Last week was quite the week. Tiny Refuge went from bare studs with electrical, to purple with some studs coming through to beautiful knotty pine siding. Part of me had forgotten what a difference siding made to the exterior of the house. It is certainly making a wonderful difference to the interior.
The interior siding arrived just under four months ago when the ridge beam was delivered. It was stacked beside the big house, protected under tarps, until December when it was brought inside before the snow fell. Although it might have been fine to stay outside, the thought of snow sneaking its way inside the tarp and then melting, was enough to move the whole lot into the tiny house. That pile of siding, much of which is 16′ in length was really interesting to get inside the house and then even more interesting to cut and install.
We set up the mitre saw next to the large window on the short wall of the house. Then we set up a ladder outside, lined up with the window. Whenever a 16′ board was cut, we had to open the window and slide the board outside, where it would rest on the ladder and stay level to be cut. If the board was the wrong way around, it was fed outside through the window, turned and then sent back in through the window.
Fortunately, it wasn’t too cold on Saturday and though colder on Sunday, it wasn’t too bad. The insulation got it’s first real test and I have to say, it did a great job. I had read a post by Laura Moreland of Tiny House Ontario on Tiny House Listings that described the effect opening a door had on the heat in her tiny house. It had me rather nervous, and I am happy to say that Tiny Refuge held its heat fairly well. Granted it was a balmy -12C (10F) and not -31C (-23). Nonetheless, it was reassuring that with the small electrical heater going, the house remained comfortable while the window was completely open for minutes at a time.
We started by installing the 2×3 stud that is the beginning of the bathroom wall, with cutouts in it for the wires to be able to reach the breaker panel that will be in the wall. Then the siding started going up. It was a little bit of slow going with all of the cutouts needed for the electrical outlets and switches and for the wheel wells and windows. Stefan used the table saw for the long straight cuts and we used two different tools for the smaller cutouts. The first was a jigsaw and the second was an oscillating multi-tool. We used the multi-tool a little with the exterior siding, but it really got good use with the interior siding. It was nice tool to use. The jigsaw was also fun, I even got to cut circles with it and they were pretty fantastic for my first shot of cutting circles with a jigsaw.
We had wonderful help on Saturday from René. He manned the mitre saw and juggled 16′ boards.