The Urban Barn – The Why, What, Where, How, and Who

Well, It's been almost a year now since the idea of a tiny house started to linger in my head. I am happy to announce that our 1st version of the tiny house is finally completed! At the time of writing this post, the tiny house is fully operational. We are fully booked in Airbnb for July and have even had an advance booking for next year.

We have a lot of positive feedback so far. Both I and my wife are thrilled very grateful for this. I would like to share our journey of how we arrived here.

Why?

One day I was having a hard time trying to find my stuff organize all these junk from my storage shed. These are not even my junk. They belong to the previous owner of the house. All the sudden, the idea of converting is space into a cash flowing property start to bounce around in my head.

So instead of organizing, the lazy person in me made a phone call and have one of my guys come and trash everything out.

So it looked like this after we cleaned everything out.

Now I really start to see the picture. We have been a big fan of Airbnb for a while. The Airbnb's culture of hosting and servicing guests is just simply brilliant.

Why would I store junk instead of turning something like this into a living space, create good cash flow, welcome guests to visit Houston and give them an awesome experience? So that's what we did.

What

What is the Tiny House?

If you ask your best friend Siri, Google, Or Alexa, Tiny house is simply a structure between 100 and 400 sqrt that you can call a house, or better yet - a home. The tiny house can come in all shapes, size, and forms. It could be an abandoned boat, a big container, in this case, It was my storage shed that was once full of stuff

The tiny house is becoming a movement in the United States. Why? I don't know. It is simply because of that weird-cool looking feeling that travelers are craving for? Or is it because the Tiny House concept actually solving a real big housing affordability problem that we have in the United States? The answer is yours to find out.

This is what the tiny house looked like before. simply a storage shed.

Where

Where could you put a tiny house? Well since it's tiny, I can place it right on my backyard. We didn't move the shed at all. We did raise it however to prevent flooding. I'm pretty lucky to live in a neighborhood where there is no HOA, otherwise, I could easily run into issues. and here is my shameless plug: If you want to find cool places like this in Houston, hit me up! there are not a lot of neighborhoods like this around anymore

My wife and I have a vision of a village full of cool Tiny House for the travelers that we can build later in the future. Who knows, the dream might come true, just gotta stop dreaming and start working. If you know of a location that would be a perfect fit for a tiny house village, please let us know.

How

As much as I wanted to get the thing to build and complete like yesterday. We ran into all sort of issues. Slowly, with the help of the..youtube, good contractors, and my awesome wife, the project slowly coming to life.

In the pictures, my wife, and the electrician is planning for power usage and outlet location.

Here is another cool picture

WOAAAA. She even made custom chandelier for the house!!

The project took more than 3 months to complete. most of the issues are due to us trying to figure out what to do, looking for good contractors, material selection. Decisions ranging from power, sewer, and water planning and testing to where to put this table are made on the fly.

The devil is definitely in the detail in this one. It is the finishing touch that took us the longest.

Little by little, the puzzle completed over time:

New Support installed for the bed

Window came in. My dog seems to be bored waiting for the house to finish.

Sheetrock installed. ready for paint

The light finally came on at the house.

Here she is again nailing some quarter round into the floor

Last minutes Idea, we decided to throw in a deck.

And here is the Final product:

The Who

Who would live in a tiny house? -

I would live in it.

I did, however, think about the worst case scenario where everyone would reject the idea of the tiny house in Texas (since things are big in Texas they say). If that's the case, we wouldn't mind having a guest house on the back of our house just to entertain and let friend and family stay over. Fast forward, we are grateful to have a lot of support from friends and the Airbnb community.

The answer is now changing from me to everyone. We have many guests, all came to the tiny house for various reasons. Some are simply curious, some came for work, travelers in the State and around the world, others simply want a hideaway with popcorn and Netflix.

Here is our booking on Airbnb

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/26322785?s=51

Hopefully, this won't be the last one that we built. it would be ready cool if you travel and got to stay in a village where it is just tiny houses everywhere, each with a different build design and different culture taste, isn't it?

What is your thought about the Tiny House? would you stay in a Tiny House vs. a Traditional hotel? Would love to hear your thought on this subject.