Update!
April 25, 2012 § 5 Comments
It’s been a few busy days, unfortunately not for the tiny house, I finally got back at it today though! Wewt! I got all of the firring up today but I have no pictures, instead, here is an update on everything else! 
I met Jonathan! It was weird, like 4-5 months ago I found his blog, he was a random dude from the midwest who did a similar thing that I was interested in doing. I have got to know him over the months and went through his blog front to back have learned SO much! One of the funny things to me about this whole tiny house deal is that I have gotten to know quite a few people pretty well via the internet but to actually meet another person who has built his own tiny house and gone beyond like Jonathan has was pretty surreal to me. He’s a cool dude and Barney is actually adorable, just like he seems 
. For those of you who don’t know Jonathan he lived formally in Michigan but has pretty much been kicked off of his own property because of local codes not being accepting of a tiny house. He has chosen to move to Portland and just made it today! Congrats on living the dream, it was a pleasure meeting you Jonathan, totally, I hope to visit ya soon in your new home town. I hope you find Portland amazing!!
Other than that, in completely unrelated events, I actually spent the last weekend in Portland. I didn’t seek out any other tiny houses really, I had a great time though, checked out some stellar music, met some amazing people and had an overall great time! I did take a little trek to Ikea also and found a plethora of ‘things’ I want but I didn’t get anything just yet. I will probably get a lot of my kitchen stuff there though, and probably my bathroom sink. The just have so much cool stuff that works really well for small spaces.
Today, I did finally get back to work, like I said, I was able to fir out all of the walls to the nominal 4″ dimension that is needed for the insulation, sorry, no pictures. I have half the sheathing left to do then I will put in one layer of the insulation, do some electrical work and keep pushing forward. I should have some time to work this week and Sunday. I did officially give notice on my place so as of July 1st I will live in my tiny house. I’m not saying it will be ‘done’ per-say but it should be at least in good ‘camping’ order, and I will save a bunch of money on rent… .
Two more quick things of note… I ‘hope’/think I may have found a great solution to my roofing situation, I am not going to spill the beans yet until I know it will work but I am pretty excited about it! Second thing, I nearly came home from Portland with a Great Dane, I couldn’t believe they had 2 purebreds at the pound in Portland but they had to go together, there is no way that I could handle two danes right now but as a heads up, there will be a dane living in this house with me. I am officially on the hunt for my perfect pooch! Let me know if anyone knows of any leads, I want a blue male .
That’s pretty much my quick update! Hopefully I will be all the way sheathed tomorrow and start in on the insulation very soon! Also, time to start the garden, going to the market to get my plants this weekend!!! wewt! Have an amazing week! Here are some pictures in no particular order…
PS. For those of you who didn’t catch it the radio show went well, i got to talk for a half hour about tiny houses and thank each of my sponsors publicly . I will see if I can get the audio of it or at least a link and post it!
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- I wanted to hold Barney, he didn’t want me to… I won!
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- Jonathan checking out my very first housewarming gift, from dad!
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- he’s pretty funny, dad and him were BFFs :)
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- I took Jonathan around Boise and probably tried to convince him of how much better Boise is than Portland, this is taking a load off later in the evening.
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- more relaxation! Barney isn’t so much into the camera. He was being super cute until I pulled the camera out, then it was back on dad’s lap…
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- This was pretty much Barney’s night. The cat taunted him, he found out Barney couldnt make it up to the loft on his own, so he hung out there and watched him… Barney went crazy :)
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- this is pretty much what happened, Dad and Jonathan chatted, about politics and government issues etc… Barney and Cat ‘played’/taunted and I took pictures and enjoyed the first ‘social interaction’ in my tiny house… big smiles!
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- the same thing…
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- more taunting
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- I came back from Portland with an amazingly tidy shop, dad got the bug, because I’m so messy he couldn’t stand it… Now I have to do better to keep it clean!
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- you can actually see the ground, amazing!
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- all the tools are lined up on the tables! So nice!
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- no idea what this is….
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- more chatty!
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- Barney thought he may have a better shot from a different angle, unfortunately the barn floor is much further down… no such luck!
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- Dad and mom went to a charity auction this weekend and found me my first house warming gift, I LOVE it, I love the size the color the function, cant wait to break it in! it is an igrill, it plays my mp3s adn grills, what more do you need besides some bbq’d veggies and great music! really? Thank you dad, its PERFECT!
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- the overall view :)
Update – Walls – Sheathing
April 19, 2012 § 3 Comments
Just a quick update before I leave town for the weekend (Can’t wait to explore Portland and have a long awaited visit with Dan!). I didn’t get as much done as I hoped these last couple days but we did get some sheathing up and it’s still giving me warm and fuzzy feelings . I swear I took more photos than this, apparently not though…
Up it goes!
Getting ready to cut the openings out.
prior to cutting windows out
Update – More Walls
April 15, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Another quick update, I got lots of loose ends tied up, even though I may not have taken pictures of all of it . I promise, lots of progress this weekend! Wewt!
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- I took apart 10 more pallets… it’s been a while since I’ve worked on those. I officially took apart half of the pallets I bought. Still TBD on the exterior siding…
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- Framed in the floor area to extend the loft for the king sized mattress.
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- I extended out the loft and thought it was a great opportunity to put in a closet for the battery storage for solar power. I have been feeling like the solar is not going to fit into my initial budget (unless there is a sponsor out there :) ), I want to build in an area for it because eventually I will have solar. So, I have a closet at the front of the trailer in a semi ‘warm’ space accessed from the exterior for battery storage.
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- The depth view.
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- This is a cat… Named ‘Cat’…
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- I put this window in the wrong place!! Oh noes. The worst part is I didn’t even notice it. Dad noticed it though, but he thought I just gave into how he wanted it. He was more comfortable with more ‘meat’ toward the back of the trailer and to push the windows towards the middle… I however was concerned about how the lav in the bathroom lined up with the window. Yet I put this window in, all by myself… and messed up the location! I couldn’t believe it!
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- We were able to remove the whole window assembly and relocate it, LUCKY!
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- In it’s new, CORRECT location… Dad FTW! It was actually WAY easier to move than expected.
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- and another shot…
Updated Design
April 14, 2012 § 10 Comments
Alrighty, I updated my Sketch-Up model a bit. His is a more accurate view of my designs. I go back and forth on the outside materials, I really like the way that Shane and Carrie’s tiny house siding turned out, I can totally picture 4″-6″ wide pieces of chocolate or bluish colored siding with darker or galvalum z-bars. I also am starting to bring back up the idea of the recycled pallets. I am going to take some more of those apart today and see how that goes.
As far as the darker material shown I am wrestling with what type of material to use. In my head it was always a standing seam metal roof but I want it to look monolithic when it turns the corner to continue down the outside wall, I don’t know how successfully my limited skills can pull that maneuver off with standing seam, and corrugated would be much harder. I am wracking my brain on what material to use, if you guys have any ideas I would greatly appreciate it!
Design
April 13, 2012 § 2 Comments
I realize I haven’t posted design sketches in quite a while. This is my latest design, a few pieces need to be updated but I thought I would post these until I can update my model. Here are my design sketches. Stay tuned for an update shortly with a little more accurate images.
