Shopping Ban Results

At the beginning of May, in this post, I explained that I would be doing a shopping ban for the month and not allowing myself to buy material things I don’t need. I have a bad habit of impulse buying random things and extra clothes, and I wanted to consciously put my money towards the build and my future instead.

I did well for the first week, spending money only on my hair appointment and a mother’s day gift.

In the second week, I convinced myself that scratch tickets didn’t count because they aren’t something you keep – but I still should’ve avoided them. I also added $10 worth of minutes to my phone, which I do every few months.

Then in the third week, I think I just wanted to spend money. I made a couple donations, supported an artist I really like, bought 3 books, and bought a gift in advance. So that was more than I planned on spending, but all on good things.

Towards the end of the month, all I bought was a pack of paperclips (for a dollar) that I’ve been needing to organize my tiny house spending receipts.

So it went pretty well, but I still spent $236, and I overspent my food budget by $96. I worked on the house 12 days this month, plus the day I moved the house, which is great, but I also bought more take-out food than usual because I was working hard and hungry!

For June, I’m going to continue to avoid shopping. I’m also going to challenge myself to not buy anything from convenience stores, because that’s where a lot of my money went this month. It’s going to be extra difficult because I work at a convenience store! I want to focus more on planning my food ahead of time and eating healthy, and there’s almost nothing in the corner store I work at that is healthy. There’s not even any apples, so I will definitely need to remember to bring good snacks to distract me from all the tempting sugar!

Check back soon to read about my build plans for June! 🙂

Working On It

On my days off, Dylan and I put up the 4 end rafters:

Getting the front two up was aggravating because I didn’t plan ahead and ended up having less than a foot of space to hammer the L brackets:

See all the dents?

But it’s so satisfying when you get a nail in! There are about 250 nails in the rafters, all hammered in by hand, each nail taking 3-20+ hits at all the weird angles.

Then we pulled out all the plywood out of the trailer, where it had been stored on my not-fully-dry subfloor all winter…

Not looking good…

But! Those were the only two pieces that were that bad, one meant for the walls and one meant for the roof. The rest are fine and usable, with only a few barely damp spots. And I believe I ordered one extra of each, so I should still be able to sheath the house without buying more plywood. Phew.

With help, I cut 12 identical pieces for along the top of the walls:

I measured, cut notches out for the rafters, and tested each piece by myself, some of them taking 7 or 8 trips up the ladder to get exactly right. When I got to the 3rd last piece,  I noticed the spot where the final piece would go:

Oops, I needed a bigger piece than what I had already cut. I had forgotten about that. 😛 So I finished 11/12 pieces for around the top and called it a day.

These pieces took hours!

I was done in time to see sunset from the loft:

❤

 

 

One Year Anniversary

It has been an entire year since the day the trailer arrived! I may not be as far along as I had hoped, but it’s been great so far and I look forward to the future!

May 29th, 2015

May 23rd, 2016

I’ve turned my lovely little dream into reality. I’ve put my money, time, sweat, and tears into this house and I love how it’s turning out.

So much has happened, both with the build and in my life. Today also marks my 1 year & six months with Dylan. ❤ In the past year, I’ve moved, made new friends, and learned how to stand up for myself a little better. My life is a whirlwind of balancing two jobs, the build, my relationship, a social life, my hobbies, and striving to live healthfully, and I think I’m doing okay. 😀

Check back in the next few days for a post about what I got done this weekend, how my shopping ban went, and what I have planned for June! 🙂

 

Steps List: Wall Framing

I finally got around to finishing the section of my steps list about the walls!

If you’re interested in building your own tiny house, check out the step-by-step list I wish I had when I started:

Phase 3 (start on slide 10).

See the rest of my steps list and related posts by clicking on the “Steps List” tag in the sidebar. 🙂

The one difficulty I had was keeping the wood lined up while using the nail gun. A clamp by itself doesn’t have enough surface area. I used two metal plates clamped onto the top and bottom of the pieces I was nailing to keep them from slipping.

I spent 3.25 hours on clean-up, 50 hours on building the walls, and had help from family and friends for 22 hours (for the wall raising day and later adding blocking).

It only took me a weekend to build the two long walls, which was super encouraging. Building the walls was one of the easiest things I’ve done so far. I was able to do all of it (except the wall raising) by myself, and it’s pretty simple if you have detailed plans to just cut and nail everything together.

I can proudly say I designed my house myself, and it looks beautiful!

Rain and Rafters

I spoke too soon about my floor not getting rained on. The same night that we tarped the house, the wind was terrible and I woke up to a tarp split in two! My 28′ tarp ripped down the middle, lengthwise along the ridge beam, possibly from catching on a nail. My second tarp of the same size is still covering the floor, but it’s a flat surface with no where for water to go. When it rains, the water just sits until it finds its way underneath and my floor gets wet anyway.

And as usual, it’s sunny on the days I work and raining whenever I have days off, but that’s not stopping me this year.

This weekend, I cut the rest of the rafters to length:

I traced the birdmouth onto each one, having decided not to mess with my original, and Dylan nailed some more metal rafter ties to the top of the walls. Then we swapped, and he cut out all the birdmouths for me while I finished adding all the metal pieces. He did a great job, and I’m glad I didn’t have to do anymore of the birdmouths. 🙂

The last five had to wait because the jigsaw was overheating. Dylan also added the L brackets to the ends of the finished rafters so they were ready to go up.

Then the next day, I started putting up rafters while Dylan cut the last birdmouths, then we were both up there adding rafters. Yay teamwork! But I have to admit, Dylan is twice as fast as me at putting up a rafter, so he honestly did most of the work for this weekend. I have tiny, weak arms, so hammering (especially at weird angles on a ladder) is not my strong suit. You can’t use a nail gun with the metal pieces unless you have a special gun and/or tip, because if you miss the hole it’s way too dangerous, so hammering it was!

It was raining lightly the whole time we were putting these up, so we decided to do the ones on the ends later when the ladders weren’t so slippery. Other than the last few, the rafters are up and I’m so proud!

I think that I post a lot more than any other tiny house blog I’ve seen, but every little thing is an accomplishment for me. Every single step means learning something new, so it’s slow going, but I’m keeping up with where I want to be. I can’t put in 10-12 hour days like some builders, it just doesn’t happen, but I’m picking away at it and doing the best I can.