Bumper sticker of the week, on Kyle's truck...
Here is a view of Kyle amid scaffold and ladders galore. He is working up to installing the first long roof panel.
And, here it is!! There will be some metal roof trim over onto the gable fascia board too. There is lot of trickiness involved in designing and installing standing seam metal roofing that has concealed fasteners, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Here is a photo showing the extra mile Kyle went, with regard to the lower end of each of the standing seams, snipping and folding the steel to box off each ridge. Looks great!
This is the most up-to-date picture I have (from Kyle, after I left on Friday afternoon) of the roof progress. It includes a view of the first stained cedar siding installed, on the dormer cheek wall! The dormer trim and cheek wall siding had to be installed before the dormer roofing can be installed. Some of the trim boards were installed with their faces unstained; they will be stained as soon as it stops showering a bit each day...
While all the roofing progress has been happening on the exterior, much progress has also been made on the interior. Here is a picture of my dear friend P amid her own ladder grove, as she runs conduit pipe and installs boxes. Then she can pull wiring through the two 120V electrical paths the house/studio/gallery will have.
In a ray of afternoon sunlight, P pre-drills holes to attach 2" x 4" spacers, in order to set boxes away from studs which may be overlapped by interior window trim.
Looking up at the inside of the roof peak, the electrical conduit pipe may be seen. It runs the full length of the house, and curves down at bow and stern to junction boxes that will send wiring into the walls. The conduit will be exposed, and probably painted. In the center of the photo the junction box that will hold a chandelier-type of fixture may be seen; the fixture will be centered in the space between the sleeping loft and the storage loft.
One day Kyle worked inside and installed the inside window frames, several of which needed further chiseling by me (and him) to actually fit properly/perfectly. It was a bit surprising to me that fancy windows like these would not come from the manufacturer fitting properly. But it was clearly (no pun intended) so.
Kyle spent a bit more time indoors that day. Here he is installing 2" x 4"nailers so the siding nails will have something to be secured into; this needed to be done before the wiring was begun.
Meanwhile, in the studio, various small projects are fussed with. This is a director's chair that my family gave my grandfather (HFH) years ago. We had his name lettered on the back; he loved it. When I decided to build my tiny house I thought of bringing this chair, because it is pretty comfortable for a collapsible chair. A thrift store find of green chair seat and back, and new (but pesky to install!) swivel floor protector feet, and it is as good as new.
I did some stain/sealing work; Kyle did a bit too; but the best work so far was done by two friends, E and C, who worked together and did at least eight important trim and siding boards. This put the staining team ahead of Kyle. We are trying not to hold him up at any point in the puzzle of roofing construction. You go Girls!!! It will be so special to know that pieces of my house were prepared by good friends, who are also artists in their own rights. Good art vibes.
While C and E were staining in the studio, I was crawling around the loft with another friend, J (not pictured here), who I am hoping to have design a stained glass window or light fixture to go in the finished house. She has lots of ideas, as do I, but we both feel that the design needs to be uncomplicated and clean, so as not to overwhelm the space. She plans to use copper foil in the window, and not lead, so the finished product will be lighter. After J left, E and C reached a stopping point and came out to the house, where E (an avid rock-climber) climbed up into the loft without the ladder! That is how our workday ended on Saturday, and we closed up the house and helped P clean up the wiring debris and pack up her car, and then parted ways, just as a pelting rain sent down its first drops.
The metal roof installation begins! Kyle having explored the far reaches of geometry, has gained a grasp of what is involved in the standing seam metal roofing I bought in March. He spent some time installing the "cleat" trim pieces on the port side; we quickly stained the fascia board, and he proceeded to attach the first pieces of actual Patina Green roofing material, the "eave" trim pieces.
To quote a famous songwriter, "Isn't She Lovely?" Sigh. After much research and a phone conversation with a tremendously informative representative of the Western Red Cedar Association, I settled on a transparent oil-based, solvent-born stain/sealer with UV protection, in Mountain Cedar color. And all the pickiness has paid off. The color is exactly what I wanted, the sheen of the wood may still be seen, and it looks terrific with the subtle grey-green roofing material. It is very satisfying to see it in place.
