24-FT Custom Tiny House Is Tailor-Made for Efficiency, Still Cute

Modern man (or woman) is a creature of habit but with more habits than the man of two decades ago that would consider downsizing to a tiny house to save the planet. Today's tiny house owner prioritizes comfort, mobility, and their own financial needs over whatever sustainability advantages tiny houses have.

Combined with this, the boom in popularity of these mobile homes has led to a diversification of the product offered. Put in much simpler terms, today's tiny houses are definitely not that tiny. Park model units, particularly popular in North America, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, are meant to mitigate the downsides of downsizing by offering more volume to fit in all the creature comforts of a proper home.

Builders like Oregon-based Tru Form Tiny have capitalized on the trend. Tru Form Tiny is perhaps one of the best-known companies making oversize park models, many of them customized to live like mini-mansions on wheels. These units aren't just bigger or better specced than most tiny homes; they're downright luxurious and spectacularly finished and retail for double or triple the amount you'd pay for a "traditional" tiny house.

That's not to say that Tru Form can't do tiny, though. Their latest build is proof of that, though, to be clear, it's a fully-custom unit that marks a first for the company. The tiny house showcased in the video below is a hybrid between popular Payette model and the client's design.

As a rule, like most builders, Tru Form Tiny offers a few models to choose from, some of them with various trailer lengths. To these, the buyer can add personal touches, either by choosing from a list or coming up with their own, but the latter option is also the most expensive.

This makes this unit all the more special in that it's not a Tru Form Tiny model in the strictest sense of the word. The client had already bought the trailer and the materials when they were forced to abandon the project and seek a builder to carry it to completion.

Tru Form delivered, being able to squeeze in the Payette layout into the 24-foot (7.3-meter) dual-axle trailer and combine it with what the client had in mind. The result is a teeny tiny house that's able to emphasize functionality and aesthetics despite its compact footprint.

Designed for two people, it could possibly sleep four at a squeeze, if the owner decides for a fold-out couch in the living room. The layout is a simple single-loft one, with day spaces grouped on the ground floor and sleeping relegated to the upstairs.

With a width of 8.5 feet (2.5 meters), this house has only so much space to work with, so it makes the most of it. Instead of ditching features to allow more room for others, the unit downsizes them so they all fit. This means that it's packed with functionality despite spatial limitations and offers the basics for a comfortable life – even off-grid, if that's what the owner wants.

It helps that the home is bathed in natural light from all sides. The living room, which is essentially a nook with a couch and a wall-mounted fireplace, has windows on all three sides. The kitchen, condensed to a single-unit block and storage integrated into the staircase, also gets windows on both sides. The bathroom at the rear boasts a glass door, which is the second entrance to the home and turns the bathroom into a mudroom.

There's an outdoor shower on the bathroom wall, rigged for hot water. The bathroom is fitted with a composting toilet, a gorgeous custom sink with vanity, a one-piece shower cabin, and a wardrobe. While compact, it has a little bit of everything to be comfy and, more importantly, suitable for use in some remote, off-grid location.

The kitchen is also another example of the focus on efficiency in the build. It's small but somehow still able to fit in the basics: a two-burner Furrion induction stove with an extractor, a gorgeous farm sink, a removable island table, quartz countertops, some storage, floating shelves, pantry and spice rack, and a matching all-white Classic fridge and freezer.

Upstairs is the sleeping loft, which is standard in that it offers no standing height. As a neat little surprise, it boasts a storage unit that does double duty as a wall divider and a skylight that allows you to stand out and stretch out. If tanning only half your body is your thing, or you like to take your morning coffee with an eyeful of the surrounding views from up top, it's perfect.

Tru Form Tiny says that this home will be going to live on a farm, so many of the surprise features, like the second entry and the outdoor shower, make complete sense. What the builder doesn't say is anything related to pricing, and that's probably because it's a custom unit built with the client's materials.

For reference, the standard Payette model is offered in three different sizes: 20 feet (6 meters), 24 feet (7.3 meters), and 28 feet (8.5 meters), with prices starting at $79,900.