Why build a tiny house? Mikael and Heather share their rent-free decision.

Join us as we dive into the inspiring story of Mikael and Heather, who transformed their lives by building a tiny home. Discover how they left their 9-to-5 jobs, embraced risk, and found financial freedom and community through sustainable living. Learn about the challenges and triumphs of building their own home, starting a business, and raising a family in a tiny space.

Call to Action: Follow Mikael and Heather's journey on Instagram at @WilderTinyHome and explore their video content on YouTube. Discover more about their business @seastandproductions

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Less House More Moola Podcast (00:40)
Well, Mikael and Heather, welcome to Less House, More Moola podcast. I am so thrilled that we get to talk to you about your tiny home story since you're sitting in it right now. Thank you for joining me. I think we connected Instagram, right? I just sent you a random DM. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't, but thank you for responding and coming on to share your personal experience with your tiny house.

Mikael & Heather (01:09)
Absolutely. Thanks for having us and thank you for having this podcast. I've learned a lot from listening to other tiny home dwellers. Yeah, happy to be here.

Less House More Moola Podcast (01:18)
Thanks. So let's

go back in time. Would you kind of tell us what your life was like before you had your tiny house?

Mikael & Heather (01:27)
Yes, absolutely. You to take this one? Sure. So yeah, we were living in Los Angeles ⁓ and we both had sort of regular nine to five jobs ⁓ and we were renting an apartment and we realized that so much of our money was going to rent and it just felt like this loss of equity constantly. And so I think you saw some tiny house things online.

Yeah, it was around 2013. So it was like when tiny houses kind of first caught wind or, you know, there was a lot of excitement around them. The tiny house shows were coming out. Yeah. And so at that time, we decided to move from Southern California to Northern California. And it just worked out that we were sort of given the opportunity to be able to

build on the property that we're at currently. ⁓ And we decided let's just totally upend our lives. We quit our jobs. We moved up here. We started a company and we started building a tiny house and we ⁓ learned a lot along the way. It was certainly a process. We built the whole thing ourselves with the help of some friends, except for a couple of things. ⁓ had ⁓ hired out for the plumbing and we hired out

for some of the detail things, the tile work. But other than that, was Heather and myself swinging hammers and putting the whole house together. And we had some friends that would come over and help us. So it was a fun process. Yeah. But I'll backtrack slightly because when it summarized, that it sounds like it.

was smooth sailing and I felt... was all smooth sailing, nothing bad happened, everything was easy. It was a lot. So first of all, we realized, I think that we spent $32,000 in renting our apartment in LA in two years. Which now would be very inexpensive. Right, exactly. Now, yeah, now that doesn't sound so bad, but it was like once you...

see those numbers and you just realize if you continue on that trajectory, you're just continuing to dump that money. It didn't make sense because we were really far from friends. We ⁓ were only seeing each other on the weekend, which it just nothing felt like great. It just felt like we're doing what we're told we're supposed to do.

You know, like, this is how society works. And we had always wanted to be closer to family. We were both originally from Northern California. And so it was when a family member got sick and it just was like, now is the time. We're just dropping it off, quitting our jobs and making it kind of like, OK, we're just going to hope that something works out. And we didn't know what that was going to be.

We're very fortunate to have enough support up here already that we could house it. ⁓ And we just happened to continually house it. We became like professional house Professional, yeah, for years. we were managing multiple properties at once. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was like a little cottage industry we were.

Yeah, but it's kind of interesting looking back on it now because I've become really interested in like reciprocity and you know what that means and so we were doing family friends a favor by taking care of their house and you know making sure things were okay while they were away while they were giving us a place to live while we figured things out and so it was just kind of like this

beautiful relationship that worked out really well and allowed us to start our company because that was something in the back of our mind, but it wasn't what we were going to do right then. But because we weren't struggling to pay rent, we had the option to start looking for clients and building on that. yeah. The tiny house really allowed us to take some of that.

know, financial freedom and funnel it into the company ⁓ and start the business. Because it's not easy to start a business, but if you can bring down your costs pretty significantly, it helps a lot. Yeah, and then having the business ended up being what funded our tiny house because we just built it as we made enough money to cover it.

