I’ve been out there most nights recently with the light and many layers on, listening to music play through my computer in one of those fantastically functioning outlets. I usually get in a bit of wall paneling, but sometimes I just sit there and stare at it. I think about flooring and stoves and light fixtures or where would be best to store silverware. And I am constantly amazed that through my stepdad and my efforts, we have made this colossal thing that commandeers the driveway.

It’s funny, despite all of my uncertainty surrounding the build, I’m not in the least bit concerned about actually living in such a ‘tiny’ space. Someone asked me the other day if I wasn’t a little worried about adjusting and I was surprised to find out that I’m not. At all, really. Perhaps this isn’t very smart, and perhaps it will be different when I do move in but I just can’t find anything about it that would bother me in any major way.

Maybe it’s just because it will be mine, and there’s something to be said for that. I shared a room with my sister my entire life before I left for college and even after, I wasn’t allowed to put so much as a tack into the walls of my boxy room in student halls. My third year was spent sleeping on a couch with my life shoved into a closet (occupied mostly by a water heater of epic proportion) so I just can’t wait to have my own little home.

Or maybe it’s that I won’t have to give up the space. I moved at least once every year while in Scotland and I’m so sick of packing, finding new accommodation and leaving somewhere I became comfortable in. How beautiful that all that will change is the view from out my window.

Ok, next post will have pictures! We worked really hard today and tomorrow should be the same

There’s nothing connected to the pipes (like a sink) or anywhere for the water to go (like a drain) so we just attached a temporary bendy tube doohicky and stuck it out the window, but it totally worked and it was totally wonderful The next step is to put in a gas line from the water heater to a propane tank and figure out my sink and shower faucets/ drains. Looks like luck put metal support bars for the trailer directly under my planned locations so the latter should be interesting.

My dad has had a chance to work on the house for the first time in over a month and we’ve been putting up siding all over the place in the last few days. I had been in a sort of building stalemate with cedar siding for a little while so I’m really grateful for the help.

Sometimes it seems like there’s so much to do that it can get procrastinatingly overwhelming. I have tendencies to start on several hundred small projects (with no particular regard for a sensible order) leaving lots of things partially done. While this is fun for my short attention span, it does little for the feeling of accomplishment that comes with actually finishing something.

But! I have become recently determined and procrastinate I shall not! I will finish the exterior of Little Yellow by this coming Sunday! I am on a mission! I am excited! I may be underestimating my time frame. Right, Sunday…

I don’t really know the specifics, but the procedure included an RV water entry, a water filter, a 50 ft roll of semi flexible pipe stuff called pex and a bunch of other plumbing related things that I should probably know the names of. And of course there is the most important part which is my shiny new water heater.

It a tankless model (requiring a 12v connection and propane) called an RV500 from Precision Temp. I’m still not sure how it all works but I believe the 12v DC tells the thing to start working and the propane heats the water as it runs through the pipes. It only runs when a hot tap is turned on so it is supposedly very efficient, and is considerably more compact and lighter than having a 10 gallon tank on board. A review that helped my decision can be found here: http://www.rvdoctor.com/2010/03/product-spotlight-precision-temp-rv-500.html

I looked religiously for a less expensive alternative, but most everything else I found was either not intended for moving structures or not intended for indoor use. I also researched a cheaper competitor by Girard, but heard too many negative comments to be convinced. I spoke with the company I got my heater from before buying it, and they said they had stopped carrying the Girard because of numerous complications. So, I coughed up the funds and bought my very own RV500. It looks pretty mental to me, but my neighbour seems to find it straightforward enough so hopefully it’ll get up and running soonish.

Monday brought a confused little snow storm that has been hovering around the last few days, intermittently dumping down bouts of promising flakes between constant sputters of tiny slushy bits. Basically it’s too soggy for spending extended periods of time outside, so my dad and I have been working in the big house by the fire on my window seat bench. It was finicky and used a shit ton of clamps, but it looks half way decent and I’m looking forward to the sitting part.

First, though, we made a redwood border for around the porch overhang and spent a stupid amount of time trying to get it right. We figured we’d make them both at 45 degree angles which should meet up all nice and pretty, right? Well, in my world of carpentry, no. Just as well I’ve given up on the fantasy of a square house.

