First Night Stay at the Tiny House!

Hello Again! Friday night was the very first night we slept over at the tiny house. We arrived at about 9:30pm and found the house to be warm and when we turned on all the lights, very well lit. The pillows and kitchenware were quickly put away and we had a nice quiet evening with a glass of wine and a good book. We were very comfortable, warm and everything we needed to relax for the evening was easy to access and use. We slept very well and the hot shower in the morning was amazing. We were both able to cook and be in the kitchen area at the same time without running into each other and the eggs and hashbrowns were delish! It was a great night and we were sad to go the next day. We did make a short list of item to improve but over all we did a great job of planning and anticipating our needs.

Tiny House Quick Video..."what weird birds? ohya"

Building the Deck

Hello! This morning, bright and early we began to install our deck. As you may know  we already attached a porch roof to the tiny house and used three posts to support it. We attached the deck to the posts and used wooden legs for the rest of the support. The deck was made of recycled materials sourced from a jobsite. It was pretty much already pre-built so it was put together very quickly. It still needs a coat paint but otherwise I think it looks great. We have doubled our living space, after only a couple hours of hard work. We will use the porch to store our shoes, barbecue, and other items that we wish to keep dry. 

A nice coat of deck paint will bring these former walls back to life with a new purpose. Thanks for reading.

Pat and Cori

Ceiling Insulating and Covering

Hi everyone, Today at the tiny house we insulated and covered our ceiling. It has felt like forever that the ceiling has been not finished, but today we got it done! Some really good friend of ours had some extra polystyrene laying around. We took what they gave us and bought what we needed and today got around to finishing our ceiling. That stuff sure does make a hell of a mess but in the end it worked out well.

After the insulation was up we calculated that we had enough left over roofing material for our ceiling. The rust, holes, scratches, and all kinds of minor imperfections gives it a good rustic look.

We also had time to build a door for our utilities box completely out of scraps we had left laying around.

Hope you like it!

Think I am looking kind of stiff haha!

Just a bunch of stuff

Hello blog followers, Today at the tiny house I got started by finishing the LPG gas piping running to the water heater and gas cook top. Then we moved on to mounting our television wall bracket and designed some under floor storage. We cut a hole in the upper floor to make room for lots of storage space for shoes and things.

Tiny House Budget

Hello! We knew when we started building that we didn't want to spend a crazy amount on our house. In order to do this we have been keeping track of every penny we have spent. We have made an effort to save every receipt during our tiny house build. This turned out to be a good thing not only for keeping within our budget but also when we were trying to prove to Immigration NZ that we are a couple with long terms plans of staying together, what better way than by overwhelming them with hundreds of receipts and pictures of our tiny house! Spoiler alert: It worked and Pat now has his permanent residency!

We have saved so much money by getting free materials and also buying recycled and used materials when possible. Our goal is to stay under $15,000 NZ dollars, so far we are on track.  This price includes the purchase of our trailer and all of our household appliances (fridge, hot water heater, gas cook top, shower, faucet, etc..).

As you have probably noticed we haven't included our solar panels or batteries. We consider these to be investments for long term utilities (they will pay for themselves eventually with how much we can save). For two solar panels (260watts) and the controller inverter battery charger we spent $1600, and we still have to get our batteries! It is expensive to be off the grid, at least in the beginning.

Interior Walls

Hello blog followers, This weekend we worked on covering up some of the interior walls. We had left over metal wall cladding from the exterior and decided to use some on a few of the walls including the kitchen. its light weight, durable, and water proof so its great for the kitchen area.

More more and more

Hello everyone, Today we pressure tested all of our cold and hot water pipes, installed the slate backing for the wood stove, and oiled the crates (bench seats).

Kitchen cook top

Hello blog followers, Today we installed our kitchen cook top (gas hob) into our counter. We decided we wanted to save on counter space and install a 2 burner cook top instead of your typical 4 burner. The brand is Parmco and is a very good quality cook top.

Bathroom and other things

Hello Everyone, This weekend we worked on our bathroom. We finished installing the rest of our shower unit and added some cool retro checkered design around the top edge. We also finished adding plywood to the inside walls so we have something to attach our bathroom wall cladding.

