Colorful 38-FT Tiny House Squeezes In Life-Size Surprising Features

The Charleston wants to be one such tiny house. Completed in 2018 by Longview, TX-based American Tiny House, it's up for sale on commission with Dallas, TX-based Indigo River Tiny Homes as a pre-loved unit. The latter builder is willing to do extra customizing and/or modernizing for the next owner at an extra charge.

But this isn't a sales ad. For all of us who aren't on the market for a tiny house or whose interest in tiny living is from an outsider's perspective only, the Charleston serves as a good example of how this type of mobile housing solution has adapted, grown, and evolved over the years. One way of doing that is through the integration of more traditional features, which, in the process, allows for a heightened degree of comfort.

The Charleston sits on a triple-axle trailer and offers a total length of 38 feet, with 8.5 feet in width and 13.5 feet in height. It's a tiny house on the larger side, offering a total footprint of 323 square feet, but it's definitely not the biggest options out there – and least of all from U.S. builders.

That said, thanks to a gooseneck design and a creative layout that makes ample use of every bit of available space, the Charleston lives much bigger and could even work as a full-time family home. Sleeping capacity is of four people when used as a two-bedroom residence, but it could be further rigged to accommodate as many as six people on occasion.

As it's presented in the video tour below, it offers two bedroom lofts, one with standing height in the gooseneck part of the trailer and another of the crawl-in variety over the kitchen. The layout is a classic dual-loft one but tweaked to place enough space between kitchen and bathroom, to maximize storage options, and to create an overall vibe comparable to what you'd find in a traditional home.

If you know anything about tiny homes, these are not trifling achievements. At its core, tiny housing boasts of ridding the home of "unnecessary" spaces like hallways or actual space to move around in order to obtain the most compact footprint that would allow for maximum mobility and extreme downsizing.

In recent years, tinies have grown in size to let some of those features that the original units removed back in. In countries like the U.S., Canada, and New Zealand, park tinies are particularly popular precisely because they offer home-like features on a platform that is still mobile, even if at times in theory only.

The Charleston strikes a balance between size and features. It packs in a surprising amount of storage, more so than most tinies of its size, a bedroom where you don't have to crawl on your hands and knees to make the bed or make your way around it, and residential features like a soaking tub, full-size appliances, wardrobes, and even a dedicated space for dining.

The Charleston is equipped with the extreme weather package so it's insulated for year-round use. It relies on a mini-split for heat and AC, features an on-demand tankless propane water heater, and boasts interior styled with a combination of custom work with Ikea products.

The Charleston is all about the balance between custom work and more affordable series-production parts. For instance, you get a custom faux marble acrylic surround in the shower and a real stone counter on the vanity in the bathroom.

Appliances are life-size as well, from the five-burner propane range to the double-door fridge with ice maker, and plenty of cabinets and pantries. Whereas most kitchen in tinies would only make do for basic meal prep – think along the lines of boiled eggs – this one is ready to tackle the demands, whims, and preferences of every member of the family.

Perhaps best of all, the Charleston is able to offer the most functionality for such a small space, coming across as the perfect family home in a downsized footprint. By comparison to other tiny homes, its kitchen and bathroom are huge, as is the main bedroom. There is storage built into both sets of stairs, in cabinets and shelves, and there is plenty of space to fit in all the creature comforts of modern life.

We've said this before and it warrants saying again: tiny houses have grown in recent years, both literally and figuratively. Today, they live more like proper homes while still within a more compact and mobile footprint. The Charleston is proof of that. If you do happen to be considering a transition to tiny living, this unit is asking $89,900, to which you add tax, tag and title, and shipping.