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Update 5.22.13

May 22, 2013 § 9 Comments

We (dad) got some more plumbing stuff done today, the water heater is vented! the bathroom sink is installed, the gas lines are run! The mechanical room is filling up! I forgot to take a picture of it but my great uncle Bill gave me an oversized propane tank to use, that will save me some runs to fill up the little ones! Pretty cool! It’s all getting so close to getting done!

I should also share, I had an offer in on a place downtown which had a house on it ad was a great lot layout, I was haggling on the price pretty hard and ALMOST got there but that offer fell through. I am still on the hunt for a good deal though. The plan is to buy a piece of property that will accommodate my house and provide a rental income at the same time. One of my favorite financial quotes is “Make your money on the buy, not the sell; this is true in any investment whether it’s real estate, business, or the stock market.” That is the motto here, I am not in a hurry to buy, I am not getting emotionally invested, I am looking for an investment opportunity. In the meantime I will be moving my house down town to James’s property where he as a double lot, I can live downtown while I keep looking for a place of my own and he can get some rental income too, win win. Wish me luck!

Here are some pictures:

: The mechanical room, its filling up!

: The yellow line and copper line are the gas lines, one to the water heater one to the oven Yeah for gas stoves!

: The gas line connections under the trailer.

: The bathroom sink all installed, still needs to be caulked into place but it’s there and it works!

: Even the cupboard

: front view

: And the eccotemp pieces came in, I just barely needed the extender, both of these seem WAY overpriced but I needed them… so 40 bucks for a couple feet of pipe…that I cut in half and mutilated :)

: The angels got cut to vent correctly

: and bending the the pieces to fit in in one and other

: Filing down the sharp edges from cutting

: Drilling the hole out to vent this on the deck. Now, Eccotemp says don’t vent this unit out within 4 feet of a door or window, I don’t think there is a single place I could vent this in my house if that was necessary, instead I will be installing a carbon monoxide detector, since it’s not used that much I think I will be ok…

: Two steps forward one step back, had to take a bit of the siding down to put in the vent.

: And the vent installed, we basically had to add one more angle and about 10 inches of pipe, should be A-O-K.

: From the outside, just to note, the vents that go to the outside should be angled downward at least 5 degrees so that any rain or condensation drains outside rather than inside, I would have done that wrong without careful reading and a reminder from pops!

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Update 5.20.13

May 21, 2013 § 6 Comments

I was trying to get the barn-door done tonight, no such luck but I did get all the ‘hard’ parts done. Here are some pictures:

: Welcome to Idaho, I was tempted to try to drive under this!

: Tonight’s agenda was the barn door for the bathroom door. Nathan is a jewel, we measured up and cut the pieces

: Laying all the pieces out on the ground to be welded

: The beast that makes the magic happen

: the REAL beast that makes the magic happen :)

: Slightly off on one side so we had to take it off and re-weld it.

: All right!

: Then grinding the finish

: and getting ready to cut off the bottom of the hooks

: and the hooks all cut off, these will not be weight bearing, they are just hooked over a bar to make the door stand upright,

: Tacking these in place, I just measured them out 6 inches from each end.

: and the other

: And placing the wheels, also 6 inches from each side, i wish i was able to find some skinnier wheels, these ones poke out on one side really bad, yet another issue to work through.

: The are flush with the outside but the inside will need some craftiness to make them look intentional… hmmm

: The pieces to the bar to hold it upright

: And installed. I was hoping to get the wood in it too but it didn’t happen. Tonight I work on the wood pieces. And try to get ahead of some more siding.

Update 5.19.13 – with blood…

May 20, 2013 § 15 Comments

We (James and I) rocked it this weekend, we didn’t get as much as I idealistically wanted to get done but we got exactly what I realistically hoped to get done and a smidgen more! This was the big weekend for siding, it will take more and it will take longer because at this point it is all ladders but it is looking AWESOME. Pallets are a TON of work to re-use but personally I think it’s worth the look. At this point the wood is just decorative, the moisture barrier is behind that. It is a rain-screen wall designed to let water through and vented out the top and bottom. Do not use this same system without setting it up as a true rain-screen, it will rot out all your hard work!

Also, I would like to dedicate this post to Ms. Freeman’s class in Texas, I know how much you guys like to see me get hurt . Be warned, the last two pictures have blood, it did not hurt but it is gross… caused once again by, you guessed it, me being klutzy! (I will give a warning in the slideshow view to not look at the next picture if you don’t like blood)

And there is a Denver update, he’s getting big and even more handsome!

Thank you James for all of your help this weekend, I could not have got this far, this fast, without you!

Tonight, I (Nathan) work on the barn door for the bathroom…

: First the good stuff! This is Denny, my soon to be here Great Dane!

: I have wanted a Great Dane for like, over 20 years, seriously! One of the things this tiny house enables me to do is pick my priorities and focus on them. My living expenses are small so I don’t have to work so much and I get to spend my time doing the things I want to do instead of need to do, which includes lots of dog training and walks for me!

: Hes three weeks old here and growing by the hour, I get him shortly after he turns 8 weeks old, there is a lot of prep-work left to do but he and I will both call this tiny house home, some people find that crazy but it has been designed completely with him in mind!

