ADU, Travel, Community
Lina Menard
Maui, Hawaii

After A Week Long Send Off, My Round the World Trip kicked off with eight days in Maui visiting my sister Sarah who has split her time between Hawaii and Alaska for many years. What an epic way to start this adventure! There was mist falling when my sister greeted me at the Kahului airport on Maui a week ago, so she teased me about bringing the rain from the mainland. We headed straight for Paia where she presented me with a young coconut and a lei, accompanied by the chant for the gifting-of-a-lei.

Maui, Hawaii
Tiny House, Travel, Planning
Lina Menard
Lucky Penny Moves to Walla Walla

A number of circumstances collided recently to compel me to move the Lucky Penny to my property in Walla Walla where I have a ground bound small house called Valencia Cottage. So on Tuesday trusted tiny house movers Linh and Stephanie Pham helped me move the Lucky Penny safely from Portland to my place in Walla Walla.

Lucky Penny Moves to Walla Walla
Minimalism, Workshop
Lina Menard
Downsizing Tune Up

As I packed up recently in preparation to travel cross country in my Honda Fit, I did some downsizing… It was harder than it had been during my last couple of moves because this time I had more stuff. I’d been living in a bigger space…My apartment was a studio, but it was still about 6 times bigger than the Lucky Penny! I talked with several people about the experience and a handful of them said “oh my goodness, I need to do more of that!” So I’ve decided to offer a 6-week Downsizing Tune Up…

Downsizing Tune Up

circular saw

Day 4: Tiny House Plumbing & Wiring Begins

Today we did a walk around of the tiny house first thing so Jane could decide where she wanted all of her outlets and switches. One of the builders focused on the electrical and plumbing most of the day while the rest of us finished sheathing the house.

We continued with our method of measuring the area to cover, cutting the piece, holding it up to make sure it fit properly, then adding a bead of construction adhesive to each stud and header, and stapling the OSB to the studs. We have become pretty handy with Liquid Nails construction adhesive, a circular saw, and a staple gun. The trick of nailing a pieces of 2x4 to the top plate so that we can butt the sheet of OSB up to it is a great one!

Because the house is 8'6" wide and 20' long we aren't able to use full sheets of dimensional OSB so we have used full sheets as often as possible and placed our filler pieces strategically. The stud layouts I'd sketched out a couple weeks ago were useless since the layout of the house has been tweeked a bit. We also didn't have the trailer yet so we couldn't get precise measurements from it until just before we started building. We certainly added some weight by using extra studs, but hopefully the enhanced sheer strength will be worth it. As we covered it in sheathing the house started getting darker but we cut open the windows again with a sawzall.

The trickiest pieces we worked on were around the wheel wells. Since we are building out to the full width of the trailer we're bringing the wheel wells into the house. We needed to make sure we had a good connection between the walls and the trailer and we wanted to minimize the number of exterior wall surfaces. We all puzzled over it for a while and finally came up with a solution that involved capping the ends of our double joists with plywood, then placing a 2x4 at the bottom of the gap and gluing it into place with massive amounts of construction adhesive. We'll be sure to tape it well, too, with our handy aluminum tape. Then we had the fun task of bringing the OSB to the fenders. We ended up scribing the cuts from the inside with a long pencil and then cutting them out with a jigsaw. This allowed us to get a pretty close connection which we can seal up with spray foam and caulk.

We seem to have hit a snafu with our insulation that we'll be working on later this week. Tomorrow a roofing framer is going to come out to get started on the roof which we're all looking forward to since the house will really take shape then. It's been gorgeous the past four days but we got sprinkled on this evening so we wrapped things up early. Roofing in the rain is neither fun or safe so we're hoping for some good weather the next couple of days! Keep your fingers crossed for us!