We broke ground on our tiny house in April of 2009. And, unlike builders who use trailers for their foundations, I mean it literally. While we had built the post and pier foundation we didn't really get started until the week of 4th of July that year.
In 2008, before we even knew we were building a tiny home, we invited several friends to come down to North Carolina to camp for the 4th of July weekend. We had a campfire, food, and fun. It was a good time. So we decided to keep up with the tradition the next year, but this time it had a little added activity. We were going to have an old fashioned barn raising!
Here is original post from my LiveJournal, the only blog I had at the time. (The only editing was to change names from LJ tags to actual names.)
Matt came to get me at work around 3pm on Friday June 26th. We drove up to Asheville and arrived at Mt. Matt around 7pm. We spent the rest of the daylight hours setting up the canopy that would become the kitchen area as well as the bathroom tents. When the sun started going down, we went to Ingles to buy the first round of food for the week. With only coolers for food storage, we knew we would have to make several trips (this was actually the first of four).
Around 10:30 or 11pm, the first of our victims...I mean guests...arrived: Andrew, aka Droid . We hung out and talked for a while, but I was in bed by about midnight.
The next morning, June 27th, we got up and started working on the foundation, which still hadn't been finished. Our original goal, way back when we were planning this trip, was to have all the foundation done by the build week. Alas, that was not to be. Our friend Chad didn't arrive until about 3pm that afternoon. He managed to get his tent set up just before an afternoon rain shower that stopped us for about 20 minutes. The skies cleared up again and we got back to work. I believe we finished the wood posts that afternoon and started on the joists. We broke for dinner, which was pasta and Italian chicken sausage I believe. Then Matt and Chad played Detroit Lions Tailgate Toss - a crazy game played with things that look like goal posts and "bolos" - two tiny footballs connected by a string. You throw the bolos at the goal posts and try to wrap them around the rungs. I think you would have to see it to understand. When it got dark, we built the first of many fires for the weekend and Matt and Chad played some music.
On Sunday, June 28th, we spent even more time working on the foundation. I believe we got all of the joists on and worked on squaring the thing. Droid left around 1pm that day to head back to Atlanta. Dinner that night was burgers, as I recall. Matt's brother was originally supposed to get there on Sunday night, but he ended up not leaving Detroit until Monday morning so he was a day behind. No problem.
Monday through Wednesday seem like a blur to me. I know that Jim made it there late afternoon on Monday. Matt and Chad went to Home Depot to get more supplies that day. I know that Chad had signed up for the Pool tournament at the local Marshall bar, Longnecks. We had been actually afraid of Longnecks but it turned out to be a really cool place with great beer and beyond fantastic desserts. Oh, I remember - on Monday the Home Depot didn't have any trucks available to rent to Matt and Chad had to go back on Tuesday morning to get all of the wood that wouldn't fit in the element. Jim and I went to the grocery store while they did that. I stupidly forgot my wallet and Jim had to pay for the groceries, but Matt paid him back. He was really excited about the complimentary watermelon that we got for buying more than $50 worth of groceries. I made steaks for dinner that night with a potato recipe from a camping recipe cook book that was pretty good. We also got all the plywood up to the worksite so we could finally finish the foundation. I do remember that when we were done working, we debated tarping everything but we looked at weather.com and it said 0% chance of rain ALL NIGHT LONG. Well, at 3:15am, I woke up to an insane thunderstorm. Lots of lightning and thunder. The thing about staying in a barn with a metal roof, though, is it always sounds worse than it really is. At that point, though, the damage was done. We checked the plywood in the morning. It had only rained for about a half an hour so it was just wet on the surface. Matt, Jim and I went to Lowe's to get box fans that we plugged into our generator and dried out the plywood. We lost half a day of work, but we quickly recovered. Chad left around 1pm on Wednesday and then Jim, Matt and I finished squaring and securing the floor. Since it was just the three of us, we decided that was a good night to go into Asheville proper. We went to Barley's Taproom for Pizza. We had wanted to walk around, but we were exhausted so we headed back to the land and went to bed.