: A separate note, my brother is back to the furniture making, this is a nightstand he’s made with steps for his little weiner dog Jack to be able to hop into bed, Jack is going to love it and I think it looks awesome! My brothers bad-ass furniture is my inspiration for my kitchen and dresser :)

: So, to the work! We got some siding going! Made it up to the windows by the end of Saturday before we went to a birthday party

: James spend his precious Friday evening helping me de-nail and plane down some pallet wood to be put up on Saturday

: Then Sunday we hit it hard again to plane down even more wood, it was ridiculous and got a little more in place.

: I think/hope we have enough wood on hand to just put up, it will be a big job with lots of ladder work for sure!

: The overall, this will be stained darker to match the kitchen/loft area but each of the woods will look different so it should really bring out the variation.

: I am not sure why I have never been photogenic and also why I make weird faces while I work… this was the best of several though… uggg

: I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘free’ siding because there are a lot of man-hours put into it but really I didn’t do it soley because of the price-point, i thought this would turn out great and it definitely has to this point!

: A little sun-shiney…

: The shadows are getting long and it’s time to wrap up the weekend

: A couple more evenings (or another weekend) and it should get done

: This is nothing as far as the total amount of sawdust goes… there was at least four times this much, I thought I had a picture but I didn’t, this all came from the planer prepping the wood

: The scrap pieces that probably aren’t worth saving, not bad for 80 or so pallets… I expected more

: James did most tof the dirty work of searching for those left-over nails that could hurt the planer blades

: I am very thankful for his help. VERY, this was NOT a fun job at all.

: And the remaining wood left to put up, ready to go, just have to rip it to size and nail it up! (This is where you stop looking if you don’t want to see the blood)

: I was trying to change the blade out in the planer and slipped trying to un-do one of the bolts… turns out I suck at reading directions, they turn the other way… I hate tricky bolts, I’m used to righty-tighty, Lefty-loosey…) I ended up punching the metal which happened to have a blade in it… the cut didn’t actually hurt near as much as the punching of the metal…

: But it turns out if you keep working and don’t let an injury set just a bit it will just keep bleeding… I had to change a few bandages… This happend Saturday and it is pretty much all better today, biology is amazing! Sorry for the gross factor, I did it for the kids ;-)

Update 5.15.13 – Night :)

May 15, 2013 § 3 Comments

Collecting some odds and ends. Here are some pictures:

: First and foremost, my cousins became home owners today! BIG congratulations Sage and Mikel!

: As for the house update I wanted to get the bathroom sink millwork done so that the sink could be installed

: This is the same tongue and groove wood that the wonderful Ms. Stacey found on Craigslist. This has become a major component of my house, I don’t know what I would have done without her finding this deal, for free!!!

: Got it all glued together, trimmed to size and stained to match the rest of the wood in the house

: Installed even! Looks great

: AND the cabinet is functional :) The first cabinet door installed :)

: The corner detail, it isn’t ‘perfect’, close though! :)

: The door, I don’t think I’ll put a pull on this since it really is more utilitarian under there then a real cabinet

: These are my hinges, they were a great deal AND perfect functionally, they let the cabinet doors sit right next to the wall and lift them to open.

: Aside from that I also got the next round of pallets ready to go, over the next few days I will be de-nailing these, planing them and ripping them to size in preparation for the next round of siding!

: And another pallet of pallet wood, this is about 50 pallets taken apart, really that is probably the hardest part, the rest just takes time…

: In case I don’t have enough taken apart I do have some ‘extras’ for taking apart.

: Also, I de-nailed and cut to size the hardwood flooring to be used on the bathroom barn-door, Nate has agreed to help me weld up a frame for them soon and I need to figure out the home-made hardware part…

Update 5.5.13

May 5, 2013 § 9 Comments

Here is this days progress. I started the pallet siding. Here are some pictures:

: The stove being reassembled, it looks gret, I can’t believe how much better it looks

: And installed

: Procrastinating the siding I decided instead to plan the seedlings I started a few weeks back

: Here they are, various flowery vines that should look pretty on the side of my house

: And planted

: With no more options I have to put siding up… I prepped a lot of pallet wood previously but I still had to do some, here I am planing down the wood in order to stain it in the end, one pass through

: Second pass

: Third pass

: and final fourth pass, every board has to go through about this many passes or more. Pallet wood is mostly free but ridiculously labor intensive

: I got a few rows up and needed a break.

: I was thinking about doing mitered edges at the corners but because they are all slightly different thicknesses and wood tends to shrink at different rates I thought it would be better to do finger joints like this

: This is as far as I got done today.

: The porch

: porch 2

: overall

: This is the reason to wear a mask when cutting this stuff, these pallets are all used and coated in various amounts of whatever, in an effort to not breath this cocktail of chemicals in you really should wear a mask, You don’t want this stuff floating around in you. I am using all of the pallet wood outdoors as well, you wouldn’t really want it installed indoors for the same reasons. I think for my rain-screen wall it will be ok.

: I am also making a lettuce tower.

: and the tower on the porch :)

: Another shot I guess

: this is the trellis which is rather saggy now that it has warmed up a bit. Not a huge fan but it should work and Im just going to cut it down at the end of the season.

: I also caulked all of the trim indoors

: My lovely kitchen minus some open shelving up above

: Much better color match, you can also see the brand of washer I got here.

: I had to epoxy on the oven handle, the screws fell apart

: The water heater JUST BARELY fits. I have like an 1/8 of an inch to spare with the vent

: I cut some boards for the bathroom sink, not complete but planed and ready to go.

: I cleaned up and showered then got ready to head out and came upon 9 people hanging out on my tiny house porch, my folks were showing their friends, Tobi also showed up, she seems to like the patio