This shot manages to squeeze in a stripe of the loft window color, a warm dark gray, which appears at this point to be just fine, color-wise, with the siding and roof. All the other windows are different colors, so it remains to be seen whether I will be inspired to do the fussy job of painting any, depending on how they blend in. Having either aluminum or vinyl trim, the windows would need a pre-treatment to allow paint to stick to them.
So, to move inside, looking forward, here we have a view of the partitions (folding display screens from my old booth for outdoor art shows) I have set up temporarily. I need to get an idea of the division of the space as I begin re-purposing and building in various bits of shelving, cupboards and counters. The near screen represents a short wall hiding the kitchen area from the "great room" (Tumbleweed's designation) behind me. The far screen represents a similar short wall dividing the shower stall in the port bow from the W.C. (waterLESS closet) in the starboard bow.
Poking my head around the wall between the kitchen area and the great room, I made cardboard cutouts to represent from left to right, the fridge (with microwave above), three cupboards on wheels, and the 30" x 30" corner shower.
And to starboard of the shower stall will be the composting toilet and the shelf unit which will hold a sawdust bin, bathroom tissue and cleaning supplies. In the lower right corner of the photo may be seen the corner of what is to be a desk and desk shelf. About where I am standing to take the picture will be the propane gas fireplace on its slate hearth, though it doesn't bear thinking of just now, when even the word "fireplace" causes another drop of sweat to drip off the end of my nose.
With all of this mental experimenting and rearranging, I keep thinking of the following quote: "In all his works there is more intelligence than painting," stated once about Michelangelo.
I know this view seems awfully familiar by now, but look! The loft windows are open! It looks alive, doesn't it? Three of the four loft windows do open, and were manufactured as casement windows. A certain amount of discussion, with the proprietor of the building surplus business where Kyle and I purchased them, gave us the information that the casement windows were constructed exactly as awning windows are, so we would not need to worry about drain holes being oriented wrongly if we turned these casement windows on their sides. There would be a slight possibility that props would be needed to securely hold the windows open, but the price was right, and at this point props seem unnecessary. The windows not only let a cross breeze move through the upper space in the house, but may be left open a couple of inches in a rain shower without letting any moisture in.
Here is a shot of the view out the doorway at the new location. Lush and shady throughout the day on this starboard side of the house. Although even in the shade, the ambient air temperature has been such that I have begun joking that I am coming over here, to my sweat lodge, to purify my soul. Ah, Kentucky.
I turned my head up and to my left and got this shot of some of the loft floor boards placed temporarily. The entry doorway is at the lower right of picture.
Inside the studio was my painting station for this inexpensive, uninsulated, interior hollow-core door. A temporary door is needed until the restoration of the original front door of Machamux is complete. I figured painting it with a good three coats of exterior latex semi-gloss enamel would allow it to hold up for a while. And perhaps I will manage to paint it with flowers in a Norwegian folk painting style called rosemaling and provide a bit of entertainment for my friends near Lee, MA. It does look an awful lot like a blank, gessoed canvas....
Voila! I just knew there would be a use for these plastic step-aerobic platforms (a thrift store find)!! They make the perfect temporary steps for the moment, are light, stable, and can be left out in the weather. It was rather a clamber to get in the door before I brought them over.
Again inside the studio, I have set up a staining station for the cedar siding boards. The saga of the siding has resolved into a permanent rustic look; I won't really be able to paint this little house white after some years and turn it into a New England colonial. For that I would have needed to purchase (far more pricey) shorter lengths of clear, smooth, cedar "clapboards," a term I have been erroneously using interchangeably with cedar siding. Which just shows my New England provincialism and unawareness of any difference between the two. So a decision has been made for me. No wonder I felt like no one here in the mid-west really knew what I was talking about.
An electrician friend, and former instructor for the women's home repair class program I coordinated years ago, has consented to digress somewhat from her usual huge new-construction power plant electrical work and crawl around the nook (singular) and cranny (ditto) in my tiny house pulling wires of much smaller caliber than she usually wrestles with; some may even be 12V. It was her (P's) idea that I spend some time sitting in the house and tacking up little drawings of outlets, switches and fixtures, based on my projected usage. This was pretty fun -- much easier to do than the actual installation of same. We both felt that now is the time to think in terms of providing as many options as possible, and even a bit of overkill, because getting the wiring behind the walls at this stage will greatly lessen the hassle of someday hard-wiring the house. We have planned for two 120V circuits, assuming I will someday have an AC unit, and a fridge, and microwave -- possibly even a coffeemaker.
