Well it's officially been over a month since our last post. Since then we have made some significant, although visually small, headway on the appliances. Mainly, Jon has done all the plumbing hook ups and got everything ready for the next big step, which was insulation. However, we also got most of the exterior siding up :) which is a pretty big visual improvement. Below are some more pictures of the siding in progress. Waiting on putting up the siding near the door until we have the floor and door fully installed.
We hired Weather Shield to do our insulation, since we received numerous suggestions from contractor and carpenter friends to DO SPRAY FOAM INSULATION!! It cost us $1,300 and that really hurt our budget, but realized that using the foam core boards (AKA blue board) was just not going to give us the R-Value we need for living in the winters out west.
To give you an idea, the R-Value required for code here in Idaho is a minimum of 21, and each inch of spray foam insulation gives you an R-Value of 7. Therefore, we got 3" of the spray foam in our walls and ceiling to give us that total R-Value of 21.
In comparison, the foam core boards only give you about an R-Value of 2 per inch….so the decision was pretty clear.
In our opinion, Weather Shield was good - but not great. Meaning that the end result was good but the process of working with them was not smooth. Rick the owner was very enthusiastic, but seemed to talk a bigger game than was warranted. The job took 4 days of on-site work to complete, which is pretty incredible since our space was so small. 3 out of those 4 days he was late…by a few hours….and no phone call ahead telling us he would be late. One day he said he would be over before 4:00pm to finish up the spraying. Well, finally by 4:30pm I called him to see where he was, and he said he was going to drive over to talk to me because his spray gun that broke still had not been repaired. So I found him to be a very hard worker but maybe bites off more than he can chew for the business.
Then he sent over a worker to cut back the foam that had expanded past the rafters and studs. This took two days to complete….again, we were just waiting for the damn project to be over with by this point and couldn't believe it was taking this long. Finally, the job was complete and we paid them the $1,300 (although I was tempted to ask for a bit off, I didn't). I just couldn't bring myself to ask.
Turns out that we still had to go through the entire tiny house and continue to cut back foam that was past the studs. Not sure how the guy that spent two afternoons cutting back that foam wasn't able to get it all. But I spent a solid 2 hours in there with a saw cutting back that foam and I'm still not done yet. I have about half more to go. Furthermore, they didn't even clean up after themselves after they trimmed the foam back. There was a whole bunch of it scattered around up in the loft. I was tempted to call up Rick at Weather Shield to talk to him about it, but at that point we knew we could get the job done quicker if we just did it ourselves. Sheesh.
I understand that shit happens, but COME ON. Anyways - rant over.
On the positive side of this whole ordeal, we will be super well insulated. We are very happy about that and just glad it's over with. Here is what it looks like!
Exterior Siding
End view
Side view
Closer up - the sun kind of ruined this shot, but you get the idea. The on demand hot water heater is the white box on the side of the house. The bathroom is on the other side of that wall.
On to the insulation!!!
We hired Weather Shield to do our insulation, since we received numerous suggestions from contractor and carpenter friends to DO SPRAY FOAM INSULATION!! It cost us $1,300 and that really hurt our budget, but realized that using the foam core boards (AKA blue board) was just not going to give us the R-Value we need for living in the winters out west.
To give you an idea, the R-Value required for code here in Idaho is a minimum of 21, and each inch of spray foam insulation gives you an R-Value of 7. Therefore, we got 3" of the spray foam in our walls and ceiling to give us that total R-Value of 21.
In comparison, the foam core boards only give you about an R-Value of 2 per inch….so the decision was pretty clear.
In our opinion, Weather Shield was good - but not great. Meaning that the end result was good but the process of working with them was not smooth. Rick the owner was very enthusiastic, but seemed to talk a bigger game than was warranted. The job took 4 days of on-site work to complete, which is pretty incredible since our space was so small. 3 out of those 4 days he was late…by a few hours….and no phone call ahead telling us he would be late. One day he said he would be over before 4:00pm to finish up the spraying. Well, finally by 4:30pm I called him to see where he was, and he said he was going to drive over to talk to me because his spray gun that broke still had not been repaired. So I found him to be a very hard worker but maybe bites off more than he can chew for the business.
