Hi friends! Our site is undergoing some changes and updates! We’re re-populating our lost photos, but in a slightly different way – each project has it’s own page under the “The Build” section, and the blog posts have a few photos in them as well. We thought this might be a better way to accurately portray the entirety of each project, and make it easier for you all to see what we did, rather than spread out between blog posts. Please bear with us as we make this happen, and stay tuned for a new post about what we’ve been up to since moving in!

(We’re having some difficulties with photos, but here’s a summary of what we’ve been up to over the last month! We’ll get photos up as soon as we can.)

Well, it’s been an insanely busy month, but WE DID IT!!! We moved the Tiny Timber frame from it’s home of the past year, to it’s home for the next year or so, and  are living in it now! But I’m getting ahead of myself… we did a lot more to get to that point! Since the last post we have spent countless hours in the shop working on cabinets and stairs and countertops, and even more hours in the house installing those, framing out closets and bench seating, applying wall covering and more.

First: cabinetry and stairs… we bought a lot of poplar, and in the last post we had dry fit all of the frames. After that we had to mill out all of the paneling for the sides/walls and the shelving. For the panels we then painted (using Old Fashioned Milk Paint in Soldier Blue), then sanded it to add a bit of a worn in look, and finished with Skidmore’s Beeswax Finish. Then we glued up the frames with the painted panels in them (that was quite a process!) and finally painted all of the visible posts of the frame (why waste time, energy and paint on something that will never be seen?), and finished the entire thing with more Skidmore’s. Imagine that! A finish that is not terrible for you or the environment! Then came the fun part – installation! Everything fit in perfectly and required very minimal adjustments (a couple shims to account for slightly uneven floors and we were good to go). After screwing everything to the walls we tested the stairs and even without treads they were way better than the kitchen stool we had been using to get into the loft! The final step was sizing and finishing the shelving and floors so that things could actually be put in the cabinets.

While all of this was going on Raphael was also working on the countertop and stair treads. We have some live-edge alder pieces for stairs that are this close to being ready to replace the temporary plywood treads! The counter is Maple, and was glued together, flattened (by hand!), sink hole cut and finished just in time to move the house. The finish needed to off-gas for a week before being installed, so that got put in yesterday, and we now have a counter, sink and running water!

For the closets and bench seating we did some pretty simple framing – just 2x4s cut down and screws. In order to mount the stairs we had to put one wall on my closet, but all the others are open for now (there were more important things to get done before the move). We bought some Montana beetle kill Blue Pine from a local guy for our closets and to also have as the woodstove surround. It ties in beautifully with the rest of the house and the blues in the cabinetry complements the pine better than we ever could have expected! We have some temporary plywood for seating, countertops and stairs, which is the only plywood in the whole house, and neither of us can wait for it to be gone!

The walls got done in bits and pieces, but had to be finished before we installed all of the built-ins, for obvious reasons. We decided to do canvas walls, and bought a roll of artists canvas that was primed on one side. We put that side in, because we didnt’ love the stark white, but the priming added some structure to the fabric which is why we decided to use it. We got a few pointers on stretching canvas from someone who had done it for paintings before, and using that and a lot of awkward stretching and reaching we got all the walls covered in nice, tight canvas. We called it close and were left with only tiny scraps at the end, but are pretty happy with the results! We’ll spray it with some tent waterproofing spray for some protection, and if we ever decide that it’s too dirty, it’ll be really easy to paint.

A couple days before the big move we decided to energize the electrical system. What we thought would be a quick procedure ended up taking several hours when we found continuity where it shouldn’t be during some final tests. It was narrowed down to a run that had only 1 outlet on it – the one for the fridge. We debated opening up the walls, or drilling a hole through the floor to run a new chase under the house, but neither of those sounded like good options, for many reasons. Finally, after some more testing and “this doesn’t make sense” we figured out that the 2-screw connectors that were bringing the wire into the breaker box had compressed them too much and caused a short, and after a quick patch and the addition of a junction box (and no tearing open walls or new holes in the floor) all tests were normal! We plugged in the system and turned on the back porch light (the only fixture we have right now) and tested all the outlets with 100% success and a big sigh of relief.

