Building

Upper Cabinet Trim

Upper Cabinet Trim Like so many other owner-builders, I moved into my tiny house before it was completely finished. By the time it was livable, I was ready for a break! When my Move In Day & Housewarming took place in November, I hadn't yet finished trimming out, but I was eager to find A Place for Everything. Sure, it was out of order to hang decorations before I'd finished trimming out that last window, but it turns out the trim wasn't as critical for my everyday life as having my mason jar racks in place!

This weekend I finally:

  • installed the last beadboard panel under the upper cabinets,
  • ran the cords for my plug-in kitchen lights so I can turn on any of the four sets of lights with the flip of a switch,
  • trimmed out the window over my tansu,
  • hung my new curtains on curtain rings,
  • installed curtain hold-backs, and
  • added outside corner and scribe molding to the upper cabinets.

I also plugged in a string of lights above the upper cabinets which lights up the ceiling. The light string is on a timer so they turn on in the morning (as my first alarm clock) and again in the evening. When they turn off in the morning I know it's time to head for work and when they turn off in the evening it's time to wind down for bed. It's much more pleasant cue than an alarm clock!

Trim projects still to come include the skylight box and the entryway. My landies and I are setting aside a day in a couple weekends to help each other with lingering projects, so it will be fun to see what more I can accomplish with a couple other sets of hands!

Tiny Home for the Holidays

Advent CalendarIt’s so nice to be home for the holidays! Yes, I did go see two of my sisters in Washington for Xmas and that was really lovely, but I mean that it’s splendid to finally be in my little house this holiday season! I moved my tiny house to Simply Home Community in mid-October and spent the next month working on it. Then I moved most of my things into The Lucky Penny in mid-November just before our Housewarming Party. But it wasn’t until Raffi and I started sleeping in The Lucky Penny at the beginning of December that it became real. Now that we’ve been in my tiny house for a month, it’s starting to feel like home. I even hung up the advent calendar my aunt made for us when I was really little. I’ve got My Chiller on the Porch and I've dedicated time over the past couple weekends to Putting Everything in It’s Place and it’s so nice to be settling in!

Is it done? Well, no, not quite. I haven’t yet set up the shower. (But luckily I don’t have to yet because I shower in the big house and at the yoga studio after hot yoga classes.) And I haven’t yet gotten my electrical all set up properly. (But after living in a Home, Sweet Yurt, I’m pretty good at minimizing my electrical demand. I’ve found that I can live off a beefy extension cord with a three way splitter end for my Envi heater, lights, and a free outlet for whatever else I want to plug in.) And, of course, I haven’t yet finished the trim. But it’s totally workable and I’m loving it.

My house was a dream and a set of sketches for a couple of years as I lived in other tiny dwellings and tweaked my design. Then I finally picked up my Iron Eagle trailer in mid-May and hosted my wall raising party over Memorial Day weekend. For six months my time was divided between working at the Breathe Building and constructing my little house. So it’s really wonderful to be catching up with friends and family this holiday season.

I’ve had friends over for brunch (I can make a mean French toast on my induction cooktop and we just pull out a drawer and put the cutting board on top and pull up a couple of stools!) I’ve had landies over for tea and a chat on my window seat. I’ve had clients over for design consultations (oh, by the way, I’ve resumed consulting, too! If you know someone interested in help with their space-efficient housing dreams, tell them to check out my 2-Hour Consultation!) And a couple nights ago I hosted a dinner party for 10 in the Big House at Simply Home. Our community has a supper club going now, too, so we're taking turns cooking for each other. On Tuesday nights I cook for my landies and four other nights I come home to a nice warm meal. It's divine!

I can’t wait to see what 2015 will bring for me, Niche, and The Lucky Penny!

Move In Day & Housewarming

Window Seat Six months ago I started building myself a tiny house called The Lucky Penny. And last night our Tiny Cohousing community, Simply Home Community, hosted a housewarming party. It was good timing, too. Portland has had the first wintry weather of the year this week, so it was awfully nice to have people warming the place up with compliments and congratulations. (Having the space heater running on an extension cord probably helped, too!)

It was great fun to share my little house with friends whom I've neglected because... well, I've been building my little house. I'm looking forward to wrapping up the last few absolutely necessary things so that I can start Settling Into My Tiny House AND resume my social life!

(Speaking of socializing, it was also neat last night to share tours of my house with friends of my landies and to discover mutual connections we already have. It's a tiny world after all! And of course, it doesn't hurt to have strangers say "Your house is gorgeous!" or "It's like a cathedral in here!")

When I My Tiny House Build Began, my work plan indicated that by mid-summer I would complete the first two phases: Get it Dried In and Make it Functional. I figured I'd give myself some extra time for the unforeseen and I'd begin Phase 3: Make it Home by the end of summer. But, of course, it's a construction project, so it's taking twice as long as I originally estimated.

