Julia, Katie and I went up to the farm yesterday to pick pumpkins from Katie’s personal pumpkin patch and I snapped this photo of all that’s left from 40-acres of corn. They hauled off five big double trailed trucks filled with organic feed corn when all was said and done.

Now that the corn is harvested and the field has been mowed and plowed it’s ready for seeding or planting again. This year instead of a winter cover crop he’ll actually be planting vegetables… which should be interesting… he’s never done that here before.

We didn’t get any work done on the tiny house since it was just a fun family mid-week trip. The next time I go up to work I’ll put the roofing felt down to protect it from the rain. I’m also hoping to get some scrap sheet metal for the roof but we’ll see how that pans out… you never know what will turn up. I’ll keep you posted.

I spent the last two days working in the Tiny Free House and got the other window lowered about 8 inches to clear the eaves and finished adding pallet boards to the roof. It was very slow going screwing all those boards to the trusses. I used an extension ladder from the outside for the lower boards and did the peak from the inside by coming up through the framing.

My next step is to cover the roof with roofing felt to protect the house from the rain and start on the siding on my next trip… unless my father-in-law scores form scrap sheet metal for me. He mentioned he knew a couple guys with sheet metal shops that often have shingle size scrap pieces of metal. Seems to me some galvanized scrap sheet metal would make some very nice shingles… nicer than #10 cans and still very free.

The photos above are how it looked after I cleaned up my mess on Sunday afternoon. The last photo below is how it looked at the end of Saturday. As you can see I use an extension ladder on the exterior and screwed the boards on as high as I could reach safely.

Sunday morning, working from the inside on the orange ladder, I popped my head and shoulders up from the inside boarded up the peak boards. It was a bit tricky and I was standing on the top of the 6-foot ladder. I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to get the roofing felt and shingles up there without actually getting up on the roof. I think I’ll be OK as long as I stay on the rafters. I guess we’ll see :-)

It was a bit hot this past weekend but I got to spend a couple days working on the house. I had planned to put more boards on the roof but realized that I needed to first finish the eaves. They took a bit of time to build but I think they look pretty good, so even though I didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped I’m still happy with my progress. I came up with the 16×16 diamond window in both eaves on-the-fly and plan to make little opening windows for ventilation.

I also realized the side windows were too high and needed to be lowered so I threw a temporary support in, unscrewed a couple pallets, cut them up and reframed. I only got one window lowered before I called it a day on Sunday.

Next Steps:

• Lower other side window.
• Finish putting boards on roof.
• Finish filling in pallet boards on sides so I have something to screw the milled pallet boards onto.
• Finish roof (roofing felt and shingles (The jury is still out on the final roofing material)).
• Mill up a bunch of pallet boards for the siding.
• Wrap it up with house-wrap.
• Screw on the milled pallet board siding.
• Install the windows I got free off craigslist.
• Mill up pallet boards for trim around the windows and door.
• Build the door from pallet wood, and install.
• Seal the exterior with some kind natural free finish. (I’m open to suggestions.)

At that point I’ll be ready to move to working inside the house. My plan is to get all this done before the rain starts. At my current slow pace I think it’s possible. Here are a few more photos.

I took the day off from work we took a half-day trip up the the farm today. I spent a few hours working on the Tiny Free House, shooting some photos and video. I hope this is the beginning of a series of trips that will get me a lot closer to completing the Tiny Free House. Here are a few of the videos I shot.

How to take apart pallets

Tiny free house tour

How to work with the pallet boards

Demonstration of attaching pallet boards to the roof

Nice view of corn field

Crop duster flys over the Tiny Free House

My own tiny free house is taking a lot longer to build than I ever expected but I just checked in on the scrap house gang and they are really making great headway on their free house.

They’ve been distracted too and have had some short delays as well. I think time may be the most common challenge with free house construction, scavenging takes a lot of it and you can’t just go down to the store and buy stuff. Take a look at their latest progress, visit The Scrap House blog.

I was almost dead certain I was going to go to the farm this past weekend for two days of building bliss but my plans fell through last minute and instead I spent it working on my big house. The irony is that the free house project was born from my frustration with how trapped I feel in my big house, and now it’s the big house keeping me from the tiny house.

