Yeli Heidecker and her husband had no experience with small spaces when they decided to build a tiny home for her mom in the fall of 2025.
They didn’t let that stop them, though. The Heideckers learned on the job and, despite their inexperience, finished the build in just eight weeks. Everything worked out great — for the most part.
Here are the biggest lessons Heidecker took away from building her first tiny home.
Yeli Heidecker and her husband built a tiny home for her mom on their property in Texas.
Heidecker’s mother had been living in an RV on the 32-year-old content creator and her husband’s two-acre property in Texas when they decided to build her something more permanent.
Their solution was a tiny home — or, as they like to call it, a tiny casita — designed to be a mini version of the barndominium Heidecker and her husband live in with their four children.
Heidecker said they were originally quoted between $63,000 and $97,000 to have professionals build the entire house. To cut costs, she and her husband did nearly all of the work themselves on the 400-square-foot tiny home. They only brought in an expert to build the shell and lay the concrete foundation.
They built it in just eight weeks for around $33,000, saving at least $30,000.
Heidecker and her husband learned a lot throughout the building process.
Heidecker and her husband had never built a tiny home before taking on the project.
And while the house has been working great for Heidecker’s mom since it was mostly finished in November 2025, there are some tweaks they would consider now that they have a complete build under their belts.
“Even when you are very intentional about building something, there’s going to be something that you’re like, ‘Man, I wish I would have done this differently,'” Heidecker said. “That’s why you live and learn.”
They might have raised the home slightly.
The Heideckers hired someone to build the shell of the tiny house, including the concrete foundation, since they didn’t have the experience to construct it themselves.
Looking back, Heidecker wishes he had either poured a thicker layer of concrete or raised the foundation so it wasn’t as close to the ground.
“When we talked to the guy who built the shell for us, he said, ‘This should be fine. We don’t need to raise it anymore,'” Heidecker said. “We fell for that, and we definitely should have gone with our gut and raised the concrete more just to avoid it from flooding or anything like that.”
Flood damage is their biggest concern, but Heidecker said they worry that even watering the grass in the backyard could inadvertently lead to damage to the house. They’re planning to flatten out the ground around the tiny home to protect it, but it would have been easier if it had just been positioned higher to begin with.
“It’s the foundation, so it’s extremely important to keep that in mind,” she advised.
Heidecker also thinks they could have made the house bigger.
Although the tiny home’s size works for Heidecker’s mother now, she thinks they should have made it a bit larger to be more functional in the long term.
Specifically, Heidecker wished the bedroom and bathroom were slightly bigger so they could be completely ADA accessible if her mom needed to use a walker or wheelchair down the line. The shower entrance was designed for accessibility, but the doorways and size of the bedroom weren’t.
“It could have been like $2,000 to $3,000 more if we had gone maybe 2 feet more on each side,” she said, which would have made the house closer to 500 square feet instead of 400.
They were trying to be budget-conscious during the project, but Heidecker thinks it would have been worth spending more money up front to avoid having to adapt the tiny home down the line.
She recommends thinking about how your tiny structure will function long-term if you’re building your own.
Heidecker also wonders if they should have placed the tiny home elsewhere on their property.
The Heidecker family’s home sits on two acres, and they built the tiny home parallel to theirs.
They like that the homes are close together, particularly because Heidecker’s children often visit their grandmother. However, after they built her house, they realized it obstructed the main home’s view of the sunset.
“At some point we did mention like, ‘Oh man, we probably could have done it a little bit more to the left or a little bit more back for our own views,'” she said. “The sun sets on that side, and now the casita is right there.”
Heidecker said the obstructed view isn’t a big deal, but if they were building the tiny home from scratch, they would likely place it in a slightly different spot. That could have also been beneficial if they ever want to use the space as a rental property, as it would give the renter and the Heidecker family more privacy between the two homes.
“Be extremely sure where you’re going to put the unit,” she advised.
She also wishes they had considered what the views from the tiny home’s windows might look like.
Another minor issue with the tiny home is the height of its windows.
“Maybe we didn’t communicate well, but he put the windows of the shell a little bit higher than the standard height for a window,” Heidecker said of the builder who constructed the shell.
The height makes it difficult for Heidecker’s mother to see the kids playing outside from inside the tiny space, particularly from the windows in her bathroom and kitchen that face the backyard.
“When she was in the RV, she had her window in her bedroom, and she could literally be lying down and watching out in our backyard,” Heidecker said. “She was able to watch the kids when they were playing or something without having to be outside.”
Heidecker said the windows aren’t a huge problem, but she encouraged others building tiny homes to consider all aspects of how their homes will function when designing their spaces.
Heidecker says it’s important to be patient when building a tiny home.
Now that she has a tiny house build under her belt, Heidecker recommends others be flexible when taking on their own projects.
“Be patient and be open to pivoting or making changes in the middle of it based on either budget or timing,” she said. “I think it’s very important.”
For instance, the Heidecker family’s build was initially supposed to take six weeks but ended up taking eight, and they were slightly over budget.
Despite the hiccups, Heidecker and her family love the tiny house, and they’re proud of the results. It’s working great for Heidecker’s mom, and it even withstood the cold when Texas got hit with a winter storm in January.
“It worked like a champ,” Heidecker said. “My mom was like, ‘It was so warm. It was so cozy.’ I was like, ‘Man, we could have just been in here all day.'”
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