A woman built her mother a $33,000 tiny house on her family’s property in Texas. Here are 5 things he learned from the process.

• Yeli Heidecker and her husband built a tiny house on their property in Texas for her mother.

• They love the space, but they learned a few lessons after building it.

• They advise others to think carefully about where they build tiny houses and how they will work.

Yeli Heidecker and her husband had no experience with small spaces when they decided to build a tiny house for her mother in the fall of 2025.

However, they didn’t let that stop them. The Heideckers learned on the job and, despite their lack of experience, completed the build in just eight weeks. Everything went great – for the most part.

Here are the biggest lessons Heidecker took from building her first tiny house.

Yeli Heidecker and her husband built a tiny house for her mother on their property in Texas.

Heidecker’s mother was 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 house—or, as they like to call it, a tiny house—designed to be a mini version of the barndominium where Heidecker and her husband live with their four children.

Heidecker said they were originally quoted $63,000 to $97,000 for professionals to build the entire home. To keep costs down, she and her husband did most of the work themselves on the tiny 400-square-foot home. They only brought in an expert to build the shell and lay the concrete foundation.

They built it in just eight weeks for about $33,000, saving at least $30,000.

Heidecker and her husband learned a lot during the construction process.

Heidecker and her husband had never built a tiny house before taking on the project.

And while the house has worked great for Heidecker’s mom since it was mostly finished in November 2025, there are a few changes she would consider now that they have a full build under their belts.

“Even when you’re really intent on building something, there’s going to be something where you say, ‘Man, I wish I had done this differently,'” Heidecker said. “That’s why you live and learn.”

I might have raised the house a bit.

The Heideckers hired someone to build the shell of the tiny house, including the concrete foundation, because they didn’t have the experience to build it themselves.

Looking back, Heidecker wishes he had either poured a thicker layer of concrete or raised the foundation so it wasn’t so close to the ground.

“When I talked to the guy who built the case for us, he said, ‘It should be fine. We don’t have to pick it up,'” Heidecker said. “We fell in love with it and we definitely should have gone bold and raised the concrete more just to avoid flooding or something.”

Flood damage is their biggest concern, but Heidecker said he worries that even watering the grass in the backyard could inadvertently damage the home. They plan to flatten the ground around the tiny house to protect it, but it would have been easier if it had 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 he could have made the house bigger.

Although the size of the small house works for Heidecker’s mom now, she thinks she should have made it a little bigger to be more functional in the long run.

Specifically, Heidecker wanted the bedroom and bathroom to be slightly larger so they could be fully ADA accessible if her mother needed to use a walker or wheelchair down the line. The shower entry was designed for accessibility, but the doors and size of the bedroom were not.

“It could have been $2,000 to $3,000 more if we went 2 feet longer on each side,” she said, which would have made the house closer to 500 square feet instead of 400.

They were trying to be on budget during the project, but Heidecker thinks it would have been worth spending more money up front to avoid having to adapt the tiny house down the line.

She recommends thinking about how your tiny structure will perform in the long run if you build your own.

The Heideckers also wonder if they should have placed the tiny house elsewhere on their property.

The Heidecker family home sits on two acres and they built the tiny house parallel to theirs.

They like that the houses are close, especially because the Heidecker children often visit their grandmother. However, after building his house, they realized that it blocked the main house’s view of the sunset.

“At one point I mentioned, ‘Oh man, we probably could have gone a little more to the left or a little more to the back on our own views,'” she said. — The sun sets on that side, and now the house is right there.

Heidecker said the obstructed view isn’t a big deal, but if he were building the tiny house from scratch, he probably would have placed it in a slightly different spot. This could also have been beneficial if they ever wanted to use the space as a rental property, as it would give the tenant and the Heidecker family more privacy between the two houses.

“Be extremely sure where you put the unit,” she advised.

He also wished he had thought about what the views from the small house windows might look like.

Another minor problem with the tiny house is the height of its windows.

“Maybe I didn’t communicate well, but he put the case windows a little higher than the standard height for a window,” Heidecker said of the builder who built the case.

The height makes it difficult for Heidecker’s mother to see the children playing outside from inside the small space, especially from the bathroom and kitchen windows that overlook the backyard.

“When she was in the RV, she had the window in her bedroom and she could lay down and look out into our yard,” Heidecker said. “She was able to watch the kids when they were playing or something without having to be outside.”

Heidecker said windows aren’t a huge issue, but he encouraged other tiny house builders 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 house.

Now that he has a tiny house built under his belt, Heidecker advises others to be flexible when taking on their own projects.

“Be patient and be open to changing or making changes in the middle of it, either based on budget or timing,” she said. – I think it’s very important.

For example, the Heidecker family’s build was originally supposed to take six weeks, but ended up taking eight and were slightly over budget.

Despite the hiccups, Heidecker and her family love the tiny house and are proud of the results. It works great for Heidecker’s mom, and it even stood up to the cold when Texas was hit by a winter storm in January.

“It worked like a champ,” Heidecker said. “My mom said, ‘It was so warm. It was so comfortable.’ I said, “Man, we could have been here all day.”

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