Tiny Visit

My dad’s home from Ontario this week! He didn’t get to see the tiny house before I put it away for the winter. I wanted to get the loft beams out of the tiny house so I could sand them anyways, so we went for a little visit to the warehouse this morning. 🙂

We got the beams out and loaded them into the van. I was considering buying new beams instead that are better quality, but I checked one of the other building stores and theirs were in way worse condition. I guess I’ll stick with what I have! I plan to get the 4x4s in decent shape so they’re ready to go in when I get the house out.

With my birthday coming up and my work schedule, I’m super busy for the rest of the month, but starting in May it’s building season again! Ta ta for now!

P.S. Yes, my hair is red now  😛

 

SketchUp Model!

I have FINALLY finished a 3D model of my tiny house framing. It’s been a long journey.

I have tried using SketchUp multiple times over the past few years. I watched tutorials and attempted to make a 2×4 but I’d get frustrated and give up. Whoever created SketchUp must have a completely different way of thinking than I do, because I found the functions to be so counter-intuitive. I preferred drawing with my own hand (and a ruler) on paper so I could get exactly what I wanted. But the engineer I’ve been working with doesn’t like my amateur drawings, and I refuse to pay someone to do “proper” drawings. So, one of my goals for this winter was to try again with SketchUp and make a model that would be easier for the engineer to officially approve. After a lot of yelling at my screen about the stupid functions, it’s done!

Here are some screen grabs of my progress 🙂

Surprisingly, the rafters ended up being the easiest part. Let’s hope that’ll be true in real life too when I start putting them up! I did find two mistakes when I was putting this together. My math was slightly off for the studs above the wheel wells, so they were just a little bit taller than the regular studs. That explains why it was so difficult to get the top plate down in those places! The other is that I’m just missing a stud for a rafter that I can add in.

I don’t know how several tiny housers have done their whole design on this program. This is as much as I plan to do on this model. But it was cool to see it come together and think, “I’ve already built this!” 🙂 I sent the file off to the engineer, and she already reviewed the structure before I built it, so I should just get an official stamp of approval back. It’s a huge relief to have this checked off my to-do list!