It appears blog posts are becoming a monthly occurrence. Hopefully that will change this spring when I get out of school, the weather warms up and I really start building instead of this "weekend warrior" stuff.
The big thing that has happened over the past month is getting new tires on the trailer. It was painful to spend $480 on it, but it also puts your mind at ease knowing you won't have to get at those suckers for a loong time now. The rest of my projects were pretty much on hold until I got the tires back on. However on thing John and I did when the tires were off was reenforce and beef up the wheel well covers. If I am going to be building walls on top of them I want to at least put a few more bolts in there to make sure they are really attached and sturdy. The passenger side might need a little extra something still but we'll see when we start building.
After the tires were on, I leveled the trailer and took a real measurement of how far off the ground the house will be sitting. When I designed the house I planned on a trailer height around two feet and left 11'1" for the height of the house. Two weeks ago when I was framing everything up in SketchUp(I'd rather make mistakes there and figure it out instead of doing it with wood that costs money) I ran into a huge problem. My door, or any door for that matter, would be too tall for the walls of the house. Sure I had some options, like move the door to the end of the trailer, or make the walls higher and the roof pitch less, but none of those were really appealing. To stop my panicking I decided I'd just not think about it until we had the wheels on and I could take a measurement and pray I'd find the extra few inches I needed there. In the words of Professor Farnsworth, good news everybody! It turns out the trailer is 18 3/4" off the ground and I actually have an extra 10" of wall height if I need it(and I do). So now the door will fit and the extra 10" is going to translate to that much extra headroom in the loft, which rocks.
Then, yesterday I FINALLY called a cop to come do a VIN inspection so I could get the trailer registered. I told myself after I got this done could start with flashing the floor. I held off because I'd hate to cover something up the cop needed to see. Turns out I needed to go back to the DMV to buy a VIN number, stamp/etch it in, and then have the cop come back and he'd visually verify I put the VIN on the trailer. So I didn't really get anything done with that visit but he did say my trailer is the nicest homemade trailer he's seen, usually he sees stuff that isn't even road worthy, so that was a nice compliment. I also found out that I can start putting the flashing on because I just need to stamp the number up front on the driver's side of the tongue. So I started flashing today!
Flashing is super exciting for me because this is the first real thing I've done to build the house. All the stuff with the trailer was just prep work and my flooring project and door restoration were just projects to keep me busy this school year. But the flashing, NOW I'm building. I thought this would be a fun and easy part, but a day and many swear words later I found out it had a learning curve(like everything in life). The project started out wonderfully two weeks ago when I picked up the flashing from Home Depot and dropped it on my toe loading it into the car, thus breaking it. It's been getting better and I've just been "walking it off" because I know there's really nothing anyone can do about a broken pinky toe. I also picked up some self tapping metal screws to attach the flashing to the trailer. Now most people use staples or nails to do this, but because I don't have a nice, level wood deck to attach thins to like others, I need metal screws to attach the flashing right to the trailer frame. The package said "self tapping" and they had a pretty nice tip to them, but the metal was too thick and I had to predrill nearly all the holes before I could carefully nudge the screws in. If I wasn't careful, the heads would break off and I'd have to start all over again.
The big thing that has happened over the past month is getting new tires on the trailer. It was painful to spend $480 on it, but it also puts your mind at ease knowing you won't have to get at those suckers for a loong time now. The rest of my projects were pretty much on hold until I got the tires back on. However on thing John and I did when the tires were off was reenforce and beef up the wheel well covers. If I am going to be building walls on top of them I want to at least put a few more bolts in there to make sure they are really attached and sturdy. The passenger side might need a little extra something still but we'll see when we start building.
After the tires were on, I leveled the trailer and took a real measurement of how far off the ground the house will be sitting. When I designed the house I planned on a trailer height around two feet and left 11'1" for the height of the house. Two weeks ago when I was framing everything up in SketchUp(I'd rather make mistakes there and figure it out instead of doing it with wood that costs money) I ran into a huge problem. My door, or any door for that matter, would be too tall for the walls of the house. Sure I had some options, like move the door to the end of the trailer, or make the walls higher and the roof pitch less, but none of those were really appealing. To stop my panicking I decided I'd just not think about it until we had the wheels on and I could take a measurement and pray I'd find the extra few inches I needed there. In the words of Professor Farnsworth, good news everybody! It turns out the trailer is 18 3/4" off the ground and I actually have an extra 10" of wall height if I need it(and I do). So now the door will fit and the extra 10" is going to translate to that much extra headroom in the loft, which rocks.
