A Married Couple Built Their Tiny House After Experiencing a Tiny Lifestyle in Virtual Reality!

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The married couple Kate & Willem Van den Bergh have been living in a tiny house for 4 years. Now they have their 2-year-old son in the house too! Their trailer-based tiny house measures 7.6m in length x 2.4m in width and 4.25m in height. Stepping inside, the house has bright Cedar interior walls and a ceiling. It also features macrocarpa flooring and benchtops. However, their tiny house journey begins when they got married about 8 years ago.

Kate & Willem tried to figure out how they could possibly get out of renting and into their own home. In other words, paying rent and trying to save for a family home was just about impossible. So they started looking into alternatives like container homes. Meanwhile, they were inspired to build a tiny home while Kate was working as a designer for a sustainability magazine called Green Ideas, she was working on a feature about a couple who had built a tiny house for 27k.

I think as our son gets older he needs more space so that has been tricky, especially in winter because we don’t have covered outdoor space. But he has just started going to daycare full time, so he has a lot of fun there with all of the toys and space to run around.

– Kate

At that moment they were attracted to the tiny house lifestyle. As an architectural designer, Willem designed their tiny house and put the house plans into Virtual Reality. As a result, they actually stand in their tiny house and look around using the VR headset which was really handy to get a feel for the space! “We played around with so many different layout ideas! We masking taped the floor of our flat to mark out the space we had to live within in the tiny house,” said Kate.

Once they had a design they were happy with, Kate & Willem moved into her mum’s house and started the tiny house build. “We visited a lot of different tiny homes. And, watched countless YouTube tours trying to get the perfect layout for our home,” said Kate. It was built by their builder friend in his warehouse in Waimauku. The build took almost 3 months and costs around $97,000 to complete. After that, the tiny house was towed from Waimauku to Half Moon Bay and then onto the car ferry and onto their awaiting section in Waiheke Island, New Zealand. It was finally maneuvered into place by a tractor!

Visit as many other tiny homes as you can to get a good feel for the space. Stay the night in them if you can. Living in a tiny home does take sacrifice and it isn’t for everyone! And, invest money into a good quality trailer as this is your homes foundation!

– Kate & Willem

Currently, they are building their larger home at the top of the section. It is a 95sqm 2.5 bedroom home split over two levels with lots of smart storage solutions that they have learned from living in a tiny house. The tiny house will stay on their section and will be a place that people can come and stay. During, their new house will be complete by mid-March 2021. Further, Kate & Willem selling the plans of their tiny house. So please feel free to get in contact with them through social media if you are keen to hear more about that.

Watch the story of the tiny house couple in video format