Cedar

I feel that we have been very blessed throughout our tiny house building process (*I am knocking on wood as I write this, and for the next few sentences). Thus far we have a structurally sound house, we are not grossly over budget, all major materials have been procured without too much of a fuss, and Jeremy and I even still get along! We’ve also been blessed with countless hours of building help and support from family and friends. We may not be building the house quite as fast as we had (naively) dreamed earlier on, but we are steadily progressing and each week holds new excitement- from putting our first wall up, to installing a window, to seeing our beautiful burgundy roof. And this week we had the excitement of putting up our first cedar shingles! I marveled at the color of the cedar, the unique grain patterns, and the satisfaction of hanging those shingles in the first few rows of our siding.

I mention how smoothly the building process has gone so far because we had some slight delays in shingling this weekend, which got me all ruffled. Even though we didn’t get quite as many shingles on this week as I had hoped, the satisfaction of nailing those first few rows in on Sunday made everything okay. People keep saying the shingling will go fast, and indeed once we got the hang of it we rolled right along. Before we could start the siding, we hung some exterior trim boards (white PVC trim), and then the bright yellow Home Slicker which is a drainage mat behind the cedar to ensure air flow:

Then I did the math to make a ‘story pole’ -consisting of lines showing where each row of shingles should start based on roughly 5 inches of exposure and the location of windows:

I got to nail in the first shingle:

And Jeremy hung the oh so exciting second shingle:

Below you can see Jeremy’s handiwork with cutting the shingles at an angle to fit over the wheel well:

Our shingles are eastern white cedar, manufactured in Quebec by SBC. We debated quite a bit whether to get them pre-stained or stain them ourselves, and we’re very glad we spent the extra bucks to have the clear stain already applied (thus avoiding many hours of messy shingle staining).

Another big moment this weekend was heating up our tiny house for the first time. Thanks to Jeremy’s efforts our Mini Franklin Gas Stove is now vented and hooked up to propane, and it works! As I watched the glowing flames and felt the warmth I imagined us settled into our new home on a cold winter’s day….

We have a roof

Yes we have a roof!! It is a beautiful burgundy standing seam metal roof that was installed by professionals this week. It feels great to have one important step done on our house that we didn’t even have to do with our own hands (or the kind help of family/friends). Now that the roof and metal eave trim are installed, we are ready to get shingling on the walls! So next we’ll be putting up exterior trim boards, and then start installing the cedar shingle siding. This will be the last major step in finishing the outside of our house- yippee!! At that time (hopefully early to mid November) we will be ready to move the house to Vermont. Then we get busy finishing the inside! Check out the roofing pictures below, along with pics of a couple other projects we worked on this week.

Below are a few shots while the roof install was happening:

The neat little machine that closes up the standing seams:

Jeremy conferencing with the roofing guys up on the roof:

We also continued working on vent holes this weekend, here is Jeremy cutting a vent hole for our Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) that will keep fresh air circulating in and out of the house:

I did some work inside the house while the roofers were busy outside- foaming the inside of our window openings, and taping up inside wall seams to prevent air leakage:

I never knew vent holes could be so exciting

I actually did utter these words this weekend, believe it or not. After all the sealing up of the house that we’ve done, this week we cut some holes in it! Turns out there’s lots that needs to be vented in our tiny house, such as the propane stove and water heater. Then there’s the issue of living in such a well sealed and small space, which creates the need to keep fresh air circulating in and out of the house- with a nifty ‘energy recovery ventilator’ (ERV) that we’ll post more about later, plus a bathroom exhaust fan and range hood fan. The holes for all this ventilation have to be cut before we put our cedar shingle siding up. It actually is pretty exciting, because we’re at the stage where we’re starting to make final decisions that really affect the interior of the house rather than solely focusing on the exterior.

We also had the framing of our porch roof finished this weekend, thanks to Randy’s hard work. It is quite a rugged porch roof, as you can see below! Randy got the porch roof frame ready for the standing seam metal roof to be (professionally) installed over it next weekend, along with the installation of the metal roofing for the rest of the house- this will be big progress!!

Our other big accomplishment this week was framing a utility shed onto the back of the house. This will provide space for our electric and other utilities. Thanks to my dad, Jeremy’s brother Chris and his kiddo Dakota for helping build the shed- Dakota even got to try out the power drill!

Goofballs:

And I almost built myself into the shed:

Mini heater!

Meet the newest addition to our home, the Mini Franklin Gas Stove! This stove, made by Woodstock Soapstone Company in NH, is going to keep us toasty warm all winter. It runs on propane and will be direct vented, it’s built of cast iron and soapstone. Jeremy found us a great deal on this gently used heater and drove all day to pick it up for us. This week we decided on the perfect spot for it in our home, so that we can cut a hole in the wall for the vent. This involved some serious deliberations about the interior layout of our tiny home, which you’ll be hearing lots more about once we get to that next stage in the building process.

Other progress we made this week included installing exterior trim around our windows. We went with a PVC trim board that will be resistant to decay, and doesn’t look half bad (we may paint it someday too). We’re waiting to install the trim on the bottom of the windows, so that our cedar shingle siding can butt up to the window frames.

Another big step this week was the start of our porch roof. Thanks Randy for building this (and for scaring the life out of me when you showed up by surprise Sunday morning!). The porch roof is made of some heavy duty pressure treated lumber and joist hangers, and the wood you see here will be cut down to size next week.

Next week we’ve got lots more exterior trim to apply, so that we can start the cedar shingle siding. And soon enough our standing seam metal roof will be installed, yippee!