On Thursday, July 2nd, I had one really big job to do: I got to screw in the entire sub floor of the house! It needed screws every 12 inches along every joist and ever 6 inches around the edges. We had put in a few screws the day before just to secure it down, but now I was going to spend the morning drilling screws into the whole thing. It wasn't really hard, just tedious. Coincidentally, my drill matched my tank top so the photos of me screwing the floor make me very happy. Once that was done we could *finally* start on a wall. We framed out the front wall (with the door opening) and got it all screwed together. That night, our friends Rob and Dann were supposed to arrive late, but they got a late start and, like Jim, they didn't leave until the next day either. So, I made dinner of more pasta but with meatballs this time. The meatballs were so good! We had another fire and went to bed early.
On Friday, we worked on the second wall. That morning, around 11am, Jill and Doug arrived at Mt. Matt. They were staying in town at a Bed and Breakfast that they stay in often. They started helping with the back wall. Around lunchtime, Andy arrived as well. He set up his tent and everything and we got back to work. We divided work up - Jill and Doug were on measuring and cutting. They were in charge of all the studs which needed to be 74 inches. They cut all of them for both walls. Matt, who had been working nonstop all week, had a brain meltdown while he was trying to measure the first of the two long walls. I'm sure all the numbers and measurements were just swimming in his head. Andy stepped in and volunteered to run the measurements. I went down to the barn with Matt for a break while we left our crew cutting and measuring. Jill and Doug had to leave around 5 to go back into Asheville. With Andy's help we finished marking the measurements on the top and bottom plates of the first long wall. Jim did all the small measurements and cuts of the bracing and window pieces. We called it a night and decided to go into Downtown Marshall for dinner at Bacchus Bistro. Dann and Rob were driving in and would be there sometime around 10. When we got back we built a fire. Eventually, Dann and Rob arrived and we hung out and they set their tent up in the dark. Most of us went to bed at a respectable time, but Jim and Rob stayed up with the fire until 6am. They burned every scrap of wood that we had cut and even went hunting for more.
Amazingly enough, both of them were up and running pretty early the next day. Jill and Doug came back around 10:30 and we started assembling the first wall. We measured out and assembled the second wall as well. Then our friends Bill and Susan arrived around lunch time. They got their camp set up and it was finally time to erect the walls! After we got the first couple of walls up, Nicole and Ben arrived. Our whole crew helped us erect all four walls and finally there was a real sense of accomplishment. I was so proud of everyone working together. We did good work!
Jill and Doug had to leave again after the last wall was stood up and secured into place. We wouldn't see them again, so there were hugs all round. We all gathered back at the barn for dinner. There was, however, an equipment failure and the beer-butt chicken we were going to make was not going to be cooked (a gas line problem with our Big Easy Oil-less turkey fryer caused the problem). Andy took me on an emergency food run when we grabbed a couple of rotisserie chickens, a package of fried chicken and some cole slaw. We had to abandon our chicken at a dumpster. I feel bad for it. The dinner turned out to be really good (we already had hotdogs that we were making anyway). After dinner we built a fire and played some music. Dann and Rob were in Superfiction with Matt back in Detroit and are now in a band called The Troubled Ones. They brought things like a tambourine and bongo drums. Other folks brought their own drums and Bill even brought his mountain dulcimer. We played a mix of Dann original songs as well as some covers. We were singing along and playing along and a good time was had by all.
Sunday was spent with everyone going home, mostly. Matt and I had to close up camp - including the work site and the barn/camping site. We didn't leave until about 3pm.
I would honestly rank last week as one of the best weeks of my life. I would do it again in a heartbeat!
You can see all the photos from our tiny house build at Flickr, including photos from the first 4th of July weekend.
Our friend Andy took some great photos that weekend which you can see here.
Since we moved into the tiny house we've stopped hosting the Independence Day camping extravaganza. Instead, we do some other traveling in the summer. But these weeks (we did three of them total while we were building) were very important to us. We are grateful for our friends who came to help us each year. We also chose the 4th of July specifically because it wasn't just Independence Day for the U.S. but also because it marked our own personal independence. This was the start of our new lives where building a tiny house would free us from debt and allow us to do new things.
