Trim, Flooring, Shower Pan, Etc.

I feel like I'm in architecture school again. I'm in that final stretch of working on my project to get it "done enough" for the final review with late nights in the studio after days of classes and work. Not getting enough sleep or proper nutrition or doing much of any self care. In college, I was able to pass out for hours, days after the review. I wish that were the case this time...

If you haven't guessed yet, I'm getting ready to move my tiny house to its next location and start living in it while I continue the finish work. May as well keep in the tradition of other tiny housers. I had really wanted to get the plumbing and electrical in by the time I moved, but realized that I needed to take care of the trim, flooring and shower pan first. And my new site isn't quite ready with plumbing and electrical hookups anyway (I'll be helping install them). So it will kind of be like camping which is great since I didn't have the time to do that this summer.

After trimming out my windows, I decided to start on the floor. I had picked up some 1x4 Doug Fir T&G flooring from BMR (can you guess one of the themes of my home?) when I bought the trim. I had a friend start helping me install the first few rows of flooring. We started against the wall with the door since I wanted to pick out the clearer pieces to use for the main path first. We needed to notch out the pieces around the wheel well, but that was not too difficult to do with a table saw and jigsaw. We ran a bead of construction adhesive on the floor under each piece and then nailed four 2" 18 gauge nails through the tongue of each piece to secure them to the subfloor. Once the first row was set, the next went faster. We staggered the seams in each row and made a three row pattern. Looking at it finished, I kind of wish we had done more staggering but that would have been difficult to do with boards that were only 3' long.

I continued working by myself for the rest of the floor, carefully selecting each piece of wood since they were seconds (but cheap at $.50 a foot for CVG or close to it!). Once I had all of the pieces in place, it was time to sand. I thought I would need to use a portable hand belt sander. In larger spaces, you can rent those large drum sanders, but I didn't think it would make sense for my house especially since it wouldn't fit under the sink or loft ladder. It was dark outside while I was sanding and so I sanded under two work lamps. The belt sander is a powerful tool, one that took away more material than I realized until I had made three passes with 80, 120 and 150 grit sandpaper. It had created some small (but at the time seemed large) gouges in the floor. I decided to use an orbital sander to try to even them out and made some progress but realized I should have just used that tool from the start. I had been frustrated from shower pan stuff (see below) and I just didn't really know what I was doing so messing up the floor a bit was annoying as well. But people pay good money for the reclaimed look and now I won't be as worried about marking up the floor. After the sanding, I added 3 coats of satin Zar Ultra Max waterborne oil modified polyurethane as recommended by the guys at Woodcrafters.

Meanwhile, Rory was working on my shower pan. I took the measurements, handed Rory my drain and he ended up bringing them to Schmeer Sheet Metal so get the pan made since they have a larger brake than Rory does. They used stainless steel as the material. I'm not really sure of the whole process since I wasn't there but they did a great job because it fit in the space! If I did it again, I would get the pan made and then frame the wall around it. Kevin, the other welder on site, had told me to put the wall in first so we could get the pan measured, so that's what I did. I had thought they messed up with the hole size since it was one of those days so Rory's dad made the hole a little larger. Then I realized that the drain actually attached a different way and the cutting was all for nothing. Luckily there is still about 1/4" of material around the edge which should be enough for plumbers putty. I'm going to silicone caulk around the edge too.

With all of that happening, I was also cutting, sanding, coating and installing my door, crown and baseboard trim. I have learned that trim prep and finish work in general takes a long time, especially if you are only working on it nights and weekends.

I haven't been taking many photos of what I've been up to since it's crunch time but here are some of the trim, flooring and bath pan ones in my flickr albums.

A Little Bit of Everything

This post is going to be a bit of a catch up on what I have been working on lately. In my last post I talked about siding sourcing having finally found a place to buy reclaimed corrugated metal siding. I met with Lewis from Taylor Metal on site yesterday to figure out ordering my roof as well as some install questions. In addition to being very helpful to a novice metal worker, Lewis also asked if I needed more corrugated since he had some he wanted to get rid of. If only I had met him a couple of weeks earlier! Perhaps I will take him up on his offer anyway since I could store it under my house until I build my porch roof or for the next tiny house I build...

I made a couple of trips to pick up some reclaimed cedar siding from a friend. It was interesting to see how much my Subaru's roof racks could handle as well as the looks on the faces of the people I drove past on my way to site. I will probably have enough for the tall long wall, maybe even enough for the short long wall. If not, I'll likely head over to Shur-Way for the rest since they are located close to my house, have good prices on cedar siding and are really nice people to work with.

I picked up some 2x4 cedar from Shur-Way to build out my window frames. I had originally planned to install flat trim boards on top of the furring strips but due to the depth of my windows, it would have looked weird so I came up with a new solution. I had to cut back the Roxul insulation around the windows first so that the 2x4s on edge could frame the window. Then I ripped the sills with a table saw to have a 10 degree slope. I made the headers the same way since it was a little beyond the point where I could have installed header flashing as well as for aesthetics of not seeing flashing but still providing a way for water runoff. I cut the ends of the vertical pieces to 10 degrees with the chop saw. Then I lightly sanded, stained with Sikkens Cetol SRD, and screwed each frame together.

Ideally, I would have face screwed the frames into the studs but that would have required me to also screw through the window flanges which I did not want to do. I thought about finding a way to glue them to the house but learned that was not really possible due to the stain. So I finally decided to screw furring strips to the sides of the frames since I would need them there eventually anyway. Once screwed to the frames the furring strip/frame combo could be screwed into the wall studs. This worked quite well with the help of shims ensuring that the gap between the window and frame was even all around. I was a little concerned about installing the upper two windows, but they actually went in quite easily. I think they look quite beautiful!

I had previously primed and painted the windows after install with spray paint since Lina has been a strong advocate of doing so. I could have painted them before we installed them but then I would likely had to touch them up which would have been somewhat difficult. Despite the wind's repeated attempts (and successes) at blowing off my window masking, I eventually applied two coats of flat red primer and two coats of heritage red paint. I am happy with the results and glad I did not choose the expense of having them factory painted though I may disagree with that decision for the interior.

My door arrived on site this week so I am excited to get that installed and painted soon as well!

We hosted this month's tiny house mixer on site last evening and it was fun to talk to people about their visions, tell them about my house, and play the guessing game as to whose house is larger, Lina's or mine. Mine is only 5 sq.ft. larger if you don't count the loft!

For more photos, check out my flickr!