Copper Canisters, Copper Sink & Faucet

It's now mid-November and my house is just now functional (if you consider that my house doesn't have to be fully independent because I have access to the kitchen and bathroom in the Big House). My friend Benn Kovko (who built Kangablue at Caravan - The Tiny House Hotel) has been working with me on the plumbing and we're about 1/3 of the way done. We'll be working on it again today. Still on the list after plumbing: electrical, trim, and The Punch List.

But for the sake of the housewarming party I've already shifted into Phase 3: Make it Home. Yesterday I moved most of my possessions into The Lucky Penny and started the process of putting Everything in its Place. I can't tell you how satisfying it was to hang decorations yesterday morning!

I'm looking forward to Settling into My Tiny House! Stay tuned for catch up blog posts this winter sharing more information and photos about the build process.

My Copper Penny Roof

Lucky Penny roof with old skylights Portland greeted the arrival of autumn with the return of the rain. So as I’ve fallen asleep and woken up to the rain the past couple days, I’ve been feeling especially grateful The Lucky Penny has her roof.

Back in June a wonderful crew of Tiny House Helpers assisted with Sheathing My Vardo Roof. We coated the sheathing with two layers of R-Guard Cat 5. Two weeks later I left town for several weeks to travel and teach the Tiny House Design-Build class at Yestermorrow. My goal had been to get dried-in before I took a break from my tiny house build and fortunately, I succeeded. My time away gave me plenty of chances for Musings on My Vardo Roof Box.

But, of course, my roof wasn’t really finished yet. So at the end of August Fred Nordgren from Taylor Metal Products delivered my custom metal roof panels – in copper penny color, of course. He managed to do the snaplock panels for me, which I prefer to the batten and T-panel system, but he said it was a stretch. So I’ll plan to do the next curved roof at a slightly shallower curve. It will still be plenty dramatic!

Over Labor Day Weekend, Tim Bancke and his crew, Jeremy and Shaine, installed my metal roof. I was out of town for the weekend so it was really exciting to receive the photos from Tim and return to see my beautiful roof in place. My roof is, shall we say, complicated –which at one point resulted in me resorting to Plan F: Take 2 – so there were a couple little flashing details we still had to work out.

Fortunately, it was great working with Fred and Tim who came out to take a look at my house in early August and then worked up quotes for me and kept me posted about the fabrication and installation schedules. They’ve tag-teamed other curved tiny house roofs for Katy Anderson (who built Dee Williams’ vardo) and Anita’s tiny house Lilypad (which turned out be-a-u-ti-fully – and you can read more about the Finishing Touches!)

Lucky Penny curved snaplock roof

If you’re in the market for a metal tiny house roof, please get in touch with Fred – and tell him Lina sent you! (If you’re not doing curved roof, Taylor Metal is still a great option. Laura got her roof panels from Taylor and, badass that she is, installed the panels herself, which you can read about in her post The Hat.) And, if you can get onto his busy schedule, I definitely encourage you to have Tim do your installation. (If your roof is complicated, it's worth the wait to have the pros do it right!) Tim and his crew say they enjoy doing tiny house roofs because they're interesting little projects.

So this past Saturday Tim and his crew returned to finalize the details. They cut curved flashing from copper penny sheet metal to cover up the curved rafters at the front and back of the house. They tucked a bit more flashing under the eave flashing to cover the Eave Caps for My Vardo Roof. And they installed a flashing extender around my skylight box before installing My Custom Skylight from Mark at Natural Light Skylight Co. It’s lovely and I can’t wait to get my hammock hung up to admire the rain, stars, and clouds!

The point of a roof is to protect the house from the rain, but it certainly doesn’t hurt that mine is beautiful, too!

A Splash of Color for the Lucky Penny

Note bene: This post has lingered in draft mode for a long time, like many others that chronicle Lucky Penny Finishes. (This is one of the side effects of Finishing an Owner-Built House!) The Lucky Penny has been livable since Nov 2014, when I had my Move In Day & Housewarming. I’m finally getting this post out there now because I have the motivation of the T42 Build Timeline approaching!

Lucky Penny Before Paint

Can you guess what color we painted the walls of my tiny house and what we matched to get it? Read on for the answers!

Since my tiny house, The Lucky Penny, was built with SIPs, the interior wall surface was there by the time we finished My SIPs Wall Raising. There are, of course, some folks biuild with SIPs who choose to install drywall inside the house to create that smooth textured look that's ubiquitous throughout homes in America today. I've installed drywall before and I really enjoy doing it (hooray for playing in - er, I mean "working with" - mud!) And, of course, many tiny houses have wood paneling on the interior. This is so darn common I've had people ask me if it's required in a tiny house! (It's not!) But I decided not to install any kind of additional interior paneling in The Lucky Penny for three main reasons.

