Your mileage may vary but I found installing my windows to be easy, fun, and rewarding.
It's a simple process that helps morph your wall full of holes into a complete shell. When your done your house will be much quieter and peaceful on the inside and easier to heat and/or cool during your build. It transforms your box into an indoor space so remember to use your indoor voices. There are some good products that make this whole process easier and I really really love this flex wrap from Tyvek, I'm usually not a fan boy of building materials but boy howdy is this stuff neat. I wish I had more windows to install because my 15 weren't enough!
Finding a friend to help you is key, it's possible to do this by yourself I've heard but not fun or easy.
I installed new windows, they are much easier because they have the nailing fins and such. Used windows can work but I'll let another authority like Deek over at www.relaxshacks.com handle that. He's the reclaimed materials guru.
I'll save most of the jib-jab for the video below where I walk you through installing one of my last windows. I hope you enjoy and check out my friends Ella Jenkins and Matt Nelson. They have blogs you should check out:
Ella's Tiny house blog: http://littleyellowdoor.wordpress.com/
I got my materials on Amazon after I saw some awesome tutorials so I made a video because I don't think you'd believe me otherwise. You can find a list of materials I've bought from Amazon at the bottom of the page.
I've only been building my house for a bit over a month now but I've learned a few tips I thought I'd share so you can spread liberally over the affected area and if you don't see any improvement come back and see me next week.
Embrace the dirty
If you try and stay clean and build at the same time you'll have a really tough time doing either.
I started with a few shirts and one special pair of pants that I've been meaning to get rid of but needed one last hurrah. I wore those few shirts and the same torn, ragged pair of pants for about 30 days straight as I started my house build. I did shower twice a day but with all the glue, saw dust, and soot I never felt truly clean. I knew whatever clothes I wore during that time would be ruined so once I embraced the dirty it helped. My "uniform" made me look a bit like a homeless person, which to be fair was only 30 days from being the truth if I didn't build fast.
Tools
I'm not going to list out a thousand little tools you need but these are some that I find almost never leave my side.
Speed Square: I don't use this as much as I would if I were doing traditional framing but it's still a VERY handy tool for the simple fact that it's the perfect straight edge. You will be drawing a metric ton of cut lines and this will be part of nearly all of them. Even with SIPs and not really framing traditionally I still get tons of miles out of this tool with no moving parts. It rates a 7 on the hand to hand fighting weapon scale out of 10.
Gloves: These make it easier to embrace the dirty because if you're like me and learn to just keep them on all the time, you'll have nice clean hands at the end of the day to eat dinner with ease. Also, I've saved myself from a few razor cuts, screw tips, and literally more splinters than you can shake a wooden splintering stick at. Get some good ones and wear the same ones everyday. That way you can have them form to your hands over time and if you're lucky your body won't reject them and they can replace your hand skin. During the inevitable Zombie apocalypse gloves will be key to keep yourself from being bitten by a stray walker.
Tape Measure(s): I like to start the day with at least three tapes and by the end of the day I play a little Easter egg hunt with myself to find all of them. I paint mine a good color like purple so they stand out. You'll end up with one by your saw, one by your site, and one on your belt. It's better than having to look for it every time you lose it. Keeps you from having to stop in the middle of the day to search. Plus they are cheap. I recommend getting one good one and then a few cheap ones to lend to helpers.
Sometimes you need a truck...but when it comes to a used Buick LeSabre all bets are off.
I also got my Mini Cooper in the action picking up my tub; pictures of that will be in my tub post later.
First thing: I shouldn't recommend this but we actually used the Buick to TOW my trailer! We sat on the back to balance it on the wheels and hooked up chains to the car to provide the forward pull. Slowly but surely we pulled it out of the garage and off we went. Here's the proof:
Don't try this at home
Not only can the Buick tow, it can haul!
So after a long day of door shopping with no luck, we decided to pick up our loft joists so the day wasn't wasted. We got 8 foot 4x4's and I have to be honest, I did not think they would fit in the Buick LeSabre. What you see is the product of some very good spacial reasoning but none of it was mine.
A: Trick question. There can never be enough headroom.
Quick post today of a short video I took once I got the boards up in the loft. Looking forward to getting a mattress up there but as you can tell from the video I have enough headroom up there to wear at least four hats, which you'll need to do if you're building your own tiny house.
