Meg and Ben decided to downsize because they had just gotten out of a ton of student debt, and they wanted to travel.
The couple's affordable tiny home is a converted bus equipped with solar panels and a full kitchen.
Check out more on this episode of "Dream Big, Live Small"!"
BEN POIRIER: We decided to downsize because we had just gotten out of a lot of student loan debt and we wanted to get out there on the road and explore a little bit.
[MUSIC PLAYING] MEAG POIRIER: I'm Meag.
BEN POIRIER: And I'm Ben.
MEAG POIRIER: And we are the Poiriers.
BEN POIRIER: We've been in our tiny home for about nine months now full time.
MEAG POIRIER: We wanted to have a motor home of some kind, for it to be affordable and in relatively good conditions.
So the bus was a perfect balance of all three of those things.
BEN POIRIER: Come on inside.
MEAG POIRIER: All right.
So you walk right into our kitchen and dining room area.
We don't have an oven or a traditional stovetop.
So we have a single-burner butane stove.
And this covers everything that we need.
We have a nice double-base sink.
BEN POIRIER: If you don't have a dishwasher, you need a big sink.
MEAG POIRIER: Over here we have a little bit larger than a dorm-size fridge.
And that runs off of our solar panel on the roof.
BEN POIRIER: You might have noticed that we have these cages here.
Well, a funny little side note is this actually used to be a prison bus.
MEAG POIRIER: You can hang a bunch of stuff on it 'cause it's like this nice metal grating here.
We hang jackets and bags and things like that, towels-- I mean, you name it.
BEN POIRIER: And it adds a little bit of extra security for us.
If we want to go for a long hike and leave the bus parked, we have cages on both sides of the bus.
We shut those and it protects all of our belongings.
And it also adds a little industrial flair to our whole design.
MEAG POIRIER: This is our living room.
Down below we have Moose's bed.
Moose is our dog.
We have these really nice antique light fixtures that Ben put together.
And Ben jokes around that he just wanted a wood stove and he just built the bus around it.
BEN POIRIER: That's true.
MEAG POIRIER: But this wood stove is our primary source of heat.
And it's kept us nice and warm and cozy.
And it's just great ambiance overall.
BEN POIRIER: We have a faux-brick hearth here that's actually hollow.
It's just tile.
We weren't able to put in real brick.
That would add way too much weight.
The whole thing is secured all the way down through the bus and bolted through.
So in the event of any turbulence, this 100-pound wood stove doesn't go flying throughout the bus.
MEAG POIRIER: So most people see this next piece of furniture here and think that it's just a nightstand, a very large one.
But it actually doubles as our composting toilet.
We wanted to keep our bus open concept.
It's only a 31-foot bus.
It's not a very big space at all.
And to us, I've known Ben since I was 14 years old.
That's 15 years ago.
So we've seen it all.
We've been married for five years.
So it's not like we really need to hide.
So the front opens up like this.
It vents outside.
And it has virtually no smell at all, which is really great.
BEN POIRIER: One thing that we didn't want to do was sacrifice the luxury of having a bathtub.
So I built a Japanese soaking tub out of reclaimed Southern yellow pine wood.
So you're actually able to sit in this.
And you can fill it all the way up and soak up to your neck.
And actually, the space had to be designed around the wheel well anyway.
So it doubles as having a seat in there.
So it really just kind of worked out.
And it's really wonderful.
[MUSIC PLAYING] MEAG POIRIER: That wraps it up.
Thank you so much for checking out our tiny home.
Meg and Ben decided to downsize because they had just gotten out of a ton of student debt, and they wanted to travel. The couple's..