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Big Ideas,
a Tiny House
And Simple Living

Bathroom Talk

8/28/2015

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We have hot showers! We have a bathroom door! We have a recessed medicine cabinet! Who knew a year ago that having a fully functioning bathroom would be this exciting? Not me.

So, it's time for a restroom summary:

The bathroom is a little under 6' x 6'. Like the bedroom partition, the bathroom walls don't reach all the way to the ceiling. Though we needed privacy, we wanted the house to feel open and light.

Our shower has an off-the-shelf 27" x 54" pan. We covered the moisture-resistant green board in the shower area with galvanized, corrugated sheet metal attached by roofing screws with waterproof washers. We overlapped the sheets to prevent water from getting behind them and sealed the corners with silicone caulk. Our nice, big shower window lets in a lot of light, but we didn't realize it would get splashed this much when we shower. So we added extra-wide, painted trim around the window, and we wipe the wet sill after we shower. (So far, so good.) Our Delta shower head is a low-flow model, but still produces a good, solid spray. Rather than heating water all day, we flick on our 12-gallon water heater 30 minutes before shower time, and get a good six minutes of hot water. Not a long shower, but long enough! You'll find more on plumbing here.

Our tiny, wall-hung sink is deep enough to make hand washing and tooth brushing convenient without taking up much space in our compact bathroom. After a lengthy search, we found our pint-sized Barclay sink online at Home Depot. We went with a Delta faucet on the sink. 

Our composting toilet may not be as convenient as a traditional flushing model, but we've adapted quickly with no real complaints. Nuts and bolts: The toilet seat is an Ecovita Privy 501 with a urine diverter, which means Number Two stays drier and therefore less smelly while Number One flows down a pipe through the floor to a gas can under the house. The diluted urine can be poured out anywhere and used as an effective fertilizer; we chose to pour it a distance from the house. Two 5-gallon buckets sit inside our DIY cabinet. One we line with BioBags, fully compostable liners that we will eventually be tossing into a yet-to-be-built "humanure" composter. (For now, the poop gets "wasted" by being tossed in the landfill. We need to get on this project!) Each time we make a deposit in the bucket, we scoop up some coco coir from second bucket to cover the poop. (We use coco coir, because it's considered more effective than sawdust and it's more sustainable than peat moss, the other "cover" options.) For more info on composting toilets, you can't do better than the Humanure Handbook. We also found the Gone with the Wynns website handy when figuring out our system.

Our door is a hanging barn-style DIY model scavenged from local demo sites. More here.

Our 9-inch-deep medicine cabinet is set into the utility closet behind the bathroom. A hinged mirror covers it. More here.

Our floor is the same tongue-and-grove pine we installed throughout the house. We used a waterproof stain and have a rug to sop up any shower drips. 

The light is an outdoor fixture by Design House that seemed to fit our bathroom style better than traditional bathroom lighting options. (It was also cheaper!) Like the rest of our lighting, we're using an LED bulb. It should last around 20 years and uses very little power. 

Our towel hooks, towels, soap dispenser, shower curtain, rod, rug and shower shelf are all from IKEA. They don't pay me to say this: IKEA showrooms are a great place to cruise for tiny house ideas and their products fit tiny budgets like ours.

What's not in our bathroom yet: a vent fan. We bought one, and it was so big and so ugly, we returned it. We'd like to figure out an affordable, compact way of bringing fresh air into the house and venting out any bathroom moisture and smells. Still in the works.... 

Please click on the pictures below for more details.

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We Are Floored

6/6/2015

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Three days of installing boards, two days of sanding, two more of staining...and we have floors in the tiny house.

The biggest challenge was working around  cracks, missing knots and other blemishes on the white pine boards. Saying they were "rough" is an understatement, but we managed to find enough good boards, or at least good sections of boards, for the most-seen areas and to hide less-desirable pieces where the closet, cabinets and bed will go. What little wood was left over will make great  fuel for the grill.

Now that the floors are in place, we can't put off figuring out the plumbing any longer. Or...maybe we'll do that after we trim out the windows and doors?

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What's Afoot

5/31/2015

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The first row of floor boards is in. 

After months of looking around for affordable reclaimed flooring, we gave up the search and went with unfinished pine boards like the ones we used in the screen house. At $1.30/square foot, we haven't found any wood flooring that beats the price.

They're rather rough, with plenty of spots that need to be cut out. So, the first step was sorting them for the best boards we'll use in the most visible spots and the worst of the boards that will go under the bed and kitchen cabinets and in the closet. After they're all installed, we'll sand wherever needed and then stain all the boards.

We're nailing them down over an underlayment that adds another moisture barrier and accommodates any small variations of the subfloor. One row down, many to go. Luckily, we have a little extra help in town this week... 

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