Meet Vickie, A Brisbane, Australia-based 60’s and 70’s retro items collector who builds a tiny house with her volunteer family. She always loves to collect retro collectibles and stuff. As a result, her room is filled with classic furniture and vintage clothing.
But at some point, she feels swamped by those items and realized that those collections aren’t going to make her happy any longer. At that point, the videos she saw on TV and YouTube drew her to the side of the tiny houses.
However, the house she is currently building measures 8.1 x 2.4 x 4.3m. And features a steel frame, vinyl cladding, and earth wool insulation. Most importantly, she made a scale model of her house with her hands to bring her dream come true. Nevertheless, the help of her loving family and friends strengthened her effort.
One of her friends draws the steel frame while her adult kids help to cut and join the steel frame. Because of the love, she has for vintage, she decorates the house with some bespoke things. That includes a kitchen sink, cabinets, bathroom vanity, and reclaimed windows and doors. In addition, a lot of them look unique and purchased second-hand.
“Learning patience! Relying on the help of others means that my and their life commitments like work schedules, family time, my daughter built her own (big) home, etc have to come first so some weeks only a few hours of works got done here. I even had kind strangers from the tiny house community come and insulate and line a whole room for me out of the kindness of their hearts.”
-Vickie
Also, she leaves the plumbing, cladding, and electrical works into the hands of some professionals. However, there is still some interior work to be done. The build has taken a whole year to come this far.
Currently, Vickie splitting her week between a caravan on site and her daughter’s house until the tiny heaven is habitable. “I’m five years single 49-year-old empty nester who will never be able to afford my own home so this is an even better option for me,” Vickie told me.
Her house is located at the back of her sister’s property in a secluded little forest area. So there will be the arrival of uninvited guests like kangaroos, possums, magpies, butcher birds, parakeets, cockatoos, and rainbow lorikeets.
That’s why her site is naturally beautiful and she didn’t want to distract from that in any way. So, she painted her stuff black including a love swing, a chandelier, and fancy mirror wind chimes. That makes them blend into the surroundings. And she called them ‘hidden treasures’.
Likewise, her daughter painted the front door lolly pink which is Vickie’s favorite color. Also, her big brother James who was a glazier for over 30 years installs one of the aluminum windows. “Originally I had him in mind to install all of my windows and doors but he got too sick- but still managed me to make one window that window is very special to me,” she said.
Apart from that, she feels so grateful to her sister Helen and her husband Mark for letting her live on their property permanently.
“My kids Flynn 19yrs and Amy 29yrs and especially Amy’s fiancé my son in law Mitch 29yrs who helped me out the most- he and I shared many high 5 moments!”
-Vickie
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