Evening Update :: Day Four

Here's our tiny house on day four.

We're going to have some catching up to do, but for now I'll just briefly explain where we are on day four of our first tiny house project.

On days one and two we stripped our new trailer, primed and painted the raw metal where we cut and ground off the excess parts, pulled out every other pressure treated deck board, installed and sealed the flashing, framed the floor joists, and put down the plywood subfloor. On day three we framed the exterior walls and planed all the lumber for the interior loft ceilings - I never knew a planed and sanded douglas fir 2 x 4 could be so pretty!

Today began with a shopping trip to Home Depot to pick out some handsome hardwood plywood for the loft surfaces. We decided to use something with a clean attractive surface on both sides so we can attach it to the loft decking (through the most elaborate process I've ever heard of), finish it, and leave it exposed for decorative effect.

How do you position and fasten a cosmetically crucial piece of plywood just right? First we predrill the holes use duplex nails to keep the plywood in place while we raise it just enough to reach in the gap and put carpenter's wood glue down. Then we can lower the plywood into place using the nails as guides to keep it perfectly positioned. The duplex nails come out after the glue dries and we replace them with stainless steel screws. All the interior wood will be sanded silky smooth and sealed to keep the it the same natural shade it is now. It's a clean pale fine grained birch plywood, and it looks wonderful against the pink and golden doug fir loft joists. We've sanded the joists and rounded off their edges so they look and feel great from below.

I can't wait to see the loft ceiling in place and sealed, because I think it's going to be gorgeous. Tongue and groove is wonderful, but for me, 100% T&G is a bit much. I look forward to the visual effect of a smooth pale expanse of wood ceiling in a tiny space. I think it will break up the monolithic stripe effect of the all over T&G enough to make it a visual delight on the walls.

ceiling and joists

Another design aspect I'm excited about is keeping the fresh pale colors of the interior wood intact with a sealer that won't yellow with age. I love the cool peach and tan tones of the woods, and there's a finish we can use that promises to maintain them in a natural looking state, yet with a protected surface. More details to come after further research, stay tuned.

My next major design decision is siding. I'm pretty much settled on wood, most likely T&G. We'll see after I get some samples. Another fun opportunity cropped up when the men at the Burgess Lumber yard accidentally loaded a 20' ridge board on my truck when my slip called for an 18'. They didn't notice it until they had loaded the rest of my order all around it - so they gave me the two extra feet for free. Now we have the ridge beam temporarily mounted and centered, with one foot sticking out on each end. We could put a touch of scrollwork there to get some embellishment from the extra two feet of lumber. If I want. Or just cut them clean and run the fascia all the way across. Any comments?

--- Now it's the next evening and I haven't yet posted yesterday's update... I was waiting until I had time to select pictures. Ha! No more waiting, just posting.