Tag Archives: tiny house build

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:

You Get What You Pay For

April 7, 2014more stories and reflections, tiny house build, work and lifeBBS, Big Box Store, build, community, DIY, expert, fail, help, how to, LHS, Local, Local Hardware Store, Maselli's, Mead Clark, Professional, relationship, tiny house build, usefulnessseedswithwings

While I haven’t written here for a while, I feel an update is definitely due. This is not that update.

I’m writing to extol the virtues of the Local Hardware Store which will heretofore be referred to by the acronym LHS.

Big Box Stores (BBS) like Lowes, Home Depot, Friedmans, Amazon…They have everything a consumer could possibly need! It’s cheaper than going to that little store on the corner, right? Plus, they present options beyond your wildest dreams, right? How could an LHS compete with the shear magnitude and inventory at one of these places? However, I’ve proven again and again that, in the long run, getting something at your LHS is a lot less expensive than the cheaper big-box store.

To wit.

We’ve been dealing with a tricky septic situation here on the ranch for the past month or so, and it finally looks like it might be resolved in the near future. I needed some pretty specialized items and went to Maselli’s, our beloved LHS. Upon walking in, one of the owners (actually, I’m not sure if he is an owner, but he certainly takes ownership and knows everything) asked if I needed help. It felt a little like if a major league ball player asked if I needed help with my curve ball.

YES! I DO! I told him exactly what I needed, and he showed me to the PVC fittings. I picked out what I thought I needed, asked a few more questions about possible hacks for a flotation ball that popped off the septic pump (I’m currently using a tennis ball…which everyone approved of) and went to check out. The guy at check out noticed that I had grabbed two different pipe fittings, though they were both three inches in diameter. He explained that one is for drains, and the other for pressurized systems, and pointed out that the drainage one was noticeably smaller. Then I held up my pipe, and he asked if I had all purpose glue. “Regular PVC glue won’t work?” No, apparently my pipe isn’t the regular type of PVC, so I ran back and got the “290” glue like he said and came back to finish checking out. He further mentioned that my pipe plug was 6”, just in case, and I told him it was for a different project completely. He nodded and wished me a good luck.

This visit to Maselli’s, Mead Clarke, or my childhood LHS, Smith and Strebels, would have been the same. The professionals throughout the store offered their specialized help, and the checkout people knew what they were looking at and helped troubleshoot my problem before I had one!

Based on previous experiences in the BBS’s, I can imagine I would have wandered around without any help, left with different size fittings (even though they’re both three inches), inappropriate glue, and the wrong size pipe-plug. I’d get home, try all my fittings, glue the ones that did work with the wrong glue, spend time figuring out where I went wrong, ask Google perhaps, call dad, go back to the store and, after about eight hours, maybe get it right the second time. Instead, I solved it all the same day with the friendly, non-judgmental help from some real pro’s who love helping other people DIY.

So yes, BBS’s are cheaper if you don’t count time and frustration. The prices are lower and so is the quality. We’ve decided, unequivocally that buying something at an LHS for a little more money, makes up for the time, gas, and soul-drainage spent frequenting BBS’s.

For the sake of length I’ve refrained from enumerating my BBS follies, and LHS triumphs, but would love to hear about yours! Go LHS!