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

raise walls

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Day 6: Sheathing, Energy & Systems, Wall Raising

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On Day 6 of Yestermorrow's Tiny House Design-Build we began sheathing the walls with CDX plywood. We're sheathing the walls flat so that the plywood creates sheer panels, which helps to keep the walls square while we install them. (See more photos in the Day 6 Slideshow.)

Since the long walls are being built in 3 sections and we have plenty of brute strength amongst the 16 of us, the panels won't be too heavy to lift into place even once they are sheathed. We decided to use 3/8" plywood to save weight since other tiny housers have done this. Unfortunately, the plywood has more warps and bows than we'd like to see so most of us have decided we'd rather use 1/2" for our little homes. (It may be that 3/8" plywood is higher quality on the Best Coast and this is another East Coast - West Coast difference.)

Now that we have the trailer level we can use it as a work surface. Our wall sheathing process involves snapping a straight line 3 1/2" from the edge of the trailer, toenailing the bottom plate of the wall to the subfloor along this line, squaring up the wall, and attaching the plywood, using the glue and screw method. Because this little house is not built down into the trailer frame we are running our plywood an extra 4 3/4" below the bottom plate so that it will cover the floor system (3/4" AvanTech subfloor, 3 1/2" pressure treated joists, and 1/2" pressure treated undercarriage). We also cut out most of the windows, using a circular saw to make plunge cuts. The windows we didn't manage to get cut out before it was time for wall raising will need to be finished with a reciprocating saw.

We got the walls almost ready to raise in the morning and after lunch I did a presentation on building science basics, energy, and systems. Afterwards we did our first wall raising and got three of the wall sections up. It's always such a thrill to see the first walls go up!

Thankfully, we set up the schedule with a 24 hour break from Saturday evening to Sunday evening, which will be a good chance for everyone to recharge. Perfect for a Saturday evening bonfire and a sing-along with a few (handmade!) instruments. It was an action-packed week and we've got another one ahead of us!