Cost effective interior design for a downsize

In this episode of the Less House More Moolah podcast, Laura discusses the intricacies of interior design when downsizing, particularly in the context of moving into a tiny house or a log cabin. She emphasizes the importance of creativity, personal storytelling, and balancing cost with aesthetics in the design process. Laura shares practical tips for making cost-effective design choices while incorporating personal elements and experiences into the home.

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Transcript

Less House More Moola Podcast (00:40)
Hey friends, Laura here. Welcome to Less House More Moolah podcast. Super excited to be with you today. I thought that we would take a little departure and talk about the interior design for a downsize. This is actually the type of thing that I lay around in bed at night thinking about when I'm not thinking about.

maybe financial spreadsheets or client situations. I am thinking about interior design and especially I'm thinking about it right now because we're basically down to studs in the cabin in Colorado. And so I am imagining the space. This is the second log cabin that we have been in. And so

designing interior for a log cabin can be a little tricky. You can default to cabin style, I guess, if you're into that and really have a lot of plaid and bears in your space, but that is not my preference. And so I am really thinking creatively about what we can bring into contrast with the log cabin, what

We can't put in the space because then it's too busy with pattern, with texture, with color. So it is occupying my brain space a lot.

The interior design of our tiny house was actually one of the things that got us more than a few compliments on our recent tiny home tour, which is now on YouTube. So I thought I would talk about it because that was another interesting design puzzle and it has turned out quite well.

Though of course I focus most of my decision making on pragmatic things like cost and usefulness. I definitely focus on beauty a good bit though maybe I don't talk about it as much. How the space feels to me and what elements I just naturally am drawn to are things that I look for while I'm bringing different pieces together in our homes.

We all come to love certain design elements through our own past experiences. There are maybe things in our childhood that were there that make us feel safe or comfortable. For example, there's some historic glassware that really speaks to me as does the cotton of quilts. I have a lot of quilts. I love that in designing my own spaces, I've gotten to

reveal those elements and really over time get closer to myself and bring all of those things that I really love into my life. You just have to be a little bit more creative in order to bring different themes and styles together.

I think it's really important that when we use an object, it is more than just an object. So a collection of coffee cups can tell stories and not just be the practical use of the coffee cups.

So let's get to my practical steps for cost-effective interior design.

when going through a downsizing process or moving into a tiny house, whatever the case is, we definitely are making a transition. So it's a great time to rethink our style. And my first thought is we need to start with where we are. Rarely do we move into a new home or downsize and start with a blank slate. We all have things that we've curated or inherited.

And these things can take a little bit of creativity to bring together. It's you have to be more creative than buying everything new that would be of current trend. But it can be a really fun project and make for fun storytelling when people visit you or when you're sitting around talking to yourself.

And of course, to be kind to the earth and our checking account, we don't want to throw all of our stuff away and start from scratch when we move into a new place. We can get creative with what we have and see what will work and design a new spin on our previous style based on what we have and what's currently on trend. And I think one of the first steps here is to determine

What needs dollars allocated? There are certain things that are just too unreliable over time or maybe when purchased used, your life experience will dictate what that is for you. What you feel like you need to buy new. For example, one of our primary expenses in our tiny home was windows. I probably could have found

a second handset of windows and built the house around them or designed the floor plan and the elevation drawings around them, but that seemed kind of impractical with the constraints of the small space. Plus we wanted shatterproof glass for safety of leaving the tiny house alone and also for the drive across the country. So we ended up buying a whole new window package, which was quite expensive.

Aesthetically, my life experience has taught me that a lot of light can really impact my sense of well-being. And since we were going to be parking our tiny house in a place that we find really beautiful, I wanted to see it from as many angles and as often as possible. It also makes the space feel much larger having so much glass.

But for what we spend on windows, did not spend on fixtures. So sinks, bathtubs, cabinets, all of those things don't become dysfunctional really with age. They don't have moving parts. generally speaking, those things can be used even if they are quite old.

So we got those things, the sinks, the bathtub, the cabinets, we got them from secondhand at a much lower cost than if we had bought them new. So that was a trade-off that we made, definitely spent on the windows, but not on those other things. All of our doors in our tiny home came off of clearance racks, which really reduced the cost of retail.

The design of the doors isn't synchronous. Okay, so I have a farmhouse barn pocket door and my front door has kind of an Asian inspired trim on it. Then we have the glass kind of French doors. They're all kind of different, but it's saved on cost by buying them on clearance. They were much cheaper and you know, it's not all matchy matchy, but they all work for

what we need them to do. If I were to do it again, and as we are doing in Colorado, definitely looking at architectural salvage, also Facebook Marketplace. I just bought a door from the cabin there. And so those are, you know, great options for doors, windows. But when we built the tiny house, those clearance items were really steals and they were quick solutions for our build time frame.

Another thing that I spent money on was appliances. It was hard to find a smaller appliances secondhand because appliances are, are designed for larger homes. And so they're larger than what would fit in our tiny house. So we had to buy smaller appliances that were more costly.

I was also concerned about my life experience with the fact that appliances these days are not manufactured to last a long time. They typically malfunction in one way or another. After just a couple of years, we have repaired a lot of appliances, ordering parts and fixing things. And I just really wanted to give myself a little bit more lifespan from the very beginning. So that worked out well.