Interiorally…is that a word? Hmm. Interior wise, I spray foamed the other wheel well and am continuing on with wall paneling and insulation. It’s hard to believe that quite a few sections require only these two things before they are finished! I am just loving this inside work, it’s so gratifying and really makes things seem like you’re getting somewhere

I have been knocking around the thought of putting up some form of wainscoting in the great room and finally decided to go for it. Lowes sell another kind of 1/4″ pine wall paneling with a bead down the center, so I bought a bunch and put it up vertically to just above the window line.

I’m thinking that whatever moulding I end up using to cover the seam will hang further over the vertical panels so they look a bit shorter. I’d prefer them not to be so high (41″), but where they are now puts each panel at the perfect horizontal 2×4 in the wall framing and I’d rather not have to stick another board in there. Especially as I’m having to put in an extra 2×2 for support in the middle anyway so we don’t get bendy walls. Nobody likes a bendy wall…

I got a start on the off-side cedar siding, put some new spray foam in the interior wheel well cavity and fixed a funky sliding mechanism in one of my windows that did more banging and stuttering than sliding.

For the record, the spray foam stuff I used first did not, and really did not go very well. Though it started promisingly enough, within a few days it proceeded to turn crumbly and disintegrated upon the slightest touch.

Luckily, I had two things on my side. 1, I waited to see how the first wheel well panned out before I sprayed the other, and 2, I didn’t move right on and close up the space before the disintegration occurred. To any who may think a brand called DAP might suffice in such a wheel well filling application, please think again.

Round two, aptly called ‘Great Stuff’ has proved to be much better. It is intended for window and door gaps, so it supposedly stays relatively flexible to accommodate expansion and contraction over time. I also bought and applied some fancy kind of caulk for the outside gap between the metal of the wells and the wood of the siding so any water will have to reckon with that before even getting to the spongy foam business.

For something completely different, the squirrels that frequent our porch rail feeder have evidently tired of the easy target and moved on to the so called ‘squirrel proof’ hanging bird feeder that resides just next to it.  During periods of couch sitting, my mother and I bore witness to their monumental evolutionary achievements and generally laughed our asses off. Squirrel proof? Not on this porch, buddy.

This time I measured far more times than necessary (just in case it changed while I wasn’t looking) before cutting, sanding and painting. I bought some new stuff with primer in it and much to my delight, it looked beautiful after only 2 coats instead of the previous 3; I do hold quite a grudge against that particular colour of primer white.

I was so excited to get the siding up around the shiny new borders today that I almost didn’t care that I spent 3 hours cutting out the 2 notches and messed a whole board up before getting it right. I had tried to use a single, long board but didn’t find it physically possible for one of me (RIP cedar board) and settled with 2 instead.

I think it still looks alright so I’m letting it go; better 2 concise than one sloppy, even with the break between them.  I put up a few more boards around the windows in the dying light and it looks lovely indeed, but my moment of photographic opportunity had passed by then.

I feel I ought to tell all of you wonderful commenters out there how very much I appreciate your words and suggestions. I know I’m guilty of not replying to all of them, but rest assured that they generally leave me smiling like an idiot and bouncing around the house. Thank you

Today the rain came. Rain, then rainbows, then snow, then rain again, but I set up inside my house with the light and many layers on to get some work in. I finally sourced my 1/4″ pine tongue and groove wall paneling last week sitting innocently on shelf at Lowes (after being told by several rather rude chaps at Home Depot that this combination was not possible and didn’t exist) so I’ve been dying to get some up since.

With the electric in, I began on the window bump out for my learning curve since it will most likely be hidden by a bench or somesuch. I worked from the bottom up and insulated as I went, placing my sheep wool into each cavity and thoroughly enjoying myself. I used my dad’s pin nailer to hold the boards onto each 2×4 stud and it did a fine job, leaving perfect little little silver dots where each went in.

This part is brilliant in the visual department, so I spent nearly as much time standing back to stare as I did putting everything together; it’s almost therapeutic in the pattern of it. Who needs a shrink when you can stuff wool into a wall?

Monday I went to the hardware store and picked up some spray foam for the inside cavity around the wheel wells. I really hate the thought of that sort of stuff, but after wracking my brain for an alternative that would keep air, water and varmints out, I gave in and bought some.

