September 9th Update

Macy M4 comments5625 views

We made some headway!  It’s amazing how long some of this stuff takes, I totally thought we could get more done than we could this weekend, I always overestimate that stuff, we made some great progress though!  James helped immensely getting the ceiling insulated and I dove a little bit into the electrical.   It felt REALLY good to get back to work on the house!  And I had a great birthday weekend with lots of fun, family and food!!!  MMMM!

In other news, James and I went to a cool lecture (cool for us nerds) on maintaining rights on intellectual property, it was very interesting and got us thinking about all sorts of ideas!   We have a ton of great ideas floating around.  Originally this blog was intended to be on minimalistic living and making a transformation to more intentional life, to date what it has focused on is the tiny house build, which is MY first real big step but with that getting closer and closer to completion every day there are a lot of interesting ideas I/we have floating around that are going to start getting introduced.

I am very excited to start exploring some of these openly but I think we/I need to figure out how to go about it a little more privately before that can really start to happen, it’s all just so new now.  As some hints though… there are homesteading ventures being explored, business ventures being explored, gardening/canning/freezing/dehydrating projects being explored, Great Danes being mentioned and chickens!!! I can’t wait for chickens!  That’s not even all, there are so many good things coming down the pipes along with my house plans becoming available in the works!

James (who is really close to being done with his A.R.E.s, wish him luck for the 19th, that’s his second to last test! He will be a ‘real architect’ soon!) and I have been talking through ways to make a set of tiny house drawings, my house plan, that are REALLY easy to read for people who aren’t used to reading plans and detailed enough to be used for construction… and AFFORDABLE!  (free/donation based, we haven’t worked out those details just yet).  I really like how this community is so open and so friendly and SO helpful to one and other.  We would really like to help perpetuate that kindness.  Because of my/our backgrounds in architecture I feel like we can make a set of plans that conveys all this complicated building information in a simple way, ones that make sense to people who have never constructed anything.  If we can do that I feel like we can take a lot of the ‘big scary’ factor out of jumping off the cliff to tiny-housedom and people can understand in more plain/clear terms just how simple building one of these tiny houses can be.   My thought is that if more people saw how simple it could be, more people would want to entertain this idea, more people would build them and more jurisdictions would have to start accepting them, then we all win.  I’ve talked before about working from within the system to enact change, I feel like there is real potential to start doing that and that is how change occurs, if enough people want it will become more accepted…  I could go on and on, but it’s late, I’m tuckered and I’m sort of just going on a tangent anyway but we have been thinking of such exciting things, more to come soon!

Here are some pictures!

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4 Comments

  1. This gives me a bit to think about electrical, insulation and roof wise. I’ve been considering foam, wool, spray…even shredding all the daily junk mail I get. I would have enough to insulate my whole house in NO TIME! Anyway, good to see you up and about and GREAT idea to test you beginner electrical skills out. I think I may just try that. Will you leave the pigtail on in your final connection of everything for future ease or will you connect directly to the outlet?

    Oh! speaking of sheetrock, do you know of anyone who’s experimented with any other flat paintable surface other than sheetrock in a tiny surface? they have eco-rock however I read drywall in general cracks with a lot of movement and I will be moving the house relatively often but not sure if I want to go with an all pine interior either. Anyway, I’m happy to be catching up on all your progress. Keep it up!

    Marjorie

    1. I like the junk mail idea, you’re in southern California, right? If so I bet you could totally get away with that! 🙂 I am going to leave the pigtail on for the final hook-up, I may as well, I have the wire nuts and they are WAY easier to connect than trying to thread them back through the little outlet screw connections… It is a really strong connection so I don’t foresee any issues. Honestly I don’t know of anyone who has done other sorts of panels, I am certain there are some though. I was originally considering using like a 1/4″ Masonite type board but I talked myself out of it because its just about as heavy as the 3/8″ Sheetrock I’ll be using (which was the main consideration) and I think it would rip and tear just as easily with shifts in the trailer but be harder to repair. I would be really interested to see some other materials tried out for sure. Check out Carrie and Shane over at Clothesline Tiny Homes (http://clotheslinetinyhomes.com/2012/04/25/tiny-progress-drywall-mudding-and-plaster/), they did 1/2″ Sheetrock and have actually moved it a couple of times now with ZERO damage. I was very excited to hear this! I believe they did it in a special way where they caulked the joints so they could flex a little (maybe I made that up??). The joints and where it is mudded will be where the damage would occur and, honestly, drywall is easy to fix. It would be a pain if you are trying to move it really often but if it’s a few times a year my thoughts are that the risk is worth the nice clean look of Sheetrocked walls… that’s totally opinions though!

      As always thanks for getting in touch, I am so excited to watch your project, it’s going to be a whirlwind!

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