So Long Tyvek, Hello Siding!

Time to upgrade that Tyvek house wrap! Siding weekend is finally here... and we couldn't have asked for better weather. You may recall in a previous post that we liked the cedar lap and gap for the siding, but we also wanted something to break up the boxy feel. After installing the roof, we really liked the look of the roofing material and wanted more people to see the pretty "Deep River Blue." So we decided to use it as siding as well. The cedar will cover the two short sides of the trailer, the driver side of the trailer (back of the house) will be all metal siding, and the passenger side of the trailer (the front of the house) will be both metal siding and cedar. The metal will be centered on the door and stretch to the center of the windows beside it.

In case you don't know, putting the siding up is a fairly big job (depending on who you ask) and we were hoping to get it all done in a three day weekend (Friday to Sunday). So we enlisted some help. Drew's Dad, Rick, flew down Thursday evening and Drew had Friday off. So they would be ready to pick up the material Friday morning (thanks Ray for letting us use your trailer!) and get started on the siding the same day.

We also had a family friend, Craig, volunteer his weekend to come down and help. Craig and his van full of tools arrived just as Drew and his dad returned with the siding material.

So after a half day of work on Friday we finished the forward short side of the trailer and the cedar just around the corner from it as you can see from the pictures below.

Friday we also placed some of the trim for the metal siding on the driver side of the trailer (back of the house). We quickly learned that the cedar goes up faster than the metal. It was also interesting that with the metal you had to put the trim up first before the panels. Below aren't the best pictures of the metal trim, but it's there (look around the windows). Also the wheel wells made for some interesting trim angles.

Friday night we had even more help arrive. Drew's brother, Nathan, was able to make it down to "help" (aka sling drinks) for the weekend.

Abbie and her sisters, Statia and Grace, also made it in Friday night. Abbie had to work Friday and Statia and Grace were coming home for spring break after class.

So Saturday, with all the extra help and minimal measurement errors, we were able to finish all the cedar siding and get all of the metal trim up on the driver's side of the trailer (back of the house).

We already said that the metal siding went a lot slower than the wood (and you can tell by the relative progress). This was because it was much more tedious to work with and required significantly more planning, illustrated by the picture below of us discussing how we were going to attack the cuts. We did break a little early Saturday to enjoy the great company and beautiful weather.

Which meant we hoped to finish on Sunday, but knew that Drew and Rick were able to work Monday if needed. We started and got into the zone on finally hanging the metal panels. It was all hands on deck, so no one was taking pictures of the progress until later in the day. Here are a few celebratory pictures of us hanging up the last bit of the driver's side siding.

If you are keeping count of the sides, then you've figured out that we didn't get the siding finished on Sunday. Going into Monday we still had to install most of the metal trim and all of the metal paneling on the passenger side of the trailer (the front of the house). Drew was able to take of work and Rick didn't fly back until Tuesday morning. With the team whittled down to two, they finally got the last of the siding up. Rosey Leigh is really looking pretty now!

At the end of fours days, all we lack are some touch ups, caulking on the metal siding and of course we still need to stain the cedar siding. All of which will wait for another weekend. Next up is finally finish the plumbing and starting the electrical. 

Exterior Electrical Boxes and Vents Part 2

It's been a while since we last posted, but we promise we are working! Admittedly, it has been a little slow going lately. The plumbing is proving slightly more difficult than anticipated, but nothing we can't handle! It just means Drew does more pensive wall staring than normal. 

On this blog post we are to address the exterior electrical boxes. After some back and forth we landed on installing 4 exterior electrical boxes. The first box is for a coax cable. This will allow us to install an antenna or a satellite dish near the roof with the coax cable running inside the walls (rather than the outside of the house) to our living room. The other three are for outlets. One on the back of the house for plugging in tools or a heater for the propane tank and water lines, and the other two are for outside lights. One near the roof for hanging patio lights and the other closer to the bottom of the trailer for any ground lights.

Installing the electrical boxes was pretty standard. First, you'll need a hole to install it in.

1. Cut a square out of the Tyvek wrap.
2. Trace the pattern they provided with the box on the OSB.
3. Drill a hole in one or more of the corners of the square so you can get the jigsaw blade started.
4. Use the jigsaw to make the hole.

Once the hole is cut you place the electrical box in it (we went with the Arlington DBHM1C box) and secure it with screws.

Once you have it secured, you finish it up just like you would a window.

Next up are the vent's for the bathroom exhaust fan and the range hood. As Abbie will tell you, Drew's favorite thing is cutting holes in poor Rosey Leigh. She suggested changing the name to the Swiss cheese house. Both of these vents are 4 inches in diameter, so we used a 4 1/8 inch hole saw to give us just little bit of "play". The little bit of play is nice because we have to go through the rim joist and the exterior OSB sheathing, and they are 3 1/2 inches apart. This makes lining up the holes challenging, but definitely doable.

Once both the holes were cut we placed the 4 inch duct through, to make sure they lined up with each other, and they did perfectly!

Above is a peek from the inside to the outside with the duct removed, but the louver vent in place.

And here is a close up of what it looks like on the outside with the louver vent on. The blue thing behind the vent is called Quick Flash and they come in all different sizes. We decided to use the Quick Flash because it makes it easier to set the louvers flush with the siding once it is installed. The Quick Flash product allows us to move the ducting back after the siding is installed, but still have an airtight seal.

If you look closely you can see both the bathroom exhaust fan and range hood louvers installed.

Above is a close up of the Quick Flashing all finished up and without the louver vent on.

We also redid the composting toilet vent with Quick Flashing. This will allow us to make adjustments in the future and it should make installing the siding easier.

Last, but not least, we placed the mounting block for the front door external light (we went with the Arlington 8082F for the mounting block). Once the placement was decided (centered over the door as low as we could go and avoid the door header), we needed to drill a hole to pass the electrical wiring through.