It smelled of a sort of spray paint-y, headache inducing yuck, but it filled the largish space so there you go. It also stuck to my hair quite well, not really sure how it got there…

Today I cut and put up more cedar siding while my dad was at work. This meant dealing with the blasted wheel wells yet again, but this time I knew what they were going to throw at me and made my way around jigsaw cutting the boards to fit without frying my brain too much.

It’s just as well I was in no particular rush because it took me the better part of forever to get each one just so. I’m sure if any carpenter saw how many times I repeated my method of holding up a board, taking it back, cutting a hair off and so on they would likely be appalled, but it works for me and as long as it ends well.

The hardest part of today was the fitting, cutting and attaching of the long, 16 foot boards after the wheel wells. They started out as 20ft boards which I had to wrangle out of the stack, wrangle into the garage, cut to what I hoped was right, then wrangle onto the house. There was a lot of wrangling going on out here.

I came up with a nice system of propping a block of wood against one end while I worked on the other, and emerged with siding up to just under the windows and feeling rather pleased with the outcome.

I’m finding carpentry to be very similar to sewing (another craft I bash my way through) but with slightly more rigid fabric. Saws are the scissors, clamps are the pins, drivers or hammers are the needles and screws or nails the thread. Of course, if you suck at sewing, the worst case scenario doesn’t get much worse than sticking yourself in the anywhere with a small pointy object. Carpentry, not so much. Right, there went the fabric/wood tangent…

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My dad has been trying to work out a way of getting to the ridge without my having to clamber up there, but in the end I convinced him on the practicality of being able to access both sides, and to the roof I went. Although it’s nearly 14 feet from the ground, I found it far less nervewracking than being at an equal height on a ladder, if a bit more awkward.

I think the icing on the cake were the nearly identical looks of befuddlement directed toward my house by the two cars that made accidental turns down our cul de sac this afternoon. Guess this must not be the general method of roofing, but how the hell else are you supposed to get a ridge cap on a 12/12 roof pitch?

In the interest of repelling the ever-so-persistent entrance artist that is water, we put up lengths of sticky foam followed by some funny metal flashings called ‘z closures’ before the final cap.

So it’s more waterproof, the roofing company recommends the top of each panel be bent up about an inch before the foam and z closures are put on, but we’d missed this in our previous viewing of the installation guide and the amount of screws up there made the squeezing of any metal bending tool into the virtually non-existent space highly improbable.

Instead, we used strips of tape-like, tar-smelling window flashing to span the distance between the panels on either side of the ridge. Because they hang over by about 2 inches, any aspiring water that fights its way up should be directed straight off the other side and down again.

The ridge cap (or in this case, 2 overlapping 10’6 caps) got screwed into each panel rib and although they aren’t quite perfectly straight, they work well enough and I was happy to get both feet on the ground. It really wasn’t so bad up there, but even after a few hours I can imagine how people who rode long distances on wide horses must have felt back in the day.

It sounds simple enough, but by the time we got up the window borders and the redwood 2×4′s on the corners, the number of studs that hadn’t just been covered amounted to all of 2. And naturally these happened to be the two surrounding the window, which become no longer useful a few feet up when the borders start.

We ended up screwing some boards on the inside wall of the house along the windows and at each side to which we eventually attached the lath. This is accomplished by a nifty little tool called a stud sensor which, in theory, beeps to inform you when a 2×4 is present under the plywood. In reality, our sensor seems to be a bit confused and/or broken and either beeps all the time or refuses to do so, and the process was extended by a good while and several bouts of cussing. It was nearly dark by the end of the lath labyrinth, but we put up a few of the cedar siding boards to improve the aesthetic.

Sunday was a glorious sort of day. Not only did the gable closures I ordered for the roof finally arrive, but they happen to cover my uneven plywood issue so brilliantly that we have dodged the feared act of house sawing, and that will do wonders for making any day glorious.

We got all but the last one on, and they look so very nice over the redwood facias. My neighbor also came over to put the shiny electric plug thingy on through the siding. Technical term, you know.

Today marks the first where I have worked entirely on my own. Last night, my dad gave me a severe lecture on the use of the big circular saw and several other implements of construction, so I set off this morning with determination and a healthy fear of power tools.

I managed to problem solve my way through the little issues that came up and got the siding on all the way to the top of the window. It’s really amazing what you can learn when it’s important you do so! That said, some parts look slightly funky up close, but that’s why you start at the end least likely to have viewers