So today we celebrate the 4th of July and the 5th tiny house Independence Day.
In 2008, before we even knew we were building a tiny home, we invited several friends to come down to North Carolina to camp for the 4th of July weekend. We had a campfire, food, and fun. It was a good time. So we decided to keep up with the tradition the next year, but this time it had a little added activity. We were going to have an old fashioned barn raising!
Here is original post from my LiveJournal, the only blog I had at the time. (The only editing was to change names from LJ tags to actual names.)
Matt came to get me at work around 3pm on Friday June 26th. We drove up to Asheville and arrived at Mt. Matt around 7pm. We spent the rest of the daylight hours setting up the canopy that would become the kitchen area as well as the bathroom tents. When the sun started going down, we went to Ingles to buy the first round of food for the week. With only coolers for food storage, we knew we would have to make several trips (this was actually the first of four).
Around 10:30 or 11pm, the first of our victims...I mean guests...arrived: Andrew, aka Droid . We hung out and talked for a while, but I was in bed by about midnight.
The next morning, June 27th, we got up and started working on the foundation, which still hadn't been finished. Our original goal, way back when we were planning this trip, was to have all the foundation done by the build week. Alas, that was not to be. Our friend Chad didn't arrive until about 3pm that afternoon. He managed to get his tent set up just before an afternoon rain shower that stopped us for about 20 minutes. The skies cleared up again and we got back to work. I believe we finished the wood posts that afternoon and started on the joists. We broke for dinner, which was pasta and Italian chicken sausage I believe. Then Matt and Chad played Detroit Lions Tailgate Toss - a crazy game played with things that look like goal posts and "bolos" - two tiny footballs connected by a string. You throw the bolos at the goal posts and try to wrap them around the rungs. I think you would have to see it to understand. When it got dark, we built the first of many fires for the weekend and Matt and Chad played some music.
On Sunday, June 28th, we spent even more time working on the foundation. I believe we got all of the joists on and worked on squaring the thing. Droid left around 1pm that day to head back to Atlanta. Dinner that night was burgers, as I recall. Matt's brother was originally supposed to get there on Sunday night, but he ended up not leaving Detroit until Monday morning so he was a day behind. No problem.
Monday through Wednesday seem like a blur to me. I know that Jim made it there late afternoon on Monday. Matt and Chad went to Home Depot to get more supplies that day. I know that Chad had signed up for the Pool tournament at the local Marshall bar, Longnecks. We had been actually afraid of Longnecks but it turned out to be a really cool place with great beer and beyond fantastic desserts. Oh, I remember - on Monday the Home Depot didn't have any trucks available to rent to Matt and Chad had to go back on Tuesday morning to get all of the wood that wouldn't fit in the element. Jim and I went to the grocery store while they did that. I stupidly forgot my wallet and Jim had to pay for the groceries, but Matt paid him back. He was really excited about the complimentary watermelon that we got for buying more than $50 worth of groceries. I made steaks for dinner that night with a potato recipe from a camping recipe cook book that was pretty good. We also got all the plywood up to the worksite so we could finally finish the foundation. I do remember that when we were done working, we debated tarping everything but we looked at weather.com and it said 0% chance of rain ALL NIGHT LONG. Well, at 3:15am, I woke up to an insane thunderstorm. Lots of lightning and thunder. The thing about staying in a barn with a metal roof, though, is it always sounds worse than it really is. At that point, though, the damage was done. We checked the plywood in the morning. It had only rained for about a half an hour so it was just wet on the surface. Matt, Jim and I went to Lowe's to get box fans that we plugged into our generator and dried out the plywood. We lost half a day of work, but we quickly recovered. Chad left around 1pm on Wednesday and then Jim, Matt and I finished squaring and securing the floor. Since it was just the three of us, we decided that was a good night to go into Asheville proper. We went to Barley's Taproom for Pizza. We had wanted to walk around, but we were exhausted so we headed back to the land and went to bed.