Then he sent over a worker to cut back the foam that had expanded past the rafters and studs. This took two days to complete….again, we were just waiting for the damn project to be over with by this point and couldn't believe it was taking this long. Finally, the job was complete and we paid them the $1,300 (although I was tempted to ask for a bit off, I didn't). I just couldn't bring myself to ask.
Turns out that we still had to go through the entire tiny house and continue to cut back foam that was past the studs. Not sure how the guy that spent two afternoons cutting back that foam wasn't able to get it all. But I spent a solid 2 hours in there with a saw cutting back that foam and I'm still not done yet. I have about half more to go. Furthermore, they didn't even clean up after themselves after they trimmed the foam back. There was a whole bunch of it scattered around up in the loft. I was tempted to call up Rick at Weather Shield to talk to him about it, but at that point we knew we could get the job done quicker if we just did it ourselves. Sheesh.
I understand that shit happens, but COME ON. Anyways - rant over.
On the positive side of this whole ordeal, we will be super well insulated. We are very happy about that and just glad it's over with. Here is what it looks like!
Facing the living room end of the house
Jon working on cutting back foam around the wheel well encasement we built. All the cut foam pieces you see on the ground are what were left behind up in the loft. Still got a bunch of cleaning to do up there.
Closer up view of that trimming. Using a sawzall is the easiest for this job.
Michele continuing to cut back foam after it had apparently already been cut back :) #passiveaggressive
This is the loft roof
The Pallet Project!
So one last project we started working on while the insulation was being sprayed in for a whole week was disassembling all the free pallets we had accumulated from local businesses. These pallets will give us the wood we need to side the inside walls and ceiling of the house. The idea came to us initially from a coworker and friend, and then found numerous DIY tutorials online of how other people have paneled their walls in pallet wood. We combined some of those techniques and added a couple of our own "processes".
Here is the process we went through:
1. Jon cut through the nails that hold the wood boards together with a sawzall (easier than using a pry bar and leaves the boards in better condition…not as much splitting)
2. I collected the individual boards and laid them out on the driveway
3. I mixed a very concentrated bleach and water solution together and purchased a brush with a long handle that would enable me to disinfect and clean the boards without breaking my back.
4. I scrubbed each board with the bleach and water solution. This killed any mold that may have started to grow from rain and whatnot. Then I turned all the boards over and Jon scrubbed the opposite side.
5. We rented a power washer from the local hardware store for two or three hours and Jon power washed every board as I followed him and turned them over, preparing Jon to go back and wash the other sides as well. This cleaned the boards to the best of our ability and got any dirt or gunk off them. Honestly, the boards were in pretty good condition to start with, but we didn't want to mess around with any microscopic stuff going on that could turn into a health hazard later on. Plus, the power washer cost us $40 to rent so it wasn't a very expensive process.
6. We are still staining the boards, since weather has been against us the last few weeks. We have had some rain and now we have a few inches of snow. The boards were covered with a tarp but inevitably some of the rain got to the boards. In an attempt to dry them out, I spread them across the lawn….then it snowed like three inches today. So, ya know…I'm pretty much a genius. It's kind of a headache I don't want to think about right now, but we might have to bring the project into the garage and turn on a space heater to dry out all the wood and stain them. Where there's a will, there's a way! We don't have any pictures of the stained boards yet - that will be in a later post.
Here are some pictures of the pallet process:
Jon sweeping the boards before I scrubbed them with the bleach solution, in order to get dirt and dust off
Michele scrubbing the boards with the bleach and water solution
Forgot to take a picture of Jon actually washing the boards, but this is the power washer next to the boards with water all around it…so use your imagination
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