We’re spending a few days reframing the east wall of the tiny house to move and enlarge the window opening. As Brian mentioned in yesterday’s post, we really don’t have the time or the money for this kind of insanity on a build that’s already behind schedule, but weighed against all the time and money that we’ve already invested in this project, it’s a small price to pay to get things right.
Interestingly, when I was first planning this house, I really wanted a large, offset window on this end. But somewhere amidst conversations about shear panels, I got it into my head that offset wasn’t a possibility. I don’t think I ever even proposed the idea to Brian. So as we drew up the house, we always drew it with a reasonably-sized, centered window. And once we framed everything in, that worked well enough… at least from the inside.
The problem that I think both of us struggled with was that from the exterior, when you add the height of the trailer, the height of the window felt strangely imposing. Almost fortress-like. And that was not the feeling I wanted for the face of the house that you first encounter as you walk up.
Moving the window has changed that completely. It’s brought the house “down”, making it feel more human-scaled and approachable. It also dramatically opens up the interior in a really beautiful way, and makes the wall space to the side of the window more functional for shelving or future utilities installations.
I’m not gonna lie, I was terrified to undertake a dramatic remodel on an unfinished project. What if we were wrong? What if we burned a bunch of money and time and still didn’t like it? Getting everything framed and sheathed today put those doubts to bed. It was exactly the right call, and it shifts the feel of the space from “good enough” to something that really shines.
x Liz