We had a very nice guy from a company called custom crating build us our bench seat/ storage that will be our main seating bench in the tiny house. The top will be removable so that we can store blankets and things inside. I really had to modify it to fit around the wheel wells but it fit good. I also built a very sweet cabinet out of old crates that was going to be smashed up and thrown away.

Here's the cabinet i am making!

The cabinet and the lockers are not attached yet because they both need to be modified a bit more. See you next time!

Hot water and Kitchen faucet

Hello Everyone, Today I installed the instantaneous hot water heater that will be powered by LPG. It also has a automatic igniter switch powered by two D batteries, instead of having main power run to it.  I finished some more cladding on the outside of the utilities box and installed our kitchen faucet which we got a amazing deal on. I also added two photos of the shower. enjoy!!

FIVE ESSENTIAL Tools To Build Your Own Tiny House

Hello out there, We decided to do a blog post on tools you need to purchase to complete a tiny house from beginning to end. You may think the list would be huge, but you don't have to spend a fortune on tools. You may need to borrow from friends or family here and there to get by but the main tools you need to purchase to do the bulk of the building are on this list.

1: Cordless drill with two good rechargeable batteries-  Buying a good battery drill from the beginning will save you lots of time on recharging batteries and less hassle of dealing with extension cords. It's worth buying name brands and spending the extra money when it comes to buying your drill.

2: Circular Saw- This will come in handy during framing, finishing and general building. Every nog (dwang- look it up) in our house was cut with this incredible tool!

3: Hammer-  Self explanatory.

4: Measuring tape- Make sure you have a few of these lying around where you are working, because when you need one they are never there.

5. Table saw- This tool can be pricey but it necessary near the end of your build. We held off as long as we could, but it has already proven itself in terms of usefulness for finish work. In our last post we were only able to install tons of wall boards because of the table saw.

We had a productive weekend again. Finally installing the lockers!

Roof and corner flashing

Hello everyone, Today was a beautiful Autumn day in New Zealand! I finished the roof and corner flashing but still have to flash around the windows at a later date. I attached the Flashing with some rubber washer screws and sealed the corners and seams with some waterproof sealer. Looks pretty flash haha!!

Framing the walls

We framed all of our walls with 35x75mm timber. They are all screwed together with 75mm wood screws. The timbers are actually really light weight and only cost 1.75 per meter.

All of our windows and front door was a total of 640.00 dollars. They are all doubled glazed and were purchased from Brown Sparrow recycled building materials here in Christchurch. The Stainless steel counter top was 100.00 from the same place. 

Building the subfloor

Hello everyone, Today we got a early start and built the Foundation for our tiny house. It came out really good and the only brand new materials we bought was some half inch plywood, spray foam, and some long screws. The 2x4's were purchased at a recycled salvage yard for 100 dollars. We used the vinyl we had to water proof and bug proof our subfloor. The whole floor was spray foamed, insulated and covered with half inch plywood.

Tiny House Project

Hello who ever you are! My name is Pat and along with my partner, we have decided that we are sick and tired of dreaming and wishing and watching tiny house videos on youtube and want our own! We have given ourselves a one year deadline and today was the first day of work. And boy was it work. We are also keeping an itemized list of materials (our goal is to keep it under $15,000) in order to prove that you don't need to spend a fortune on a tiny house! I am a welder by trade, have experience building homes and have access to some of the current building sites where perfectly good building materials end up in the trash.

The first step was a getting a trailer. Custom trailers will cost between 8,000 and 13,000 dollars in New Zealand. I found a great deal on trademe for a used trailer for 3,000 in great shape.

Today we took off the existing wood that was very weather beaten. Then we cleaned up the frame with a wire brush and applied CRC rust converter ( which you can buy from Bunnings Warehouse for 32.00) after letting that dry for at least one hour then we applied a rust preventative paint (cost was 50.00 from bunnings) and let that dry. It looks brand new!

Here are a few links on some videos explaining more into detail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju8Kqoey5hI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBR5YjdOCCo&feature=youtu.be

We did this all outside on a nearby llama farm outside of christchurch. There was poop everywhere and it was very hot in the direct sun, but we got the job done in about 4 hours.