequenting a local watering hole on a typical weekend night. To give some context, this establishment was a lesser known dive bar in college, but overtime transformed into a popular, hipster-loving, always-down-for-a-good-time spot as the neighborhood become more and more popular. I’m talking about Kings Hardware in Seattle.

Now, if any of you know Husband, you know that he LOVES flannel, and has been wearing flannel since before I knew him. On this particular Saturday night, Husband was wearing one of his go-to flannel shirts. At some point in the night, another patron approached Husband, raised his glass, and said, “Nice flannel!”

At first Husband was a bit confused by the comment because he had never heard anyone tell him that flannel was nice. But as he looked around the bar, he realized that every other person in the room was also wearing flannel. That was when Husband knew: overnight he had become trendy, by mere accident.

I tell this story to illustrate how Husband and I have unknowingly fallen into a popular trend again. With the preparations of Ozzie for the remodel, we’ve accidentally become part of the tiny house movement.

The all knowing Wikipedia defines the tiny house movement as an architectural and social movement that advocates for living simply in small homes. Most of these homes range in size from 100 square feet to 400 square feet, with an emphasis on efficiency of space. Once we tear the back part of Ozzie off, we will have no choice but to be extremely thoughtful and efficient with our space.

In preparation for demolition, Husband and I have spent quite a bit of time transforming Ozzie into a tiny house. No joke, almost everything in our upgraded space has at least two purposes. To prove my point, here are some of the improvement highlights we’ve done to make Ozzie just as much a tiny home as the rest of them.

Phase One: The Murphy Bed

My number one concern when taking on a remodel of this grandeur is where we are going to live while the construction takes place. As an expectant mom, the safety of Twinkie is my number one concern. In order to provide a closed-off living space for us and the baby, the best option is to seal off the kitchen and begin the remodel in the back part of the house (see Ozzie Before to get an idea of what I am talking about). This option allows us to have a functioning kitchen and bathroom with a living space that is completely separate from the construction.

While this idea is really great in theory, Husband and I had to do some brainstorming to figure out how this will actually go down. Especially since we will have to tear out the bedroom to execute this plan. The only option we had was to make our living room multi-functional while still having enough space to live with a growing infant.

The solution: a murphy bed.

To make this possible,we had to do some preparations in the main living area of our house. Namely, we had to remove the non-functioning chimney so we could build the bed along that wall.

The chimney, that was once used for a wood burning oven, has sat idol behind dry wall for years

Several weeks ago, I came home early from work. Husband greeted me at the front door with a construction mask on, asking, “What are you doing home so early?” He proceeded to block my entrance into the house for about 5 minutes, until I finally pushed my way past to see this:

The living room was a complete mess

There was a layer of dust that had settled on everything

The deconstructed chimney in our front yard

I was a bit shocked from the mess that he created. However, to his credit, Husband was trying to get everything finished before I got home. Plus, somewhere in the back of my head, I knew that this was a necessary evil if we were going to actually make this remodel happen.

Thankful, Husband followed through on his promise to clean everything up. And, the very next day when I came home from work, I was greeted by our completed murphy bed.

The bedroom about to turn living room

Husband putting the bed away

The bed fits perfectly along that wall

Living room ready for the day

In a matter of 2 days, Husband managed to turn our living room into a highly functioning, tiny house-ish, living room/bedroom. Phase one complete.

Phase Two: The Dining Room Table

The next thing item on the docket was a dining room table. See, when you are X number of months pregnant, eating at the coffee table becomes less and less appealing when you have to get yourself and baby on and off the floor to eat. Again, Husband and I spent some time brainstorming how we could make this dream a reality.

Originally, we wanted to put a separate table in the kitchen area, but realized with the limited space we had, we could not afford the space required for 2 tables (a coffee table and a dining room table). The discussion of a dining room table got put on the back burner for awhile.

Then, one day as we were relaxing on the couch after work, Husband got a certain gleam in his eye and asked me, “Don’t you want to know what I did today?” I chuckled to myself, because I knew whatever he had to tell me was going to be good. Husband then jumps up and starts assembling something in front of me. As it dawned on me to what he was doing, I was thrilled by Husband’s stroke of creative genius. Before my eyes, he began to transform our coffee table into a fully-functioning dining room table:

By simply cutting PVC pipes to the appropriate height and adding them to the legs of the coffee table, Husband created a multi-functional table. I have used this table as a standard coffee table, a dining room table, and even on office table when I have worked from home. It may not be the most glamorous looking dining room table, but it certainly allows us to more efficiently use the limited space we have.

Although we sorta fell into the tiny house movement, it’s kinda fun to have multi-functional spaces and furniture. This is a trend I think I can get behind.