Harold's Renovation Blog: #82: What It’s Really Like To Live In A Tiny House

If you’ve ever had dreams (or maybe nightmares?) of living in a tiny house, you’re not alone. Lots of people have lots of different feelings about them. So we called up a couple who have lived in an 188 square foot space for over two years, and we asked them all of your burning questions to find out the rosy (and not so rosy) parts of tiny house living. And it was FASCINATING. Plus, we’ve hit a big sentimental milestone at home, and Sherry’s finally jumping on the bandwagon of a certain decorating trend.

You can download this episode from Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn Radio, and Spotify – or listen to it below! Then use this page to check out any links, notes, or photos we referenced. Note: If you’re reading in a feed reader, you might have to click through to the post to see the player.

What’s New

We’re aiming to have a full post full of photos and details about our son’s bedroom update this week, but above is a peek at his new big boy bed that we mentioned. Behold the wonders of a daybed.
Before this big update, the room was pretty much unchanged from when you guys last saw it in 2014 (gasp!). Well, except maybe when 6 months ago our son figured out he could peel off the decals so it was finally time for them to go. But we got to enjoy them for over 3 years, so it’s all good.
A full bedroom source rundown will be in the upcoming post, but real quick here are his sheets, the sconces, the bolster pillow, the bee pillows, and the art. And the wall color is Going To The Chapel and the built-ins are Senora Gray (both by Benjamin Moore).

Tiny Home: 118sqft

If you want to learn more about Mandy and Kevin of 188sqft, check out their blog and be sure to follow them on Instagram.
They’ve got some great before & afters of their renovation (like the one below) over there too.

And to get a better sense of how the space actually functions for them (and their pets) check out their house tour video:

Mandy also mentioned some other people that they follow who do this sort of thing with kids, so I asked her so share some of her favorites. Here are a bunch of people juggling tiny spaces and tiny people :)

We’re Digging

There’s the pink letterboard Sherry got for the beach house (it’s 10″ x 10″ from Felt Like Sharing on Amazon). Ours is the “Light Pink” version, but they’ve got a bunch of others – like seafoam green and white.
We also highly recommend following Letterfolk on Instagram for lots of letterboard inspiration. They offer boards in lots of other sizes and frame options.
This was the smart bulb starter pack that I got for Christmas, which included two bulbs and the hub. It came right under our family’s $50 gift limit back in December, so keep an eye on it to see if it drops again.
And in case my overview of the Philips Hue bulbs didn’t make sense, this graphic gives you a snapshot of the differences between the Philips Hue White & Color Ambiance bulbs (the can be any color and any tone of white), the White Ambiance bulbs (which can be any tone of white), and the White bulbs that I got (which can only be soft white – which is all my special eyes ever need). Plus they’re a more normal lightbulb shape, which I’m glad about.

If you’re looking for something we’ve dug in a past episode, but don’t remember which show notes to click into, here’s a master list of everything we’ve been digging from all of our past episodes.

And lastly, a big thank you to Grove Collaborative for sponsoring this episode. You get a free $30 gift set (including the tin caddy and Mrs. Meyer’s Cleaning supplies shown below) when you sign up at Grove.co/YHL and spend your first $20.