My House on Wheels: July 2012

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Some finishing touches done

We got the 24" ceiling fan up and having the extra air movement is great. Especially since we started sleeping up in the loft where there is a little more room. Juno loves to come up and take naps, but Lucy will only come up if you stay too.

Worm Bin

So I got this crazy idea that I should have a built in composting worm bin. So I went to my local cash and carry and picked up a couple serving trays. I like the tray system the best because they have the worms sort themselves out for you. I guess we will see. If it doesn't work, it was a fun idea and I made it out of left over tongue and groove pine scraps.

Ladder

So to buy one of those fancy ladders that roll in libraries it costs something like $800. Too much. $300 would be too much. So I designed a ladder after watching a 3 part YouTube series of a carpenter building a loft ladder in Ellensburg. The rails are made from posts reclaimed from under my parents house. The steps are made from a mystery hard wood that Michael Manant gave my dad a while back. The notched in the rails for the steps were routered out with a custom jig that I made. The whole thing got screwed and glued together. I have two of the four coats of urethane on it and we are waiting to attach the metal hooks until after the floor is done do that we get just the right height. The ladder will hook on to the railing bolted on to the edge of the loft. Drew's grandpa down in Toledo, WA welds frame rails on big trucks. He did an amazing job of taking my drawings and turning them into the pipe with mounting brackets attached.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Tongue and Groove Pine

It still needs trim and the ceiling under the loft isn't done, but it is fantastic! The pine was purchased from Arrow lumber at $.53/linear foot with 5" of coverage. It is 3/4" thick, but as these are the true dimensions, it is actually called 1"x6". Tomorrow I am going to start white washing it and then finishing touches can be installed!

The Story

The heater clicks on. I'm plopped on the outdated foam bed in my bedroom/kitchen in a 70's Argosy reading profiles. These women are the wives of truck drivers, just like me. Drew was not a truck driver when we met or when we got married on a Saturday afternoon in the mountains next to a river without cell service. A year later he left and now for every six days he is gone I get him home for one. Ultimately it is still better than being single. Single people worry about being alone forever, whether or not a relationship is going somewhere, and renting endlessly.

Several years ago I discovered a secret. There are two branches to being financially successful. You need to make more money and spend less money. In these trying times it is difficult for a twenty-something to drastically make more dough. So I focused on the spend less money part of the deal. Since so much of budgets go to rent or a mortgage, I researched alternative housing options. There was one quiet guy named Jay Schaefer out there building tiny houses on trailers meant for transporting cars. I was hooked.

April 14, 2009 (pre-Drew) I bought two axles with an 8' x 16' bed attached that would be transformed into a home. The house got framed then I moved, worked at camp, met Drew, got married, and worked cooking at jail. Three years later; sick of working in confined spaces with government employees, commuting fifty minutes a day, and living essentially by myself in the woods; we moved back to my parents to finish the house. By the end of the summer I should get it done and I can't believe we have come this far. Construction is not a career I want to continue pursuing, but I do love a good chop saw and nail gun. For about $12,000 we should have a portable place for us and our cat,Juno, to live... until we definitively outgrow it.

My House on Wheels