The Walls Are Closing In

And now time for a great panel discussion. Ha!

Sorry, that was lame but I have a reputation to uphold.

Anyways, panelling is what we've been working on for the last month: closing in the walls; it's also how things feel. It's now the middle of June and our target of finishing in August still stands. August is not far off. So it's a good thing that we've moved on to the finishings!

Once the electrical was roughed in we could finally start stuffing the wall cavities with insulation. We're using Roxul in our house: R22 for the ceiling and R14 for the walls. We are also using a vapour barrier, which is super common but surprisingly controversial. We spent a long time at the start of the build deciding how to layer the walls and while some people don't use a vapor barrier out of concern that the house won't breath, we feel pretty confident that we've put in enough ventilation options to keep this house breathing deeply despite its plastic wrapping. Please see former post for ventilation chat.

We debated for awhile about what to do about interior panelling: whether or not to salvage materials, like pallets, or buy new.

And new won out! We bought about 360 square feet of fir T&G panelling back in January after seeing an ad for it on Craigslist. We paid a visit to the vendor, Tom Girard at Swiftwood Forest Products Limited, who runs a small mill in Port Coquitlam. We were happy to support a local business and the product was great so we took it home where it lived in the garage until this last month.

Since the 'upstairs' was ready first and far simpler, we started with the lofts. The ceiling walls have almost no interruptions, such as windows, so the panels went up fast. We also had the help of our buddy Bob, who happens to be our woodworking guru, so extra hands made it go even faster and having an experienced builder helping out was an immediate value add. I think we'd done about two rows when he told us it would be easier if we put the panels on the right side up. There's got to be a joke about being walleyed in here somewhere.

To make things easier, we'd pre-treated most of our panels for the ceiling so we

wouldn't have to apply the Varathane nearly upsidedown. But the pile of finished boards was shrinking quickly so a couple of helpers saved our hides and continued varathaning boards as we worked. Thanks Judith and Robyn!

Once the ceiling was done we were on to the loft end walls. Inspired by our paradise of wood, Bob offered to do our trim in some mahogany that was laying around the site wood shop. Score! He proceeded do a beautiful job finishing the box around the base of where the ceiling fan will go and an awesome louvered piece for our ventilation fan over the storage loft.

Next the master bedloft where Bob worked his magic again on the trim around the skylight and the center piece covering the ridge beam.

Yes, that is our mattress in the loft. It's currently helping us figure out how much room we have on either side for storage. Cozy, hey?!

Then it was on to the downstairs. The back wall was the first to be panelled and that was when things really got exciting. This is going to be our living room!

With some more help from some super keen peeps, we finished off both sitting room

side walls. Thanks Natalie and Arthur!

We also began the planning for our storage stairs. While a ladder is nice and rustic, they're not always that stable, you need to have a place to keep them and they're hard for dogs to climb. And we want a dog. Really bad. Inspired by some other tiny houses we've seen online, we decided to combine our steps with our storage, making our staircase also our clothes closet/dresser. I'm very excited about building this.

Our supply of panelling was running low so we decided to use finished plywood for our wall behind the steps.

As soon as the floor is finished (next week) we will be able to start putting it together. For now, a nice little stencil exists as the wall.

When we weren't putting panelling up, we were building the bathroom. Up went the framing and the doorway. We bought an adjustable pocket door hardware package from Home Depot in the states which made building the cavity pretty easy. We had decided to save ourselves time and not build it all from scratch but since the bathroom is under the master loft, the doorway is shorter than in a normal house and much more narrow. This makes buying a finished pocket door package impossible so this option turned out to be a pretty good one.

The shower side of this wall we're in the pocess of turning into some pantry shelving, which is what Rory is pondering in the photo below.

That's what we've been doing over the last month. Thanks for being patient as we've been so busy building that writing has taken a back seat. Actually, tonight we finished the final seal on our oak floor. But that's a story for another post...