Wow, the floor is done but there’s no time to rest because now the place is ready for the fit-out. Since our tiny house is not your standard-size house we need some custom tiny house furniture and, of course, we’re making the furniture ourselves. We’re starting with the tiny house kitchen.
Our kitchen bench
We tackled the kitchen first. Neither Paul nor I have carpentry experience so building a kitchen bench from scratch was a challenge. Another challenge was to keep the kitchen as lightweight as possible. After all, we’re building a tiny house on a trailer, so weight restrictions are always a big concern.
To keep the weight down we used 7mm plywood. Truth to be told, I wasn’t sure if this would work. The ply seemed to be very flimsy. But as we put the pieces together our kitchen became stronger. In the last step, we screwed the back of the kitchen into our steel frame. Our kitchen is now rock-solid and secure in place should we need to move the tiny house.
Our under-stairs storage
Since we’re living in a tiny space, we wanted to max out every single bit of space. So utilising the space under our staircase makes sense. In fact, we have so much space under the stairs that we’re able to fit our pantry, additional storage space and our fridge in it.
Firstly, we started to build drawers for our pantry. We calculated that we would have enough space for 4 large drawers and 1 small drawer because of the protruding wheel arch. Building the drawers is straightforward, the tricky bit is to get the partitions and rails right. The alignment for both has to be precise otherwise the drawers won’t close.
Next, we had to build a little stand for our fridge so it would sit on top of the wheel arch. The fridge stand is pretty much the same as the little stand we built for the oven.
To get even more storage space out of the under staircase we added two shelves on top of the pantry and the fridge. Lastly, we made a little door for our storage space next to the pantry. This little bit of extra room contains things like the vacuum cleaner, a broom, the router and other things you don’t want to stand around in your house.
Our tiny house kitchen
In numbers, our kitchen bench is around 3m long and 95cm high. We used 7mm pine wood ply and a pinewood benchtop. Keep in mind that pine is a softwood so it’s not ideal as a benchtop but we’re more concerned about weight at this stage.
In total, it took us three weekends to complete our DIY kitchen. We’re quite happy with the result. There’s enough space for the sink, our standard size oven, the two cooktops, the fridge, all our kitchen equipment, as well as plates, cups, glasses and bowls. What more can you ask from a tiny house DIY kitchen?
I know that you run biogas from a digester for your gas side of the stove.
Curious as to what brand stove top you used and what you had to do to retro fit it to biogas.
Thanks
Hi Meghan,
We bought our gas stove top from eBay, the brand doesn’t matter. We only had to take off the little LPG nozzle. There is a video on how to do this on the Homebiogas website. All the best.
hello what brands are the gas stove and the solar stove and whats the total costs of those stoves
Hi Fidelis, our induction stove is from Miele and the gas stove is from Millar but brands don’t matter. You can use any cook top as both are standard, regular kitchen appliances. We spend around AU$400 for both and got then second hand.
Aha! I found your kitchen setup!
Its me Wyatt I commented on your biogas update.
Its nice having a full size oven! is it bioGas or electric?
If its electric, how do you find using it on your lead acid battery bank? Do you only use it during the day?
I think i saw elsewhere you said you have 22kwh of batteries, how much gets used up for a two hour bake?
If its biogas, how do you find it? do you notice any differences to fossil fuel gas ovens?
My GF is a pastry chef and I grew up off grid with a wood stove, my GF is not impressed with how slow it is to heat up, so I’m really curious about off grid baking!
Its nice having a great view right out through the kitchen!