Well, here is a long overdue update on our progress building the Beehive Mobile Mini Mart for our client in Colorado. The last post I wrote about it we were doing exterior siding, staining and painting and we’ve now finished out the interior.
Shane found beautiful beetle kill / blue-stain pine siding for the Tiny House interior walls at our local lumber yard.
We ended up using EcoTouch fiberglass insulation. Zero voc’s and almost the R-value of foam. I went to a lecture on foam insulation and while it performs, it’s hard to feel good about putting a chemical product into the world that will never go away… Have you seen the film “Garbage Island”?? It’s sad. Plastic never goes away, it just gets smaller and smaller.
I can be such a bleeding environmentalist… here’s a quote from Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold:
Progress progress. I wanted to update you on Shane’s hand injury and our progress on the exterior siding and a current time-lapse photo of the Tiny House construction progress.
We worked on installing siding all day yesterday and it is looking really great. We like the galvanized z-bar flashing between sheets – a flat siding “rainscreen” type application that works really well on our tiny house. Like we mentioned before, we decided to use a readily available compressed cedar chip siding – TruWood I think it’s called. It’s light, easy to cut, easy to install, and thinner than real wood planks.
Here’s an overall photo of the siding installation process:
We also took the masking tape off of one window and our glossy white trim is looking very nice! (photo above.) We installed the front door, deciding to just use galvanized j-mold flashing around that in lieu of more bulky white trim. Here are a few close-ups of the siding:
the nail heads will be painted over, giving it a smooth, clean plank finish. The black painted piping visible in the photo above is our propane headed to the propane space heater and propane cooktop in the kitchen.
Here is a short video of construction progress so far:
Okay, so now if you get queasy easily you might not want to scroll down to the next images. As you may have heard already, Shane cut his knuckle on his right hand on some z-bar flashing Tuesday and we went to the ER to get it stitched up. the ER doc said the extensor tendon was lacerated and we needed to go to a hand surgeon. So, we went to the hand doc on Friday morning and the doctor saw how Shane could still lift his finger and said the tendon was fine, slapped a band-aid on it and told him to keep it straight for a month. Okaaaay…. but the ER doctor said the tendon was lacerated. Oh. The hand doc called the ER doc to get the story straight from him. It is lacerated, almost completely. So then the hand doc said he needed to operate on it. After a discussion about malpractice and liability it was agreed that the tendon couldn’t be lacerated completely through or the finger would be hanging limp, and not able to lift up, like it is. Remembering the ER doc could only see the laceration the flexed position we all agreed that the top of the tendon was cut, but not the bottom, and if kept in a splint, it would heal on it’s own, without surgery. (which just involves cutting the knuckle open and doing a fancy figure eight stitch through the two ends of the tendon). So, we paid $30 for a $2 splint and $165 for 20 minutes of the doctor’s time, and we were on our way!
Here’s the cut (and the bandaid the hand doc was going to send us away with first!)
Here’s the splint Shane is using now to keep the finger from flexing:
We had a good laugh with the hand doc about the first splint Shane was given at the ER. I am trying to think of the right metaphor for the ER compared to the rest of the medical field…. maybe the ER’s splint was like this guy’s toaster:
http://www.thetoasterproject.org/ Which is as awesome story about the cost and difficulty of making a toaster from scratch and how we take technological advances for granted.
Okay, happy Sunday everyone! Tomorrow we’re headed to buy some surplus insulation and go to IKEA to look for a sink, lighting, etc?, and eat some ebelskivers! After that we’ll finish the exterior siding, insulate the house, install the roofing, and start on the interior finishes. Stay posted… we need to finish this month to meet our construction goal of two months total. We’ll see how badly Shane’s hand injury affects progress. Maybe I can step it up, get up earlier, and help out more?? While working and bringing home… some bacon. 🙂
Well, if you’ve been reading our posts you’ll remember a discussion we were having about the back deck roof being angled or just a standard gable. We got quite a bit of feedback saying the angle would look great, and from a design perspective I liked how it would mimic the tapered roof we have going on over the gooseneck. So. Angling the roof added about two days of work (one day discussing it, and one day building it) but I really like the look.
