Roofing ordered – check! We wrestled a bit with the best roofing to go with. We knew we wanted standing seam metal roofing, but, of course, there are many brands and models of such. We decided we wanted the standing seams to be as short as possible, so that limited our options. We ended up going with ASC Building Products’s Skyline Roofing. It has one-inch standing seams, a dark gray color option, and a manufacturing plant right here in Sacramento. Continue reading
Author: Tracy
Proud Owners of a Plywood Pentagon
I didn’t realize how hard it would be to find the minutes for sharing this building adventure! We’re still working away, but with the build (and researching and planning it) taking up most moments of our free time between our full-time jobs and fieldwork stints for Eli – okay, and some backpacking and canoeing and wedding trips squeezed in, too! – there’s little time to share the progress with you all here! Excuses, excuses. Enough with that. On to the photos showing all that has been done…
Updated visualizations
There have been some substantial changes to the Sketchup model of Hygge Hale since I first posted screenshots of the model, so I figured I’d show you all what our current vision of Hygge Hale looks like. There are still some things I’m working on in the model (ignore that half-finished roof over the bay window!) – just like the physical build, it’s a work in progress. We’re slowly making headway to bring this visualization into the reality of the world! Continue reading
Clean the life out of it
Clean and tidy surroundings are instrumental in the pleasant and peaceful existence I crave. There’s nothing like the feeling of ease and serenity I experience when I sit down in a freshly groomed home.
However — I have to be careful not to clean existence away. Put that dusting cloth down. Continue reading
Tiny Fridge
Although the tiny house isn’t yet built, we’ve been enjoying a tiny fridge for quite some time. When we moved over a year and a half ago to the house we’re renting now, a refrigerator wasn’t provided. After living out of a borrowed cooler for a few weeks, our initial thought was Craigslist, which is our norm when furnishing a new living space. However, we realized if we were going to pay for a fridge, we should do a test run of the fridge we were planning to buy for our future tiny house. Continue reading
A roof over our heads
Well, the start of a roof anyway…
The next step in getting our house framed out – the rafters! We had assistance with the start of the rafter building, but Eli and I had to finish up their assembly and get them mounted in place on top of our walls after our helpers had to leave us. We’re doing our roof a bit differently than many other tiny houses. Continue reading
Not so tiny assistance!
A stroke of luck for us!
Despite having just spent a number of days being put to work assisting on a remodel Eli’s brother and sister-in-law are doing on the house they just bought, Eli’s parents were kind enough to stop by our place on their way home and be put to work assisting on our house build, too! Continue reading
It’s Actually a Rocky Road
I had a request to know more about the trials and tribulations, not just the fun and successes, of the tiny house planning and build. Although I tried to at least touch on some of our frustrations as we’ve gone through this process in other posts I’ve written, I do want to express, perhaps more specifically, that this process has definitely not all been smooth sailing and simple decisions. Continue reading
Sheathing is Seeing
With it being the busy time for wildlife field work, Eli’s often in the field right now for week long stints, so when he’s back home, we make it count with work on the tiny house! Our weekends (and some of Eli’s weekdays) are full of 2x4s and saws and toolbelts and nails and screws… and now sheathing! We’re currently working on getting the framed-out skeleton covered. Day by day, it looks more and more like a house!
But first, with all the walls up and squared, we had to make sure those walls were well secured to the trailer! Continue reading
Another Stick in the Wall
We had to keep the momentum going! So, up bright and early (to beat the California Central Valley summer time heat!) the next day to kick out those last two walls.
New strategy for the second long, 24-foot wall Continue reading
Walls to Vertical
The Independence Day holiday was a working holiday for us. Once we started up again with the actual physical construction part of this tiny house build, we’ve been very eager to continue on with the wall framing, so pretty much every day recently that we aren’t working our normal jobs, we’re hitting the build to keep our progress momentum. So, the fourth of July was a day spent slicing and dicing 2×4’s and a few 2×6’s. We got our third wall (one of the long walls) laid out and Eli, having just worked a slew of long days in the field, had time on Thursday to assemble it all. So I came home from work to a third wall framed and ready to go! Continue reading
Physics, shmysics
Because my idealist being (live the ideal!) does not like to be squelched by the piddly details of physical laws, it’s been difficult to reign my tiny house dreams in. This has created substantial frustration, research time, and a lot of anxiety for Eli and I, particularly as we try to remain within the bounds of a realistic budget for this tiny house build. I’m not going to lie, it’s been a stressful lot of months – pretty much since January – with a good bit of hindsight do-over wishing and a lot of feeling ignorant about many things on my part. Damn you, physics, bringing me back down to earth! (Literally – the law of gravity is the basis for our concerns about our tiny house’s weight. 🙂 ) Is this going to be just a really expensive learning experience?! Continue reading
Jack of All Trades
Literally. That’s us. ‘Cause we’re those people that just have to do everything ourselves. Not sure if that makes us handy, self-sufficient, or just stubborn… or, as I feel in regular bouts of confusion and uncertainty, really just foolish… It’s a foggy line.
We’ve got to figure out not only construction to build this house, but also Continue reading
A Time for Purchasing and Ordering
It seems this is our season for tiny house elements compiling. We seem to be doing a lot of ordering and purchasing these past few weeks. When we put in the order for our Andersen windows, we also went ahead and placed the order through Lowe’s for our Fakro skylight/roof window. And it already arrived last week (we’ve got much longer to wait for the rest of our windows). So, we headed to our local Lowe’s store over the weekend and brought that bad boy home.
Although nowhere near the heart-swelling capabilities of the Sardine, Continue reading
Sardine
No, I’m not calling our tiny house names – I’m talking about our soon-to-be tiny woodstove! We just put in an order for one!!!
The “Sardine” is made by Navigator Stove Works, a small, independent shop who builds made-to-order marine (i.e. originally made for sailboats) iron woodstoves. And, these stoves are freakin’ adorable. Continue reading
Ready to roll
Our trailer is now street legal! Okay, honesty at the forefront, this happened a few months ago, but I kept getting distracted from posting about it. But, back to our trailer now being ready for the road. Continue reading
Have they given up?
I imagine many of you are wondering just where in the world we’ve been for the past two months since I last posted about the tiny house. Maybe even a few, “Have they abandoned this harebrained idea??” (Which just might be something that has also crossed – and I’m sure will again – our minds on occasion with this adventure…)
Well, we’ve continued to slug and drudge through the black box of window purchasing these many days. If only we’d had some foresight into how the window industry works! Continue reading
Secret Life of the Locals
I am little enamored with technology (alright, the term luddite has been adhered to me on more than one occasion), but the ability to catch photos of your curious nocturnal neighbors and their undisturbed behaviors — give me that camera!
No, I’m not a voyeur – well not of humans, anyway! Continue reading
Single use my a**
Cause everything deserves a second chance at life, clean those baggies! And, those produce bags!
We’re actually trying to move to cloth zippered bags and produce bags, but plastic bags continue to find their ways to us (are they like cats and can sense when someone doesn’t like them??), Continue reading
Cheers to you!
With mine rapidly approaching, a word about birthdays:
What better way to honor a person than to celebrate his or her birth and all the successful years that have ensued in his or her life since. A celebration of that individual’s existence in the world. A holiday special for each individual, recognizing their individuality and significance. So, I try not to miss other people’s birthdays, and I try to do something special for my own. Continue reading