In my past house, we had to replace the range and refrigerator a couple of different times because after two years something stopped working and parts were obsolete or unavailable. So I just, you know, wanted to start from scratch there with appliances. The soft furnishings, linens, pillows, all of those things are another area to think about where you need to spend and where you can save.

Our bed and our tiny home as an example is a short queen. So it is shorter than a standard queen to fit in the eight by eight space. So it was a custom order from my favorite mattress maker, but I spent a lot of time in bed. So it was a no compromise item for me. I also

had custom pillowcases made for the futon and probably wouldn't do that again since my dog has eaten the corner off of every one of them. But nonetheless, had a really fun time with pulling all of those prints together on those pillowcases. I want to talk about trends for a second. So I can't say that I'm oblivious to trends.

You can not spend a lot of time on screens and still figure out what is going on with trends. We went through an entire decade of gray. Thank goodness that is over. I am wildly on board with the move from brushed stainless to brush brass. I think that is beautiful. However, I tend to want to bring a little bit of recent trend together with things that are a little bit more enduring so that you don't end up

feeling dated so quickly. Those enduring things, by the way, are also known as what I already have. So trying to bring some trend into some more enduring elements or things that already work. If we're too worried about trends, it may require us to start from scratch in too many places. So I love, you know, sort of weaving trends in if

in a place that it makes sense to buy something new. So for example, in the cabin, I had to source all of the lighting fixtures because the cabin was never wired for power throughout. So it gave me an opportunity to really get into what's going on with trends or what I thought was interesting and bring those things together.

Another example is that of trends is that when we moved into the tiny house, I perched in that I narrowed down my pots and pans to only the most necessary and highest quality when we moved into the tiny house, because it wasn't going to have room for every single thing. And so I found the need to repurchase some items for the cabin.

For some reason, all the pot and pan companies, this is similar to the knife companies. They all think that we need these mega piece sets. And really I found that a really high quality skillet, maybe one or two pieces of cast iron, a saucepan and a stock pot are really what I need 90 % of the time and that works well. So in the cabin, I was looking for those core pieces.

And like anybody else who's really into cooking, I have succumbed to the fascination with copper cookware. I recently got a really good deal on an estate lot of a copper collection on eBay. It was a really great price. And so that brought copper into the design plan for the cabin.

So then I chose to spend a little bit on a brushed brass faucet for the kitchen sink that would bring some more of that metal element into the design and also give me functionality of a sprayer in the sink, which I don't currently have. And then I bought a $10 antique

porcelain vanity wall hung sink at the restore store. And then on eBay, I got an open box discount, a Kohler faucet for the bathroom, also in the brush brass. So I got to indulge my, my shiny metal needs a little bit. And meanwhile, we're bringing in many of the furniture pieces, dishes, soft furnishings that we brought from our previous home.

that didn't make it into the tiny house because of the timing of that downsize. You may recall that we sold our regular house after setting up the tiny house. So we had the stuff left over. So I'm starting from a furniture perspective with a collection of inherited furniture plus some industrial style elements that we had in our previous home.

These are all things that I had some attachment to and wasn't really willing to get rid of. So they came with us in our enclosed trailer and were allocated for a future living space project that I didn't really know at the time for sure what was going to happen with that. So now I'm mentally working on pulling together a touch of

the modern elements into the log cabin by way of some mediating classic. I'm calling it romantic modern. So another thing that I think is ⁓ interesting is bringing some ideal geography or land elements inside. I like the idea of riffing off of the geography or culture that you're in.

either in your home landscape or maybe a preferred landscape somewhere that really feels good to you. In the tiny home, I chose a global spice paint palette that mirrored the colors of New Mexico architecture. I bought a weaving piece for the living room from a New Mexico weaver. So even though our tiny house

isn't straight up Adobe style like New Mexico. It has some of those elements in it. In the Colorado cabin, I'm really wild about the purple asters and the Chimisa yellow outside on the land. The green of the cottonwoods and the pines. It's just, you know, precious in the West. And so really celebrating that green. So these are colors that I have prioritized when imagining the design.

for the inside of the cabin. And then the final thing that I wanted to point out is that I think there's something very valuable about reflecting yourself or putting yourself in your space. When we choose to reuse or collect our things slowly and through serendipity rather than creating a massive Amazon cart, we create more stories to tell about.

our experiences and our home. Like for example, if we go around and collect our kitchen necessary pieces from secondhand shops with a good friend, or if we bring things from our grandmother all of those stories are then attached to those pieces rather than it just being something that we got from some sort of online or quick retail.

thing that we won't remember.

I personally would rather have a collection of my life stories in the things that I hold on to and display in my home even if they don't match or coordinate perfectly.

Like having some part in the construction of our home, having some part in the design of our home and being able to share how you put things together.

can be really meaningful. You are putting you, your imagination, your creativity, your inspiration on display in your home and it'll make you feel more at home and others feel more at home and understand you better when you are represented there. So that's my thoughts on how we can be cost effective in our interior design.

downsize and how we can create a space that feels really good to us when we have that opportunity to start over in a new space. So thanks again for being with me this week on Less House, More Moola podcast. Look forward to talking to you again soon.