On Thursday, July 2nd, I had one really big job to do: I got to screw in the entire sub floor of the house! It needed screws every 12 inches along every joist and ever 6 inches around the edges. We had put in a few screws the day before just to secure it down, but now I was going to spend the morning drilling screws into the whole thing. It wasn't really hard, just tedious. Coincidentally, my drill matched my tank top so the photos of me screwing the floor make me very happy. Once that was done we could *finally* start on a wall. We framed out the front wall (with the door opening) and got it all screwed together. That night, our friends Rob and Dann were supposed to arrive late, but they got a late start and, like Jim, they didn't leave until the next day either. So, I made dinner of more pasta but with meatballs this time. The meatballs were so good! We had another fire and went to bed early.
On Friday, we worked on the second wall. That morning, around 11am, Jill and Doug arrived at Mt. Matt. They were staying in town at a Bed and Breakfast that they stay in often. They started helping with the back wall. Around lunchtime, Andy arrived as well. He set up his tent and everything and we got back to work. We divided work up - Jill and Doug were on measuring and cutting. They were in charge of all the studs which needed to be 74 inches. They cut all of them for both walls. Matt, who had been working nonstop all week, had a brain meltdown while he was trying to measure the first of the two long walls. I'm sure all the numbers and measurements were just swimming in his head. Andy stepped in and volunteered to run the measurements. I went down to the barn with Matt for a break while we left our crew cutting and measuring. Jill and Doug had to leave around 5 to go back into Asheville. With Andy's help we finished marking the measurements on the top and bottom plates of the first long wall. Jim did all the small measurements and cuts of the bracing and window pieces. We called it a night and decided to go into Downtown Marshall for dinner at Bacchus Bistro. Dann and Rob were driving in and would be there sometime around 10. When we got back we built a fire. Eventually, Dann and Rob arrived and we hung out and they set their tent up in the dark. Most of us went to bed at a respectable time, but Jim and Rob stayed up with the fire until 6am. They burned every scrap of wood that we had cut and even went hunting for more.
Amazingly enough, both of them were up and running pretty early the next day. Jill and Doug came back around 10:30 and we started assembling the first wall. We measured out and assembled the second wall as well. Then our friends Bill and Susan arrived around lunch time. They got their camp set up and it was finally time to erect the walls! After we got the first couple of walls up, Nicole and Ben arrived. Our whole crew helped us erect all four walls and finally there was a real sense of accomplishment. I was so proud of everyone working together. We did good work!
Jill and Doug had to leave again after the last wall was stood up and secured into place. We wouldn't see them again, so there were hugs all round. We all gathered back at the barn for dinner. There was, however, an equipment failure and the beer-butt chicken we were going to make was not going to be cooked (a gas line problem with our Big Easy Oil-less turkey fryer caused the problem). Andy took me on an emergency food run when we grabbed a couple of rotisserie chickens, a package of fried chicken and some cole slaw. We had to abandon our chicken at a dumpster. I feel bad for it. The dinner turned out to be really good (we already had hotdogs that we were making anyway). After dinner we built a fire and played some music. Dann and Rob were in Superfiction with Matt back in Detroit and are now in a band called The Troubled Ones. They brought things like a tambourine and bongo drums. Other folks brought their own drums and Bill even brought his mountain dulcimer. We played a mix of Dann original songs as well as some covers. We were singing along and playing along and a good time was had by all.
Sunday was spent with everyone going home, mostly. Matt and I had to close up camp - including the work site and the barn/camping site. We didn't leave until about 3pm.
I would honestly rank last week as one of the best weeks of my life. I would do it again in a heartbeat!
You can see all the photos from our tiny house build at Flickr, including photos from the first 4th of July weekend.
Our friend Andy took some great photos that weekend which you can see here.
Since we moved into the tiny house we've stopped hosting the Independence Day camping extravaganza. Instead, we do some other traveling in the summer. But these weeks (we did three of them total while we were building) were very important to us. We are grateful for our friends who came to help us each year. We also chose the 4th of July specifically because it wasn't just Independence Day for the U.S. but also because it marked our own personal independence. This was the start of our new lives where building a tiny house would free us from debt and allow us to do new things.
So today we celebrate the 4th of July and the 5th tiny house Independence Day.
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