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.
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. A year after we started our build, we moved in. We finished the deck seven months after that. There's much I've skipped (the wood stove install, for example), so let us know if you have questions about the steps I've passed over here. (Or the steps I included!)
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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. 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 had finished three sides of our tiny house when winter hit hard last year. The final side was a challenge even in fair weather. The ground drops away on that side of the house, and balancing on extension ladders to nail boards and screw in metal panels proved difficult and downright dangerous with snow on the ground. We decided we'd wait to finish the siding until we built a deck, which would give us a stable platform. For months, we did our best to ignore the Tyvek house wrap still exposed on that side of the house. Other things took priority. Wiring the house. Plumbing for sinks and the shower. Walls. Ceiling fans and lights. Finally, this September (more than a year after the start of our build) we turned our attention to the exterior of the house again. Bill designed a deck we could build in pieces and take apart, if that ever became a necessity. As soon as we had the platform in place—even before the boards were screwed in place or the railing built—we installed the rest of the house siding (no more Tyvek!) and finished the eaves. Now it feels as though the house is complete. From our first sketches, we had corrugated metal and pine boards in mind for siding. We like the mix of "industrial modern" and "rural rustic" for our mountain setting. The materials echo the construction of many of the farm buildings in the area—plank barns and metal sheds. They have the added advantage of being affordable choices. Sheets of metal run around $20; eight-foot shiplap boards cost less than $10 each. Mixing the two materials helped break up the 24-foot-long sides of the house. And it made it possible to give each side a distinctive look. One side, the side that faces the home of our friend/generous landlady, has only wood because she's not a fan of the metal. Two sides have their own pop of color—green and blue doors. Form follows function in our design. We wanted a home flooded with natural light, so we worked a total of 11 windows and three glass doors into the design of our 250-square-foot house. Putting windows at the same height and keeping their proportions similar hopefully gives the house a sense of balance even though there's a lot of asymmetry going on. Now that our house has four finished sides, we're working full time on getting the deck finished—more on that later. Please click on the images below for more details. We prepared food in our tiny kitchen for more than 20 people this week after inviting friends and family to tour our almost-complete home. The kitchen makes food prep and entertaining guests a breeze. The two of us can work in the space without bumping elbows, and more than once we've been told, "The kitchen feels so big." Some kitchen specs: Our butcher block counter top runs 9 feet, but feels as though it extends another two feet because our counter-height table sits at the end. If we need even more counter space, we have inserts that fit over the sink. We cut the counter to build in our oven/stove, and we can lift out the section behind the stove to store pans, racks and the sink inserts when not in use. The counter is IKEA's birch Hammarp, sanded down so that we could stain it to match our other wood. The sink is a whopping 32" undermount model from Kraus. We don't have a bathtub, so we wanted a sink big enough to wash out anything that needs cleaning. It's also big enough that we can leave our dish drainer in the sink and still wash dishes beside it. We put in one or both butcher block inserts if we need more counter space and less sink. The faucet is a pull-out, single-lever model from Kraus. Hot water is courtesy of our Bosch mini-tank. More on that here. The stove/oven is an alcohol-burning Origo 6000 from Dometic. Find more on the stove here. Our refrigerator is a 5.6-cubic-foot Energy Star GE model. It was hard to find an affordable fridge of this size made to fit under a counter. There's only a tiny freezer, but we have access to a full-size freezer in our friend's house just a short walk away. (One example of many compromises weighed to make the most of our compact space.) As far as storage goes, our pantry is the workhorse. Six sliding shelves hold everything from dishes to food to cleaning supplies. The top, fixed shelf has room for the toaster, food processor, big pot, colander, water bottles and more. We also built shelves that fit over the microwave and across the top of the window. The long, high shelf is great for extra china and decorative pieces that wouldn't fit in the tiny house otherwise. An IKEA magnetic bar holds our knives and a couple Grundtal racks hold spices, wooden spoons, pots and more. Our base cabinets come from (where else?) IKEA. We had plans to build our own cabinets and drew initial sketches. We went to IKEA to get ideas and came home, instead, with cabinets. We realized they were the perfect size, design and price point--so why reinvent the wheel? We spent extra to go stainless on the doors and drawers, but it was a splurge we both wanted. The wine rack was a leftover-pallet-wood inspiration because we wanted a finished side on the refrigerator that made use of the six inches left at the end of the cabinets and fridge. Beside the wine rack, our counter-height table features a DIY pallet-wood top with a steel IKEA table base. It's the same dimensions a second table we made, so we can fit them together if we ever want to host a big feast. The folding chairs are also IKEA. Four pendant lights keep things bright with LED bulbs. To cover the holes in the ceiling, we came up with the idea of using old kitchen tins sourced at an annual flea market that raises money for the hospital. (The fish mold on the wall came from the same sale.) At this point, you've probably already guessed that the lights came from IKEA. We like our modern conveniences here, so a pint-sized LG microwave sits atop the counter. It's big enough to fit a dinner plate, but small enough to be energy efficient. We don't have to but we choose to filter our drinking and cooking water. That's where our beautiful Berkey comes in. In the tiny house, we have the "Travel" model; in the screen house, we use the "Royal" model so we have enough water to wash dishes in our makeshift sink. Here in the house, we installed a shelf so that the Berkey didn't have to take up counter space. The spot beneath it makes a great home for our compost bucket. That's all I can think of for now....Please ask questions about anything I've left out. Please click on the pictures below for more details. 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. What's happening in the tiny house build? Everything. All at once. This week, Bill drilled six holes through the floor of the house and one through a side wall to get our plumbing well underway. Before he could do that, we had to frame up a multi-purpose space between the bathroom and living room which will be: home to the water heater, pump, pressure tank and other plumbing "guts"; space for wiring to run to the bathroom lights and plug; a built-in medicine cabinet on the bathroom side; a pantry on the kitchen side; and built-in shelves and a spot for a TV on the living room side. It's still taking shape, but we think we've worked out how all that can happen. At the same time, we've also: installed the floor trim in the kitchen area; assembled our IKEA cabinets with their big, pull-out drawers; figured out how to build in our wee, alcohol-buring oven/stove; put in half the bathroom walls; installed the shower base; bought our three faucets and two sinks (which takes a lot more time than I thought it would); started building a wine rack; and set up our SOLAR unit--which is now powering the fans that keep us from overheating while doing five things at once. More on all these projects in future posts! But now it's time to paint the potty, sand the countertop, attach the base for the oven, install the bathroom sink, screw the cabinets into the wall... Our trim is just a subtle 2-inch strip of wood painted white, but we've been impressed by what a difference it makes. The ceiling went from having gaps and sagging panels to snugging up neatly against the rafters. The windows and doors looked unfinished until molding bridged the black gap between the frames and wall board. Trim is a style statement. Some traditional houses call for intricate window molding--complete with frieze boards, mitered returns, crown molding and caps (see This Old House for an illustration)--but it wouldn't work in our setting. Narrow, flat trim suits the scale and style of our tiny house. We figured this out by buying small pieces of a number of options and looking at them in place: along the ceiling, around the windows and doors, and edging the floor. Style-wise and (not unimportantly) finance-wise, the simplest trim was the best fit. And now...we're on to building the bathroom walls and tackling the plumbing... 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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