In the last post, we were considering a number of build projects, and the winner is...a combo shed/outhouse. Right now, we're lucky enough to have a place to store tools, but it's up the slope from our homesite, in our friend's garage. With a shed just below the house, we'll have shovels near the garden, the toolbox close at hand and a workbench to start new projects.

On top of that, we'll have a place to shelter the solar generator when we're away for extended periods or when a big storm heads our way. (We'll be able to detach the side panels of the generator and roll it under cover.) And, as it that isn't enough, we're going to build an outhouse into one corner of the structure for a second bathroom, one with a beautiful view into the forest.

After a little clearing and leveling, Bill undergrounded our graywater pipes so they run under the new platform. (Yay...we don't have to look down at them any more from the deck). He built an 8' by 8' platform for the outbuilding; then we realized we wanted a little extra deck on the end—that way we could walk across it to an out-facing door on the outhouse. So, he added another 4 feet of deck.

We're going to attempt to NOT overbuild. This isn't a home, just a shelter from the elements and a fair-weather bathroom. It's easy to run a wire to have lights and a charging station for the tools, but we won't be plumbing the bathroom. Water for the sink will be gravity fed from a tank. We also decided to wait on the final design until we found used windows to save money on the project. Now that we have the windows, we'll sketch out our ideas and come up with a final plan.

I've been in town babysitting our sweet little granddaughter, so the shed has been a one-man project for Bill at this point. But as soon I'm home more, I'll be lending a hand.  I can't wait to get building again.

​Back from The Tiny House Conference (more on this in another blog), we came home to spring in all its glory. I've been reveling in the warmth as I wander our site—transplanting here, raking there; placing a few newly bought native plants, tearing out invasives. No-plan, no-goal puttering. But after a few wonderfully aimless days, I find myself asking the same question I was asked a few dozen times at the conference: What are you working on now? 

Our house is built, but that doesn't mean my itch to build has gone away. In no particular order, these building projects come to mind:

1. Treehouse: I've scaled down my initial fantasy. Before I think about building a mansion in the trees, I'd like to try a modest raised room. Roofed, half wall with screens (rather than windows). No insulation. A seasonal lounge (for us) and playhouse (for the grandkids).

2. Outhouse: I'm thinking of another DIY composting toilet, this one down near the gardens. We have a pile of shutters that could work for three sides. The fourth side, I'd like to leave open, facing out to the woods. 

3. Tool/garden shed: Currently, we haul tools up and down a slope everytime we work on a project. We have the good fortune of having space in our friend's garage, but building a shed on our site would not only move the shovel closer to the garden and the saw closer to the next build, it could give us a space to temporarily house our solar generator during the worst of storms.

4. Wood shed: We love the occasional campfire. Once we borrow the neighbor's splitter, the dying ash trees we had taken down will fire up many a campfire if we have a place to let the wood dry out. For this project, I'll love to salvage the materials.

5. Teeny, tiny house on wheels: I'm not looking to replace our house, or even to add more space for us. This would be a guest house and, ideally, a rental house. It would also be a great way to experiment with space-saving ideas. I'd also like to challenge ourselves by building it out of as many reclaimed materials as possible.

That should keep us busy, once we're done with our current gig—babysitting our wee granddaughter Margot for the first few months our daughter goes to work. Time to break out the graph paper and pencil and get sketching the plans...but which build to start first?

Last January, I told the tale of our water woes. The ground froze before we finished under grounding the water pipes leading from our friends' "big house" to our tiny house. We drained the pipes and carried in water for drinking and cooking the rest of the winter. We showered at rec centers and other peoples' houses. We often hauled our dishes over to our friend's house for washing.

A year later, with freezing temperatures day after day, I'm happy to report that we have running water in the house! We wash our dishes here! We shower here! When the temperature first dropped to the single digits, we did have an issue—which has since been resolved. All of this wasn't just a simple matter of digging trenches for the pipes....

