We sent out a blank post earlier today!  Oops.  Here’s the real thing!

by Joseph

Hello All. We’ve been cooking along on our tiny house, and have received so much encouragement and physical, emotional and cyber-ical help from y’all. Thanks! We figured it was time for an update on the nuts and bolts of the build.

Our second wall is UP!  Building this wall went SO much faster than building our first wall, which is about a third as big.  Meg and Bre, two of our group build compatriots, helped us measure, nail, and everything else to make this wall happen.  We’ve discovered building goes much faster with three or four people than with just us two.  Once we had the wall built, we got even more help.  Five generous, charming, and strong Tumbleweed staffers joined us to lift the wall’s thousand pound mass up and over the welded-on trailer bolts, and then tilt it carefully into place.

Our new wall is a little out of square, but after letting it sit for a few days  it went from one-and-a-half inches out down to three quarters of an inch out… and we think (hope!) once we start strapping and bolting things down it’ll get even more level/plumb.

Here are some pictures of our progress.

Team Purple (Bre and Joe) are working on their shou-sugi-ban siding while they wait for their SIPS to be delivered; it is beautiful! Shou-sugi-ban is a traditional Japanese wood treatment.  They torch the wood, then sand/wipe it, then treat it. We’ve included some pics here and we’ll definitely share more as they progress.

Meg is making a beautiful butcher block for her interior counter tops using multi-colored strips of hardwood. Here’s a video we took while deciding on butcher block design (also more of this to come).

We also met with Meg to hammer out a new vision for the interior of our house.  This made the whole thing feel very real all of a sudden.  This actually took a few hours, as we walked around on our two-walled trailer platform and visualized various things, drew in our sink and oven and thought thoroughly about who we are and what’s important to us in a space. We asked questions like: How do you enter a space?  What’s the first thing you do? the second?  How do we want to use the space? Cooking, computer work, yoga, dinner parties, getting dressed, bathing, watching movies, reading, day-dreaming, cuddling (Sarah wrote that last one, I swear).

Also, we’ve been thinking about who each of us are and what we each need. Por ejemplo: Sarah needs private place to write. Joseph wants be able to be an introvert, even within a shared small space.  And, we like sitting around the table together. All of this process was really helpful to start thinking about. Sarah and I were just so focused on how to frame a house, that we started letting the inner details fade. Here’s a picture of the sketch Meg made for our interior, though we feel this will be it’s own post when we get a bit closer.