November 2019 – Page 2 – actually tiny

Another leak

November 16, 2019November 24, 2019Leave a comment

This isn’t a glamorous post but it is a very teachable moment. I ran into another problem today caused partially by me and partially by the extremely tight space for our water heater. (Which is caused by the fact that we can’t get a tiny house taller than 12 feet out of this location).This...

Off-the-sheld bed + storage

November 15, 2019November 24, 20192 Comments

We built the bed and the under bed storage drawers today thanks to the magic of IKEA. Could I build my own bed frame and storage drawers from scratch? You betcha, but it would cost me more in materials alone plus two days of labor, which is where IKEA starts to look really appealing....

A leak in the system

November 14, 2019November 24, 2019Leave a comment

Today started with high hopes that were somewhat soggy by the end. The plan for today was to flush the water piping and pressure test all of the newly installed components for our somewhat complicated hybrid wood-fired, solar thermal and electric hot water system. It’s always a good practice to take the head off...

Undersink plumbing

November 13, 2019December 23, 2019Leave a comment

We installed the sink today, ticking yet another item off the punch list.Our sink is a reclaimed stainless steel double basin sink that we bought from the Rebuilding Center. Old stainless sinks are durable inexpensive, lightweight, and environmentally friendly, satisfying four of my five requirements for a tiny house. The fifth one is aesthetics,...

Updating the outdoor shower plumbing

November 11, 2019November 24, 2019Leave a comment

Today we revised the outdoor shower plumbing situation by dropping the valve/handle location 5 inches and building a new wooden cover with integrated soap shelf that does away with the horrible escutcheon altogether.It’s always surprising to me how small changes like this can completely transform the feel of a space. I could never be...

Plumbing the outdoor shower

November 10, 2019December 23, 2019Leave a comment

Today we plumbed the outdoor shower. Overall it went pretty well with the notable exceptions that the valve location feels about 6 inches too high and the escutcheon plate is positively atrocious.We both really wanted a vintage fixture for this but ultimately a single handle pressure balanced valve is just a lot more user-friendly...

Finishing the sewer connection + setting the toilet

November 9, 2019November 24, 2019Leave a comment

Finished the sewer connection today and set the toilet. It seems like most people are going with composting toilets in tiny houses, but I’ve never been a big fan of indoor composting toilets. We had outside composting toilets on my off grid farm and it was a great setup, but here in the city...

Blocking up the trailer

November 8, 2019November 24, 2019Leave a comment

Today we blocked up the trailer, ending my ill-fated experiment of building a tiny house with the weight on the wheels and keeping level by winding the leveling jacks down an equal amount of turns over the course of the build to prevent overloading them.This strategy didn’t cause any problems per se it just...

Timelapse: building the woodshed

November 6, 2019November 24, 2019Leave a comment

This little firewood shed means more to me than you might expect. One of the downsides of becoming seriously chronically ill six years ago was leaving my beautiful off-grid farm behind and moving back to the city where energy arrives at the flick of a switch with no visceral sense of usage and certainly...

Building a woodshed out of scrap

November 5, 2019December 23, 2019Leave a comment

We’ve spent these last few precious sunny days cleaning up the seemingly endless bits of debris from the build and repurposing as much of it as possible into a tiny firewood shed. This time it was me on the saw and Liz doing the assembly.I do my best not to save leftover construction materials...