Because I Can

Back in December, work on the tiny house slowed to a halt – snow came early, I got sick, then it was Christmas and time to give myself a break from the tiny house build for the holidays. As a Christmas present to myself, I bought the queen-sized mattress that will go in the tiny house. I bought the thinnest one I could find, 5″ thick, and it was on sale! 🙂 The thinner the mattress, the more headroom I’ll have in the loft.

In the meantime, instead of putting the mattress on the floor, I decided to build a platform for it, because I can do that sort of thing. 🙂 I wasn’t going to spend several hundred dollars on a particle board bed frame when I won’t even need it in the tiny house. Besides, if I can build a house, a simple platform is an easy project. It only took me an afternoon (plus a lot of trips to different hardware stores to collect materials). It cost about $150 in materials, which is more than a cheap metal frame, but oh well! Plus I bought extra materials for a potential headboard, so the platform alone cost less than that. I’m pretty proud of it!

The finished frame: nice plywood, two support pieces underneath, and six bed legs supporting it.

You can’t even tell there’s a homemade frame underneath!

I purposely put the leg off to the side to keep me from stubbing my toe on the corner all the time. 🙂

My end table/nightstand fits nicely next to it. 🙂

I’ve been pretty down this month, disappointed in myself for not getting the siding up in time for winter and trying to figure out what to do next. It’s tough, being solely responsible for this massive project, with no one to kick me out of bed to work on it except myself. My bed is so comfy! As much as I enjoy having full control over how I spend my time, I don’t always spend it wisely. Watching TV is more immediately appealing than going out and getting work done on the house. I’m learning to balance everything, to motivate myself, to plan small specific steps, to get out there even if it’s snowing. 😛 By this fall, I intend to be sleeping in the loft of my finished tiny house, so I just have to keep working towards that. ❤

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” – Zig Ziglar

Soffits and Snowflakes

Vinyl siding is pretty stiff, until you cut off the edges. Then it’s a flimsy piece of crap. 😛 I’m quite disappointed with my homemade soffits and how bumpy they are, but they’re done. I don’t know what else I could’ve used. Anything I could’ve done differently, structure-wise, would’ve had to have been changed way earlier on when I didn’t know how difficult the vinyl was going to be. I think some older houses have wood underneath their overhangs, but that would’ve just added more weight to the tiny house. Besides, only about two inches of the vinyl will show along the sides once the siding is up.

I put up the vinyl under one side eave yesterday, and finished off the final overhang today, just as it was starting to snow! Almost all our snow had melted, but it was only a matter of time until we got more. 😛

The vinyl was easier to attach under the sides, but it was still difficult to avoid ripples. The rafters are 24″ apart and the vinyl sagged between them:

This was my solution:

So it doesn’t look great from up on the ladder:

😦

We’ll see how it holds up.

The snow’s back!

I should get used to working in the snow. I really need to have my siding up before the end of March or risk damage to my house wrap. I’ll be out working in the cold, hopefully getting everything done very quickly!

 

Hidden Details

The temperature has been above zero recently! We barely have any snow right now, and I managed to get a little bit of annoying work done.

There are some parts of a house that are not talked about, like soffits. I never knew what soffits were or how a roof was ventilated before I started researching, and even after that I found very few examples of how people build the more hidden parts of a house. Some tiny houses don’t even have an overhang, and others simply don’t show what they did for theirs. Some houses have exposed rafter tails, but mine aren’t particularly pretty, and I definitely don’t want to leave any sheltered spots open for hornet nests.

At a building supply store, when I asked for something to use for solid soffits (my roof is not vented because I will be using spray foam), they suggested vinyl siding, which I could cut to size. I bought a few pieces of white siding and matching nails, plus some thin pieces of wood. Underneath the overhang on the sides of the house, the vinyl will be attached to the rafter tails, but under the front and back, there’s nothing to attach the vinyl to. So I planned to nail up those thin pieces of wood to give me something to nail to. The first piece I put up I was able to hammer the nails in straight, but that left no space for hammering the second piece. For the second piece I used nails at an angle, and was pretty proud of myself for getting both pieces up.

The pieces that are attached to the house are nailed in straight, while the pieces attached to the fascia are attached with angled nails. Cut to me trying to put up the vinyl. I’ll give you a list of how many problems I ran into:

• First off, the vinyl strips I cut were slightly too wide for the front overhang, which led to some very time-consuming trimming and checking, trimming and checking.
• If the nail bit into the wood slightly over from where I intended, the vinyl would bubble.
• Trying to leverage nails out by pushing against the very flimsy attached piece.
• Trying not to hurt my nicely stained fascia.
• The fact that the nails were designed to be difficult to pull out.
• The wood had some flex to it I think, which meant that the majority of the time I hit the nail, it wouldn’t move. Ah, how many times I’ve been up on a ladder and swearing.
• Sometimes a nail would go halfway in, and then just would not go in any further.
• I was hammering at an angle, against gravity, on a ladder, mere inches from the house and a window.
• The pieces attached to the fascia started to push up while I tried to nail to them, sometimes ripping out of the nails attaching them. One piece almost completely detached, and I added a nail through the side fascia to keep it in place.
• The final piece I was trying to attach had split, ripped out of its nails, and the end of it also split when I tried to attach it through the side. It was impossible to nail to because it would just push up further into the cavity. And there was no easy way for me to fix it or replace it with the vinyl already half-attached.

But they’re done:

If you look closely on the right, there’s a nail sticking out of the fascia that the vinyl is resting on. That’s all I could do. So don’t look close. 😛 It looks good from a distance!

I also cut the rest of the vinyl I need for the side overhangs. It was a lot easier and didn’t take as long because the side overhang is a bit smaller. Instead of having to cut where the vinyl curved, I was able to cut along straight lines:

Putting the vinyl up along the sides should be way easier as well (except for the fact that they’re ten foot long strips) because I’m nailing into solid pieces of wood. But we had an ice storm today, so I didn’t get outside to work on the house.

Oh, my parents got me some wheel well covers for Christmas. 🙂

When all the snow melted off the roof, I took the opportunity to go up and inspect it, especially around the skylights and the ends of the ridge caps. It all looks good, and I checked the interior as well and it does not seem to be leaking! Yay! Phew!

Looking through the main room skylight at the open front door.

I quite like it up there, when it’s not windy. 😛

I wasn’t sure how close to cut the pieces around the top of the skylight, but there doesn’t seem to be an issue.

The ridge caps above the skylight did get pressed down, but again, that doesn’t seem to be an issue.

No damage!

It’s so pretty. 🙂

I also measured all the windows so I can get ready to cut trim pieces. The plan is to cut them inside the tiny house, label them, then transfer them to the heated garage for priming and painting. I’m so excited to break out the purple paint! Then I’ll go from there.