A layer of primer

First, I didn't want to add the weight of additional paneling. Even if I went with an interior that's super lightweight like cedar tongue and groove or Alupanel, it's still additional weight and I'd rather not add it. Second, some folks have concerns about the drywall seams cracking when a little house is moved. (I haven't actually seen this happen yet, but I'm curious about whether anyone has. Feel free to leave comments below either way!) Finally, I kinda like the texture of the OSB being available. It's almost like the "truth window" in a straw bale house. It lets people know that my walls are really and truly SIPs!

So I knew I wasn't going to add an additional interior finish, but I did consider using a plaster paint because I love the look and feel of it. It seems almost magical to me how it captures the light. (Oh, and did I mention getting to play in the mud?!) But the lead time was really long and I had some concerns about it cracking in transport. And finally, none of the colors seemed quite right. Plasters tend to come in really lovely and sometimes quite complex hues, but I decided I wanted something more vibrant!

First layer of paint

So I decided I was just going to paint my walls with a no VOC paint. Picking my trim color was really easy. When my friend Matthew and I went to the paint shop to pick a trim color for my arched door, the burgundy called California Claret just seemed to jump out at us. I knew it would great against the copper of My Refinished Arch Door, so it was the obvious choice. I felt the same way about the paint color for my interior walls. It just had to be the color of patinaed copper. So I took a piece of copper with a nice patina on it down to Green Depot where we matched it with the Yolo Paints color ways. The color is called Thrive 04 (which happens to be my lucky number!) I'll take it. Oh, and this is when I learned that another benefit of building a teeny tiny house is that you can paint your interior with just one gallon of paint!

This past weekend a couple Tiny House Helpers assisted me in putting a layer of primer and then two layers of this lovely patinaed copper paint on my walls. We also did a few little tweaks to my interior walls and pocket door. (Thanks, Benn Kovco!) Meanwhile, I worked on a few fussy bits like closing up the top of the walls and sealing seams.

I didn't think I'd end up with quite such a bold color, but I do truly love it. And much of it will end up being covered up since we'll be Installing My Cabinets next!

Curved Trim & Interior Walls

Note bene: This post has lingered in draft mode for a long time, like many others that chronicle Lucky Penny Finishes. (This is one of the side effects of Finishing an Owner-Built House!) The Lucky Penny has been livable since Nov 2014, when I had my Move In Day & Housewarming. I'm finally getting this post out there now because I have the motivation of the T42 Build Timeline approaching!

The pocket door is too big for the frame so we'll rework it!

The past two Fridays, I've worked with a right hand man to accomplish two projects. Last weekend Eric McClelland helped me create the curved trim for my arched window and door and this past Friday my buddy Kenny Bovoso helped me rework a used pocket door frame and install the interior walls.

Eric and I started out the curved trim day by tracing the shape of my window and door onto scrap pieces of plywood. I'm lucky that the arched door came with it's jamb so we don't have to do any fancy business there. I just had it dip-stripped by Timby's Dip Strip since it tested positive for lead paint.

We then went to Parr Lumber to pick up a few pieces of exterior trim for the exterior of the curved window and Emerson Hardwood to pick up a big sheet of medium density fiberboard (MDF) for the interior trim for both the window and the door.

Eric is a talented cabinet maker so back at his shop he showed me how to piece the exterior trim together with biscuit joints to create an angular version of the curve we wanted to create. I got to make some fun cuts on the table saw and it was nice to have Eric's expert supervision and guidance since I'm still extra nervous around the table saw. We also cut the curved trim for the interior of the window and door out of the MDF using the band saw. Then we sanded the edges of all three curves to smooth them out. It's not perfect, but as I keep reminding myself and my Tiny House Helpers, my house needs a little wabi-sabi. It's certainly not bad for my first curved trim project and I'm pleased with the results and extremely grateful for Eric's guidance. I look forward to seeing how the trim looks with the trim paint I've picked! I think it's going to be beautiful! The interior walls project started with a trip to Building Material Resources where I found a pocket door frame that was 36" wide, six inches wider than I needed it. But I figured it could be reworked, and, indeed, it was, though I'm not sure it was worth it financially in the end. It certainly wouldn't have been if I'd been paying Kenny in cash instead of beer and hugs! On the other hand, we appreciated the quality time together to catch up and the project was pretty fun.

We removed the side braces, cut them back, and then reinstalled them at the right width. We then installed the pocket door frame and built the other interior wall to line up with it. It will need a little more finessing, but I've gotta say, it's pretty exciting to have this interior wall because it's the first big move on the interior. This wall divides my Quintuple-Duty Mud Room from the rest of the house and my little house is starting to feel more like I'd envisioned it! For the rest of the weekend I continued on with Siding & Shingling, which was a good project to be working on during the Green Anchors Open House because it was easy to take breaks and show people the little house.

