Tiny House Update 9.23.13

I have actually been pretty busy working on fixing all of the things on my ‘to-do’ list before the photos are taken in exactly 1 week and certainly before the TV crew gets here in just under two weeks from London.   There has been a lot accomplished and even though its stressful to have this deadline it’s actually great because it means I am actually going to finish all this crap, not just let it sit on my to-do list for months to come!  I am getting very excited to be done, there is one major project that will wait until after the crew has gone, that is winterizing my grey-water set-up but that is OK.  The rest will be done.  The great big awesome accomplishment from this weekend is that I have heat!  I finished hooking up my radiant floor heat and boy, it’s awesome!  The tiles were getting really chilly to walk across in the morning but now I actually get excited to get up and walk across the house :).  Of course if you ask James the big accomplishment is that the shower is cleaned!  He had to step up and finish that because I can’t be playing with the acid if I intend to make a baby with ten fingers and ten toes… he did a great job, that was a pretty big deal to get that cleaned and it probably took him a good 10 hours of scrubbing and spraying…. moral of the story, do a better job than me at grouting, I am pretty sure I am never allowed to grout again.  Last weekend I also got the weeds pulled from the yard and with the help of my brother, who gave me manual labor for my birthday this year, what I guy, right, the lawn was rototiller and planted, I even have little sprouts poking up.  Mom says that fall grass is the best grass, I am hoping so, my spring grass was all burned off with out unusually hot summer!  Maybe this can get in and get started and get strong before summer hits again.   Those are the three big ones, here are some pictures of the other parts, like my electrical closet doors, my trim, cleaning up the paint parts and fixing the dog food drawer that was just a tad too big to work well.  In not particular order here are some pictures:

Denny man is getting big, he's probably just a little over 70 pounds now, he's too big for me to actually pick up an weigh anymore so it's just a guess. His go-to nap spot was the couch but with the warm floors he likes laying down there now!

Nater doing the dirty work of wrestling the rototiller

Day one of cleaning the grout of the tiles, he finished the big nasty bad wall and made a big dent on the cubbies that were horrible

The floor has a ways to go, there is a lot of grout built up that shouldn't be. The drain should actually be square 🙂

I kept trying to get a picture of the steam that would come off after he put the muriatic acid on

You can kind of see it here, I took a video of it but just like me I am sort of dopey when it comes to being able to attach those sorts of things.

Nater also got me a fruit basket for my birthday, it has all sorts of things I've never had that are delicious! That watermelon is yellow inside and SO good!

And also, who has a stove, this girl!

It took me a little while to figure out how to light it but now it goes like a dream, this is the pilot light that was on but not lit that I think I can blame for the previous gas smells.

Thought I would try it out and make some cookies, not from scratch 🙂

It worked, there were a coupel technical difficulties that made the cookies not turn out super well, first they were frozen then I was trying to regulate the temperature but it turns out the stove actually does do that, i thought it wouldn't be that advanced because it's older but I should have just left it alone.

Denver dog has his moms grace and coordination... and now he'll have a big ole scare on his head...

James took him for a walk to the ponds by our house and he got distracted by a pile of glass then excited to run so he just took off full speed without looking where and ran straight into a log that was laying on the ground... I guess it was a pretty loud conk but no yelp... he got himself pretty good though.

And back to the work this last weekend... We are building out the frame of the electrical closet, there is no wood to nail too so we are building up some supports that will hold the doors.

The top gets fastened to the roof/bedroom floor above

The bottom board of the frame goes in too

The first door needed a couple notches to fit around some fixed trailer parts, the first being in the corner where a little piece of angle iron cut across the opening.

The second is a little notch to fit around a protruding piece on the hydrolic lift.

The notch completed... almost

And the piece it had to go around

Like a glove!

Mounting the hinges

The second panel is a fixed panel that sits behind the trailer lift. The electrical panel sits behind this, if I had better forethought I would have designed this differently as it is it will work... You'll notice the second smaller panel next to the big one too, that is for my radiant floor. I put it on an entirely different panel so that it will have it's own plug, right now I am just using a splitter and have a 15 amp power cord running my entire house. If that ever becomes a problem I can use two different circuits and split off my floor heating which is probably the main draw at the end of the day. I am happy to see that I don't need that right now though.

And all three panels mounted, finally!

Two open to allow access. This is where my extra dog food will be stored until I go off grid and then this is where the solar batteries will be stored. They do better in enclosed/protected spaces I've heard so I wanted to allow for this in my initial design even though I don't plan on having solar for a few years.

And the latch into the structure above that allows me to keep these locked. It's kind of nice to have a little outdoor storage area in my tiny house for garden tools and things too.

Here are the wires coming through to the cabinet inside where I will have my thermostat mounted, again, better forethought would have had this on the wall near outside but this works too and it's kind of nice to not have ti clutter up my wall, since it is measuring from the sensor embedded in the floor it is ok that it is enclosed. Usually you'd want it out to measure the air temperature but radiant heat is a little different set up.

Here is that other panel, there is a power in and a 15 amp GFCI breaker in there only for the floor, so far so good 🙂

Hooking it all up, going purely off of what I have learned from reading up on electrical because I lost the install guide 🙂

Who is awesome though?! That's right, I did actually LEARN this stuff and was able to get it up and going! It works SO GOOD!

And day two/three of grout cleaning, James is stoked to be done in there!

You can start to see the stones again! Wewt!

The drain is actually square again too!

Also went through and notched all those boards in my kitchen shelves that need it.

now all the slats sit flush and purty

I don't think I ever showed my pot/pan/utensil hanging bar either, like everyone seems to do because it's such a great space saving idea I hung an ikea bar under the lower shelf to put my pots and pans and things on, works like a dream and I think it looks cool too.

And my new tv, I went with a 32" to fit in my media center, and I got my books brought over, I think that is all that made the cut. Originally this was just one big book shelf but when I thought about how many books I was really going to have after downsizing I decided to design it as a media center/bookshelf instead, I have a computer tower stored below that is hooked up to the tv as a monitor so i can work here too.

And mom finished the last baby quilt block! its an adorable satin leopard. I think i am missing one from the line-up, either the hippo or the rhino, I'll have to do an update on that soon. 🙂

Putting some trim up on the shower since I forgot to do the schluter edge... there are lots of 'lack of forethought' mistakes in this house, I just find other ways to cover them, otherwise I would have never made forward progress. Even though it isn't perfect I am happy with all of my mistakes

And the awesome dog food drawer, I am happy to have fixed this, the bag of dog food has been just sitting in the shower... now it has a home, this will hold a 40 # bag of dog food and just sits under the stove. Another person might use something like this for pots and pans, I like big dogs though, so this is his pantry... 🙂

the acid did a number on my steal. this is the barn door side that was exposed to the fumes...

this is the other side that is pretty normal. It rusted the crap out of things! ill have to run through and scrub that off and seal it if I want it to stay silver.

And this is a harvest moon rising at the ponds where we walk Denny just by our house. it looks like a sun rise, the picture is cool but does no justice, it was neato

And at the birthday bbq bash James Nephew and nice were trying out my glasses, Ben looks so mischievous!

And Bradley is a cutie!