More Electrical Work

Most of the outlets and boxes are now wired in by my lovely husband, and he put up the lights so I could get a better idea of what they would look like. These two lights will be on either side of the kitchen window and sink.
This is the view from the loft looking out the back window, a light on either side and outlet boxes underneath

The view from the loft looking down to the living room, a light above each side of the couch for reading along with individual switches to turn them on and off, and if you look at the ceiling, you can see the box where the ceiling fan will go (YES! I get a ceiling fan! How cool is that! *no pun intended*)

Reading break! And I'm also very excited to report that my papasan chair will fit nicely upstairs in the loft, my dogs are also thrilled about this, and I get the feeling that I will never get to sit in it......

On a side note, we've also put in vents in the rafter blocks so that everything can breathe well.

Lots of Work

We've been busy working on the house, even if I haven't been the best at posting updates :o) I was busy getting our taxes ready, so posting went by the wayside for a bit.

My dear husband has been working on the electrical and outlet placement for us as well as planning the best spot for everything to be in before he installs appliance specific electrical work.




AND, my fabulous hubby has been building our windows too! He's got the glass cased in and will work frames and opening design soon.

House Update

We got the plywood put up on the front of the house (and of course by "we", I mean my husband). I've been feeling rather crummy lately so things have been progressing slowing. Hubby has been in the shop working on the windows and deciding which style of joint he is going to use for the wood.

Some progress is better than none I suppose, but I keep hoping that we'll wake up and some little elves will have finished it in the middle of the night :o)

Wood windows and our own economic crisis, laughs!

Today we were able to get our clear cedar for the windows, it doesn't look like a lot of wood (and it's not), but boy is it ever pricey! Already being 20% over budget is bad enough without paying this much money for a few sticks!

Everyone says that's what happens when you build a house, no matter how tiny, but still, it hurts the pocket book a bit.

It also seems that the prices on everything are rising due to the economy being so bad (can we say hyperinflation?), so not only has work slowed down for us because of economic factors, we're now faced with paying more for all of our building supplies.

We ran the figures for our tiny house project the middle of last year and came up with a figure we were aiming to stay under, and then found when we bought everything this year to start on it that we could easily add 15-20% to that original figure PLUS being over budget by 20% (and we're not done yet!) YIKES!

Glass for windows

The glass that we ordered for our windows was finally ready today.....we ordered it quite some time ago, and it seems that they kept "misplacing" our order, but lo and behold, today was the day! We're building our own windows as ordering them from someone like Jeld Wen or Milgard proved to be in the several thousand dollar range, and we just don't have the budget for windows that are that expensive. Also, even though we wanted wood-clad windows because we didn't want any plastic/vinyl in the house, apparently most companies are just wood clad vinyl windows, or they treat the wood with toxic chemicals to cure it. So, it ends up just being better to make our own!
Tomorrow we will go place our order for clear cedar to construct them out of, we had to do some shopping around for the wood as prices seem to vary significantly, but any way you skin it, clear cedar is still a WHOLE LOT of money!

More work on the house....

The house is now covered on the exterior with the siding underlayment, except the entrance wall. We're still tossing around some ideas for the entryway, but should have those pinned down shortly. We've decided on our window placement, so will frame those in soon as well.

Also, the whole exterior has been covered in the organic stain so that it will hold up in Wet Western Washington while we continue work on it. It is a HUGE pain to have to keep putting the tarp on, but a necessity due to the bad weather here, and we're hoping that this extra layer of stain will also help with weather resistance.

Someday we'll be done.....but not today!

We were up into the wee hours last night trying to get all of the plywood up, but when our fingers froze we thought we'd better go inside
Blocking in the rafters

Sort of looks like an ark, don't you think? We're putting all of the plywood up first and then deciding where we want the windows after it's all boxed in. We only get a very few days without rain here this time of year, so being water tight is more important than windows at this point. The windows will go between the existing studs, so that won't be a problem, we're just not sure yet how tall we want them and how many of them we're putting in.

