Saturday, March 21, 2015

We are still here!


For those of you who have been wondering what happened to those Agnew Tiny House People...Are they still with us? Are they still building the tiny house? Is everything okay?......YES YES AND YES! sometimes in life you get to make a choice between priority and not. Due to some arrangements that we made when deciding to build this house  it was agreed that we would get it done by March.....the beginning of March...
What were we thinking??? LOL In January we realized we had a LONG way to go before completion so it was time to hunker down and prioritize. As you can tell the blog unfortunately did not make it on the priority list. 
So despite what the blog says we have been working hard and are very near completion. In fact only days away.... 4 days to be exact. On Wednesday March 25th our dear little house will be dropping her wheels leaving her driveway and heading  down the big highway to Oregon where she will meet her new permanent location. 
Anyone living in this area is welcome to stop by in the next few days and take a final look before she starts her journey. Just give us a heads so we know who to expect. Once our little tiny is settled I will resume again with the blog posts and share all the excitement of the last 2 months! Until then wish us luck

Link to Fionnbharre personal page !https://fionnbharres.wixsite.com/fionnbharre


Saturday, January 17, 2015

Building The Loft

Where do I begin...... Everything has been moving along so quickly lately I can hardly keep up. Fionnbharre is turbo charged and there is NO slowing him down. I've been lucky just to get pictures taken. This blog post is going to be minimal on it's wordage and I'm letting the pictures do the talking.....
But Just to bring things up to speed. We still have some painting to do but all the major walls are done, aside from a few touch ups here and there. But since the painting has been complete we have  installed the permanent loft ( the loft in previous pictures was just a temporary make shift loft), Built and installed the cabinet stairs, installed the kitchen cabinet framing, built the wooden counter tops, build our loft dresser, built the closet cabinet, cut all the trim in the house. At present we are finishing all the trim in the house with polyurethane and Fionnbharre is building the doors for all the cabinets. Allow me show it all.... perhaps this is a good time to grab a hot cup of tea, and maybe a cookie to enjoy the loads of pictures that you are about to see.....perhaps I will break this blog up into 2 parts for ease of viewing and creating... anyways enjoy!

 Building the Loft


 The loft is primarily supported by the 3 steel beams attached to the walls. One on each wall and a larger stronger one down the middle of the loft.

Cutting grooves into the wood to sit on stainless steel beam

















This Post is still in Progress...lets just consider this a little preview......

Thursday, January 1, 2015

The Painting Begins

 Its starting to feel like every step we take forward seems to be momentous and not to be taken for granted. Things like finishing the shingles and putting the interior walls up are  HUGE events. And now the next big event is in progress. PAINTING! This is the moment where this wooden structure that we've been spending months on begins to take life from the inside out. It's also the moment where some big decisions have to be made. What color is the house going to be?? Personally I like for this decision process to take a little time. Find some colors, sit with them for a little while, mix and match, perhaps sleep with them under your pillow to see which one resonates the best. Okay maybe putting them under your pillow is a bit far, but I think you get my drift. I was a bit taken back when I found painting time was already here and we were to pick our colors today so we could paint by tomorrow. Some people like to make decisions far faster then others. Although I have to say it's really good we have someone our team that likes to get things in a timely manner. Because if it was up to me we'd probably still be deciding on color until the end of the month and maybe into January. The whole process went quickly, I kind of think we were divinely guided in our selection process. It couldn't have taken more then 20 minutes. Not bad considering we had a completely BLANK slate to start from or at least so we thought. We've decided to go with a nature-driven and calming tone for our tiny house, with what I would consider neutral to warm tones. You'll see the colors in later pictures. When we went color shopping we thought we had a totally blank slate, until we got home with our new colors and realized our wood stove is a bit of an eye catcher and the right colors would be very important to prevent clashing
. Out of all the colors in the world we could have picked, we picked the perfect colors to bring out the stove! Was that by chance? I like to think not! 
One of our biggest concerns about painting was not so much the color but how to do the texturing. Typical drywall texture is expensive and a bit of pain to use, not mention it's heavy. We didn't really want to go that route. So with a little bit of YouTube education and online research we found something called Tissue Paper Texture. It's exactly as it sounds. You use tissue paper as your wall texture. There's a more detailed explanation of this further down in the blog. The final result is amazing. Its very professional looking and can actually be made to look just like sand stone. So far we are really happy with the results.
As of now we have all of the lower walls done and will moving forward to the ceiling soon.





The first stir of primer





















 















Don't Forget the Details!









It's time for some tissue paper fun. 
GET READY TO CRUMPLE!!!





Thanks to the lovely holiday season we found a great deal on tissue paper at costco. 400 sheets for only $6. Now that's cheap texturing! We took an evening to pre-crumple. land tear off the edges of all the tissue paper so it was ready at hand when we needed. This ended up saving us a lot of time. So with  a cup of tea, a documentary, and some tissue paper we had a great evening of crumpling
....Tissue Un-crumpled
Tissue All Crumpled






Lets Paint!

The exciting moment where the pain can gets opened!

ahhh.... look at that lovely color





     Here's hows the tissue texture works. You paint a tissue paper size section on the wall.  As shown on the picture to the left.  Then take a single sheet of white tissue paper crumple it into a ball, then uncrumple it and place flat on the pre-painted section and once again paint over it, being careful you don't have to much pain or you will end up with a big goopy mess. Also pay attention to the amount of pressure you are using  being careful not to tear or break the tissue paper. It's best to initially roll away from tissue paper making sure the edges and corners are secure. Repeat  this process until your wall is covered.


Its best to cut around outlets and windows shortly after painting them,
so the paint is still a little damp and you can peel
 the tissue using the the edges of the outlet or window seal. This allows you to see
if you missed any edges


It's important to have the tissue paper relatively smooth without any BIG bumps or ridges. Large ridges will lead to problems after it has dried.











This section was cut after it dried. Its a little trickier this way and can lead to unfinished and rough edges.














We still have a little ways to go on the painting... Since I originally started writing this blog back 2 weeks ago. Fionnbharre and I BOTH got sick and caught up in the holidays again. But now we are well again and moving full speed ahead. Fionnbharre has been working hard on building cabinets and stairs and I'm continuing on the painting journey. I will have more updates soon!