Now for the fun (and stressful) part – moving the house. We were fortunate enough to have the same person who moved the frame a year ago move the house again, and he brought his 6 month old puppy along (who I got to watch while the Raphael helped Josh maneuver out of the yard). There was some fancy footwork (wheel work?) required, but after getting it out of the yard, it was a smooth trip about 25 minutes out of town to its new home. There was more tricky maneuvering on that end (dirt road hills and low branches and wires), but it worked out great! The final (and arguably worst) step was then to jack up and level the house – meaning crawling around in dirt and gravel maneuvering heavy cement pavers into place and being sure they’re dead level before stacking pilons high enough to hold the weight off of the trailer’s suspension.

On top of all that we had to move all of our possessions from the house we had been renting for a year and a half to our storage unit (which is ironically bigger than the house) and the house. But we did it. We are alive and well, and although we are both sore, tired and have some bumps and bruises, there were no major injuries, and no catastrophies. It feels a little surreal to be living in the tiny timber frame after being a construction zone for a year, but as we find homes for everything and get more settled in we love it more and more.

We have had some minor issues with our photo storage, and therefore all of our photos are gone from the website =[

We have backups but it might take us a little while to repopulate the site. But don’t worry we’ll post again soon and update our progress.

Hi all, quick update here – we will be living in the Tiny Timber Frame within the month! If you find that hard to believe, join the club – we can’t quite comprehend how after a year plus of building this humble abode, we will actually be living it it in such a short time frame. In the last few weeks we have gotten approval on our electrical system, finished the floors,  fully reflectex-ed the house (our secondary level of insulation and moisture barrier), installed and pressure tested our plumbing, and finalized all plans on our cabinetry and built-ins. This weekend we bought the lumber for the kitchen lowers and stairs, and started milling out the lumber for those. We have completed dry-fit carcasses for the lower cabinets and stairs, and started the process of milling the tongue-and-groove lumber that will be the panels for all of those.

We have secured a place to move the house in Chimacum, WA (about 20 minutes from where we are living now). Friends of a friend have an RV hook-up (power and water) with access to a shower, laundry facilities, a garden, a place to put our chickens, and potentially even a workshop. We’re going to call that place home for the next 9-12 months while we finish off interior details and finalize & perfect our off grid systems so we can get set up in a more permanent living situation. Not to mention escaping some of the rules and regulations (and costs) that come with being fully grid-tied.

And what a year it has been! We purchased our trailer exactly one year ago today, and while we had no idea what we were in for, looking back upon the past 12 months we have learned an indescribable amount. We’ve learned how to timber frame, how to build windows, how to manage a job site, how to wire a house, how to plan for off grid systems, and most of all how to work together to accomplish all of these tasks.

Before we got started on electrical and insulation, we took a bit of time to clean up, because who doesn’t love a tidy job site? We’ve been checking on the windows regularly as they were installed just before several winter storms. They have been holding up great! And only one needed to be refit after swelling and rubbing on the casement.

After dozens of hours of research, we finally felt ready to start on electrical. There was a fair amount of prep work that needed to happen before we actually started running wires. Because we are going to be using canvas as our wall covering, we needed nailing/stapling space around the outlet and switches, so we cased each electrical box with wood. We gathered all of our supplies and came up with a wiring diagram to help us navigate along the way.

One thing that made the wiring a little more complicated is that we are wiring for both AC and DC. The AC is run to send power to all outlets and a few light fixtures. The DC powers additional lighting, the range hood fan, a water pump, and we even ran a line that can power a solar fridge in the future. The idea is that our house is going to be off grid some day, and it will be nice to be able to run the house in “low power mode” during those long dark days in the winter. We can shut off the inverter and its constant draw, but still have most of the electrical system up and running. The complication is that AC and DC wiring must not be run in parallel chases. They can cross perpendicularly, but never run side by side. This resulted in using a lot more wire than we initially estimated. We originally budgeted for around 250 feet of wiring, but ended up using over 500 feet. I could only imagine wiring a full sized house!

This whole process was brand new for both of us. I have played around a little bit with simple DC circuit wiring, but never anything this large or complex. It took a while to wrap my head around but I’m feeling pretty good about the process. Being that there is not really a set of electrical standards and practices for tiny houses, we didn’t strictly need to follow code, but we made every attempt to follow both NEC and AYBC standards. And just to be extra safe, we’re having it inspected by a licensed electrician before we energize the system.

