HOUSTON – By day, Becky Stephens spends her time in the operating room at St. Luke's Hospital as a nurse anesthetist.
"I put people to sleep, and then I take care of them while they're asleep under anesthesia, and then I wake them up," Stephens said.
To relax, Stephens enjoys yoga. There's just one problem: Her home is not big enough for a dedicated yoga room.
"Right now, I have a guest bedroom that I have a twin bed in, and the reason that I've only had a twin bed in there is so that I have enough room to do my yoga," Stephens said.
Stephens considered a room addition, but the renovation cost was too expensive. Then she found out about the tiny house movement.
"I was looking online and saw different little buildings and I thought, 'You know, I could put a building in my backyard and that could be my yoga room,'" Stephens said.
Tamara Harbert of West Houston "inherited" her tiny space. Her husband originally built the space for their children, but once they stopped using it, Harbert made it her own.
"It went from being their space to my space when they just kind of lost interest. Or, (they said) 'There's bugs in there, I don't want to be out there,' or 'There's a glare on the TV from the window,' which I don't mind because I didn't want a TV out there, and I just slowly started moving things in. Of course, now that it's clean, they want to be out there again," Harbert said.
Harbert now uses the house, which has been updated with sheetrock, an air conditioner and even wainscoting, as her artist's retreat.
"I kind of got into making collages," Harbert said. "This one's going to go off to A&M with my daughter in the fall because she loves the sea and she wants to do her room in all blues and reds, and that's going to go with her."
Harbert said she's at peace in her home away from home.
"No. 1, I purposefully didn't put a TV in. I purposefully don't bring my phone out here unless my children are away and need to reach me," Harbert said. "I want to be separate, literally separate, and I am."
KPRC 2 spoke via Skype with Jason Ellis, one of the owners of Kanga Room, a Texas-based company that's been building tiny pre-fabricated structures since 2010. What's driving the boom of tiny houses?
"I think it's a lot to do with people working more from home, but also, people want to separate out their hobby space," Ellis said. "It's like taking a trip into your backyard where you're getting out of your house and into a place that's all yours."
Stephens discovered the Kanga Room's website and was impressed with the designs of its units, so she bought one. With delivery, installation and upgrades, she spent $12,600 for her new yoga room.
"The add-ons to the basic shell that I got were the air conditioner, and what they call a cedar wraparound, which I think makes it look really nice," Stephens said. "I think that gives it a little extra accent."
The installation was completed in a day.
Now all Stephens has to do is get the place wired, add sheetrock and install the floors. She and her husband opted to do the work themselves, saving them $5,000-$6,000 in costs from Kanga Room.
Stephens is already visualizing her new space.
"I'm thinking of painting it kind of a gray, a soothing gray color, and I have a really nice painting that a friend of mine gave me that he bought in Nepal," Stephens said. "I'm really looking forward to coming home after kind of a hectic day and just putting on my yoga clothes and going in there. Not having to set stuff up, take stuff down. Just walk in and do it."
KPRC 2 asked the owners of Kanga Room about the most unusual space they've designed. Ellis said it was a tiny house built with a retractable roof, so the owner, an amateur astronomer, could use his telescope to look up into the sky and stargaze.