Less House More Moola Podcast (06:41)
So it sounds like that you are number one, very say comfortable with some level of risk in that you that you went from a state of being a known state of being that like you said, you were just following the path and doing the thing that you thought you were supposed to do. And then you said, wait a minute, this isn't really working.

and let's change everything all at the same time. Have you seen other people do this? Kind of upend their life and transform things for themselves?

Mikael & Heather (07:24)
I mean, in our social circle, I don't think so. I mean, we are making a documentary right now about a friend who went from not ever driving a stick to becoming a rally car racer as a mom of two at 38. So now, you know, yes, but at that time, not at all. And

It was, yeah, it was very risky. It was very, I mean, I always feel like I have to keep in mind that we have the privilege of having... That safety net. That safety net. That we knew we wouldn't completely fall. Like we could get close to the bottom, but that we could climb out.

And it, but I mean, it took a long time. To build the tiny house? Yeah, it When we tell people how long it took us, they were like, what? Yeah. That's a long time. Most people do not take as long as we did to build this house. Yes. So, but yeah, it was... Yeah, we did. It's definitely risky.

Less House More Moola Podcast (08:29)
And so how long did it take?

Mikael & Heather (08:31)
I think we got the trailer in maybe february of 2018 and we were Sort of done in 2021. Yeah, we moved in in march of 2021. Yeah, ⁓ there was a lot of start and stop ⁓ you know mentioning the the business, getting a business off the ground at the same time meant that it was ⁓

managing that time was difficult and we didn't have the amount of time that we would have liked to put into the business or into the house. So it was really kind of triaging our available time. But yeah, we also did a couple of things that maybe were, they could have been faster, but we both as risk takers and perfectionists decided to go kind of.

I know you want to say it above and beyond, but certainly did things atypically. the siding of our house, we milled ourselves from rough sawn redwood that we got from an organization here that basically rescues wood that would have otherwise been thrown away. And we re-sawed it all ourselves and planed it and sanded it. It was 2,000 board feet.

of wood that we did on a table saw, portable table saw, and we did it in, took us like nearly six months, if you consider all like the... With the weather and everything, which sounds really silly to have done that now. We could have purchased some hardy board. We could have, but a big part of our project too was living our values of sustainability. Yep. And so that ended up being...

like a huge part of the personality of the house is being like, okay, this was rescued redwood. And that ended up being cool too, because we traded a video that we made for them to get the wood. So it was free. And we got to work on a cool project, because we really enjoyed filming it. Because that was our passion anyway. So it was...

Yeah, just kind of another example of trading and doing things a little bit differently. ⁓ And yeah, so that part did take far longer than siding normally would have. Yeah, we don't want to make people scared about building a tiny house. You can do it quickly. Yeah. We just didn't.

Less House More Moola Podcast (11:04)
Yeah, but I think that this is so inspirational because it does take longer sometimes to A, let things show up in your life via serendipity, relationships, what have you, Two to source things that align with your values. I too am working on some reclaimed wood that I would like for flooring purposes and our ⁓ project that we're working on in Colorado.

it's going to take longer to find that. It will require some some pre-work in order to make it flooring ready. And yet I think that that is important to me. And so.

It's just going to have to, you know, it's a little bit more of a labor of love. And likewise, anytime you're doing something for the first time or learning something, it always takes longer. So I'm working on a project here where we're going to be doing Adobe building. This is new to us. It would be so much easier to frame it up, right? Because we could be doing that every afternoon a little bit. But when we start doing something that is new to us, the hardest part is getting started. Then you've got to learn all the things.

And it really takes time. So how did you all maintain your motivation being that you had a pretty comfortable place to stay, right? Cause your house sitting, how did you maintain your motivation as you were building it? it kind of that, that prize of equity at the end or what was, what was deep inside you wanting this tiny house to get finished?