With my SIPs I was able to pick exactly where to put my loft and I choose 6 foot 6 inches for the clearance...if you're taller than that you're used to ducking to get places. ;-)
We're seeing lots of interest in the Shou Sugi Ban burning so when we got back from picking up our loft joists we thought we'd show you how we burn them.
It's pretty easy and not too scary. Can't really mess it up too bad either. If you go too dark, brush it or sand it down and try again, if you go too light, just keep going man.
This is a tiny post about tiny house posts...or joists in this case.
So how do you put loft joists in a tiny sip house? What kind of extra considerations do you have to take and which ones can you ignore? Why is this entire paragraph questions?
When I first looked into building with sips I found Art Cormier and his beautiful house and with his advise my build has gone really well. Be sure to check out Art's blog at tinysiphouse.blogspot.com.
Art told me how he did his joists and I did the same. Basically I cut the joists about three inches longer than the width of the walls from interior to interior. Then I cut corresponding holes in either side of te house through the inside osb layer only. I used a hot iron to scoop out all of the foam out of one of the holes but only an inch and a half of the other side. This allows you to slide the post inside the big hole and have enough room to negotiate the other end into it's shallow hole. When you do this you'll have the post centered with an inch and a half on either side.
With your posts set in place you'll want to fill that void back with foam so from the outside you can locate the spot and drill a small hole that you can use to fill it with expanding foam so you get all the r-value you can and also make that post more secure.
Finally, in order to really secure your post you'll use one of your long SIP screws on each end to drill through the outer layer and into the end of the post. Be sure to let your expanding foam harden for a day or so to stiffen up your osb from the inside. That way your screw doesn't tear it's way through the board as those giant behemoths are want to do.
There is one exemption to this process. The post that is against the back wall is not notched into the wall. This is because at that point in the corner the sip panels have some 2x4s at the seam and I don't want to mess with notching around them so instead I cut it flush, slapped some good ol construction adhesive on there, tacked it up temporary with blocks and toenail screws, then went outside and sip screwed the whole board on both ends and also every foot along it's length. It's not going anywhere.
***One big tip I got from the Artist currently known as Art: once you get your house up and you know it's square measure everything else based on the house. A level can be a very crude tool and isote likely to lead to trouble than a tape measure. A sip house is almost guaranteed to be square once it's up so I measured all my joists based on the house and they look great.***
One hiccup I had was that I had planned on my loft being 8 foot even. This is because it would do a few things; allow a little area in front of the bed for solid footing when getting up and down, make for easy 24 inch on center joists, and I wouldn't have to cut my 8 foot pieces of cedar for my loft surface. And I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling kids!...I mean if it weren't for those meddling SIP seams. The sips typically come in 8 foot sections to help keep them a manageable weight but you can get them any way you want, Art got his whole wall as one piece his whole house is 6 pieces and a floor piece. Anyway there was a seam right where my last joist wanted to go and I couldn't give it the same treatment as the first joist so I was forced to concede two inches so my loft is 7'10". Shaq could still take a nap no problem so I'm not complaining.
Because I had to move my last joist I had to make a choice on what to do with spacing. I could space them even, a little less than 24 oc, I could keep the 24 oc for all but te last one, or something else.
I'm doing thin walls, using 3/4 inch tongue and groove boards instead of big 2x4 walls. I'll just need a bit of blocking at the top and bottom to keep them in place and boom, bob's your uncle. I'm planning on using my loft joists to support the top of my thin walls so their placement affects more than usual.
I had planned for my bathroom to be 24 inches wide and already ordered the bathroom stuff to fit so that rules out making all my joists less than 24 inches. My closets were going to be 20ish inches and basically fit between the joists and they have to be at least that wide for my little dog crate to fit so those couldn't move either. I didn't like the idea of making only one joist spacing different so I split the difference on the last two in order to keep as much rhythm as possible. Even if we do all march to a different beat.
I was taking a break and thought I'd show you guys around my house as I try and conceptualize what it will look like when I'm done. It'll be nice to have these videos to see how far I've come.
We think we're going to be finished with the outside sometime next month. I will only have a few days to work on it but I have some really good help from my tiny house friends.