Like with all the other electrical boxes, it was screwed in place and finished up with the Tite Seal Tape. Below you can see what it looks like with the mounting block in place. We haven't picked the light out just yet, but I think it will look great on that block!

With the vents and exterior electrical boxes finished, it is time for siding! We have a long weekend planned with some special guests to, hopefully, finish the siding all at once. 

P.S. To be fully ready for siding we also needed to get the exterior water lines run through the sheathing, which we did, but we'll talk about in more detail in an upcoming plumbing post.

Covering the Line Set and Installing all the Vents Part 1

Last weekend we got the line set routed, but it wasn't fastened to the trailer underneath, and it definitely wasn't protected from anything that may jump up at it when going down the road. So this week we had to take care of that. Drew gleaned inspiration from this video on YouTube and decided that he could bend some thin galvanized steel to form a cover and something that held the line set up at the same time.

Below is the back corner piece being bent to fit into place. This piece was the only piece that was cut first and then bent.

The rest of the pieces were straight runs and it was easier to bend them and then cut them with the electric sheet metal shear that Drew's dad left when we worked on the metal roof. Below is what the piece looked like right as it was ready to be cut.

In the next picture, Drew had already worked his way up from the back of the trailer (working back to front so the overlap is favorable to the direction we will be going down the road) to in between the axles. The picture attempts to show how the metal is bent and installed. To the right of the white insulated line set in the picture is a 6 inch steel beam and above it are 4 inch beams with a sheet metal bottom. This makes roughly a 2 inch corner (since the beams are flush on the top of the trailer) that we used to hide the line set in, and only needed to bend the sheet metal to create the other two sides instead of three.

Some action shots of Drew putting in the last piece (photographs courtesy of Abbie).

There is a break in the sheet metal covering where the scissor jack juts out. That's why the corner piece was the last piece.

The finished product!

Now onto some vents! First up was the LUNOS e2. If you look at the linked brochure you'll notice that they come as pairs. So we had two ~6 1/4 inch diameter tubes that needed to be placed. One in the living room and the other in the sleeping loft. We made a frame inside the wall for each LUNOS e2 unit and transferred the center of the frame on the outside using a drill through the wall. Then used a jigsaw to cut the hole for the tube.

The outside of the LUNOS is supposed to be flush with the outside of the siding, so we used a sample piece of the cedar lap and gap to measure how far the tube needed to come out and then sealed it up in place.

Below is the finished product from the outside after it has been properly flashed and sealed.

And here is what it looks like from the inside. We will just put finish trim up around the part of the tube that protrudes inside the house.

Next up was the vent for the composting toilet. We are using a Nature's Head composting toilet and it has a fan that runs 24/7 to expel the smells from the toilet. So it needed a way to vent to the outside. The easiest way to do that was with 1 1/4 inch PVC pipe that the hose, supplied with the toilet, can connect to and that will vent to the back of the house. So we used a hole saw to make the correct sized hole for the PVC pipe and then used some 2x4s to hold it in place.

This is what the toilet vent looks like from the outside once it was sealed up.

Next up is plumbing, more vents, and exterior electrical boxes!

Electrical Boxes, the Line Set, and Joist Cleaning

If you've been following our blog, you might remember a post that mentioned a battle of the light switches... Well we finally came to a compromise and it was time to start putting up the electrical boxes. Abbie took the initiative and started hanging the boxes. Some of them were in trickier locations than others, but Abbie got them done! She did say that her wrists were hurting the next few days because of the weird angles she had to use the hammer in. It is a tiny house after all, but her tennis two-handed backhand sure came in handy!

While Abbie was hanging the electrical boxes, Drew was working on routing the line set (refrigerant lines) for the mini split (laymen terms: the AC/heating unit). The evaporator half of the mini split is going to be up high on the wall between the two lofts and the condenser is mounted on the back side of the trailer. So the lines needed to make their way between the two.

Here are a few options we considered for routing the lines:

• Straight down inside the wall, through the trailer, and along the bottom of the trailer
• Through the studs in the wall all the way to the back of the trailer
• Up through the rafters all the way to the back of the trailer and then down the inside of the wall
• The normal method on a house, which is through the wall and then along the outside of the house all the way to the back of the trailer

After much thought, we decided the best option for us was to route the lines down the inside of the wall, through the trailer and along the bottom of the trailer. It was going to be the easiest (routing copper lines is not fun) while still looking good (not having a channel running along the outside of the house).

So Drew took a 1 1/2 inch hole saw to make three holes in the bottom plate and subfloor.

A 3 inch hole saw to the bottom of the trailer, and cut out the insulation that was in between.

Pro tip: don't cut a hole in metal from below while wearing a fleece jacket... it was not fun picking the metal shards out of it.

Then we had to route the line set from the outside to the inside up the wall, and finagle it over the axles and to the back of the trailer.

Before she went back to college, Grace, Abbie's sister, helped us out with putting a second coat of paint on some sample interior paneling. We wanted to see what it looked like up on the wall and with several pieces of the tongue and groove together.

We still are a little worried that it may make the house look a little busy with the close lines, but we can't really afford the weight of the thicker shiplap. It would add about 600 lbs to the overall weight?!

Now onto cleaning the Douglas fir joists before they get stained, and it was quite the task... The cleaning process involved clean rags, a scrub brush and some good ol' denatured alcohol. Abbie jumped on this task and did an awesome job, even though she hated every minute of it. She was ready to call it quits several times and just paint the joists. We persevered and while the joists aren't perfect (just don't look too closely if you come visit us), they look much better and are ready to be stained!

Next up is installing all the vents on Rosey Leigh and covering up the line set on the bottom side of the trailer to protect it.