Category Archives: tiny house build

Learning to build, then building, then learning to fix our mistakes

November 5, 2013framing, learning curve, tiny house build, tiny house thoughtsbeginner, build, framing, frustration, partnership, practice, wallsseedswithwings

by Sarah

So this house-building thing takes a long time. The house may be tiny… but it still takes a long time!

After reviewing the Tumbleweed DVD this morning, we realized we’d missed a little detail… the sheathing that we’ve put up on the three walls we’ve constructed was supposed to overhang above and below the wall in order to attach to the roof and trailer’s fascia. We made an overhang below the wall and not above. It’s probably not that big of a deal. As in, we won’t have to re-do those walls. We will figure out a way to fix it, to attach small pieces of sheathing to something, to make it work.

After this little setback, and the ensuing disappointment, I reminded myself that:

1. It’s got to be about the process and not just the destination. Because the destination is far away, sometimes it feels very far away.

2. We are learning how to build. This is a useful and transferable skill.

3. We are learning to work together.

4. We are learning to be humble and to learn a new thing. How often in our adult lives do we get to learn something totally new, to be complete beginners again? Not that often.

I hesitated writing this post, because I want this website to be fun, and not to focus too much on the frustrations. At the same time, frustration is a big part of building a tiny house if you’ve never built a house before. I want to be honest about this. It is hard. It’s not obvious. There are many little pieces and no clear and simple recipe. Building is an art, and it’s vast. We are sloppily finger-painting our ways towards something. I hope it will be a house that stands straight, resists rains, and keeps us warm.

I did feel encouraged when I ran through those four points, though, reminding myself of all the ways we are learning and growing, even when the external progress on the house appears so slow.

Also encouraging, we’ve had company this week! Joseph’s brother Adam stayed with us for the past ten days and it was so fun to have another person to build with. Since we left our Sonoma build site, it’s just been the two of us (and sometimes only Joseph!). Having Adam here reminded us of how fun and energizing it is to do things with other people!

Here are some photos of our build progress.

Adam and Joseph cutting the plywood to fit around the wheel well.

We've got three walls! — We’ve got three walls!

A Day at the Salvage Yard

September 27, 2013preparing to build, tiny house buildDIY, flooring, group build, how to, recycled, salvage, siding, tileseedswithwings

by Sarah

We are trying to salvage as many of the materials for our house as we can. It fits with our environmental goals, and it fits with our budget! We’ve written about salvaging our windows before, but we thought it’d be fun to take you along with us on a day of salvaging.

We’ve been to most of the main salvage yards in the Bay Area, and we really like Whole House Building Supply in San Mateo. We were there with Meg last Saturday, then went back with our truck on Tuesday to really spend some time, pick up Meg’s doors and our own purchases, and to film along the way. Whole House has a great selection of lumber, as well as the doors, windows, sinks, and other items we’ve seen in other places. They also have really fair prices, artwork made of salvaged objects, and demolition sales, where you can go to a house they are taking apart and buy things right off of it (we have yet to do that!).

We’ve also visited:

Urban Ore, Berkeley – major “eco-park” with lots of interesting stuff.

Ohmega Salvage, Berkeley – more like an antique store, inspiring but expensive.

The Away Station, Fairfax.

Heritage Salvage, Petaluma – beautiful furniture made from salvaged materials, and a small salvage materials yard we have yet to explore.

Habitat for Humanity Re-Store, Santa Rosa – we got many of our windows there, lots of great stuff.

And, of course, our home away from home, Maselli’s, Petaluma, where we bought many of our tools, our strong ties, and countless extremely useful odds and ends.

And still on our list is to check out the Sonoma County Dump and Building Resources in San Francisco. Any recommendations for more salvage opportunities in the Bay Area?

We got a great haul from Whole House including flooring, interior siding, odd pieces of finish plywood for shelving, a mirror, a couple of tiles, a few sheets of plywood in good condition, and more.

Check out our video to see inside the salvage yard and to see our purchases!

Building Update

September 18, 2013framing, tiny house buildbuild, butcher block, framing, group build, interior design, shou-sugi-ban, wallsseedswithwings

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.

Base Plates in place and pre-drilled — base plates in place and pre-drilled

Sarah measuring and placing things for a dry run.

The Tumbleweed staff took a break from the office to lift the wall into place

I have no idea how we would have done it without them!

plywood overhand — plywood overhang to connect the walls

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.