At first it was the resale value plummeting which is now down about 40%; yep I’ve  lost almost half the value from the peak market price. But the other trapping quality is the time my house takes to maintain. This one, being about 35 years old, has had some deferred maintenance and it seems like every time I turn around I have to fix, prune, mow, or clean something else.

I’m still planning on taking time off from work but June is looking really packed with previous obligations. I think I may take advantage of the good weather and run some garage sales so I can sell the odds and ends I’ve collected. I may also try to tackle some woodworking projects around here like build the tiny house’s front door. Maybe that will help me eliviate some of the frustration I’m feeling and make some real progress too.

Today is my daughter’s 3rd birthday! It should be a fun day. In the past several weeks I’ve been swamped with work at my day-job and spring cleaning around my ‘big’ house (like patching my stupid flat roof… grrrrr).

After this weekend it looks like I’ll be back on track with the tiny free house! This week I’ll redouble my scavenging efforts and get all my ducks in a row for my next trip to the farm. Next step is to get the roof on and then I can start covering the exterior with pallet boards. I can’t wait for the tiny free house to really look like a tiny house.

I ran across this on Kent Griswold’s blog this morning and jumped for joy. It’s another tiny free house project being built by three students in Salvo, NC. They are scavenging free materials and building a very nice 96 square foot tiny house. It has a little kitchen, bathroom, and living area. They plan to be done within a month.

I’d love to see a million free houses pop-up around the country. I can’t be the only one this simple idea has occured to… and the more people that do it, the more people will try it and discover that a little ingenuity can replace spending money any day. Read the complete story on Tiny House Blog. You can also visit the students’ project blog at thescraphouse.wordpress.com.

Initially I was thinking I’d make the tiny free house more like a ‘park model’ house with a flush toilet and RV hookups. But the more I learn about sawdust toilets and soil box gray water systems the more I think that these two solutions are really a better way of dealing with the waste water and sewage.

In addition to being free, these methods are far more sustainable, provide usable compost, and don’t require massive quantities of water. The sawdust toilet does require a special compost pile for the turds to cook. I’m also pretty sure few government agencies officially condone these little methods or handling human waste so before trying this yourself be sure to check your local laws.

To learn more about sawdust toilets and gray water soil boxes get the Humanure Handbook. You can also read The Humanure Handbook online free but this is one book you might want a hard copy of in your library. It makes great toilet reading too… (pun intended). Photo credit to Jenkins Publishing.

I took the day off from work today and went up tot he farm and finished framing the roof. After searching all my usual haunts for long pallets with no luck I broke down and bought 18 2×4s for the roof which cost about $28. I figure the money I’ll save in gas is will offset this little investment and it should be easily reclaimed by selling some of the free stuff I’ve collected so far. In fact the weather is just right now for a garage sale to do just that.

Anyway it felt very good to have this milestone complete. It also feels good to have a safe roof over head. I didn’t want to use pallets in the roof because it just seemed like asking for trouble. This roof shouldn’t collapse on my head.

The next step is to close up the roof with roofing felt, tin or shingles. I’ve already got enough scavenged roofing felt but I still need some kind of roofing material. Initially I was hoping to find an old metal shed someone wants hauled away, but I’ve been thinking more about using flattened #10 tin cans. I’ll need to do an experiment before I start collecting the 200 cans. My imagination tells me it will work great but my practical side tells me I’m crazy… but we knew that right?

A finished roof will give me some shade to work in while I finish up the interior wheel well and bathroom wall framing. I’d like to get all the rough framing work done before I start closing it in with pallet boards so it’s easier to work in there under the hot sun.

I’m also still on the lookout for insulation but I’m pretty sure I’ll use styrofoam packing peanuts stuffed in old plastic grocery bags. The bags should hold the peanuts together and keep the whole process of putting peanuts in the walls and ceiling less messy. The interior will be sealed up the same way are the exterior with pallet boards.

Here’s what it looked like after I cleaned up my mess at the end of the day:

I plan to put bracing in at the peak to keep the roof strong. Instead of framing the roof normally I made simple trusses on the ground and lifted them into place and then added cross bracing between each truss. By adding a little metal or wood plate at the peak it should help keep the roof together for a long time.