Moving toward sustainability
Time to work on the loft’s walls. I’m deviating from the original plans in order to provide more room in the loft. Originally, the roof was going to slope down to meet the loft floor, creating a tight space along the sides.
To fix this, I’m installing dormers—short walls to open up the loft and make it more roomy. The added benefit is the loft will have 5 windows instead of 1!
You can see an example of a dormer on the second floor here:
With the fifth wall built, it was time to install it. It didn’t take very long.
Looking from outside you can see the porch:
I moved the stairs over here because climbing through the wall was not very easy. Who’da thunk it?
Trying to walk on the porch (really a hole with one rafter across it) is not very easy. I’m thinking I need to install the trap door and flame-throwers sooner, so the porch will be usable.
I took the opportunity to square up and plumb two of the walls (the long one and the bedroom one). What this means is I measure a wall corner-to-corner diagonally, and then measure the other diagonal. They should be the same if the wall is square.
To plumb the wall, I check it with a level to make sure it is straight up-and-down. As a sanity check I also verified the angle between the wall and the floor, although with the floor being buckled and warped a bit from all the rain, I didn’t worry about it being perfect.
Next up is to square and plumb the second-longest wall, then start building the first-floor ceiling/loft floor. And the sixth wall.
Bam!
This is what it looks like “inside” – wow, a real room!
I threw the tarp over the whole thing and now it is a nice little space.
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.
Sorry for the lack of updates!
I’ve been working on the third wall — the 20′ long one that runs the entire length of the house.
As of now, I have the studs all cut (will have to go back later and cut the headers and cripples for the windows).
Last weekend, I assembled the “outline” of the wall: the first and last stud, the top and sole plates.
The biggest challenge was getting the sole plate around the wheel well and spare tire hitch. I messed up and mis-cut the wood for the wheel well, but the spare tire hitch went well.
The next step is to cut the wood for the cross-beams between studs, then install them and the remaining studs.
I powered through and got the first two walls raised! There’s no going back now.
To start, I needed to trim part of the wall that hung over the wheel well. I’d measured it a little long and it needed to be flush. The Japanese saw worked nicely here.
For the first (long) wall, I attached a couple of 2x4s, one at each end, with a single screw so it would hinge and prop up the wall when I raised it. This allowed me to raise the wall by myself.
After I got the wall up and reasonably plumb, I clamped the bottom.
Next I worked on the adjacent wall, so as to provide stability. I needed to cover everything with a tarp (the next week is predicted rain every day), and I was concerned that a single wall would be easily knocked down by wind or the weight of the water on the tarp.
I quickly assembled the second wall, starting with the footplate. I went to look for a 4x4x8 in my wood pile for the header and realized I hadn’t bought any in that size. GRR!!! No problem. I used a 2×4 temporarily to anchor the top of the studs. I screwed in just 1 or 2 screws in each stud and didn’t use glue.
With that, I threw the tarp over everything and tied it down as best I could. By this time it was 1:30 am; I went late because I didn’t feel like I could leave it with only one wall.
Whew! The next wall is the longest one in the build. It should go faster because I’m more confident and know what to expect.
It is raining so I’m spending the time prepping wood. Besides ripping it to the correct length, I’m drilling pocket holes on each end so it will be ready to go.