Mikael & Heather (12:36)
That's a really great question because I feel like there were many times that we looked at each other and said, what are we doing? Yeah, there were definitely some questioning what's going on here. Should we quit this whole thing? Yeah. Is it too late to turn back now? Yeah. Was a thought that went through my head. Mm-hmm. And of course, there were different...

phases because at the very beginning raising the walls That's pretty quick and it goes up and then you have a structure So it's just like from flat to structure and then we're just like wow look this is happening so fast Like we're really good at this and I think we could make a living out of making tiny houses By the end we were like Can't do that again Not building more tiny houses. Yeah, yeah, and that is

Having all those skills has, now we feel really comfortable with the potential of building something else, maybe, now that we've had some time to just rest in the house. It has been really incredible, like being in here and knowing that we did all of this.

and all the memories behind each part of it. And, on the floor underneath the cork, like we wrote welcome home and, you know, there's just like a lot of stuff in the walls. so I feel like having a place that is genuinely our own really made it worth it.

because we lived in a lot of apartments together before this. And I don't know, I just feel like where you live is such a reflection of who you are and you want it to be yours. so that's for me a lot of the motivation behind finishing it. ⁓ Besides that, we...

when we got married, because that was also part of everything that happened right when we moved up here, we asked for money toward building the tiny house and instead of a honeymoon or something like that we asked for this. And so the amount that people gave us we then felt like a little bit like, now this is

not just a thing that we're doing. Like we owe it. is everybody's. This is everybody's. We owe it to our family and friends who believed in us and everybody who let us house it for them. we're not gonna give up on this thing. We've gotta follow through. We've gotta follow through, yeah, cause it's not just us. So I think that was a huge motivation.

Less House More Moola Podcast (15:29)
Yeah,

there's that principle, right? That the minute that you speak something to somebody else, you're 40 % more likely to accomplish it or whatever. Like if you are telling people and people are supporting you, it kind of pushes you through on the hard days. Would you mind sharing some comments about how your relationship weathered building a house together?

Mikael & Heather (16:38)
Oh yeah, totally. Do you want to take this one? Oh, okay. Let's just try and think of how... I mean, it was certainly an amazing team building project. Absolutely. You know, you're really in the trenches with another person when you're building a house with them.

I mean, there were difficult times during the building of the house where we were like, you know, upset with each other about whatever. I mean, overall, I think it was a super net positive experience. we can be in this house and we can see every day the memories of what we did together in here. And I know

the insulation that Heather stapled right there and I know- I was gonna ask if it was when I stapled my hand. That was a difficult time. That was a difficult time. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think, so what the reason I was saying, I don't know how deep we want to go into this, but we experienced a miscarriage in the midst of all of this. And which is-

Shortly after that's when I stapled my hand because I was like not present. But it feels like having the tiny house to work on was a really good mind shift. distraction. It was a good distraction because we were still like building something together and then it made it.

that much more meaningful, I guess, when we were pregnant with Finn, when we were like ready to move into our finished house and then this became his first home. He's only known the tiny house and we brought him home from the hospital here. So it's working on it together has been like,

I don't know exactly how to say it, but like... So much of our lives together has been building this tiny house. So ups, downs, overall extremely positive. I think made our relationship stronger. Yeah.

Less House More Moola Podcast (18:49)
what I've noticed in building stuff with my husband is that we see things just so differently in terms of process or our filter, our life experiences play out in such different ways. And it becomes very clear in the most simple of things, how you measure something or how you put something together or whatever you just, you operate from two different places. And so then you can kind of like learn that.

lesson and say, Hey, this is true in the rest of our life too, that we're probably always going to see things slightly differently or approach things slightly differently. And, how can we leverage that strength there and combine strengths instead of, saying you look at it wrong.

