Really coming together

We keep saying things about our tiny home such as: “It’s really coming together” and “It’s starting to look and feel like a real home”. We’ve been saying these things along many steps of the way so far and I think we’ll keep saying them over the course of the building process- and it will be true each time!

In the past couple weeks we finished putting all our windows in, installed our front (and only) door, and built our porch floor. Wow, it’s been exciting (and exhausting)! We’ve also been working on figuring out where in the Middlebury area we will park and live in our home, hopefully moving the house there before winter sets in. We’ll let you know when we have that finalized…

So here’s some visual highlights of our recent progress. Big thanks to Randy for his porch building work, Bob for helping install our door, and Matt for help with window installation!

Flashing the door sill pan:My dad learned how to make a sweet bow tie for the sill pan:

Knock knock!We’ve been enjoying the sun streaming in our lovely windows:Porch building time, Randy hard at work:

And here’s our brand new porch, getting her first sweep clean:Windows and door in, porch floor on, yay!

Ah, windows

Wow, building a house and working full time is exhausting!! We have been busy trying to balance house and work and life, and we are looking forward to a time in the not so distant future when we’ll be able to just relax in our tiny home… but we know we’ve got a lot of hard work to go before we get there!

With that motivation we are trying to crank out the construction as fast as we can, without getting completely burned out (or going so fast that we make lots of mistakes). This week we started installing our windows, yay! We now have 4 lovely Marvin Integrity windows in place, and just 3 windows left to install next weekend. It was a slightly nerve-wracking process since we are novices at window installation, and it seems like something you don’t really want to mess up. But as in this whole house building adventure, we’ve done all the research we can, drawn on support from others (thanks Matt!), and done the actual work as carefully as we can- knowing that our house won’t be perfect, but we’re giving it our very best effort! As you can see from the pictures below we followed this process:

1) flash the window openings with a sloped sill pan and flashing tape to prevent water from entering the house 2) caulk around the window (except the sill/bottom) and place the window in position until it is centered and level, setting shims at the sill

3) shim both sides of the window (the jambs) to make the window fit tightly, while checking for level throughout and making sure the window opens and closes properly

4) when all is set, nail around the entire window flange, then add more caulk around the edges and stick on the neat little corner pieces5) finally, apply even more flashing tape around the window Soon we will finish insulating and foaming the windows from inside the house, but for now we’re focused on getting the outside sealed and complete. Did I miss any steps? If you’ve got window install secrets that we missed leave us a comment, we’re welcome to any suggestions!

Thanks all for reading, as I said earlier it’s been an exhausting and rewarding and exciting process so far- and we really do appreciate all the kind words of encouragement and support. For anyone in the Dublin, NH area or passing through please do get in touch and come visit the house, we’re there pretty much every weekend and we’d love to give you a tour!

The miracles of science

Correction from last post: the special tape we put on the house seams is made in Switzerland, not Sweden!

Thank you DuPont, for doing strange things with chemicals and through “the miracles of science” creating Tyvek to wrap our house in. To show our gratitude, here’s some free advertising of your product!

We covered the house in Tyvek housewrap this weekend. Our house is now a major step closer to being protected from the elements. Installing the housewrap was a fairly quick and straightforward task, which makes for extremely rewarding house work. We bought 3 ft wide by 100 ft long rolls of Tyvek, and started by applying to the bottom of the house and working our way up. We secured the housewrap using plastic capped nails, and then placing Tyvek tape over all horizontal and vertical overlaps/seams. The trickiest part was wrapping our little dormer. See the progress in the pics below (including a retrospective look of how far our tiny house has come in the past 2 months!).

Before we get to the Tyvek advertising though, a quick note on a house challenge we’re dealing with. Since the house is built right on a trailer bed, there are unique aspects- such as how to seal up the house around the wheel wells and prevent moisture from entering this area. A decent amount of water has gotten in the wheel wells recently, likely when our tarp covering slightly failed and the house wasn’t as sealed up as much as it is now. Jeremy has been working on removing that moisture with the trusty Shop Vac (see his sad face below), and we need to figure out long term how to better seal up the wheel wells. You can see from the picture below we’ve got a rubber ‘pond liner’ that wraps around and is secured with flashing tape, plus there’s silicone caulk in there. Let us know if you’ve got any bright ideas on how to make this system more waterproof!

Now, let the house wrapping begin! Thanks to my dad for helping, and being Vanna White:Looking pretty snazzy! And to show how much progress we’ve made so far, here’s where we were two months ago when we were just starting construction:Finally, you may be wondering what the inside of the house is looking like. Since Jeremy and I did a little tidying (house cleaning!) this weekend, we thought we’d show it off:Doesn’t look like much now, but we’ve been imagining and planning for what the finished inside will look like soon!

We are taking a break from house work next weekend (to go to a BMW motorcycle rally!) so it will be a couple weeks until we have new progress to post. But don’t fear, we’ll post about other important tiny house stuff- perhaps the budget for a tiny house, or the process of paring down stuff to live tiny?! If you have a nagging question about our house, or tiny houses in general, please leave a comment and we’ll write an upcoming blog post about it. Thanks for reading!