• Step one: Finishing the water line to our house. We excavated rocks so that we could finish trenching to the tiny house. Then we used foam insulation around our hose and encased that in PVC pipe for protection before burying it underground.
• Step two: Setting up holding tanks. We were still worried that pipes might freeze because we couldn't get them below the freeze line (down 20 to 30 inches), given our rocky mountain terrain. We decided to create a holding tank up the hill from our house where we could keep water from freezing. Bill constructed an insulated box large enough to hold three, 78-gallon barrels (rated for drinking water). He connected the barrels and put a thermostat-controlled panel heater inside the box. We fill the barrels from spring fed water coming down the mountain, as needed. Our tiny house can now draw water from the climate-controlled tanks.
• Step three: Protecting the faucet. The first place to freeze last year was the short section of pipe above ground that leads to our outside faucet. Bill wrapped that section of hose in aluminum foil and then attached heat tape. He insulated the faucet where it connects with the house, and that connection hasn't (knock on wood) frozen since.
• Step four: Better insulating the pipe running under the house. We have a section of PEX piping that runs under the house, between two floor joists, from our bathroom to our kitchen sink. While that space is sealed and insulated, it was obviously too cold on frigid nights. Water ran from the outside tanks to our bathroom without a hitch, but we couldn't use the kitchen sink after the pipe under the house froze. So, Bill insulated the PEX pipe leading to the kitchen better and installed an incandescent light bulb in that space to provide a little heat to the area with the pipe. Only once has the pipe frozen since then, when we had a number of days of single-digit weather—but at least the pipe didn't burst! Our new plan is to replace that PEX pipe with a heated, potable water hose. 

With the temperature still below freezing outside, we're quite happy to have hot, running water. It's something I've taken for granted in the past—but no longer! 

You can read more about our plumbing, water pump and water heaters in old blog posts. Please click on the images below for more details about our winter water solution.

After living for years in traditionally scaled homes, we sold our last house and moved to an apartment to try  living in a smaller footprint. We didn't miss the space, we loved ditching our mortgage and we found ourselves firmly on the path to living more sustainably.

​We finished this house and moved in about 15 months ago. People late to our story have asked about our build, so I figure it's time for a retrospective. 

Site prep. We were fortunate enough to have a friend invite us to build on a corner of her 5-acre property in the Blue Ridge mountains. We cleared and leveled (or partially leveled) a site for our house, with enough room to build a separate screen house which went up first. (More on the screen house here.) We scavenged old boards and used them to build a retaining wall, then reinforced the wall with stones from the woods.

​The trailer. Zoning doesn't allow a second foundation-built house on the property, so we built on a trailer. Ours is  on a 24-foot equipment trailer from Tiny House Builders of Georgia. Our design runs the full 24' of the trailer and extends over the bed two feet on both sides. We used 10" joists to raise the floor over the wheel wells; it also left us plenty of room for insulation). Bill drilled holes through the trailer to attach the joists and bottom layer of plywood with 6" lag screws.

​Framing. We went with a "stick built" house on 24" centers (sometimes referred to as advanced framing). The technique saved us a little money (by using less wood) and reduced the house's overall weight. We designed the framing in about 8-foot sections so that it would be easy for the two of us to lift pieces into place and attach them. We put up four 4x4" posts to carry the weight of the roof, since we decided to go with a split roof design that incorporated clerestory windows.

​Roof. After a couple months of tarping the build site for rain, we were thrilled to roof the house. We installed a beam and framing for the row of clerestory windows between our two rooflines, then hung rafters and screwed down plywood decking. On top of the plywood, we went with a layer of WeatherWatch instead of roof felt for more leak resistance. On top of that went panels of corrugated steel fastened using screws with rubber washers. Bill bent the flashing out of strips of galvanized steel.

Sheathing and house wrap. Plywood installed on the exterior studs made our build look more like a home. After cutting out the spaces for our windows and doors, we swathed the house with Dupont Tyvek HomeWrap. We'd talked about adding a rain screen which would leave a gap of air between the house wrap and the siding yet to come...but we forgot. Rainscreen helps control moisture. (You can read more about it here, for more information.) So far, so good here without the rainscreen.