When I got around to wiring the distribution panels, I had a lot on my mind. Two different systems with two different sets of standards, very similar in theory but not always translatable. For the AC system the black (hot) lead gets wired directly to the fuse while the white (bond) is wired to a neutral bus bar. For the DC system, the black or yellow (negative) is wired to the negative bus bar and the red (positive) is wired to the fuse. For some reason I was in auto pilot when I got to the DC panel and spent an hour feeding, splicing and crimping all the wires to the wrong locations! It took almost another hour to correct, but it should be good to go now!

Now its time for planning and contemplation about the next several steps.

Between shorter (and greyer and rainier) days over the past few months, and trying to find a balance between working on the house and preserving what little sanity we have left, progress has been slower than ideal, but we’re closer and closer to a liveable house every day. There is a light at the end of the window project tunnel, and we’re rapidly approaching it! Since our last post, we have completed the 8 windows we started (with a couple left to hang, and some minor hardware installation to do), as well as completing and installing the 3 small shed doors and the back door! We also put up gutters to help keep rain from finding its way inside, and to prepare for future water catchment systems.

The house looks so much nicer the more plastic and plywood we get to take off!

We took a New Year’s Eve trip to Home Depot to buy gutters, and got them up that weekend!

Fitting windows was a long process, with lots of minute adjustments and plenty of measuring twice before cutting once.

Glazing the windows was a process in itself. Neither of us had ever done it before, and there is very little information on the internet about it (probably because most people buy their windows premade these days…). After a bunch of research Raphael purchased a quart of Sarco Type M Multiglaze online, but halfway through glazing the windows we realized a quart wasn’t enough so we had to stall the rest of the windows until the next quart got shipped. To glaze windows you have to roll this gooey sticky substance into a thin roll and set it in the rabbet all the way around the window, then gently smoosh the glass onto it to spread it out, and then place some glazing points around the edges to hold the glass in, then flip the window and trim the excess putty. After that you have to press a bigger roll of putty all around on top of the glass and then cut away all the extra to create a nice smooth surface. I was pretty good at all the smooshing, but Raphael was definitely the expert in the smoothing, and while they look a little rustic (hey, we’re not professionals) I think they look pretty darn great!

Getting the windows painted and installed was the last step. When the paint was wet we were a little worried about the brightness of the yellow, but after the second coat had dried it was exactly what we wanted – a happy, sunshiney yellow. And the sun even came out for a bit for us to install them!

Oh, and we also bought a wood stove! Next we move on to insulation, wiring and plumbing…

Its been a busy few months and some of our hard work is starting to take shape. The theme of late has been windows, windows and more windows. And I suppose a few doors too. While we aren’t quite ready to install, we are proud of the progress we’ve made so far, especially considering this is a brand new experience for us.

We made great progress with the siding, and except for a few details the house is pretty much wrapped up. Although it was a bit slower, we made the decision to stain and paint as we fit. Even the back of the siding was stained. I would highly recommend this method to anyone installing new siding. It provides complete coverage on your overlaps, so bare wood won’t be exposed when the wood shrinks, there is no need for masking or delicate brush work where two colors meet, and no need to fuss around on ladders or scaffolding. Once its up, its up and you can move on to the next project.

Although its been a little stressful, making windows has also been a lot of fun. Its one of the projects I was most excited about and I’ve already learned tons. This is one area where I can apply my training in traditional joinery, to make something strong, long lasting, and functional, and yet still inexpensive and simple enough to build with a small set of hand tools. Sure there have been many hours invested. Currently over 65 hours in the window sashes alone. But a lot of that has been time spent researching and learning so we make the right decisions at every turn.

At this point, we’ve got 8 of our 9 windows fully built, some of them are fit to their casements and hinges hung. Amy has been sourcing used glass from some folks near by, and cutting each piece to fit. Next we will be priming our sashes, glazing in the glass, painting the sashes, and then installation is right around the corner!!

We have been busy as beavers over the past couple of months and have made some amazing progress, despite taking another week long trip back to the east coast for a wedding.

