Tag Archives: practice

March Update…Finally

March 29, 2015learning curve, roof, tiny house build, work and lifebeginner, caretaking, DIY, expert, fail, fix, frustration, Learning curve, lesson, liveandlearn, mistakes, practice, progress, ridge, ridge cap, roof, tiny house build, updateseedswithwings

March has glided into the Oregon bringing plum blossoms, morels and humming pollinators.

Sarah is working happily away with Sum Of Us, and I’ve been working on the land here gardening, building ‘A’ frames for a green house, and re-roofing the cabin we’re living in while we finish the Tiny House. It literally blew off in a huge storm that rolled through. This required peeling it off, scooping out the rotten old fiber-glass insulation (worst part…most def.), replacing and sistering in rafters, re-sheathing and putting on standing seam metal roofing and flashing a chimney. While it took longer than I thought it would, it didn’t take long at all…and the next metal roof that I do will be even better.

The good news is the tiny house is bone dry. That storm didn’t even come close! WOOT! While we were gone, there were some woodpeckers that made a home in the house, but then a ring-tailed cat moved in and took care of that problem! I evicted them plus a few wasps with a little sage smoke and we’re off to the races.

I feel like I’m continually finding ways that the house ‘could be better’ if only x-y-z, but at the same time I’m charmed by the little mistakes. I have even started laughing (lovingly) at ‘Past-Joseph’ when ‘Present-Joseph’, who has excellent hind-sight, comes upon something that his predecessor did that made the next step SO much more difficult.

The ridge cap is a perfect example of this. I know what the roofing directions told me to do, but the stock ridge cap that came with the roofing material was too small for our massive ridge beam and I just HAD to do it my way *eye-roll*. So I made a bigger ridge cap out of the metal sheeting, bent the edges a few times to mimic the original cap thinking the “z” channeling that we put on for ventilation would snug into it nicely.

This was dramatically foiled as I precariously tried putting a 25′ long 65 lbs piece of steel on in one long ‘home run’ and, after dropping it twice, hollered for Sarah to come up and help. She did, we got it on, but the piece was bent all over the place, and it was foolish to think that I could make a machine-straight bend in a piece of metal with only hand tools, then put it on while precariously straddling the roof.

Well, we’ve come this far!

I move forward knowing that this self here IS the past self, and will have to contend with/fix/accept the choices I make again and again as the learning curve winds on. It’s always a funny feeling to be SO SURE of what I’m doing, knowing full well that there will be something that humbles me coming down the pipe. There WILL be some part of the task that is unexpected, it’s never what I think it will be. After all, ‘these are the stones on which we choose to whet the keen edge of our spirit.’*

Next week I’ll start running electrical, and now that we’re a little more settled in this life, be more diligent about updating the blog. Thanks for reading!

Parting shots!

Cuper grillin me, as Annie looks on approvingly. — Throwback! Coopy practices for his performance as Rodolfo, in La Boheme

*Paraphrased from Richard Bach.

November Update: Home Is Where the House Is

November 14, 2014framing, roof, siding, tiny house build, work and lifeashland, beginner, build, Christmas Trees, community, DIY, framing, freedom, OR, partnership, practice, roof, southern oregon, sum of us, tiny house build, traveling, treeridersnycseedswithwings

Where to even begin!

Our house is dry-in (as far as we can tell)! That means waterproof, that means the outside is pretty much done!

And the house moved to Oregon. Wait…what? You’re in Oregon now? Yes, we’re in Oregon. Our lease was up on the sheep ranch we were still building, so it was time to mosey on. Good thing we’re building a house on wheels. Now we’re living in a small community in southwestern Oregon near Ashland. Trillium Farm is a stunningly beautiful place, and we are feeling very fortunate to living here alongside inspiring people, deep in the wilderness.

Here are some pictures of our little house, as we put the roof up and siding on.

And here it she sits, at Trillium, in Oregon.

If you blow up the picture below you can see small houses dotting the hillside, and if you look reeally close, you can spot Hoss, our big yellow truck. If you don’t want to squint, just rest your eyes and know that we live just above that green valley down the middle.

A baby bear print.

Joseph is in New York now, planning another fun year of Christmas-tree-forest wonder on the Lower East Side at St. Marks Church in the Bowery. #TreeRidersNYC

Here is a picture of the tiny house he builds every year on the sidewalk of Manhattan… more pics and upgrades to come!

Year one, very little building skills required mostly nailed together then scrapped 😦

Year two, a little more skillful from year one. We kept some of the pieces for re-use:

Year Three: after working on tiny house. This one was built in panels that bolt onto a base then bolt together… much like our house! And the only thing I will be replacing is the floor (which got kind of snow/water-logged last year).

Sarah has started a new job with SumOfUs. SumOfUs is a worldwide movement for a better global economy, which fights for people over profits, and to limit corporate power. Sarah serves as the Executive Program Coordinator where she… coordinates programs for the Executives 🙂 She works closely with the Executive Director and Chief of Staff, and also the Board and major donors. The SumOfUs staff all works remotely so Sarah can carry out her duties while nestled in the mountains of Oregon… or cozied up in a Tree Shack in the East Village, NYC… or even while sipping coffee on a visit to sunny Petaluma!

Here is a photo from a recent SumOfUs action in Australia, from a campaign to stop Doritos from using palm oil sourced from rainforest deforestation. More on the Doritos campaign here. And all of SumOfUs’ campaigns here.

So, there the house rests in Oregon, and here we are, New York at the moment, and Oregon again soon. Change swirling around us as we relax into movement as a way of being. What the new year will bring? Who knows. All we know is that this linear time will keep coming and we’ll keep flexing and learning, board by board.

Next up: Helpful practices we use to keep our heads straight while building.

Here’s Annie-Lamb-Boleyn just for good measure:

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.