I think people get nosebleeds when they are that high in the air :o)

In an effort to make sure that our home will really be non-toxic, we are skipping the Tyvec house wrap (it's plastic), and using a coat of no VOC, organic woodstain on the siding underlayment to give it an extra water-tight oomph! Plus, my giant tarp won't quite cover the bottoms of the walls, so this way I don't have to worry about rain saturating my new plywood before the siding can be put up.

Up goes the sheathing!

And here he is, the man responsible for making all of my tiny dreams come true.....my loving husband. Someday I will run out of projects for him, but not likely in the near future :o)
We started putting up the sheathing so that we can have some sort of water barrier before the rain sets in again, gotta love the Pacific Northwest!

The back section is almost finished, we took care to space out the plywood sheets so there is room for expansion and contraction if need be.

It feels like we're on top of the world!

I guess I didn't realize how high our new house was going to be, it is much taller than our 5th wheel that we're currently living in....
But the views from the loft are fabulous!

The roof goes up easily, we utilized less of a roof pitch so that we can have more head room in the loft


And there she is in all her glory!

Wall construction begins.....

The entryway wall goes up without a hitch ;o)
But then the rain sets in so we have to halt construction and rush to get our huge tarp in place, we can't have water getting into the insulated floor

More framing.....

After all of the exterior framing is done, we pulled the tarp over the whole thing and started work on the loft inside.

Time flies when you're building a house!

We got the floor framed in and are ready to insulate the floor



Wool insulation proved to be a really easy, non-toxic solution to conventional insulation and we were lucky enough to find some locally, even though it's produced in Wales, UK.


Beautifully insulated floor! We were out working on our little house until about 11pm, so the pictures are a bit dark.

Work on the sub-flooring

Well, it took A LOT of homework and searching, but we FINALLY found an all organic, non-toxic, no VOC wood stain. We used this on the underside and up the sides and top edges of the sub-flooring to waterproof the underside of the trailer and keep any moisture from creeping up. We'll also use this same product to stain our siding once we get the exterior walls up.

Smells a bit like canola oil, but that's it! No stinky fumes!

We painted the boards for the trailer and let them sit for the recommended cure time per the instructions.

And lo and behold, we have a sub floor! Next stop, floor framing and insulation!

Yay! My tiny house has a foundation!

It finally arrived! Our custom made trailer for our new home!

Very exciting indeed!

We painted the frame in Rustoleum so that we won't have to worry about it later on.

There she is, in all her glory! 24ft of tiny living space!

Now the fun part begins! We actually have to get ourselves in gear and get working on our new house :o)

Our Tiny Dream

While many people dream big dreams, ours are quite small indeed.

We've created a life for ourselves that some consider drastic enough already, but we're getting ready to embark on a new journey, a more permanent journey into uncharted waters for us.

Sometime between the middle of 2006 and the beginning of 2007, we had both left our jobs on a hope and a prayer that there had to be something better than 8-5/Monday-Friday/Until the day we Died.

We started our own business, and I'm not going to say it was easy, but we have managed to put food on the table and it's so nice to not be working for someone else anymore. In order to regain more freedom in life we decided to rent out our house in the city, condense our vehicles, buy an RV and move to the country to stay on a relative's property until we got our bearings. It's been a blast, but we're again pondering "what now"?

The last year has proved to be a huge learning curve, emboldened with the desire to live an organic, non-toxic and healthy life, and not willing to return to "normal" employment we're stuck trying to find answers for a permanent housing solution that will give us a peaceful, happy space to call home.

Enter the Tiny House!

We had heard crazy stories about people living in yurts, mud huts, and converted school buses, and now we are the crazy ones! We're building a very very tiny house on a trailer that will accomodate all of our needs and serve us well for the next many years.

Building will be a chore, but it will be worth it in the end! We'll be able to take our home with us wherever our lives may lead us, and allow us to become self-sufficient and independant!

I'll keep you posted with our progress :o)