Then, yesterday I FINALLY called a cop to come do a VIN inspection so I could get the trailer registered. I told myself after I got this done could start with flashing the floor. I held off because I'd hate to cover something up the cop needed to see. Turns out I needed to go back to the DMV to buy a VIN number, stamp/etch it in, and then have the cop come back and he'd visually verify I put the VIN on the trailer. So I didn't really get anything done with that visit but he did say my trailer is the nicest homemade trailer he's seen, usually he sees stuff that isn't even road worthy, so that was a nice compliment. I also found out that I can start putting the flashing on because I just need to stamp the number up front on the driver's side of the tongue. So I started flashing today!
Flashing is super exciting for me because this is the first real thing I've done to build the house. All the stuff with the trailer was just prep work and my flooring project and door restoration were just projects to keep me busy this school year. But the flashing, NOW I'm building. I thought this would be a fun and easy part, but a day and many swear words later I found out it had a learning curve(like everything in life). The project started out wonderfully two weeks ago when I picked up the flashing from Home Depot and dropped it on my toe loading it into the car, thus breaking it. It's been getting better and I've just been "walking it off" because I know there's really nothing anyone can do about a broken pinky toe. I also picked up some self tapping metal screws to attach the flashing to the trailer. Now most people use staples or nails to do this, but because I don't have a nice, level wood deck to attach thins to like others, I need metal screws to attach the flashing right to the trailer frame. The package said "self tapping" and they had a pretty nice tip to them, but the metal was too thick and I had to predrill nearly all the holes before I could carefully nudge the screws in. If I wasn't careful, the heads would break off and I'd have to start all over again.
But before I could screw the flashing in I had to cut it to size, which was a whole other battle. The stuff I got comes in 50' rolls, and rolls are great for transport and storage, but not so great for unrolling and trying to lay flat. I eventually got a system in place to do it by myself.
I have a clamp in 3 corners and then that paver stone where a clamp couldn't fit. One warning, this stuff is very sharp so use gloves. Also, as soon and you're done cutting a section out it's going to want to snap back into that round, rolled up shape. Make sure you have things setting at each corner and the roll back doesn't hit anyone or anything it's not suppose to.
Something else I learned is be aware of screw placement. The flashing is suppose to overlap at least 4" on each side so if you place a screw right on the edge of one piece, then when you lay the flashing over it, it'll create a bubble and it won't be a tight seal. I thought about this ALMOST just in time, but that didn't stop me from still making the mistake. However it only affected one screw. Below is what you don't want happening:
I pulled out the screw and it's all fine now. Also, by being aware of this screw placement you can cut back on the number to screws you have to use because you'll be using one screw instead of 2. To make sure I didn't make this mistake again and to give myself a guide on how far to overlap for the next piece I measured in 4" and drew a line down the entire length.
I then placed my screws to the left side of the line and called it a day. All in all it took me from 9am to 4pm, quite a bit longer than I thought. However part of the reason it took so long was because I had to learn what process I needed to follow and I was doing around the wheel well and had to do some custom cutting. The next 3 or so pieces should go up fast and easy because I have less metal to predrill through and there's no weird cutting going on. I may do those tomorrow or later this week(it's spring break). Whoo!! Spring Break 2014!!
There are small cracks and gaps in areas, like these, but once I get all the flashing down my plan is to use rubber flashing tape and/or roofing caulking to seal those so the bottom of the trailer(and my subfloor) will stay nice and dry.
And for those of you who don't obsessively follow Tinyhouse building blogs and don't really know what order I'm going in right now and what the heck is up next here's a little run down:
1) Most people start with their trailer already wired, braked, titled, registered and ready to go(unlike me). So flashing like this is usually the first step:
And for those of you who don't obsessively follow Tinyhouse building blogs and don't really know what order I'm going in right now and what the heck is up next here's a little run down:
1) Most people start with their trailer already wired, braked, titled, registered and ready to go(unlike me). So flashing like this is usually the first step:
2) Then they build a subfloor, attach it to the trailer and insulate it:
3) Then build like a regular house. Framing walls, roofing, windows, etc.