Christmas Parade!

The tiny house makes it's debut tomorrow, December 4 from 2-5pm down King St. in downtwon Charleston! Come out and see La Casita in action!

The Skinny on The Tiny

Since we've got them, I figure I'll share a few Google SketchUp renderings of the Tiny House. SketchUp is free, and it is a really useful tool in considering the 2d plans spatially. A few details have already changed (window placement, mostly), and a few things need to be added (water heater, a/c unit, more detailed cabinetry diagrams), but they're too cool not to share.
Here's the house with no exterior walls (how?!)
The shelves in the foreground do not float, they are attached to walls that are currently invisible.
The blue couch is our real, actual couch! It's a really cool couch, and I wanted to model it and make sure it will fit in our space. I think I may have to surgically cut out a chunk of one leg, to accommodate for the wheel wells, but I will have that couch.
Here's a shot without the roof showing the closet arrangement in the bedroom loft. There will be significant clothes downsizing.

Through the kitchen into the living space. Shelves on the left of the far wall also serve as a ladder to Zach's loft-study, over the front entry.
To the left of Wayne is our alternating tread staircase/bookshelf. It's a central feature; I designed significant parts of the house around it! Maybe we can call it the Treppenhaus.
I'm excited to compare the renderings with the product as the build progresses!

Floor Pan Beginnings

Zach and I both woke up around 6:45 am yesterday, ready to dive into the TH build! First, a shot of the trailer without any of the decking. The lower part in the foreground is our detachable porch - 2' deep, and we can do a simple install of Ipe decking and call it a porch! When it comes time to move the house, we can just slide the porch out of the two rails, stow it in the house, and roll down the highway with a slightly shorter load.

First order of business was to lay out and rivet together the strips of aluminum flashing. This provides a mostly structural barrier against any debris that could fly under the house during towing, or any animals that might want to get up ins once it's in place.

All the flashing riveted in - shiny!

Rosie the Riveter: intimidating, or crazyface?

6mil poly sheeting goes down next, to act as an impermeable vapor barrier (except for where I dropped a floor joist and poked a hole, oops).

Floor joists are 2x6" Timbersil: a great, green product! Instead of being treated with toxic rot, insect, or fire retardants, Timbersil is impregnated with glass, making it extremely stable and wonderfully non-toxic! Ours were b-grade, meaning they were a little warpy, but totally useable, and also totally affordable.

All joints are reinforced with Simpson Strong-Ties, to make sure that when we go rattling down the highway, the house doesn't come rattling apart at the seams.

Upon cutting members for the floor box, I discovered that the trailer was not the requested 8'x24', but is actually 6" wider! The Department of Transportation doesn't allow anything wider than 8'6" to travel down the highway without special permits ($), so this thing is built to our absolute max width. It's not what was planned for, but I'm not going to argue with an extra 6" of width - that's an extra 12sqft of interior space!

After completing half the floor boxes, energy was flagging, but much was accomplished today!

An Announcement!

This is Zach, and his lady Margaret. We have been friends with Cedric and Andrea for about a year and housemates for about half of that time. We learned about this new approach to living through them and when the opportunity arose for use to build a space of our own, we just couldn't turn it down.

Now, after moths of planning and prep work, we have started down the same road Cedric and Andrea blazed before us; building a house for ourselves out of reclaimed lumber and building supplies from the Sustainable Warehouse. Through the immense courtesy and patience of Rebecca O'Brian, we had amassed most of the supplies of our build well in advance of the arrival of our custom made trailer.

Margaret and I have also been doing a lot of design work on how we would like the house to look and function. Margaret's amazing skills resulted in this:

A view of the inside:

For the foundation of the house we needed something very special. The wonderful folks over at McElrath Trailers really gave us a break on an awesome trailer with great features that allow us remove the house from the frame if we ever decide to stay some where for a long time or would like to use it to build a new house. Margaret and I ordered the trailer two months ago and on thursday we got word that it would be ready to pick up this weekend. As you can see, we were quite pleased to hear this.

We learned a lot about our trailer as we went along and Rick Conner from McElrath Trailers was very helpful and patient with us as we figured out what we need to get this project done right. He was about as awesome as it gets

We were so tired when we got home from the 10 hour day we just parked it in the warehouse and called it a day. Leaving it to rest in its new home.

Roof Raising Saturday, November 26

It's official! The roof is ready to be raised and we're planning a work party to help get it done! Saturday, November 26 from noon to 4 at The Sustainable Warehouse! There will be lots of different tasks at hand from putting the roof on (!!!) to painting windows to oiling the exterior and much much more! This is basically the race to get the house ready for it's Charleston Christmas Parade debut! Sunday, December 4 from 2-5 is the date and time of the public showing of the house and we are so so excited (as well as a bit nervous as everything that needs to get done in the next couple weeks!). There will also be spaces open in our spot for the parade so we need a few folks who would like to join the tiny house parade celebration. Perhaps a band or some bicycle friends (or a bicycling band) would like to join?

So please come out Saturday, November 26 and join us for refreshments, friends, dancing and roof raising fun!

Flooring!

So this past week we found out that the house we are renting is in the early stages of foreclosure! Nothing better than news like that to motivate us to get La Casita done as quickly as possible. This weekend Cedric and I put in the flooring for the loft. It is looking super great and we'll have pictures of it posted this week. It took about 5 hours and we did it in our own unusual way. We drilled it in to the downstairs beams rather than stapling it across the way you would normally do flooring. We'll be doing it the "right" way once we get started on the flooring downstairs. It looks really lovely and we'll be oiling the underside since it is visible from downstairs and we'll be doing some sanding to the top. Reclaimed flooring tends to have a LOT of splinters and rough edges! This week I'll continue to do some insulation so anyone who is interested in helping please let me know.




We've been getting a lot of nods from folks who've seen the City Paper article and we just want to say THANKS again to our friend Nikki Seibert for getting us published! It's been really fun meeting new people and talking up La Casita. Everywhere we go people seem open and excited about the undertaking and we are so glad to know there is so much community interest and support in the Charleston area for the tiny house movement. It's really the best time to be building this house and every day we feel so lucky to have been given the chance to do it! So please come on out to the warehouse if you haven't already (or come a 2nd or 3rd time!) and let us show you what La Casita is all about!

Happy October!

While Cedric is out of town I will be getting insulation put in. I was hoping to have a good start on this week but then I got a virus. Yuck. I'm feeling much better now and plan to hit the warehouse hard next week. If anyone is interested in coming out and helping I could sure use it! Any day after five o'clock and Saturdays 10-2 I'll be at the warehouse a workin' so send me a message if you can come out one day! That would be mighty fun! I'll even bake up cookies if you like!

We've pretty much have all the materials we need to finish the tiny house except a stove and a fridge! It's looking like we are going to be having our roof raising at Thanksgiving so all those who will be hanging out in Charleston for the holidays we'll keep you posted on the date (once it's decided).