Making Ends Meet

Memorial Day Weekend was momentous for me. On Friday we had My SIPs Wall Raising. On Saturday we applied My Tiny House Air Barrier. On Sunday and Monday we had my Vardo Rafter Raising. Fortunately, I had lots of Tiny House Helpers. Then I (mostly) took a break from building for a couple of weeks. I spent the last couple days of May in Walla Walla, Revisiting Homeownership, and then lead a guided bike tour for Portland’s ADU Tour.

The first Monday of June, I snuck in a build day with my friend Chris who helped me install blocking between my rafters. This involved nipping off a corner at 26 degrees. Fortunately, Chris got really good at doing this with my circular saw.

Then we worked on figuring out a plan to close up the end walls. While I was finishing up Building My Arched Rafters, I Ordered My Tiny House SIPs. I figured it might be tricky to match the curve of the rafters, so my plan was to build rafters that would fit into the end wall. But then I learned that the SIPs company could cut the panels to a radius and put blocking in for me. So Patrick Sughrue of Structures Northwest and I figured out what the radius must be based on the rise of 15” at the 8’ mark. It turns out that, even though the rafter jig was based on a radius, the rafters have a more oblong curve because of the spring back that happens when they’re released from the form.

So when we put the rafter up against the end wall to test it, we discovered the curves didn’t match up properly. Once I had the birdsmouths in the rafters there was only ¼” difference between the curves at the top but 2 ½” difference at the ends.

So Chris and I explored a lot of different options last week and Tony chimed in, too, when he swung by. “Why don’t you just build more rafters?” he asked. “I can’t do that,” I said. “I already returned the jig. I’d have to source the strips and I wouldn’t be able to get the fir strips milled down in time so I’d have to use hemlock lathe. I’d have to build the rafters and plane them and sand them and birdsmouth them and seal them and install them.”

Eventually we decided to cut a curved piece of plywood to seal up the exterior and on the interior install the barge rafters I’d built. We got the rafters in place, tarpped everything up again, and called it a day.

The trouble was, it just looked off to me. As Jacob Deva Racusin, one of my natural building instructors, taught me, there are two rules to hack:

1. Is it safe?
2. Can you live with it?

Using the rafters this way was safe, but I couldn’t live with it. I couldn’t sleep that night. At 3 AM I found myself devising a new plan. And I’ve learned about myself that when I come up with a plan at in the middle of the night I’d better at least give it some good thought in the morning.

The next morning I decided it was going to be a pain, but it was still a good plan. So a couple days later my friend Willie helped me pick up the rafter jig again from Katy and I ordered 52 strips of 12' long hemlock lathe and built myself four new rafters – one for each side of each end wall.

Then I spent the weekend out of state at a family reunion where I got to show off baby pictures of my tiny house (which were, of course, completely upstaged by my nephew who is admittedly way cuter!) Yesterday Eric helped me plane the rafters and Jack arrived just in time to help us sand them. We took a lunch break while waiting for the sealer to dry and then installed the rafters and fixed the blocking.

I filled the gap between the new end wall rafters with spray foam and got myself good and sticky as I always seem to do when attempting to make Great Stuff go where I want it to. The trick here is to just let the foam do its thing and then shave away the excess with an old saw once it’s hardened.

We wanted to get the bead board up, too, but the staples I’d picked up weren’t long enough to hold the bead board into the rafters on that curve. So we set the bead board aside (again!) and tarpped the roof up.

I plan to have work parties again this weekend with the assistance of more Tiny House Helpers. Hopefully we’ll be Building My Roofbox on Saturday and Sunday. Stay tuned!

Planing My Curved Rafters

Waaay back in March, I began Building My Arched Rafters for my gypsy wagon, The Lucky Penny. I was able to borrow a jig from the uber talented Katy Anderson. Katy is a woodcrafter extraordinaire (who is currently building a vardo for Dee Williams which she’ll be taking on her book tour for The Big Tiny!) Laminating the ¼” strips of mixed grain fir on the jig was a neat process. (If you’d like to learn how you can do it yourself, check out the Vardo Plan Set from Portland Alternative Dwellings!)

I’d never done any lamination before so I learned a lot through trial-and-error. I found there were two particularly important things to remember:

First, it’s important to prep your workspace because once you start gluing up the rafters you have to keep moving. Even the Titebond III glue has a fairly short open time. (That means it starts sticking quickly so you have to get things positioned just how you want them before it’s too late!)

Second, if you aren’t really good about pressing the fir strips down (in addition to clamping them against the jig), you end up with quite a bit of variation along the edges of the rafters. I didn't consider this at all on the first rafter I built and it was all kinds of cattywampus! On the second one I remembered to press down at the middle but didn't realize it was important to do this all the way to the edges. With two trial rafters under my belt I caught on and made the rest of them much better. However, even on the best ones, when my rafters were all glued up there was probably about a ¼” worth of variation from the low point to the high point on each side.

Fortunately, the Breathe Building, the Living Building Challenge project I'm working on, had just purchased a planer. We’ve salvaged the wood that was removed from the North Building and we’ll be milling it down to use as interior finishes throughout the new facility. When I told Mike about my project he suggested we use my rafters to test out the new planer.

So yesterday afternoon my coworkers Mike, Gabriel, and Evan spent a couple hours helping me plane my rafters down so that they’re smooth on both sides. We all oohed and ahhed when the first one came through the planer. They are bee-a-you-tee-full! It was fun getting into a rhythm with the team and making the magic happen thanks to a really great tool. Both the machine and its operators get two thumbs up from yours truly! I can’t wait to see what all the wood in the Breathe Building looks like when it’s done...

Building My Arched Rafters

This year I'm Kicking Off Spring with Tiny House Prep! Today I began building my arched laminated rafters. I'm building a gypsy wagon, also known as a vardo. Over and over again I find myself drawn to little arch-topped houses, so I've decided to make one of my own. I've never lived in an arch topped house before, but did live in My Home Sweet Yurt, which had a circular roof and a round oculus. And I'm a big fan of the arched roof on Caboose at Caravan - The Tiny House Hotel, John Labovitz's tiny house truck Polymecca, and Big Maroon. And, of course, Little Bird, which is one of my all-time favorite tiny houses.

Katy Anderson, the incredible craftswoman who built Sweet Pea has generously allowed me to borrow her jig to make the rafters. I my mixed grain fir milled up by the fine folks at Creative Woodworking. It cost a small fortune to have the milling done, so these rafters will probably cost twice what I originally estimated. But I'm fine with paying for the milling since I didn't have a good way to cut 130 pieces of 12 foot long 1/4" thick fir. Over the past couple weeks I hunted at nearly every hardware store in town to find a glue applicator like Katy recommended. I finally found one at Woodcrafters. They had the best price on Tightbond III as well, so I got a couple gallons of that on Friday when I was Kicking Off Spring with Tiny House Prep. I also dropped nearly $200 on clamps, because, you know, "you can never have too many clamps." I currently have 20. Need more clamps...

At the moment I have the first half of the first rafter on the jig. I feel like a kid eager to open a present, waiting to unclamp it and see how it worked! I'll be building my arched rafters over the next ten days, so I'll let you know how it goes.