P also wanted to know the amperage of various appliances I own now, to help with a ballpark estimate of what power need I may be looking at ultimately. After several futile minutes trying to get my face between my refrigerator and AC unit in my apartment, and my (older) eyes far enough away to read the fine print, I got the brilliant idea of taking a digital photo of each label, my camera being significantly smaller and more maneuverable than my head ... Aha!
The non-digital microwave I own now was a gift from a dear friend on the eve of his moving to England. Yes, it is old, but it works fine, and even better there are NO annoying blinking LED lights/clocks to reset or cacophony of insistent beeps ordering me around my own kitchen. No, there is a dial which is set like an old-fashioned kitchen timer, and a mere ding when time is up. Lovely. But P seems fairly definite on this microwave oven not being up to snuff for my tiny house ... sigh. Walking backward into the future again, I guess.
C and P went ahead of the house so they could get this "footage" of the truck/house/car procession passing Anita's Mexican Restaurant, a delicious and convenient eatery now open in the same location where for probably 30 years or more there had been a Frisch's. Since it was a geographic reference point for so long, people have taken to calling it the Mexican Frisch's, and absolutely anyone immediately knows where it is. C is standing in the parking lot at the side of the road with her digital camera. The truck was just at the point of turning in to the final stretch of the journey; Kyle is waving.
I can't resist responding to a curious glance, so you have he opportunity to hear my chitter-chatter with a neighbor of Big D's as I am slowing to a halt to allow Kyle and B to back the truck and house into the driveway of its current destination, Big D's house and studio. It is an unintentional narration of the video, though I was dimly aware that I was recording myself. The trick here for B, driving the truck, was mostly the telephone pole right on the edge of the far side of the driveway, but as he is the consummate experienced trailer-tow-er, it was as nothing to him! One branch thereabouts did scrape the roofing membrane, but Kyle has already repaired the slight damage, so we are still weatherproof. I am getting ready to go over and help install a temporary door, which will be in place until the 1782 Machamux door is restored, adapted, stripped, painted, and installed.
Here is a clip of the house going through what Kyle's family calls The Tree Tunnel, a lovely stretch of road overhung with leafy shade trees, dappled with sunlight. The road goes downhill here, and over a few bits of broken pavement, but nothing wavered or stirred on the tiny house. It is wonderful to be at the end of the procession and watch everybody just rolling along, hugging curves and gently swooping up and down the country road.
If this works, it is a tiny clip of the first moment out of the farm driveway and onto the road. More to come if this is viewable.
Last Sunday Big D had a fun day with the rental bobcat, leveling and widening and spreading additional gravel on the driveway and parking area at the studio where the tiny house will be. Two Julian Bechtold urns are in the foreground; K and J in the background are overlooking the garden.
A few days ago I found the right stain/sealer for the western red cedar siding boards. The sheen that I wanted is there, but doesn't show in the picture. Now for the rest of the 82 lengths! Each board will be stained on all six sides, for the best weatherproofing. The exterior will need to be re-stained every few years depending on the exposure the house gets, perhaps even every year. It is small, but it's quite tall, so I'll need a ladder.
Okay, this is it! The first road trip. Here we are at the farm this morning at 9:30. B, a very capable farmer's son and neighbor of Kyle's, has the house hitched to his powerful pickup truck, lights and brakes hooked up, license plate on. Ready to go. I am pretty sure his truck is as long or longer than my house! Shelby and I are represented in the reflection on B's door; Kyle and M are off-screen luring Junior away (from my car, the path of the truck, and a side trip to Maggie the cat, who made a short appearance in the arms of N, Kyle's mother). C and P, my good women friends are also off-screen getting their photography gear together to lead the caravan and help record the adventure. I only wish my father were here; he would have gotten a kick out of the procession, and so would a lot of the old Machamux Painting Party gang.
