We got the CS 14 strapping installed all the way around the house and it is looking great.

As with many things in his project, it involved some compromise and flexibility. When I laid out the blocking (the wood between the studs), I neglected to get them exactly lined up with one another, so when it came time to install the CS 14, it was obvious it wasn’t going to match.

As with everything else that “went wrong,” I had to remind myself that any job worth doing is worth doing poorly.

Coming to the master bedroom’s window, I had to cut the CS 14 to make it work.

It turns out that tin snips don’t work, but an angle grinder does the job nicely. So with that out of the way, it is time to work on the loft.

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Tiny homes are a little different from conventional construction in that the house needs to handle movement, such as when driving down the road. To help with this, we add some steel to the wood.

Lil’ Helper

The kiddo wanted to help, so the key to keeping him interested and engaged is to give him a task he can complete, along with the opportunity to use power tools.  I asked him to install corner brackets on the door frame and he had a blast.

CS-14 Strap

I got a spool of 14 gauge steel strapping to wrap around the house.

It will provide stability to keep the studs from moving around when we’re bouncing around the highway. Or weathering a Cat-5 Hurricane (well, maybe not that part).

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This weekend I got about a third of the wall framing completed, including a window!

The square in the upper-left corner is the tiny (24-inch) window. The actual glass won’t go in for a while, until after the wall is raised, the plywood attached, and the water barrier installed. Still it is nice to have a tangible feature completed.

Notice in a ‘typical’ home, there are studs above the window, called King (or Cripple) Studs:

Their function is to help transfer the load around the window. Tiny Home doesn’t have these because a) it is too short, and b) there isn’t as much load on top.

You can see here how little space I have to work with:

The base of the wall is on the right and the wall itself fills the entire floor. The American Flag box contains lots of drinking water, most of which I drank and later evaporated.

I’ll try to drop in a few studs a day and we’ll see if we can’t get this puppy knocked out by the end of the week.

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