Juggling Pencils, Power, Plans, Peen hammers, Pickles, Pottery and Precious Passengers

Since this picture was taken, the starboard side of the tiny house has probably gotten the rest of its siding installed. Kyle has been working over there yesterday and today.  The door has its trim on, and the forest green window looks quite handsome.  I have decided not to install the last window -- it would be squeezed in just to the right of the door.  It is white, and I think the house will just look better without it.  There will be plenty of light from all the other windows. 

As the bow wall siding installation (and the construction of the shed to house batteries and propane tanks) is contemplated, an inventory of the remaining long siding pieces suggests we will not have enough siding to do that final wall (sigh...more staining!!).  But for the moment, we have collected all the shorter pieces, and may squeak by, since the shed side walls will be set in about a foot from the outside of the corner trim on the house, necessitating about 42 very short (perhaps 9") cedar siding lengths. Similarly, the roof of the shed will run about a foot inside the roof line of the house proper, but since the ends of each of those siding pieces will be mitered, they will have to be more like 20" pieces. The rest of the shed could be built and trimmed differently.

Here is an optimistic view of the house floor (otherwise known as the sub-floor). At the time of the picture, it was very clean, having been swept immediately prior by yours truly. The optimism comes from the hope that I can get the floor painted and sealed before any more construction or visitor debris can settle in.  Even as I write this, though, there is a plan to work on some of the wiring tomorrow, which is a higher priority.  We shall see.

Soon after my last post, Kyle's wife M and I decided to go ahead with the design and construction of a hammered copper shower pan, since I couldn't find an inexpensive 30" x 30" shower pan.  Instead of spending several hundreds of dollars on a pan that would have to be modified anyway, I finally allowed myself to imagine M making me one!!  Hours (or moments) after Kyle brought home the 4' x 10' sheet of 16oz copper, Junior, the youngest member of the household, innocently joined our discussion and amiably reclined on one end of it.  Who knows, maybe it was cool to the touch, or maybe he really has sophisticated taste in lawn furniture.  The phrase "to the manner born" came to mind, although none of Junior's other pastimes, including chewing rocks as big as his head, call that particular phrase to mind.

Hearing that Junior got into the picture, Tuck made sure to give me a happy smile from his (Junior-proof) perch in the house, just to ensure he got his 15 seconds of fame.

And Shelby, looking the picture of disheveled contentment, grinned too, from her position on the walk.

Okay, here is a view of the first step toward the frame for the shower pan. In home-decoration-ese, this is known as a neo-angle corner shower pan. Designed by M and I and Kyle, and produced in the open air shop of their barn by Kyle.

Isn't this gorgeous?  I contributed about 53 dimples to this copper landscape of gently rolling hills, M did the rest.  It is REALLY fun to bang on the copper sheet (cut to 4' x 4' -- by me, incidentally).  But my hammering muscles were long out of shape, so I had to leave it to the blacksmith to sculpt.  What a beautiful job, too!  It looks simply luscious. 

Here is a view of the final framework Kyle constructed to support the copper.  It took much mulling over on all of our parts to design it in such a way that it can be installed into the house, and also be entered by a shower-taker, and also gotten underneath in case of leaky drain pipes and such (there will be a chase).

M test-soldered a corner joint, possibly to be sure she was happy with the pattern she was making for the copper sheet.

And here she shows that she is in the running as an expert origami paper-folding practitioner.  Again, impressive!

In this view, one of the trailer lights (still with its temporary jury-rigging from the move) leans against a tire of Kyle's truck, a mnemonic device to remind him to take it off the 2x4, and me to bring it with me to Columbus to the marine electric store the next day.  I was to look for possible replacements, with a lower profile, and possibly LED lights instead of incandescent. (I did bring it, but what with getting carried away by the 12V wiring, deep cycle marine batteries, fuse blocks, and cigarette-lighter-type receptacles, I didn't look very hard -- and didn't see much -- maybe there is more choice in an auto parts store.  But more on that topic in the next post!)

This little pipsqueak, LL, came for a visit, and happily found the house interesting.  I like having the kids pass through every once in a while, because, not only do they like giving me ideas, but it reminds me that I really want to keep the house kid- and mess-friendly as I put together the interior furniture and decor.  I don't want to have to keep on saying no, and don't want to spend a lot of time protecting things from curious or less-than-impeccably-clean hands.

Bless my friends C & H for coming by, and relieving me of the queen-sized futon mattress that has sat on this frame as my couch for probably 20 years!  Now I can work on cutting down the backrest portion to make it into the built-in windowseat/bed for the stern end.

I made three drawings to plan the construction of the shed that will be built on the trailer tongue. This one shows (in red) the outline of the shed relative to the bow wall. It's a view looking at the bow wall from the front. The shed will be about 5' wide and 16" deep.  I guess the height will work out to be approximately 10', since the trailer floor is about two feet from ground level, and when last measured (before the ridge vent cap!) the whole thing was 13' 4" from the ground. 

In this view, I sketched in the batteries and propane tanks where I hope to place them, the propane in a metal-lined box, and the batteries as far as possible from the propane tanks and connections as possible. If I am lucky, I will have room between to stand my collapsed six foot long EZ-Up booth tent (just slightly less square footage than the house itself). The batteries are about 72 lbs. each, and the full propane tanks are about 36 lbs. each.  So the batteries are going on the starboard side, to offset the greater weight of the kitchen on the port side.

I wanted to get a feel for what kind of doors I would need on the shed, and this sketch shows a bottom door/cover which will lift up to expose the batteries and propane tanks.  I will need to be able to get the propane tanks out as easily as I can in order to exchange them.  I tried to leave room on the inside to allow two milk crates to fit (with their respective tanks).  I read online somewhere that keeping the tanks in milk crates is a fairly easy way to keep them upright in transit.   The two upper doors will open out on hinges on either side. 

Too much graph paper is not good for the soul -- so I took to making some crayon encaustic prints while in Columbus helping out a friend after surgery.  Must keep the artistic fires burning after all!  I want to have something to trade or sell in my traveling peddlar life...

Additionally, nobody can have too many pickles in his or her pantry (especially as a way to preserve vegetables a bit), so I was happy to experiment with C and B in Loveland a couple of times making the most delicious refrigerator pickles. Pickled beets and carrots are tastier than beets and onions, and cauliflower is yummy, though raw Brussels sprouts not so much. Zucchini and cucumbers are wonderful.  I am about ready to make a third batch -- I am almost out!

In response to a 2012 (!) call to artists, I was chosen to be in a very interesting exhibition in Covington which opened a few weeks ago, of artwork made specifically in response to life's biggest challenges: grief, loss, PTSD, mental and physical disabilities and illness, etc.  Intermixed with all the myriad of details with my tiny house, I managed to successfully deliver my artwork on time (and even respond to interview questions of a local arts reviewer)!  My entry was the work "47 Goodbyes: A Tribute to My Father's Life and Death", a series of stained and glazed miniature porcelain vessels capturing my memories of my father, including his final illness.  The opening reception was very successful, and more personal than most. 

On a domestic note, Minnie, the frustrated girl warrior, who has not been let roam all summer, has been doing a very good job keeping the insect population down in my apartment.  Here she is fixated on a small shadow, which turned out to be a shield bug on the OUTSIDE of the screen.

But HERE she has found a bumbling (and very much alive) cicada, either out on the porch or after it got inside somehow.  She/he provided only one evening's entertainment before keeling permanently over, but Minnie avidly interacted with her/him for several hours. Thankfully, though, she did not eat the poor critter as she has the moths and scutilaria she comes across -- I wouldn't want to listen...