All 9 windows are framed out (that was a long and sometimes challenging process we’d be happy to share with you if you’re interested!) and painted, as well as both of the doors, and we’ve also gotten several rows of siding up all around the house. We haven’t been without frustrations – bent nails, banged fingers, boards trimmed just a little too short, chickens jumping up on freshly painted boards – but what house build goes perfectly? We’re still having lots of fun and despite what feels like slow work we’re making good progress and should be able to make our goal of getting the outside finished by the end of September, because at this point all that means is 1 more coat of paint on the loft Windows and finishing siding which goes pretty quick with 2 people working on it!

Our OSHA inspectors (Squirrely-Toes, Arry, B, Cleo & Jane) taking care of anything resembling a bug problem under the trailer. Who needs chemicals when you’ve got these girls?!

It’s been a while since our last post (whoops!) but we’ve been busy busy busy since then!

Raphael spent a lot of time and energy researching and designing our windows and doors, and we figured out a design that was functional (hold the window in and keep the weather out) and simple enough for us to build ourselves. So off we went to Carl’s Lumber to buy lots of hemlock for all the casements, jambs and stops and oak for the sills. Once we had all the wood we cut it all down to rough sizes and were fortunate enough to be granted permission to use the School of Woodworking’s shop to further mill everything down. We have a simple table saw, and Raphael recently purchased a band saw and a small planer (!!) but we don’t have a jointer, or nearly as nice machinery or shop space as they do, so we were really lucky to be able to use it. Now everything is just waiting to be fit and cut to final dimensions and installed!

We also made a trip down to Bremerton, WA (about an hour south of us) to pick up all of our cedar bevel siding and trim. We found a company down there (Cedar Products, Co.) and cedar is all they do, and they’re far more affordable than anywhere up here, and it was well worth the trip.

The next tricky part was choosing colors (not my forte, I want them all!). We narrowed it down to a grey stain for the siding (aiming for the look of aged cedar), green trim and yellow window sashes. The first green we picked out and painted some sample pieces was a winner – “Fiddlehead Green”! The first yellow we got was too pale, but our second one, despite the terrible name “Yellow Highlighter”was just right. The siding was our biggest trouble – there are solid stains, semi-solid and semi-transparent, and it turns out the samples at the paint store that are supposedly true to form, are not. Once we figured out that they’re a full level off (the sample for the semi-solid looks like the actual semi-transparent, and neither of us were ready for a black house), we found our semi-transparent “Amherst Grey”.

Now that most of the planning phase is done it’s on to move on to installation. We’ve installed and painted everything but the doors on the back shed, as well as fascia at the roof line. We cut and fit corner trim and painted that, but it’s not installed just yet. We’ve been battling opposite work schedules and working too much (which leads to exhaustion) so our progress hasn’t been speedy, but we’re chugging along, slow and steady and it’s the tortoise who wins in the long run.

After taking the past two weeks off, we are back at home and getting into the swing of things. In the hustle of packing and getting everything ready before our trip, we didn’t get a change to post any photos, but here is what the house looks like now.

We were able to meet our deadline and got the house all wrapped in tar paper before we left, and lucky we did. Its been raining here quite a bit.

The whole time we were back east, I was looking for inspiration from the built and natural environment. Although my first thought was to examine buildings, I found a lot more to motivate me.

New England is not the east coast I am familiar with. I am realizing that my image of the east is obscured by my experiences of dense sprawling suburbs, and the overwhelming hustle and bustle of even denser cities. This was really my first experience of the glorious and rugged untamed forests of Vermont and New York. And I have to say, I was captivated.

We were also able to find inspiration in the skilled craftsmanship of barn and boat builders alike. The boat pictured is an Adirondack guide boat, built in the year 1900 by H. Dwight Grant. These boats are able to carry up to 1000 pounds of gear, and are light enough to be picked up and carried over land.

Dwight Grant was a guide, a woodsman, a caretaker, a politician, a civil war veteran, and in the winter he built boats in his back yard shop in Utica, NY. He averaged about 14 boats a year, with the help of a few trusted carpenters.

Now that we are back, we are going to be working and building in all of our free time. Currently on the agenda, designing our doors and windows.