DIY Tiny Off-grid Kitchen

This is my Tiny DIY Off-grid Kitchen

The Tiny Off-Grid Kitchen is coming along but the counter top and sink have not been installed.

Cooking off-grid and indoors can be quite pleasurable especially when using nice cookery and a butane stove. This kitchen has both a butane (1 burner) and a propane  
(2 burner) stove.

 

Chicken and Veggie Herb Soup: Good for the Soul

The wall is covered with green bamboo. The temporary counter top is covered with natural (toned) bamboo.

I store food in these clay pots to keep it safe from any varmints that might make it into the tiny house. The large clay pot is mostly used for rice or beans. The green-topped pot is for cooking and/or food storage. The smaller pots are used for spices and fermented sauces. The green pot is a honey pot.

 Inside the cabinets, I added small shelves for bowls and teacups (l and r ) and in the center cabinet,  an led light which runs off 3 AAA batteries- it works very well. I use rechargeable hanging solar lights under the cabinets. In this picture, there is only 1 solar light visible (under the middle cabinet) as the others are outside recharging.

Later on, I'll show you what I've done beneath the counter and stoves as well as my storage above the cabinets.

Making An Inexpensive Tiny Cabin

One can build a tiny house for about $10,000.  One can also convert a storage container cabin into a tiny house for $10,000 or less.  I started with a fairly inexpensive  10x18 cabin.  At the time of purchase, I added the following extras: a 4' porch, shudders on all windows, an extra door (back) and an insulation kit. The rest was up to me.   I have limited carpentry and building skills so I took it one step at a time, did the best I could and created myself a tiny place to call home.   I added flooring, tongue and groove wood paneling, a sleeping nook and a tiny bathroom, kitchen and living room. I built a bed for the nook, benches for the living/dining room, a tub, toilet and pedestal sink holder for the bathroom. 

I built this bed from scrap wood from another project.

Sleeping Nook with tongue and groove wood paneling.

Added bamboo to the walls of the area to become the bathroom.

Built a frame for the room and put durock on the floor. A wood floor of planks was later built over the durock.  The trough was later covered with hammered copper.

Added hammered copper paint to the trough, then drilled a hole for the plumbing.

After building this wall, I added shelving and covered it with bamboo on the inside and Korean paper on the outside.  The window was made from a painted dollar store picture frame.

 The pedestal sink holder built from leftover 4x4s.

 The first piece of kitchen furniture was this makeshift counter top. I simply laid 2x4s over 4x4 legs and laid more 2x4s across the top and covered it all with bamboo.  Will add a real counter top and sink later.

 Made simple cabinets with raw wood (2x4s).  May paint later, may  not.  That's green bamboo on the wall behind the cabinets.

 I left a little room near the front door for a closet which is made of 1x4s and handmade Korean paper.

I just remembered that I built the closet before I built the kitchen cabinets.  I kind of built things as I felt the need for them.

Covered the living/diningroom walls with a combination of bamboo and pine boards.  I then built low benches (which I later added longer legs to) and an elevated 2x4 floor.

The same area with the raised benches.  The light on the table is pretty bright (recharged via usb cable) and the one on the wall uses batteries (recharged by the sun).

Living in Tents and a Car: How we did it

In order to avoid high oil field housing prices, we lived in several tents, our car and other temporary living sources until we could clear a sufficient road to our land.

The first tent was a Guide Gear 10x10 tee pee.  For the most part, while in the tents, we stayed at Sandhills State park in west Texas.  With a $75 monthly pass, we paid $7 bucks a night for the campsite which included unlimited electricity and water and use of the toilets and  hot showers.  Overall, this tent (pictured above and directly below) was spacious and dry.  The screened door and widows kept the mosquitoes and most other pests out.  Although it handled the high desert night winds well, the tent flapped quite a bit on very active nights. We had some problems with too much sand from time to time but it was easily   vacuumed out with a car vac and returned to the dunes.  Ultimately, it was a summer storm that took finally took this tent out.  We weren't in and should have taken it down.  We still have this tent and even though is has a few small tears, it can be easily repaired and put back to work.

I loved the Intex mattress pictured above.  It was nice and comfy.  It held the air pretty well and only had to touched up every 4 days or so.

Can't quite remember which brand this one was but it didn't last long- about 2 weeks and the desert winds had destroyed it. It would have been great on less windy terrain.

Other than the high winds, the worst thing about tenting in the desert is that most of the tends have this design flaw in which determined flying insets eventually invade through the multiple tiny openings, especially at night when one is trying to read peacefully by lamplight.

The sunrises and sunsets were the best.  There are no more beautiful skies than those in west Texas.

My favorite tent- a Korean replica of the European bell tent.  We shipped this tent from Korea, prior to our move back to the U.S.   Initially, this tent was purchase for temporary shelter on our land while we built our first dome.  However, without a driveable road, it was more practical to stake her down at the Sandhills.

Spacious, dry, warm in the winter, cool in the summer and insect free.  Love, love, love, this tent!  As this was a Korean replica, it was not quite as strong or as well made as the European brands but it was easily repaired and reinforced after a few bad storms.

Life wasn't too uncomfortable in the bell tent with electricity and room for our fridge, toaster oven and microwave.  

Christmas wasn't half bad either, especially with the help of our Little Buddy propane heater which kept us nice and toasty.