Here’s the construction progression in three stages:
And a close-up of the angles (compound angles too…)
We spent all day today running errands, making phone calls, and attaching steel fenders / wheel wells. The ones on the used trailer we bought were totally mangled. Turns out that was a bigger bummer than we thought. These fenders cost $155 plus a days worth of work welding them onto the trailer. Here is an overall view of our tiny house on wheels showing the new front porch roof (the porch will be attached later):
The fenders:
TGIF… and we’re going away for our anniversary (our FIRST anniversary ever!) Sunday thru Tuesday so that’s exciting. We’re both torn about leaving in the middle of this project. But it’d probably be good to get away from it all and relax and celebrate for a few days. All work and no play… you know how that adage goes.
Well, we’ve been plugging away on our Tiny House and it’s really starting to feel like a house. A tiny house…. With the walls sheeted we can get a better feel for the space inside, (or absence of space…) and it’s going to be cozy! Hopefully perfectly cozy. We realized last night that the new Tiny House will be about twice the size of the staircase at our current house. Ha! Maybe three times the size…
Yesterday Shane got the house wrapped with a Tyvek house wrap product and the interior walls built, as well as exterior trim installed at the roof line.
The house wrap we found on craigslist for $40 for a roll. A great find.
The interior walls are built, with pocket door hardware at the bathroom walls that separate the bedroom from kitchen / living room.
There will be a storage loft above the bathroom space that can be accessed from the kitchen side and the bedroom side. Here’s a photo of the bedroom:
There will be stairs on both sides of the bed with drawers for clothes storage. Here’s a photo of the living room, showing the front door and the full height windows on the left, and picture window on the right:
Shane did some really beautiful trim work to bring the roof drip edge out as far as possible (without exceeding the 8′-6″ width limitation):
Also, tiny house bling bling! We just got our kitchen sink in the mail and it is so gorgeous! shiny chrome / stainless steel with a dish board on one side. Large enough to still be functional and wash dishes, unlike bar sinks or RV sinks. It’s from http://www.Houzersink.com. Really beautiful, and lightweight! In case we ever have to pack up “everything and the kitchen sink”….
Hello! happy saturday! we have been busy building our tiny house on a trailer – a gooseneck trailer (see previous post on our foundation – the trailer) The walls are framed, the roof is framed and we just put the plywood sheeting on the exterior yesterday. here are a few photos and a time lapse video of the construction progress so far:
the roof is framed
roof framing
the front of our new Tiny House (or the back, if you prefer...)
the inside of our Tiny House looking back toward the bedroom
interior view from the bedroom
the front of the trailer (the rear of the house) showing the bedroom platform elevated over the gooseneck
hope all is well, and we’ll keep you posted as we sheet the roof next!
“It’s easy to sit there and say you’d like to have more money. And I guess that’s what I like about it. It’s easy. Just sitting there, rocking back and forth, wanting that money.”
Why Tiny? Clothesline Tiny Homes will strive to have a small footprint on our natural environment, will allow us to live wherever we want, paying much less money for rent / mortgage and utilities, and will be a fun adventure where we can grow and learn to live with less stuff and enjoy our beautiful world much more!
We started designing it in February of 2012, bought the trailer platform February 25th, and started building February 27th.
2-1/2 months later we finished building and moved into our tiny house mid-May 2012 and lived in it full time through November 2013.
After 18 months we decided it was too small, and would make a better guest house! So now we are building a small house (1,000 SF) DEBT FREE in Southern Colorado, where the tiny house will be a lovely guest cottage.
We both have years of experience designing and building but we thought the best way to learn about the intricacies of a Tiny House would be to design and build one for ourselves.
Clothesline Tiny Homes 