Mikael & Heather (19:36)
Yes, there were definitely instances of that, especially because I'm so tiny. ⁓ Like there were times when the normal way of doing something wasn't working out and we were getting frustrated and then we were like, well, let's just try it this way instead. And then it ended up being, it looked better or something, you know? So it was like a lot of trial and error.

And I think we complement each other with the way that our brains operate. So Mikael's very ⁓ like engineer minded. Pragmatic. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm more like the dreamer. I'll be like, what if it's like this? then I'm like, how do you, how do we do it? So it's cool because we can kind of talk things out and then he can figure out how to.

make the dream reality. Yeah, she can have the dream and I can watch a thousand YouTube videos. Yeah, it's perfect.

Less House More Moola Podcast (20:41)
So let's talk about making or expanding a family inside of a tiny house and how you thought through that. Cause it's, you know, it's maybe a little counter culture, right? To, to then expand your family in a tiny house, a tiny house is, often viewed for one or two people. Um, so how did you think about that? And it sounds like it was very intentional and you brought, it's

been Finn's only house? Tell us about that and how you thought about that.

Mikael & Heather (21:14)
Yeah, I mean it was ⁓ definitely intentional. And I think when we started building the house and we thought about, would we have kids in the house? We thought, well, maybe we could have like a baby in the tiny house. But once they get too much bigger, you you can't get away with that. But actually, you know, he's three turning four. It's been great. we haven't had...

an issue there and that might be because we have a pretty substantial amount of outdoor space available to us. So he spends a very good chunk of time outside. We have a big mud kitchen for him to play in. We have a nice outdoor patio. so that has built the mud kitchen with our scrap material. That's right. Yeah.

⁓ So anyway, yeah, it has been a lot better. Like the concerns that I maybe would have had before we had a kid, those aren't the concerns that I have. I do still see it as if somebody is looking, know, can I live in a tiny house with kids? ⁓ It's not without issue. It certainly has its own set of pitfalls, but...

it isn't as, as difficult as I would have thought. And I think you can make it work, in many instances, you know, if you have a ton of kids, maybe not, but, we have one and. It also makes us a lot closer, which I, so it depends on how, like how you feel about space. obviously since we started a business together and all this stuff, our intention all along has.

been to spend more time together compared to how we were living before. And so having a kid in this small space, like we just have a toddler mattress for him next to our mattress upstairs. So he doesn't have his own bedroom, but it ended up working out really well to have him that close to us for this early stage of his life.

I don't know what things would have looked like if we weren't in as tiny of a space, but I've really enjoyed raising him this way. I was also going to say, when we started the process, we thought the idea of the tiny house was actually, why are we spending so much money on rent when we just want to like take off and travel and...

So it was going to be like a home base for us to travel and it's the exact size it is because it's as big as it could be while still being towable without a special permit. that was the intention was that it was our mid 20s house where we could. Yeah, we're in our mid 20s. Adventure. So then it just took us a lot longer. Finn arrived when we.

hoped to start a family, just, that's when we also finished the tiny house. So it became like our starter home for our family instead of being our adventure house. I think it's just gonna have like different phases because eventually we hope to turn it into our office too. It might be our son's.

guest house at some point. exactly. It could be his first place, you know, so yeah.

Less House More Moola Podcast (24:48)
that's interesting how a tiny home can serve multiple functions and maybe become something that can be down and serve for a future housing need that is...

housing's not getting any easier to figure out. So I love that. And so I want to go back to what you were saying about

Mikael & Heather (25:05)
Certainly.

Less House More Moola Podcast (25:13)
It was going to be your home base and you were going to travel from there. what has the tiny home offered you in terms of flexibility and freedom since you have actually just sort of rooted in there? What has it done for you in terms of, having choice in your life?

Mikael & Heather (25:32)
Yeah, mean, it certainly affords us ⁓ some financial freedom. so whether that is being able to travel or being able to get something that we want to get, it certainly does that. I think what ended up happening and part of the reason why it maybe took us so long to build it as well was that during the time that we were building it, we were also doing a lot of traveling. Like we did a lot of really fun trips during the time that we were building the tiny house.