And they're off! Kyle is riding with B, in the tree-branch-and-electric-wire-reconnaissance-seat, a position he really didn't want, since he would be the first to witness any damage to his deftly engineered and constructed work-in-progress. But unfortunately for him, he is the most careful, alert and cautious candidate for the job, and he graciously took it on.
I am rearguard for this trip, and I follow behind this cute house, with the cute taillights, snapping pictures and shooting video while driving very slowly. As we move down the farm driveway in the gorgeous morning, it looks as if we are in the garden of Eden, or a Rousseau painting, the foliage is so lush. A beautiful early summer day bursts forth around us, shining and sparkling and chirping and whispering. My tiny house is leaving behind happy dogs, busy chickens and waving friends, as it cutely toddles along the way.
The house fits in the lane perfectly, and from here, does not look like another 3 - 6" in width or height would require an oversize permit for every outing. Whew! Thanks Tumbleweed, for designing it so! As for the SUV in the left lane, I imagine the occupants are doing a bit of rubbernecking as they pass.
Here we are on the dead-end residential street that is our biggest test. Low phone lines, bushy trees hanging over the road, and folks' cars parked along one side of the road. It goes beautifully.
B pulled forward past the right-hand driveway, and then dextrously backed into the spot we had picked out and marked. A couple of backs and fills and it's all set! It is 10:08am. Only one slight scrape on the roof by a branch as the house was pushed into the driveway, and no apparent damage from it. Kyle will check from a ladder tomorrow.
A nice fender reflection shot by C of the small group of onlookers, including a dog-walking neighbor who was drawn in by the sight of a house coming down the street. She and the dog Zuzu came in to marvel.
Photographers confer, watched by the sentinel urns and the tiny house.
Two humans for scale, seated on the trailer tongue, backs against the bow wall, relaxing in the shade. And looking back from my car as I head back to my (huge) apartment, I see the following vision, and am happy.
Once the weather eventually warmed up, Kyle made progress lickety-split. Here is a shot of the bow, with all the 3/8" plywood sheathing on. There will be a shallow utility shed of sorts here, resting on the tongue of the trailer, but no windows. Sheathing covers the framing of both the port window, forward of the wheel well, and the two port dormer windows. Just before each window will be installed, the sheathing will be cut away from the rough opening for each window. Looking ahead to this task, four small holes per window were drilled from the inside, at the corners of the rough openings, to make it easier to cut out the rough window openings when the time comes. It is not weather-proof yet though, so the onerous task of covering and uncovering the house with that hulking tarp continues. Next step is house wrap, roofing membrane, and self-healing flashing.
The certain advantage of having a builder who has a good sense of humor, and is always thinking. My dad would have appreciated this.
I think the place looks BIG here! I mean I remember hiding inside the old wooden doghouse by our garage, WITH my brother. And his treehouse was about 6' x 8' as I recall, and we felt that was plenty big for a pleasant port in a storm. It was a bright sunny spring day for this picture, person for scale. The tarp was off the stern end, and the only openings in the sheathing were the fours holes at the corners of the rough openings for the stern double window over the window seat, the opening along the ridge which will be covered by the ridge vent system, and a bit of a crack between two sheets of plywood. There was PLENTY of daylight, giving me a slight thought that with eight windows in the house, it would hopefully not be TOO bright!
A close-up detail of a cornflower at a wonderful annual plant sale I have been to several times. This time I went, and looked at all the beautiful vegetables, herbs, annuals, and perennials, and realized that I won't be planting anything much for a while. Perhaps a window box or two, but big pots of good garden earth are too heavy to tow along the highway...
As my tiny house really started to take shape, and Kyle's construction rounded a corner and began to look like it was in the home stretch, my mind kicked into higher gear on the inside design, causing me to get antsy to have the house a bit nearer to my apartment. I was excited to get my own hands on it, after a long winter of being little more than an observer. The son of the artist I studied with for many years now owns the house and studio where I spent many happy seasons wrestling with Zen and Phenomenology and painting, drawing and sculpting. He (the son of my teacher) has said I may use a part of the old studio space for a workspace, and set the house in his driveway area for about a month, so work can continue simultaneously on the inside and outside. Kyle and I will both travel to this familiar and nurturing spot as he finishes the roofing, and I start on the built-in window seat.
