Tiny House 12

It's done, and Mistakes Were Made along the way

I installed the last piece of siding yesterday evening, and hemmed the last two curtains this morning, so I think the tiny house is done. The area around it looks like the typical construction site disaster zone, but I started to clean that up this morning, too.

The siding was a long, tedious, and tiring job, as I expected. The temperatures were up in the mid-90s for about week during this period, and that didn’t help. But mainly it was the constant fiddly work that wore me out. Before I could cut each piece, I would measure the space it was going in, and sometimes that would involve climbing the ladder. Then cut the piece. Then test-place it to make sure it would fit (more ladder climbing). Then sometimes re-cut the piece and test-fit it again (more ladder climbing). Then paint the newly cut edge(s). Then screw it into place (more ladder climbing); this always took a while because I’d pre-drill each hole to prevent splitting. Anyway, after a week, I was so exhausted in the evenings I was often near tears.

Then about halfway through the siding, I was almost out of paint. I was using some Kelly-Moore paint left by the previous owner for doing the main cabin in 2020/2021. I saw that the color formula was on the side of the can, so I said to myself, I’ll just go to Kelly-Moore and get an exact match, no problem! Then I discovered that the company went out of business last year. So I got a local hardware store to do a match, and they did such a good job that I can barely tell the difference. But to make the switch less obvious, I stopped using the old paint after the second wall, and used the new paint on the third and fourth walls.

At one point I was so sick of siding, I decided to take a break and build some stairs to make it easier to get into the house, the floor of which is about 21 inches above ground level. Here’s a picture of the finished siding and stairs on the south end:

Working on the curtains was more fun. They were 98 inches long, so I had to cut and hem them for the 54 inch windows. I had used the sewing machine back in 2021 to make some backpacking equipment, but I had forgotten some important details about threading the thing. It’s amazing what a jam a sewing machine makes, and how quickly, when you screw up this part. I finally had to RTFM to figure out what I did wrong.

There’s no good place to set up a sewing machine in the main cabin, so I did the work on the built-in laptop desk in the tiny house:

The curtains look nice and keep the sun out during the rather brutal summer afternoons here, but still let in some light:

I made a bunch of mistakes during the build process, and maybe learned a little too.

The biggest and most expensive mistake was ordering the wrong size for the roofing panels. I had done the math correctly on my little drawings (this is why high school trigonometry is the most useful math class I ever took). But I had forgotten to take into account the thickness of the walls and roof insulation. So I had to order a second set of panels that were five inches longer. I’ll use the “wrong” panels for other things, like an outhouse or a woodshed.

I also underestimated a lot of the other materials I needed, especially the flooring, sheathing, siding, and strapping. I am one of the seven people in California who do not own a gigantic pickup truck, so I had these materials delivered. Before ordering I had tried to estimate what I’d need based on square footage plus waste, but somehow I still got things wrong. Then I’d have to go buy the extra stuff and fit it into my little hatchback car so I wouldn’t have to pay delivery fees. I was able to get up to twelve 8-foot boards into the car, with eight resting on the dash, and four sticking out the passenger window. But I had to cut a 16 foot floor board in half to get it to fit, so there’s one place in the floor where there’s a joint.

Amazingly, I got the number of rigid foam pieces exactly right. Maybe this is because they are big (4x8) and I had drawn out a cutting and placing diagram before ordering.

On the whole, despite the exhaustion, I’m happy with the project and love the space I created. I had originally built this thing so that my friend Joan from Vermont would have a place to stay when she visited, but after her cancer diagnosis in mid-2024, it was a race against time: getting the thing built before she was too sick to travel. I didn’t even start the project until January because I was uncertain about the site and design, and then the rain and snow slowed things down. In the end, Joan’s cancer won the race in April. At least I now have a place for guests to stay, and even if that never happens, I am content using the place as my summer bedroom.