Category Archives: tiny house build

A Strong Foundation, and a Wall

August 16, 2013framing, insulation, tiny house buildframing, group build, sharing, SIPS, subfloor, wallsseedswithwings

by Joseph and Sarah

It’s been an eventful month here at our group build site in Sonoma. As a group, we’ve been building subfloors onto our trailers and starting to frame our walls. Here’s a little update we wrote for the Tumbleweed Tiny House newsletter, and we added a bonus here: a short video of our build progress! Check it out at the end of this post.

I’m sure we’ll get used to it one day, but for now Joseph and I often find ourselves thinking, “This is actually happening! This is our house!” There is something so special about knowing exactly what is going into every single part of this house–every self-tapping metal screw, piece of plywood, and batt of insulation.

We started by protecting our future houses by screwing pressure-treated 2X6s all around trailer’s outer edge. It’s not easy to screw through pressure-treated lumber or steel trailers, let alone both. But we got much better at it as we went around each trailer, eventually settling into the right balance between effort and gentleness to get the screws all the way in without breaking.

Next we put in the subfloors. Meg and Dan (Team Yellow) and Joe and Breanna (Team Purple) used polystyrene insulation that they cut to fit between their trailer struts. After Team Red’s (that’s us) woeful experiment with washing wool for insulation we bought batts of recycled denim and fit those in. We put down construction adhesive, sill sealer, then we attached ¾” plywood. Yahoo–we have subfloors!

We are doing a traditional “stick build,” so we got going on modifying our plans to fit our salvaged windows, and then cutting sill plates for the whole house. We then cut the studs for the back wall and nailed them together with our new serious, dangerous tool, a pneumatic nail gun. Ka-thunk! We now have a back wall.

Sharing tools, batteries, and hands was such a benefit in this physical process. Lifting ¾” ply is not easy by yourself, nevermind placing the tongue in the groove and getting it all screwed down. When we made a mistake on our house, it was satisfying to be able to talk about what happened, and prevent our co-builders from doing the same thing.

The other two couples are building with SIPS (structural insulated panels), which have not yet arrived. In the meantime, Joe and Bre are researching old-time-y locks with skeleton keys for their front door. They’re also shopping around for a speak-easy door hatch.

Coming up next, a good old-fashioned SIPS-raising. Also, torching exterior siding shou-sugi-ban-style (What? You’ll see!) And more walls from us, definitely.

If you’re on Facebook, please check out our Seeds with Wings page – we are trying to post photo updates pretty often. And below is our fascinating yet concise build update video and pictures. You can see our first wall!

Steep Learning Curves in All Directions

July 29, 2013framing, learning curve, preparing to build, tiny house build, tiny house thoughts, working togetherseedswithwings

by Joseph

We’ve been planning for our tiny house, watching “how-to” videos, and thinking “this’ll be a breeze.” Okay, not a breeze… but I have some construction/carpentry experience and Sarah excels at learning new things. She’s got one of those sticky brains that will hold onto obscure, yet important information like what size nail we need to frame with (8d) or the R-value of denim insulation (???). So, whether by blissful ignorance, or misguided confidence we totally thought we were going to figure this thing out on our own. Not true.

As with all things, it takes a community. During these past few weeks of construction, that’s been hammered home (pun definitely intended). The following are some small steps on the steep learning curve we’ve started climbing.

I’ve used metal-tapping screws before. I could even explain how they work to someone who’s never heard of them. What I didn’t anticipate was how hard it would be to use them with the pressure-treated wood and tempered steel of our new trailer! Impact drivers sucking down 18 volt batteries and burning through gloves as I put my WHOLE WEIGHT into it, digging boots into grass and absorbing the shock with my arms, shoulders, and back. After doing this a few dozen times on our trailer, it was time to do Meg and Dan’s. After the trial and error on our trailer, I relaxed a bit, pre-drilled the holes and went slower (which makes a straighter, therefore more efficient, hole). Our whole group did this together and we all learned how to be more efficient, transferring our new skills to each others’ builds.

Another example of this transference:

With great difficulty, Sarah finagled the two tail-lights off our trailer (necessary before attaching the pressure-treated lumber, the lights will be put back on the outside of the house later), then did another trailer, and by the time she got to the third trailer it took her all of 10 minutes to handle the tricky wiring tucked neatly into the trailers frame.

And another:

Sarah and I cut the tongue-and-groove plywood for our sub-floor, and when we placed it we found that we were 1/4” off on each piece because we didn’t account for the tongue. The cutting, sealing, fitting, and attaching (more metal-tapping screws) took four of us all day to do. But the next morning we cut the plywood to the right size and knocked Meg and Dan’s sub-floor out in 2 hours!

So, though the learning curves are steep, it has helped to remember “We’re not in this alone!” Not only are we building with two awesome couples, but we have friends and family offering feedback along the way, and we have each other for balance and support when our sunburned arms are tired from impact-wrenching into steel. And we have YOU, dear reader, allowing us to fully process our journey.

Deep bows of gratitude to all those from whom we’ve drawn guidance, inspiration and knowledge. The path has been cared for by those who walked before us. May we also care for the path that others may tread safely to their dreams.

45889_328997900568078_1798403484_n — Impact drilling the plywood into the trailer

Meet the Cast and Crew of our Group Build

July 23, 2013preparing to build, tiny house buildDIY, group build, subfloor, tiny house build, trailersseedswithwings

As you may know, Joseph and I are undertaking this tiny house build in good company—we’re doing a group build of three tiny houses with two other couples. In this post we’re introducing the great people we’re building with. It was published on the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company newsletter, where we’ll be writing regularly about the group build.

Meet our Group Build crew, and their design plans:

Meg and Dan Stephens will be building Meg’s own design, the Tumbleweed Linden. Meg is the rockstar, ahem, in-house architect at Tumbleweed.

Meet Joe and Breanna in this sweet Valentine’s Day story about how a love of tiny houses actually brought them together. They will be building the classic yet modern Cypress 20 with dormers.

And of course, Joseph and I can’t wait to get started building the tiny house of our dreams, a modified Cypress 20. By the way, did you know were posting tons of build photos to Seeds with Wings Facebook page?

Over the next few months we six will be sharing a work site, some tools and resources, and muscles. Each couple will be working mainly on their own house, but we’ll help each other out as needed, with practical things like lifting up the walls, and with the intangibles, like advice and learning from each others’ mistakes. Even as we’re just getting started, it’s also nice to know that there are others in this with us.

We’ve been planning for our builds and buying materials for a couple of months now, but we felt like we were getting started for real when our beautiful new Tumbleweed trailers rolled into town. As you can see in the photo, the trailers look great (and so do we!)

Joseph and I found out they also roll (and brake!) just as beautifully when we hitched ours to our truck and towed it a few hours into Eastern California to pick up some cedar siding. We’re already seeing a financial benefit to doing the build as a group as we were able to share the cost of a full pallet of surplus siding at a good price. A pallet is too much for one tiny house, but should work out just great for three houses.

Since the trailers arrived, we’ve worked together to get the subfloors into the three houses, and we’re about half a day’s work away from finishing that step. Next step, framing our walls!

Here are a few photos from the first few weekends of group building:

For more photos, please do like us on Facebook and check out our build progress album!