The Simple Life





Roby and I have decided to live "lightly". Come along for the journey of the construction and trials and tribulations of living in the Tiny House.

This blog is posted with the most current adventure first. So, scroll to the bottom if you want to start from the beginning. s.

We welcome comments and any building tricks.



Sunday, June 6, 2010

Custom Bathroom


Sarah has developed a new work plan for the site crew designating which days we devote to photovoltaic work, gardening, and infastructure. Now we work on the tiny house on Tuesday and Wednesday. We are getting down to the nitty gritty. I spent time cauking the cracks around the window frames and finishing up the trim work in the kitchen. Roby has dedicated himself to tiling the shower and toilet room. He has never done it before.

Instead of making it easy on himself and picking the perfectly square tiles to just install in a few minutes, he decided to let his artistic brain convince him to do a custom mosaic pattern. He figured how long could it take to tile a 2x2 room. (Three eight hour days later he finished his masterpiece.) He started by cutting out the hole in the wallboard for the compost toilet. He installed the toilet-a 5 gallon bucket with a fancy recycled wood toilet seat over it. Next he went through our recycle yard and picked out the different tiles he was going to use. He used a white square tile for the base layer and cut out an organic pattern which he filled with blueish green broken pieces. He had to improvise because he did not have the proper tools to cut the tiles. He used a small dremel with a tiny blade on it and cut through it to lay out his patttern. A job which would normally take a few minutes to prepare for such a small area took 4 hours and several cuss words with the dremel saw. He used a hammer to break the blue pieces to fill in the design. The next problem was re-creating the pattern he designed on the tabletop to the bathroom floor. We thought of trying to slip a board under it and moving it carefully but it was not going to work. Instead he took a mental snapshot and did it blind. He said it was a lot of fun but very stressful because he had to make sure the mud did not dry before he got his mosaic set. After a full eight hours he had the 2x2 shower floor finished. You would have thought he would decide to take it easy on the toilet seat area but no, he got even more ambitious. This time he spent 6 hours designing the mosaic and another 8 hours installing it. He said the best thing about being a construction worker is the beer you get to drink after work.

Roby was pushed to get the tiling completed because while we are on vacation Cuatro and Chris are going to lime plaster the shower walls. Hopefully we will be able to use it when we get home.

Our goal is to move the tiny house to its final resting spot mid-June. The only remaining task will be to install the roof. We have two good leads on materials but nothing confirmed. Roby will then put his magic together and design a cute little garden and patio around it. We will have it set up as a display for visitors to see how to build a green sustainable structure. We are going to use photovoltaic panels for power and a solar thermal system for our water system. These along with our compost toilet will make us off grid completely. Many green festivals have asked us to bring the tiny house to their events to showcase it. Hopefully we will get to take it on the road to promote sustainable building practices. Burning Man here we come!!



1 comment:

  1. Hi. I am a graduate journalism student in LA, currently writing an article on the tiny house movement and I would love to get one or two comments from you guys regarding the money and manpower it took to get your tiny home complete. Would you be willing to talk to me? My email address is: leiladylan@gmail.com. Please let me know.

    Kind regards
    Leila Dougan

    ReplyDelete