First things first: our tiny house is finished! We finally have our own house. I’m so happy.

For the first of this two-part series, I shared with you the backstory of constructing our tiny house for three. If you haven’t read that yet, please do check it out.

In the first blog, I said I will be sharing the finished house, as well as how much we spent. But since we’re a month and a half past our schedule (and our budget), I will share instead the week-by-week walkthrough until the construction itself was finished.

How [the Workers] Built Our Tiny House: a Week by Week Walkthrough

Week 1

As I mentioned in the first blog, our house was a 30-square-meter concrete shed, so we decided that that would be the size of our tiny house, too. However, our contractor found several structural issues, such as foundations not being strong enough. We wouldn’t be able to use most of the walls, so the first four days was spent by demolishing the old shed. They managed to save one wall and a beam, though.

Week 1 was around the first week of September. At this time, Foreman assured us the house will be finished in a month. Because of the demolition, they adjusted the completion of the project for another two weeks, which was fine with us.

Weeks 2 and 3

On the second and third weeks, the construction began, as the workers started with excavations and building the walls and foundations.

Weeks 4, 5 and 6

Bulk of the construction happened on Weeks 4, 5 and 6. The walls, except for the front, were built, and the roof framing was put up. At this point, our contractor convinced us to add an outdoor kitchen, saying this would only add around PhP 20,000 ~(USD 400).

Call us naïve, but little did we know it would not cost just that.

This point on, I started getting a bit frustrated at the pace so I stopped tracking. But I’ll try my best to recall.

I Honestly Lost Track But I Think It was Until December.

The longest part of constructing our house was during architectural. Please forgive my lack of knowledge in construction lingo, but that’s the part when they paint the house, install the tiles, windows and doors, add the fixture, and such. It’s also the most costly.

I was shocked, for starters, with the number of lights about to be installed. There were – brace yourselves – 12 pin lights! The funny thing is, I don’t remember agreeing to pin lights at all. But I might have and I forgot due to mom brain.

Anyways, at this time, the house was almost finished. Slowly, our engineer’s vision was coming to light, and, what can I say? I was starting to like it.

Unfortunately, we were not able to finish the house even on Francis’ birthday in November, as promised by the foreman. There was some sort of miscommunication with the supplier of our front doors and mahogany planks for half the loft, which set us back for – are you ready for it? – almost two months!

In the end, we had to buy our front doors from a local carpenter and someone else had to finish the house (varnishing, paint, and installing the front doors) and we were able to spend our first Christmas Eve in our tiny house.

How Much Did We Spend to Convert a Shed to a Tiny House?

Everyone on the Internet is actually dissuading us from major projects with the bleak Philippine economy. But we decided to go for it anyway because we don’t know how long we’ll have to wait until the Philippine Peso recovers from this all-time low.

We actually gave our contractor a huge headache, setting an unbelievably small budget for today’s economy. His rate for a 30-square meter house is PhP750,000 so there was a lot to work around. So, we negotiated and settled that we will purchase all the materials and pay him 45%.

With that said, the actual total cost of building our tiny house with loft, an outdoor kitchen, and a garage was more or less PhP 650,000 (USD 11,500).

(I personally feel bad for our contractor because he had the worse end of the deal. However, this was the price we have settled on, and I don’t think it’s our fault that the workers weren’t able to finish the house on time.)

Here’s the breakdown of our expenses:

We were also able to save from the following because there were available raw materials in my in-laws house:

• Good lumber
• Narra floor for the stairs and loft
• One whole wall
• One beam

Meanwhile, here are the expenses we didn’t originally plan for:

• Outdoor kitchen
• Garage

Final Thoughts

Francis and I are in love with our tiny house. The next thing is to decorate our home so we can have it blessed and finally move in, possibly this month.

Of course, we’re preparing ourselves for the adjustment period for our one-year-old who has been with my parents since Day 3. But I’m happy about the decisions we have made so far: from building our house to choosing the design elements for our family’s cozy home.

So, that’s it for today! That is everything about how we build a tiny house for three. If you’re here because you’re thinking of building a tiny house, I hope you found the contents of this blog post useful. See you next time!

Love lots,