Walls - Day 3-4 - Almost There

 (~9 hrs)

End of Day 4: 7 of 8 panels installed!

Today started with discovering a puddle of cat vomit on my subfloor. Gee, thanks. To whom do I owe the honor?

The upside to it was that really, things could only look up from there.

And they did! That is, two more wall panels went up today, which, after yesterday's work, brings me up to seven of eight panels installed--and three of four walls completed.

I feel good!

Walls - Day 1-2 - 50% Done

 (~12 hrs)

(Photo credit: Rachel Escher--thank you!)

Walls! Dimensions! My house is starting to look like a house... if you face a certain direction and don't look up!

I had predicted that it would take us three days to complete the walls, but at our current rate of two panels per day, it's going to take four. That's okay.

Big thanks to Mom and Ellen, Chuck, Troy, and Rachel for helping Dad and me these past couple of days! 

Today's post will be photo-heavy because I don't feel like writing. (I feel like going to bed.)

Sill Plates: 75%

(~6 hrs)

It looks 100% done, but the end pieces aren't bolted down yet.

Sill plates. If you'd asked me what the quickest and easiest step in building the walls would be, I'd probably have said the sill plates. What could be simpler? Just glue and bolt some 2x4s around the edges of the floor, keep them half an inch from the edge, and... there you go!

Plus, the wheel well arches are obviously the hardest part of the sill plate, and I had my plan all laid out for those ahead of time. Boom, taken care of.

So. Dad and I worked for about six hours today--not including a couple runs to the hardware store for supplies--and we got the sill plates about three quarters done.

The first and every lesson is: expect everything to be slower and more complicated than you think, if you've never done it before (and especially if you lack basic skills or physical strength...)! 

SIPs Mayhem!

The long wait for walls is over! The scheduled 8 AM delivery time was too good to be true, of course, but I had my delivery in hand before the morning was out.

Huge thanks and appreciation for Sarah, Rachel, and Jim for helping me and Dad with the unloading (and to my sister Ellen for cooking us sausages)! The panels were maybe not quite as terribly heavy as I expected them to be, but it definitely took all of us to easily maneuver the biggest 8' x 11' pieces. And maneuver them we did...

Impending SIPs, Roofline Alterations, and the "Tool Shed"

I have my SIP completion date: May 22! That's this Friday! That's so soon! Woohoo! And I broke down and paid for delivery, so I don't even have to worry about driving to Puyallup and back (250 mile round trip, hurray) in a rented truck pulling a giant trailer in Friday-of-Memorial-Day-Weekend traffic.

Worth it.

The delivery is scheduled for 8 AM on Friday. They told me I need four to six people to unload the panels from the truck, although I assume they were imagining brawny construction-worker types, not wobbly-armed neophytes like me, so I'm mentally converting that to six to eight people... haha. I've had a few volunteers so far--thank you! And I get to catch up with a few people that I don't get to see very often, which is icing on the cake, the ketchup on the fries, the salsa on the chips, and all the rest!

The Going Green Home - Part 3: Reclaimed Materials

(Part 1: Introduction)

(Part 2: Insulation)

Reclaimed material--or pile of junk?

Tiny houses could be seen as inherently eco-friendly because they use less stuff than a larger house. Obviously; they're smaller! Less stuff means fewer acres of forest logged, less metal ore mined, and less energy used producing stuff, fewer gallons of fuel burned shipping stuff, and (normally) less wasted stuff clogging landfills after the project is done.

But wait, there's more! With each piece of new stuff that you replace with reclaimed and reused stuff, it's like eliminating (nearly) all of the negative impacts of that stuff!

So, what exactly are reclaimed materials (stuff)? I define them as any materials that were saved from the landfill and put to use instead. Most often, they are materials removed from a building that is being demolished or renovated. They could also be surplus materials from a construction job. They could be old wooden beams or logs that have been milled afresh into lumber or flooring or another product. They could be materials that a building supply store or construction firm has had languishing out back for ages and it's time for them to go. They could even be city street or yard trees that had to be removed, and someone milled them into useful wood rather than relegate them to the wood chipper.

But whatever their origin, the basic idea of reclaimed materials is: Use the stuff that already exists, rather than throw it away and waste resources on producing the same stuff new. Good idea, no?

SIP Progress!

I know--I've been away from the blog for a while. Almost three months! But I wanted my next post to be about actual progress toward building my tiny house, partly out of pride and partly out of the fact that we've been having an outrageously sunny and warm late winter/spring and frankly, I couldn't be bothered to drag out my computer and sit in front of it writing non-essential blog posts when I could be out frolicking.

It's nice out today so I'll be spending some time frolicking. Today's scheduled frolicks: some work in the garden and a run on my town's newest stretch of waterfront trail.

But about that "actual progress" that I wanted to write about... yeah, it hasn't been very forthcoming. Until this past week!