​Windows and doors. We knew we wanted a lot of light and cross ventilation (no air conditioning) in our house. We looked at second-hand windows, but finally decided we didn't want to take the time to scavenge the exact sizes we wanted. The best deal we found was for Jeld Wen windows and doors at a local lumber yard. We made a last-minute decision to swap out one window for a third door when we thought about building a deck. So, 11 windows and three glass doors it was.

​Siding. We wanted to break up the sides of the house by using wood and metal siding. Our final choices: corrugated steel (same as the roof) and wood clapboard (stained the same color as the screen house). Snow came before we could finish the siding, and eventually our progress crawled to a stop. We took a few months off and finished the last side and the eaves of the house in the spring. We started the eaves with super light-weight panels, but switched to thicker plywood by the end. 

Wiring. Our electrical plan got a little complicated when we decided to go solar as much as we could afford. We found a solar generator (the SolMan classic by Sol Solutions), and Bill designed the wiring to go to two boxes. All the lights and most outlets are wired to a box powered by our generator. The hot water heater, water pump, microwave and back-up heater—all items that need surges of power—use grid power drawn from our friend's house.

Plumbing. A mountain spring feeds the cistern that supplies water to our friend's house. We tap into that supply. We went with PEX water pipes because PEX is flexible, inexpensive and easy to work with. Bill watched YouTube videos to figure out the little he didn't already know. As far as waste pipes go, we're careful about everything that goes down our drains so it can be piped to a mulch pit. We're not on septic, so urine also goes to its own pit. We deal with solid waste by composting it.

Insulation, walls and floor. With the electrical and plumbing installed, we insulated between the ceiling rafters with rigid foam and between the wall joists with EcoTouch Fiberglas. The walls went up fairly quickly with standard drywall; the ceiling is light-weight (too light-weight) beadboard panels. We painted the walls and ceiling white, knowing we would have dark wood floor and trim For the floors we found a good deal on pine boards at Lumber Liquidators, then stained them with the same color as the exterior house. 

Kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. We built interior walls to divide our space for a bathroom on one end of the house and sleeping space on the other. The interior bathroom wall also houses the water heater, plumbing, electrical, a medicine cabinet and the pantry. Both walls stop short of the ceiling for air flow and light. We went with a big sink, undercounter fridge, alcohol-burning stove, butcher block counters and IKEA cabinets in the kitchen. Besides the DIY composting toilet, the bathroom houses a mini sink and a metal-lined shower.

Deck. Most of the deck went up after we moved in. It wraps around three sides and makes it much easier to walk around the house, especially important given our sloped mountain site. The deck also gives us plenty of room for grilling and dining, growing herbs and having friends over. We've planted  grapes and hope they'll grow up the lattice that hides the trailer from view. Still to come: planters outside the big glass sliding door.

Recently I posted pictures of the barnwood wall behind our sofa and mentioned it was 90% complete. We ran out of steam before we got around to measuring, cutting and installing trim along the edges and top.

And there were the two posts that support the clerestory windows: they were also missing a decorative sheath.  Ditto for the bathroom doorway.

​I'm happy to report the trim is (finally!) in place. It's amazing how much more finished a look it gives our space.

(Now if I could only remember to install the two feet of missing floor trim—already painted and ready to go!—then I could say we've finished off our space.)


​Please click on the pictures below for more details.

I have never been known for my patience. In the past, when I wanted something done, I wanted it done yesterday. Building this tiny house has been something of a lesson in patience. Take our new slate, for example.

We built our tiny house about ten feet away from the screen "house" we built first. The screen house is an open air living space for about 8 months of the year. It's part of what makes our tiny house not feel quite so tiny, and we walk between our two living spaces several times a day. In the screen house, we have a primitive kitchen (cooler for a fridge, a sink that empties into a bucket), a table for dining and a much-used lounge area.  But back to the slate...

