Did you know my mom has a vintage tiny house in her backyard in Germany?
As someone who is into green living, I’m totally intrigued by the tiny house movement and binge watch Tiny House, Big Living and Tiny House Hunters.
And when I was writing this post, it suddenly dawned on me that we effectively had a tiny house in our backyard the whole time I was growing up.
Vintage Tiny House in My Mother’s Garden
My father, an architect and lover of old buildings, bought the frame of this antique farmhouse 30+ years ago and had it rebuild in our backyard and filled in with brick.
The frame is held together with only wooden dowels — I think nails were not used much or too expensive when this house was first built 100+ years ago.
My parents owned an antique store back then and filled the eat-in kitchen, the powder room, and the little bedroom upstairs with vintage treasures.
I’ve shown you the outside of this antique tiny house over the years when I’ve written about our trips to visit my family and friends in Germany and my mom’s cottage garden, but I’ve never shown you the inside.
That’s changing today!
On our visit this summer, I made a point to photograph the inside of this charming little house.
Come on in and I’ll show you around!
The kitchen is filled with a little desk, a table, seats for six…
…an ornate oven, a cupboard, a beautiful little enamel range — and an endless supply of small decor items.
My parents were collectors of so many things (I wrote a whole post on my mom’s collection of bronzed baby shoes and weights), and I have inherited the hoarding gene from them – we all can’t pass up a vintage treasure.
I decorate just like them — we overdo it with little knickknacks. It’s hard for me to not want to display all my things at the same time.
How pretty are all those antique dishes?
I love this movable light fixture — you can easily move it up and down with the weight in the middle.
Next to the stairs is the powder room. My dad had a wonderful sense of humor and he designed it to look like an outhouse – but there is a regular toilet under the cover.
Upstairs you can find a bed, a desk, a table with a sofa and chairs, and old machines people used back then, like these washing machines.
A lot of the little windows are stained glass gems my parents bought and integrated into this house.
Landon saw these antique glasses on the desk and tried them out.
This would make a cute AirBnB, right?
Landon was curious what was under there – he hadn’t seen an antique sewing machine before.
When we visited, my mom invited a lot of her friends to a concert in the garden.
It has a fun day listening to friends of ours who are talented musicians, and we all were thinking of my father a lot, who passed away suddenly five years ago on that day.
We loaded up on yummy German food and cake, the kids were running around, and we had a lovely time enjoying the garden.
I hope you enjoyed the tour of the vintage tiny farmhouse in our backyard!
In all these years, I’ve never stayed in it while I was visiting, but now I kind of want to on my next visit.
It would be fun to live like people a hundred years ago and use that old oven and stove, and all those antique dishes.
I think I’ll skip using the ancient washing machine, though.