Here's D, whom I have hired a couple of mornings a week to help me in the colossal task of shifting heavy things around in my life! He is helping move a number of pine 1 x 10s from my storage unit to my new workspace. The boards were scrounged from the trash when my landlord was renovating the apartment upstairs from me, and have been reincarnated once already as shelving in the Over-The-Rhine clay studio I had for a year with three women artist colleagues. Now they will be most of the loft floor, lighter than plywood and just as strong or stronger.
The outline of the house is duct taped to the floor of the studio. The chair sits in the living room (or "great room" as Tumbleweed calls it) where a more comfy armchair will be.The dotted line is the edge of the loft floor which will be over everything that may be seen forward of it. Chalk lines help me design the interior elements, and plan for their smooth and practical working together, down to the inch in many cases. The swing arc of the entry door may be seen, showing how the door opens into the space.
Years ago, for an outdoor art show I was included in, I built these two 4-panel burlap-covered folding screens. Made of 1" x 3"s covered with chicken wire, and then burlap, they provide for a number of possible configurations for a booth set-up, and lots of space to hang artwork. They are very light, a very sturdy for their weight. In my house they will be used as some space dividing walls, and will be removable if I need to use them again for a show. Nifty idea I think. Each panel is two feet by six feet, and that seems to be working well with a lot of the measurements of the tiny house, which is 79 1/4" wide on the inside (6' 7 1/4") and some 14' 3" long. At the moment they help a lot in visualizing the space I have to work with.
Moving back to Kyle's barnyard, this shot shows the stern as house wrap is all on, and roof membrane is being installed. The house is not as small as it first appears -- the tarp is only pulled back for the job at hand.
My new friends T and P at the County Clerk's office help me wade through the oddity of registering my tiny utility-trailer-mounted studio/sculpture/gallery/house as a truck! It makes me smile, thinking how unlike the huge semi trucks my little trailer is, until I realize that, since it is 13' 3" or so tall from the ground, I may be spending more of my time on interstates and at truck stops than on country byways and residential streets. I will need as much clearance as many a semi, and I visualize trying to let the air out of the trailer tires to get under some underpass along the way to a friend's house. Hmmm.
Truck license in hand, I return home and find this baby mourning dove paused a bit worriedly at the top of my backstairs. I feel like he or she seems to feel, not all that confident about flying into the new horizons opening in front of me. Eeek.
Here is a photo from Kyle, who master-minded a test drive of the trailer around his hayfield, towed by a visiting uncle with a big SUV (with heavy-duty tow package). It went fine, and now the house is parked by the barn, closer to Kyle's current workshop, and pointed up the driveway toward the road, and the big world.
Looking small and cute next to the big old barn. And that tarp is almost ready to be retired.
Looking at the starboard bow. Notice two dormer windows are in (actually all four are!), and several cedar trim boards and fascia are installed. The tongue is just visible forward of the house, and the forward starboard scissor-jack may be seen holding that corner stable and helping level the trailer.
A view of the port side; loft windows installed (I still have to re-purpose some screens to fit these four windows). Another scissor-jack is visible, as well as a multitude of vertical nailing strips to which the cedar clapboards will be nailed.
And, last but not least, a new companion for me, a tiny kitty for my tiny house. This five-year-old female was trapped somewhere in the storage facility in which I have my generous storage space, and to make a long story short, I convinced her to come out, and then took her home "temporarily". The owner listed for her microchip number could not be traced, and so she has come home with me. With the previously given name of "Kitty", I felt it was permissible to add on some more splendiferousness in the moniker department.
So, her full name, unless she vetoes it (she's napping just now) will be as follows:
Halupshe Howalel Fatah Mesita Minnie Kitty. I've been calling her Min.
And finally, today (June 8th) is the one year anniversary of the passing of my main man Misha, who will always be remembered, and missed, and be in my heart.
A baby picture of Misha from 1996. The original black and white photo was taken with a film camera, my trusty Rollei.
Magnificent kitty, in his 17th and final year, at home among my art supplies, forming the centerpiece of any tablescape.
e
