Well, we’re almost done with our drywall. We’ve got it all taped and mudded and plastered and we purchased the interior paint (Sherwin Williams ‘Alabaster’) yesterday so we’re almost ready to cover it up!
Living Room - with Drywall
What a pain. Tons of sanding. But it’s going to be so pretty and smooth and white inside. Sanding action photo:
Well, we started installing our roofing on our Tiny House and it looks great! Metal (steel) Pro-panel roofing in a burnished slate color. While steel might not often be thought of as a green or eco-friendly product (because it is so sharp?) it is actually a decent product due to it’s high recycleability. Most steel is recycled and there is very little lost in the recycling process (so it’s not just “down-cycled”). It is also durable leading to longevity, and no need to replace it with more materials.
Blah, blah, blah, here’s a couple pictures:
Yesterday we trekked to Phoenix and picked up some closed-cell foam insulation to use for insulating the walls and ceiling of our house. We wanted to use spray foam but the quote came in SO high that we just couldn’t justify it. $1,600 for the spray foam, and we paid less than $400 for the foil-backed foam boards. A craigslist find that didn’t seem to be stolen… haha. Sometimes you wonder when you’re buying building materials from someone who has a lot of them from an unidentified source. They appear to be “seconds” with slight voids.
Was a tall, light load coming back from Phoenix:
We also went to Ikea! Ikea! (I really like going to Ikea.) We ended up returning the kitchen sink we had purchased because it was WAY too big. 31″ wide with the drainboard. It was so shiny…but for the price of that kitchen sink we got a new kitchen sink and all our upper open shelving for the kitchen, as well as hanging racks for the bathroom and some scissor extension mirrors! Great deals. Can’t wait until we can start installing the interior components.
Work on our tiny house is squeezed in between our real jobs… Currently I am working on space plans for a Waldorf School in Flagstaff, getting ready to start construction documents on a residence in Prescott, random drafting for a landscape architect, and, on Thursday, I’ll be driving a diesel bus down to Tucson taking Ecosa ecological design students on a field trip. I attended the Ecosa Institute and am also a faculty member there. We’ll be touring Tucson with Brad Lancaster, a rainwater harvesting genius in Arizona.
Okay, hope all is well in everyone’s world. (it’s the same world as mine, right? haha)
take care,
Carrie
Tuesday. Man, I feel so tired. we don’t even do daylight savings time here in Arizona, so I can’t blame that. building a house is a lot of work! we’ve been working what feels like non-stop for 3-4 weeks. I’ve been taking Sundays off, but then not really, because we always end up needing to work out design details or shop the internet for fixtures and materials.
The house is looking so great though! I am so excited to have something of our own. I’ve been renting places since I left for college, so 14 years or so. I’ve lived in maybe, well, twelve houses / apartments. I just counted. It’s feeling a bit smaller now that the walls and roof are closed in with the plywood sheathing…. but we are both so excited to have our own place! And our utility bills last month were almost $200, combined with our rent of $900 (which is really low, thankfully!), plus cable internet, cell phones – phew. Too bad salaries haven’t increased with the cost of living. In the Tiny House we’ll still have to pay our cell phone bills, a little more to get internet through our cell phone, and pay for propane, in addition to rent and utilities in someone’s yard. But that will be $200 to $300 a month, so an absolute max of $450 a month, all in. Right now we’re paying out almost $1,300 a month.
Oh yes, progress. Shane got the roof sheathed with plywood on Sunday, and built our two interior walls (with pocket doors) yesterday. we were going to do surface mount “barn door” sliding hardware, but realized we needed the clear wall space. so the doors on either side of the bathroom with be sliding pocket doors.
The walls are sheathed, as well as the roof now.
You can see in that photo that we’re adding a deck on the back. this will be storage for bicycles and motorcycle while the house is in motion, then they’ll get parked under the gooseneck hitch when we’re parked at home. The trailer had pull out steel ramps (as it was a car hauler) so there are four steel c-channels under the frame that we’ll weld some 2×2 tube steel onto for the deck platform. we though about making a folding deck that would close up while we’re moving the house, but it’d be nice to have somewhere to park Shane’s motorcycle. (that’s not the living room – ha)
Tiny House Roof is sheathed
You can see the deck and porch overhang in the photo above. The porch overhang might go…. we haven’t decided yet. Was quite the discussion figuring out how that porch should be. Ahhh, the age-old differences between architects and builders. I wanted an angle to match the angle on the roof in the back. So the peak of the porch roof would project 3′-0, the sides only 2′-0. Admittedly, it doesn’t make much sense other than aesthetics. Which is maybe “bad” design. Architects are typically trying to make things look simple and clean and effortless (as well as utilizing design principles like rhythm and balance) – not realizing that it is actually more difficult to build something in a way that looks … well, unbuilt. as if it was extruded from a lump of porcelain! kind of funny. if you’re in a good mood.
Next post I’ll put up our materials palette options. We were looking at rough-sawn siding, maybe board and batten, but now we found a rain screen look that’s nice and clean, less expensive, and modern looking.
Clothesline Tiny Homes 