Two sets of stairs lead down from the tiny house to stairs up to one of the screen house doors. For more than a year, we've had to step down on to dirt or mulch to cross between our living spaces. (Imagine all my dirty feet and socks...) We had a few hundred ideas about what to do in the gap between the houses, and we actually took the time to weigh them. What would each cost? Would they reflect or clash with what's already on site? How much time would be required, time taken away from other projects? We thought long and hard about what we wanted, and we came to this conclusion: we wanted a walkway of slate slabs between the houses.

The next lesson in patience came when we looked at the cost of slate slabs. At local nurseries and hardware stores, we found prices between $200 and $300 to buy enough slabs the size and thickness we wanted. The walkway wasn't enough of a priority to justify the hit to our bank account. That's when Bill turned, once again, to Craigslist.

He kept his eye out for slate (among a few other wish-list items) and, after a few months, he found it. We paid $15 a slab for pieces larger than what we had been looking at. The walkway cost us only $30, once we realized we could make use of a couple pieces of slate we already had on hand.  The 2x3' slabs were so reasonable, we spent another $60 and had enough to put slate at the bottom of another set of stairs off the deck and under a little table and chairs that had previously teetered on dirt.

That's neither our first nor, hopefully, our last Craigslist find. The set of wicker furniture that we lounge on in the screen house cost less for all four pieces than the price of some new chairs. And then there's the beautiful, metal Emu chairs and table on the deck—in great shape and also a fraction of the price if bought new. We've also scored free landscaping stones and lumber. 

Yes, you have to wade through a boatload of ridiculously hideous and/or overpriced items, not to mention scams, on Craigslist—but, with a little patience, Craigslist can be the tiny house builder's best friend.

When we moved into the house a year ago, gutters were still on the to-do list—along with the deck and stairs. While we finished the other projects a bit ago, the house remained gutter-less. The delay was caused by someone (that would be me) who really wanted half pipe galvanized gutters for aesthetic reasons.

We finally found all the supplies we needed, and just today Bill finished the gutter project! It's still a work in progress, though, because we plan on adding rain barrels under the deck to collect water for vegetable gardening. Now we just need to find food-grade barrels that will fit in the space we have. In the meantime, the rain water will just run off down the hill.

We took a deep breath after we finished the deck project, and it wasn't until we had a couple families coming to visit that we felt motivated enough to tackle the next project: proper stairs leading to the kitchen door. Our "construction grade" stairs (narrow and railing-less) needed a safer, more aesthetically pleasing replacement.

In the end, we decided to build a deck-lette just outside the door, with stairs leading down the side of the house. This way, we could save the space between the tiny house and the screen house as a courtyard of sorts and have three sets of stairs leading to the same landing. Once we score a few more squares of slate to add to the two salvaged pieces we already have, we'll be able to cross from the deck to the screen house, or the screen house to the tiny house, stepping across slate instead of the ground.

After posting the other day about reclaimed materials, a friend reminded me that I'd never posted a picture of the completed "living room" wall. While I can't actually claim it's 100% completed (still missing a board at the bottom and trim on the edge...), I can say I think the old wood we attached to the plywood wall has transformed the room for me. It's warmer and richer, and I love the contrast with the white walls around it. 

We recovered the wood from a collapsed outbuilding up the mountain. Much of it was rotted and needed to be cut away. We cleaned and sanded the best of the wood, then cut off any bad edges and sorted it by width. We thought we might want to stain it, but decided we liked it just the way it was.

And now...the neighbors up the mountain with the collapsed outbuilding have told us they have more wood we might be interested in. Who knows what we'll use it for?

We live at the edge of a forest. We wanted the house to suit its natural setting, so we looked for a wood stain that would blend with the trees around us. While the hue we picked ("Pewter") didn't turn out quite as gray as the bark we were hoping to match, we've been happy with the color.

​Putting up the deck—in all its new wood glory—reminded us what a difference the stain makes. We're happy to say now that the deck blends in a little better these days, thanks to another gallon of stain.

Now, there's just those railings to finish...and vertical garden to plant...and...