And so, you know, once our son came along, our travel sort of toned down a little bit. But I think it continues to be this thing that allows us the flexibility to, to do travel if we want to, or to, afford our son's preschool, or any number of things that, you know.

when you think about the fact that housing is almost always the most expensive thing that people pay for, having something that you own outright ⁓ really helps with that and really helps with cashflow and helps with future planning, right? So I think it has afforded us many, many things and we will be forever grateful for the fact that we decided to do it.

Less House More Moola Podcast (26:45)
and for the...

Mikael & Heather (26:46)
when Finn was five months old, I think is when we started taking him on trips. So we took him to Hawaii for 10 days. And then when he was two, we went to Florida for like a month, a month. yeah, we didn't stop traveling. It was just a little bit different. And that's also a combination of like tiny house and own business, right? Like a little bit of flexibility.

Less House More Moola Podcast (27:14)
yeah, I was just gonna say and the flexibility that your business has had. 

Mikael & Heather (27:20)
Absolutely, yeah. So that was a little unexpected actually because we didn't think when we moved up here that we would be starting a business. We anticipated moving up here, we were gonna housesit for a month and then we were gonna find jobs, full-time salary jobs in the Bay Area. And then we started getting some freelance work.

and that kind of snowballed and we realized we turned to each other at some point and we said, can we just like turn this into a business and keep doing it? And we decided to do that. And 10 years later, we can look back at 10 years of us saying, wow, we've had this company for two years, are we still gonna make it? Wow, we've had this company for four years, are we still gonna make it? And we had so many times where we were like, oh, I don't know, I don't know. And then we'd say, but I don't know, we've said that so many times. I think we're.

still doing okay, like we're still making it. So ⁓ yeah, it certainly helped.

Less House More Moola Podcast (28:20)
And how do you think about that in terms of, what we're seeing, maybe this gets into a little bit of nerdy ⁓ economic type stuff. Are you paying attention to what's going on with white collar, layoffs and that sort of thing? Like, how do you think about your career? Do you feel like that this, self-employment piece or having built a business yourself was like a really unexpectedly smart move?

Mikael & Heather (28:49)
Yeah, I mean, I will echo everything you just said, but I'll also say I'm real glad that we learned a lot of blue collar skills. Well, yeah, because now Mikael's very passionate about solar. And lately I keep saying that's probably a good thing to continue being interested in because, know, that's, absolutely. There have been times

When, just like the cost of healthcare and all that as a self-employed person was rough and there were times where we thought we just should get back to having regular jobs. But then we'd hear how long some people that we know would be out of a job. And there was instability in both.

cases, like with our business, was kind of just like, there might be a little bit of a dip, but it would come back or, with the pandemic, a lot of the work we were doing was filming conferences and things and that overnight was gone. But then like doing live, events became something that, so our flexibility helped a lot.

and being able to just continuously morph to fit the needs of whatever was happening. ⁓ And yeah, so then I feel like there are many instances where we were really grateful that that was what we ended up doing. Absolutely. Yeah, now it's, I don't know, there's so much unknown in this moment.

Less House More Moola Podcast (30:23)
Yeah

I feel like that you all are like living examples of what I've been saying, for two years now, like check the box on the housing, get that out of the way because life is freaking complicated and navigating what's going on with labor market shifts and, rising costs and, all of the demands that we have on us ⁓ is, is enough. It's enough to worry about without having to worry about the roof over your head and focus all of your

energy there and having one employer is a risk. know, whether we like to think of it that way or not, I think a lot of people are realizing that, when you have one customer, which is your employer, it is a risk that you're taking. And when your entire, family's safety and wellbeing by the roof over their head is dependent upon that one employer that, can put you in a tough spot sometimes and your, your ability

to cultivate those skills and those competencies by building your own house makes it so that you're primed and ready to help out in your community or to help someone else build a house or to build a house and sell it or to install some solar, whatever. And that is just so good to have that, that multi-level competence in today's environment where we do see shifts and what's going on with what work is out there and what's available.

and what's paying well.