Mistakes Manifesto

Window Oops As I continue work on my tiny house, The Lucky Penny, I think a lot about the mistakes I'm making and what I can learn from them.

When I taught the Tiny House Design-Build class at Yestermorrow this summer, my co-instructor Lizabeth Moniz encouraged us to share mistakes and solutions with each other in our evening and morning construction reviews so that we could all benefit from the lessons learned. Ever since, I've been thinking a lot about mistakes.

Over the past sixteen years I've assisted with the construction of 23 houses, including 12 tiny houses on wheels. In the process I've learned an enormous amount about building. I've also learned a great deal about myself.

And one of the things I've learned about myself is that I wish I were already a better designer and builder. I wish I didn't make so many mistakes. I want to be better at this already, thank you very much. But mastery takes time. And a willingness to make mistakes and learn from them. (My host family in Italy could vouch for this philosophy. I said all sorts of preposterous things in my efforts to communicate in Italian. But I got better at it in leaps and bounds because I was willing to be wrong - over and over again!)

I worked with some builders once who refused to talk about the mistakes they made. They didn't want anyone to believe they ever made mistakes. And I can understand that feeling. It's about pride. And it's about reputation. But wouldn't it be nice if addressing our mistakes and lessons learned was better for our reputation than trying to hide our imperfections?

I'd rather all of us could fess up and say "Oops! Look at that. I messed that up big time!"

Because the great thing is that a mistake that's confessed and addressed has a fix along with it. Occasionally the fixes are just redos. And it's obnoxious to tear out a hard day's work to redo it. But often the fixes are innovations. The solution we come up with after we've made a blunder is often better than the original idea. (Plan F: Take 2, for instance, was better than Plan A!)

Maybe it's working as a woman in the male-predominate construction industry that makes me both hesitant to admit my mistakes and also too quick to downplay my expertise. On the other hand, perhaps it's precisely that same gender conditioning that compels me to share these challenges for the greater good. I know several other female tiny house builders and bloggers - like Kate from NajHaus and Laura from Laura's Blog who have been brave enough to share their struggles and successes.

So when I wrap up construction of The Lucky Penny this fall, I plan to share ALL The Mistakes, because maybe you can learn from mine. I figure if I can save you some time you can make plenty of your own mistakes. Just be sure to tell me about them so I can learn from your mistakes, too.

Hurry up! Make some mistakes. Than confess and address them. Let's learn from each other!

Tiny House Shingles

Front Shingles It was another gorgeous August weekend in Portland. Perfect for working on my tiny house. I spent it running errands, helping with a work party at Simply Home Community, and playing with siding and shingles for The Lucky Penny.

On Saturday Ashley Lane was my right hand woman. In the morning she helped me pick up my tansu, a beautiful Japanese storage cabinet that I'll use in my little house. And in the afternoon we hung shingles on the front of my house. I met Ashley Lane in a PAD Tiny House Basics workshop and then got to know much better when she took the Tiny House Design-Build class at Yestermorrow this summer. Next summer she and her partner plan to build their own little house (inspired by the Minim House at Boneyard Studios). On Sunday Hanah came to lend me a hand. She and her sister are both interested in building their own tiny houses, so it was fun to hear about her tiny house dreams.

It's been fun to work alongside so many Tiny House Helpers this summer who have either built their own wee homes or plan to. It was also nice to work solo for part of the weekend. I've hosted so many work parties that it was nice to have a few hours all to myself to figure out next steps and savor the sensations of building at Green Anchors on a beautiful summer day.

door over the tongue, before porch

When I worked on my Tiny House Trim & Siding back in June I put up my first row of half rounds and arrows to make circles with my shingles. I was thinking about doing this the whole way up, but I decided it would be overkill. So instead I decided to make the rounds an accent by alternating them with rows of raked shingles. I think the effect is quite lovely!

Now that My Flip-Up Front Porch is done, we were able to position the ladders right on it for shingle hanging. How convenient! Hanging shingles (especially when you're jigging out for A Beautiful Arched Door and My Arched Rafters) takes some puzzling. And I do enjoy puzzle piecing it together. I like the way I can feel that part of my brain working hard. But it's sure nice to be on the straights and just slip into the meditative practice of staining and hanging shingles!  (By the way, we're staining all six sides of each shingles before installing them because they will be less likely to cup and warp and they should hold up much longer this way. It takes forever, but hopefully they'll last forever, too!)

We didn't quite finish the shingles on the front of the house and, of course, there are three more sides of the house to shingle. But let me assure you, it's really rewarding to see my house begin to look like I've envisioned it!

My Flip-Up Front Porch

ta da! my front porch! After taking a break from The Lucky Penny for a few weeks because I was Doing Life, it felt good to get back to building this weekend. On Friday I helped Ben who has been building his tiny house at ADX. You can see his progress at Ben Builds a Tiny House. