Category: Uncategorized (Page 5 of 89)

We got the tiny house finished and somewhat furnished yesterday. We put up the last of the polystyrene sheets on the walls and got them screwed into place. Then we brought in all the floor coverings we had accumulated for the project. It turned out that the piece of vinyl we’d bought was 12′ x 13′ and not 12′ by 11′, so that made the $45 we paid for it even a BETTER deal! It goes all the way from the edge of the bedroom rug to about 3 feet from the south wall. So we put another piece of vinyl (that matches the living room rug really well) in that small area at the south end and we put the big “oriental’ rug in the bedroom area, with a small piece of vinyl covering the piece of tin under the dresser area. The only place you can even see the painted floor is around the rug in the bedroom, for just a bit on the north end and the east side of the bedroom, and that will be well hidden by the bed.

We moved the fridge in and the lower cabinet from the garage (after I’d washed it really well.) That is stocked with the pans, towels, utensils, etc. There is plenty of room on top of the fridge for cups, plates, etc. We also moved Mama’s old dining room table and chairs in. Finally, we put the two camp chairs on the rug where the living room furniture will eventually go. It looks very homey! We ate supper out there last night!

Now on to the actual house!!!

Zoning. The county commissioners meeting was yesterday morning and they voted unanimously to approve our request to have the property changed from light manufacturing to single family residential. Yea! Next we can get our building permit and then start really breaking things apart and rebuilding them!

It was so cold last night that I had to go over and cover the flowers in the raised flower bed and some of the vegetables in their raised beds. It was actually snowing as I was covering them, but that didn’t last. It got down to 32 in Blountville, so I’m not sure how cold it got up there on the hill.

I also filled the refrigerator that we bought for the tiny house with food from Aldi’s yesterday. So now we have lunches, dinners, and lots and lots of snacks!

We decided to put regular windows on the front side of the tiny house, even though there will be less air flow that way, because only half the window opens. With the huge door on that side, the air flow isn’t a problem. We are going to leave the old windows on the back, just replacing the glass where it is needed. They open so the entire opening lets air in.

So we bought those two windows at Lowe’s yesterday, got them installed and framed on the outside and decided to paint the frame white to match the windows. That was a good call, because it makes the windows look a little larger. We also decided to paint the door the same color as the walls because it is so low and wide and looks a little odd. But we are out of paint for now, so that will have to wait.

Don also put in a conduit and another electrical box that will be to the left of the fridge and be used for the fridge and the various appliances on the countertop.

We picked up a nice enough toaster oven for $3.00 at the church garage sale yesterday. It was covered with grease, but I got it washed up pretty well (there is still grease on the glass door) and it seems to work fine. I finished off the brownies in it and learned that the toaster setting needs to be turned to on, even if you are not making toast! It is really the on/off switch, combined with the toast darkness setting.  The brownies turned out fine, considering they were moved, mid-bake, from the oven to the toaster oven and then the heat was turned off for a while, then turned back on.

The first of the plants are up in the garden boxes – the beets, onions and spinach and maybe a pea or two! I watered them good twice – morning and late afternoon. I planted a few peonies back by the grove of trees behind the tiny house. I just dug up the sod and filled the hole with compost, because we have quite a lot left.  The other plants from the back yard in Blountville are in pots until I discover what they are. Right now they are just tall, grass-like plants, sort of like wild onions, but not.

We started the day by driving down to Kingsport to the mulch place to get another half trailer-load of compost. Then we went to Lowe’s where Don got the plumbing parts he couldn’t find last night on our excursion to Home Depot, and I got some flowers to put in the raised flower bed once we put in the compost. I also found a new nozzle for the hose, so I can carefully water my plants.

When we got to the new place, Don parked the trailer by the flower box, so I could unload enough compost to fill the box. Then I planted the 12 giant marigolds that I’d bought, along with two other beautiful purple flowers that I’d never seen before. While I was doing that, Don was putting the outside water spigot together, so when I finished, I was able to water the new flowers, as well as give the vegetable beds a good soaking. Nothing is up in them, yet.

Then we got to work on the outside of the tiny house, as I expected we would. We took turns with the power sprayer and got all the gunk sprayed off. It went from dingy gray with black spots all over to nice and white. The back side was a reddish color – not sure what from, but that all came quite well, too. It was hard work and the sun was out and it was getting hotter and hotter! Somewhere in the middle of that project I fired up the grill and made lunch. We decided this was the last day we’d eat outside, because it is just getting too hot out in front of the house. And since our lunch break is supposed to replenish our energy, sitting in the hot sun isn’t such a good idea!

While Don was finishing the second round of spraying – this time standing on the roof of the tiny house, which made me a bit nervous, I worked on putting the chicken wire tops on the remaining five raised beds. They do roll chicken wire very tight, so it was a great challenge to get it unrolled and flattened enough by myself, but I managed to get the job done. About that time, Don called me to come over and finish the spraying, because his hand was too tired to hold the trigger any more.

Somewhere in there I also cleaned our new refrigerator, since we are starting to put food and water in it. We took a mid-afternoon break, then I unloaded some more of the compost in big piles to plant the squash in when they get a little bigger. I’d transplanted them to bigger pots earlier in the morning, but I still want to be able to move them inside if the nights get too cold. Another couple weeks and I think I can put them outside for good.

The final job was to paint the outside of the tiny house. I did the walls, using the rest of the gallon of paint we’d used on the front of the big house. Don did the roof, using a special reflective paint made for trailer tops. It smelled quite strong, so I was glad he was doing that job and not me. I got the front of the tiny house and about half of one end painted before my paint ran out. But I finished it so it looks like I meant to just do the bottom 2/3 of that end!

We decided to do the water hookup ourselves after the plumber had not showed up for four weeks. So we started digging and discovered that it was going to be pretty impossible to dig the whole 50 feet or more by hand. Then Don had the brilliant idea to run the water pipe through the existing downspout drainpipe that went within about 8 feet of the city water hookup. That meant only an 8 foot ditch 24 inches deep, which we dug Friday afternoon. But it rained Saturday, so we didn’t do anything more.

On Tuesday, the plumber (who we had called and cancelled on Friday) called and said he could do the work. So we hired him to finish up the project and within a couple hours we had water in the house as well as the parking lot graded smooth. And the hot water heater still works, so we even have hot water.

I cleaned out the shower really good and it is in great shape! The sinks are all in working order and the toilet just needs a seal around the tank and all the existing plumbing will be up and working!

I finished insulating the tiny house today. Yesterday we bought some polystyrene sheets at $4.50 each (30 of them), to use for the interior walls. They are white on one side and actually have a layer of thin plastic, so they should be easy to keep clean. They will break easily if we fall into them, but most of the wall space will be behind furniture, so we should be okay. I think we’ll have a few extras for serious breakage.

We also bought three more sheets of styrofoam – 4×8 sheets this time. It was just enough to make up for all the pieces that were missing. I got most of it done yesterday before play practice, but I went back today and finished it entirely. I discovered along the way that the best way to keep them in place was to put styrofoam “shims” in all the spaces where they were a little loose. So they are all held nicely in place now. But Don is still going to hold each row with a 1″x1″ strip. That strip will also be what we nail or screw the polystyrene sheets to. I think it is going to work out well. It will also give us somewhere to put hooks or hang pictures or clocks or the such. I’m getting excited about how nice it is going to turn out!

Don also got the electric line buried and hooked up to the tiny house, so we have a couple of outlets and two overhead lights that work! There is also an exterior outlet on the house, so we can run an extension cord from that to the tiny house if we need things on more than one circuit.

I’ve had a busy week. Don told me last Sunday that he wanted me to remove all the paneling and the rest of the carpet. He didn’t think I’d get it all done, but that was simply not an option.

So on Monday I started by taking all the electrical boxes and other things off the interior wall. Fortunately the boxes didn’t have to come off the exterior walls, because the paneling just went around them. Then I pulled off the trim strip between the bottom 8 foot piece and the top 2 foot piece. Then I was ready to begin yanking paneling off the wall. It actually went pretty well. Once I broke the edge loose and got a good hold on it, I could pull the piece off without breaking any more nails loose. I got the interior wall done by lunch time. It was definitely hard work, but not time-consuming. After lunch I started on the east wall, because Don had already done the north wall. I finished the south wall except for the corner pieces that I couldn’t get loose.

Then came the ladder work. I had to first remove the top trim strip, which was a lot like the baseboard strip. Then I could loosen the 2 foot section and pull it off. But I was pulling it off from 3 steps up the ladder, so my stability was not as good as when I was on the floor. I managed to do it without getting hurt and went from the center of the interior wall to about the center of the east wall before I was too exhausted to do any more. I’d been there from about 10:00 until 1:20.

On Tuesday I got right to work finishing the upper sections the rest of the way around. Those pieces were more difficult to get off, particularly on the south wall and the interior wall. I was able to get all the paneling off except one upper corner piece and one long corner piece. Then I had to clean up, putting all the pieces of paneling in the trailer. I loaded paneling on the AV cart and wheeled them to the door, then heaved them into the trailer. The trailer was full to the top by the time I was finished. Then I swept up and everything looked great.

I started removing the carpeting that had been under the shelves in the back of the building. I got the carpet all up and the backing removed on the interior wall and the north wall before going home.

On Wednesday, I returned and made short work of the rest of the backing. I then pulled up the carpet in the area behind the counter and scraped up all that backing. That came up a lot more easily. Then I did the final sweeping up. I’d been avoiding a section where raccoon poop had fallen through a hole in the top plate in the interior wall, so I carefully swept around that. The rest of the place was well swept, though, and the counters were straightened and wiped off before I headed for home.

Yesterday when Don came back, he cleaned up the toxic poop area and we loaded a few more things on the trailer and took it all to the disposal place right in Bristol. At first they said they couldn’t take that kind of stuff, but then the guy looked at it and said it would be fine. So we were able to dispose of all that stuff for $27!

Dad worked Sunday through Tuesday, then slept most of Wednesday because he has been fighting a cold, so we didn’t spend a lot of time at the property until yesterday and today. Even those two days, we’ve only been there from about 9:30 or 10:00 until 1:15 or so. We bring our lunch, so we take a break for that.

We finally finished removing the last of the shelving on the right side today. We removed the shelving in the “clean room” by the shower the other day and used the lumber to make the rest of the raised beds for the garden. We even had enough to make a 14 foot long box to put in front of the house for the marigolds. So that room is totally emptied and swept out. It just needs to be scrubbed and we can paint it and then move stuff into it whenever we want. It has a door on it, so will be the place we put stuff we don’t want to get terribly dusty during the summer. And come colder weather, it might also be the place we sleep. We’ll see how things are going by then. I hope to have the new master bedroom done, but you never can tell. At least we have a backup plan if we don’t get that far by cold weather.

The shelving on the right side took a long time because we either had to pull nails or cut off the nails with the Sawzall, which is what we did today. Then we moved all the pieces either to a pile to use for future shelving on the left side or, in the case of the smaller pieces, to the burning pile, which is getting really big!

We also worked a little on the shed, removing some flooring and seeing if the plywood from a couple of the shelves would work as a replacement floor, which it does. We still have to nail that down, because getting it fit in the space turned out to be a little tricky. We also got the door on the shed yesterday, so we can now close that up, although it still isn’t watertight because of some metal missing alongside the door and several holes in the walls.

I’ve forgotten to keep this update current. So where are we now?

First of all, we’ve decided to try to fix up the shed to live in during the warm months as we remodel. So that meant cleaning everything out of the shed, which we have done. We checked the state of the floors and walls and know what repairs need to be made before the end of July. The first thing we want to do, though, is get the exterior painted, and we can’t do that until we power wash it, and we STILL DO NOT HAVE WATER!

Okay, there is technically water to the property, but the plumber hasn’t connected the water to the house, yet.

We’ve been working on setting up the work shop on the left side. There were quite a few shelves made from particle board set on blocks in the shed, and I moved all the blocks inside the workshop and used other boards to make lots of shelves. We have the tools and everything set up in that area and it makes a very nice work space.

We’ve also removed most of the shelving from the right side. There was a lot and much of it was nailed, not screwed, to the walls. It is a tedious process removing it, but we have the left wall done and the back wall done, so all we have to do is the right wall. We also have everything else removed from the rest of the walls, including the other kinds of shelving that were held up by various brackets. We have left the counter and lower shelves where they are for the time being, partly because there is a sink there (if we ever get water.)

Today we made the first four raised beds for the garden. We used lumber from shelving. We still have five more to make, but four will be enough to get the important early stuff in the early part of April. We also planned where the squash and flowers will go (on the rise to the east of the house, along the property line with the neighbors.) There is plenty of room there and it looks like it will get plenty of sun after about 10:00 a.m.

I guess I didn’t mention that we painted the front of the house. That was quite a while ago. It looks really nice. We also taped off where the window will go in the master bedroom. We think we are going to put in a 4′ by 4′ slide-by right in the center of the back wall.

We only had a little while to work at the place yesterday, but it was beautiful weather, so we made the most of it working outside. Our goal was to finish clearing the section behind the shed and that is what we completed. The fence is clear all the way around and we now have two big burning piles out in the pasture. It is so nice to be able to see through that area, either from the pasture to the house or vice-versa. A huge job done, although there will be some days of cleaning it up and getting the ground itself free of debris, vines, weeds, etc.