Slightly More Accomplished

November 3, 2012 – While every little bit adds up to an eventual tiny house, sometimes it seems like we work all day and accomplish very little. This was one of those days. We finished framing the second (storage loft side) of the gable walls and got the sheathing up as well. That’s it. That’s all we did.

On another note, we have decided to make some changes to the plans. I must first preface this by saying that I’m obsessed with all things tiny house! I’m constantly searching for new blogs, staring at google images of tiny houses, and searching for new you tube videos. It’s a dangerous habit because I find myself saying, “ooh, look at that, we should have done that”. I finally told myself that I could not compare our tiny house with anyone else’s because I would always be second guessing things. I assured myself that our tiny house would be adorable and we are going to love it. Well, then I saw a picture of the Protohaus. We have seen other tiny houses that made use of dormers, but we never felt compelled to do that with our tiny house. However, when we saw the pictures of the Protohaus, we gave it some serious thought and in the end decided it would be worth the extra effort and money to modify our plans.

Since the beginning, we’ve been trying to imagine how we are going to use our space. Are we going to use the loft as a hangout space or just a sleeping place? Because this place is going to be sooo small, it makes sense that we would want to take advantage of the loft as a secondary lounge space and dormers will make it that much roomier. It will mean not having a roof on as soon as we had hoped. There will probably be several feet of snow on the ground before we officially have a roof, and it will also mean ripping out a few of the rafters we worked so hard to put up. Stay tuned!

Because we placed our window opening higher than the plans we put in a spacer to achieve that proper rough opening size.

Plywood sheating in place.

Protohaus exterior.

Protohaus loft with dormers.

Protohaus interior.

One of my favorite tiny houses so far. I love how bright it is.

Tiny House Building Spirit Renewed!

The recent blue skies got us back into tiny house building mode.  As I type this post we do not have blue skies; it is currently overcast and snowing.  However, the past two weekends, while cold, were clear of precipitation and allowed us to get back into full tiny house building swing.

Because I have procrastinated on blogging, this post will be short and sweet and not too detailed.  Two weekends ago (October 20th & 21st) we got back to work and finished putting up the rafters and put in the blocking at the base of the rafters.  We also trimmed the ends of the rafters to what we think is the appropriate length.  As I type, I question whether we cut them short enough.  We did account for the fascia, but we need to figure out how long the metal roofing is supposed to hang over the fascia and possibly trim them a little shorter.  We need to make sure we are road legal and that means not having the rafters/fascia/metal roofing hanging out further than the wheel wells of the trailer.

The following weekend (October 27th &28th) we put in the blocking between the rafters where plywood sheeting seams will land.  We also framed in the opening for the skylight and framed in the gable end on the sleeping loft side of the house.  We chose not to put the skylight above the sleeping loft like the plans call for; instead we placed the opening for the skylight in the great room centered between the two lofts.  We also modified the gable ends slightly so as to lift the window opening as high as we could place it while still keeping the typical window header.  In doing so we only raised the window up about 3/4 of an inch.  Another modification we made to the Fencl plans was to keep the 12/12 pitch roof all the way across instead of going with the dutch hip roof at the front of the house.  This allows us to have a little more space in the storage loft as well as being able to put in another window.

Tomorrow and Sunday are supposed to be partly cloudy without precipitation so we will finish framing in the gable end above the storage loft and start putting the roof sheathing on.

Skylight opening.

Sleeping loft gable wall framed.

Starting the framing for the storage loft gable wall.