108 degrees… It was 108 degrees last weekend… and it has steadily hovered around 100 degrees for two weeks now! While SHED is located in the shade, an ambient temperature that high makes even the most ambitious tiny house builder lethargic. As we enter July we find ourselves still only working on SHED an average of 1 day a week which is a bit less than expected but we have yet to feel stressed about what feels like steady progress and would like to show you what we have been up to in the last two weeks. You will find the new interior photos and floor plan at the bottom of this post.

Following a family death back East my 25 year old Brother, Brad, paid us a visit here in the PNW for a long weekend that was productive for us all on many fronts, including the Tiny House which he saw for the first time. We spent an afternoon framing the interior wall and hanging the interior pocket door that separates the bathroom from the rest of the space as well as glued and screwed the roof sheathing on.

A problem solver by nature, I mentioned to Brad that I had wanted to create a floating BBQ contraption that we could take on our leisurely trips down the Yakima River. A spike of creative brain energy, fueled by a cold beer at the local brewery led to a flurry of design sketches that slowly brought together our separate approaches into a design that incorporates two ice chest coolers with lids, two small storage platforms and of course a charcoal BBQ that breaks down into 3 separate pieces to fit inside a small car trunk. We returned to the build site which already had tools and left over materials strewn about and took the design from paper to reality over the next couple hours, just in time to take it on its maiden voyage the next afternoon. We proudly carried our invention to the waters edge in front of 10 friends and another 25 strangers patiently waiting to put their flotillas into the water as a tinge of doubt and lack of test float led to growing worry of an impending failure of epic cooking contraption proportions. To my personal amazement the fully loaded BBQ entered the water and bobbed up and down at the perfect buoyancy level before setting off on our 3.5 hour downstream journey.

In keeping with the water theme we revisited the island that initiated an ER visit weeks before to relax with a few friends in a beautiful location in our extended backyard. Sleight’s island to island slack line attempts were pretty spectacular but the highlight had to have been the summer solstice moon followed by daybreak on a small piece of earth submerged in what was akin to a giant mirror on a perfectly calm Monday morning.

After Brad returned to the East Coast, Samantha and I turned our attention to installing our two external doors and officially closing up all large openings in our envelope. The first door, a custom height (shorter than usual) metal w/ foam core Jeldwen was installed on the tongue end of our home and will provide entrance into our gear storage area. The second door is a full height, 32” wide front entry door with full glass and internal retractable blinds and was a bit more tricky to install because of the unique angled entry condition that we framed on the fly a few months back. Because we pushed our sealed envelope boundary back into our house, exposing our subfloor to the outside we were forced to develop a unique protective flashing pan with the help of our very talented friend, Nate, who owns local custom furniture and fabrication company, Atlas & Cedar. After making a site visit to get a feel for the circumstances and to record dimensions Nate presented us with the perfect custom cut, bent and welded steel flashing pan to ensure complete protection on our outside “door step” that will eventually be holding up the top tread of our folded steel plate entry stairs also conceived in conversations with Nate.

The last bit of progress we have been working on has been the interior framing of the bathroom. Including around the shower stall that we have set in place and the vanity, sink and medicine cabinet alcove that is adjacent to the toilet alcove and window on the entry side.  It was this internal framing that really started to develop the space proportions and encouraged us to take a few interior process photos that we have tried to combine with a floor plan to help understand the lay out and where each photo was taken.