Now that Isha and I have made a Tiny Announcement about building Tiny for Two (T42), one of the questions we're most frequently asked is when it will be done. This is no surprise because I got the question a lot when I built The Lucky Penny, too. And we're answering much like my build buddy Laura and I did then: "It will be done when it's done." Which we know isn't very helpful. So let me try to shed a little light on why it's so hard for those of us building to answer that question! (Also check out Timeframe for Building a Tiny House on Wheels).
First of all, figuring out when we're even starting has been a challenge so far. Back in February we ordered our tiny house trailer from Iron Eagle and it's ready when we are. Then we went Window Shopping Again and got our windows ordered. But we don't have a delivery date for the SIPs yet. When I submitted my model to have it converted to shop drawings for the SIPs we anticipated a pretty quick turn around for the shop drawings, but there's been some back and forth. Three weeks later, we're still not signed off on the drawings. The SIPs usually take about a month to produce once the drawings are approved, so we've had to bump back our start date by a month. We now anticipate we'll start our new tiny house at the beginning of May. Here's our tentative timeline:
- Monday, May 2 - Friday, May 6: Tiny House Foundation & Build Prep
- Monday, May 16 - Friday, May 20: SIPs Wall & Roof Raising
- Monday, May 30 - Friday, June 3: Rainscreen, Exterior Trim, Siding
- Monday, June 13 - Friday, June 17: Lofts, Interior Walls & Painting
- Sunday, June 26 - Thursday, June 30: Cabinets, Built-Ins & Stairs
(If you want some hands-on build experience, please join us for a week-long Build Blitz or for the day as a Tiny House Helper!)
So, how long will it take us to build our tiny house? My best answer is that I figure it will take about six months to build the new tiny house because it took me about 6 months to build The Lucky Penny. Since the Tiny for Two is bigger but I'm now a better project manager and builder, I'm figuring the same timeframe is realistic. We're staring in May and we'll have two months to work on the house before July when I take off two months from building to embark on summer teaching and speaking adventures. Hopefully we'll get dried in quickly and then be able to make good headway on the functionality of our little house in June. We'll be able to start working on the tiny house again in September so if we count four more months of building from then, we should be able to move in by the end of 2016 and begin making it home!