Mikael & Heather (31:55)
Yeah.

Yep. Absolutely. Very true.

Less House More Moola Podcast (31:59)
So I don't want to miss the reciprocity element, Heather, because you brought it up. I think it's, it goes into the idea of community and sort of barter and trading and mutual support and all those things that we need more of in this world. So would you just talk a little bit more about your thoughts on that since you brought it up?

Mikael & Heather (32:22)
I would love to. This

has been like the theme of my year. And because we finally feel stable with our living situation right now and work, that has been like my focus and exploration, especially right now, just specifically with

Trying to help support the things that we want to see more of in the world. Being so aware that where we put our energy and our money is what we create. that is, if you stop funneling money towards the things you don't want to see and push it elsewhere, that's what's going to grow.

Yeah, lately we've been offering some like trade that makes sense. I got into ceramics this last two years and I have a friend who's a ceramicist and she has a kiln and a wheel and I don't have the space for any of that right now so she needs video. I need help with that so that's like a

nice even trade that we can do. utilizing skills as the means of the value. we have to test it out because it's kind of, it's not a new way of doing things, it's an old way of doing things. I feel like the tiny house was a really

good experiment with that. But just right now with everything going on, it just feels like the time is ripe for leaning into that harder and ⁓ yeah, building community and it's been really exciting and fun and ⁓ I feel like it's become more of like a micro view and becoming like way more local and being

around the people who are in this community more and helping each other out more has been really nice. I feel like because of the internet, we've all kind of gotten used to communicating from afar. And even just a week ago, we finally met Robin.

in person. She was the gal in West SAC who got tiny houses legalized that, she worked on that for four years and they had a party about it. So we went down and got to meet her and talk in person and, you know, realizing that we can grow our community more and accomplish more.

So anyway, that has been a huge goal of mine lately.

Less House More Moola Podcast (35:15)
it's a beautiful concept that I studied some in my permaculture class that we took. there's this concept of time banking where you're exchanging services or goods. And it's a way that we can push back against capitalism in terms of, skipping out on the, the taxation at every level of the transaction and the way that we can be more supportive within our own communities and develop those

relationships and our relationships are really important part of our wealth picture because those relationships are, as you all have proven, super supportive of you being able to build a business and build a family and build a house and all of those things. And there's no dollar amount you can really put on that, but it was, a great privilege, as you said, and you were, created a life out of having those relationships.

And so we all can look around and find what relationships, that we can support and we can be supported by and use that to hone into our, smaller community and be better able to weather whatever is yet to come.

Mikael & Heather (36:25)
Yes. Well said. Very true. Yeah. It really does feel like we're on the precipice of huge change and it feels like... Like something's got to change. Something should definitely change. But yeah, when you see the joy and the beauty in connecting with community and just... Then it makes it all feel like...

there's hope and there's something we can work toward here. ⁓ Yeah, definitely.

Less House More Moola Podcast (36:58)
So tell listeners where they can find you, follow you and the work that you all are doing.

Mikael & Heather (37:06)
Yeah,

absolutely. So we're on recently on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/@wildertinyhome We have one video up so far, but we have captured most of the build process and are going to start slowly ramping those videos up. @wildertinyhome is also our Instagram handle.

@seastandproductions is where our video is. That's S-E-A-S-T-A-N-D and then productions. yeah, I think that'll mostly be our documentaries. So we'll see what comes from that. There's lots of things I think are on the horizon.

Less House More Moola Podcast (37:47)
Mikael and Heather, thank you so much for sharing your story and kind of getting into the depth of the meaning behind it. You're very inspirational and I love the optimism that you have for, what changes we might see in the world and the way that you've really designed your life around a world that you'd like to see. So thanks for sharing that.

Mikael & Heather (38:09)
Thank you for having

us. Yeah, appreciate it.