Wednesday, July 30, 2014

All The Little Things Add Up...

We spent the week finishing up little things here and there.  All the little things sure do add up to a good amount of work.

We left framing in the wall under the bed platform for last.  We knew we would have to build the wall complete with siding painted and all.  Due to the support steel beams, it had to be installed from inside.




Backside of the wall.













Front side with the siding installed.









We built it to be a very tight fit.  We had to knock it into place with a sledge hammer.











We bolted it in 3 places to the upper steel frame of the bed platform.




We bolted it the floor in 3 places as well.












We sealed in the gaps between the frame and the siding with Great Stuff.  After it hardened, we trimmed it flush and taped the Tyvek together over the foam.









It's fun to watch this stuff expand and grow.  :)

















Trim came next.  We cut out around the beam so it was a solid
piece of trim. 














It's a bit hard to see but we used galvanized flashing under the siding to prevent water from splashing up and getting into the house from under the wall.  We pop riveted it down to the trailer on the outside. 












A better picture of the flashing before we riveted it
into place.








Now all we have to do to the exterior is build the door and finish the trim around it.  That will be a bit down the road since we still have to move in appliances and such.

On to the interior!  Bracing that is.  :)




We used all-thread to tie the walls down to the frame.  It goes from the top rail of the wall all the way through the bottom of the frame of the trailer.  We used locking nuts and a connector in the center to tighten it down tight.















We did this in all the corners and in the half way point of the walls.













This was an extra step we took to insure the walls would stay fastened and tight to the frame during hauling. 














That's the bottom of one of the pieces peeking through the trailer frame.  We trimmed them up a bit to keep them from getting caught on things. 












We plan to have some exposed brace beams in the house. Since our trailer is much longer than most tiny homes, we wanted something supporting the walls in the center of the trailer.
The beams across the rafters will be finished and painted to match the ceiling. 














The cross beam brace is 2 2x4's that we notched and glued together.  They run from the wall, just above where the kitchen counters start to the roof rafters.  They will be finished and painted to match the interior. 









And finally, we got the end caps up on the roof.  We couldn't find any manufactured end caps that went well with our roof.  The Hubby took a piece of flashing and bent a small one to the specs he wanted it to be.  We have a great local steel source we have used for all our trailer steel. 
http://www.jcsenterprises.net/default.htm

JCS Enterprises has been wonderful.  They were able to bend the end caps to our specs. And we love them!





End cap profile.











Front view.




Side view.

We are ready for the Arrango Insulation Co. to come out and spray the interior! YAY!

The electrical and plumbing will come later.  We plan to run both in pipe on the exterior of the wall.  That way we can easily access it if we need to fix anything or add circuits down the road. With the house being mobile, we worry that connections might loosen up or break.  Accessing either through a wood wall would be a pain in the you-know-what! 

So what do you all think so far?  Leave me some comments and thoughts on the job so far.  We would LOVE to hear from you! :)


6 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Chrissy and Ronnie, greetings from Canada eh :)
I stumbled across your blog this morning while having coffee and I could not stop reading until I had read your entire blog thus far.
Your guys's house is going to be mind blowing amazing!
I admire your attention to detail and what you may call overkill I call quality craftsmanship :-)
I can hardly wait until your next post and thank you for inviting the world along on your journey!
Cheers!
Travis

Unknown said...

Hi Travis! Thanks for the kind comments. I'm glad you have enjoyed the blog so far. It's my first attempt at one and I'm kinda just fumbling my way along. We try to make it as accurate and note the things we do so others may be able to attempt their own tiny home project. :)

All the best,
Chrissy :)

Anonymous said...

The tinyhouse community probably hasn't seen a home quite like this before. We (Chrissy and I) are planning on making a shower that reclaims and recycles in a closed loop with an IR purifier and cleanable filters! And, when the house is done we will start on the next project.............a sun tracking photovoltaic power trailer that hooks to our Jeep, independent of the house! Complete offgrid (except for propane) living anywhere we want to go!

STAY TUNED
RONNIE:-)

Carol said...

Ronnie and Chrissy.... What a wonderful job you are doing, and EXCELLENT blog to help us follow and learn! Thank-you for that :) !
What are the dimensions of your build? It looks longer than the standard 8.5 w X 13.5 h X 20 or 24 ft long. I'm planning on starting a build in another two years, and wanted to go approx 32ft. I am retiring in 10 years ( or so) and wanted to be mobile enough to " backyard surf" amongst my children and friends every couple of years or so. I plan on paying a trucker to move it every couple of years so that I can follow it in my car ( one daughter lives up near the Yukon boarder and my other daughter lives up in Northern Alberta ) . I presently live in the Okanagan valley in British Columbia.
I've been working on a scale model that I've been tweaking and adjusting as I come across different ideas over the internet. I love coming across blogs such as yours, that have been a wealth of knowledge to accomplish my dream. Thank you soooo much for sharing!

Unknown said...

Hi Carol. Thanks for the wonderful comments! Ours is a 32ft trailer so your dream is do-able! Sounds like you have a great plan. I'd love to travel northern Canada but my Hubby isn't all too keen on the colder climates. I've lived a good chunk of my life in norther NY, up near the Ontario border. Used to love shopping in Kingston. :)

Anonymous said...

Chrissy didn't give the complete deminsions. The trailer is a 32ft deck over flatbed but, the mods we did above the gooseneck added an additional 6ft. From the ground to the peak it is about 12.5ft. The square footage is about 265 square and with deck it is 305 square.

RONNIE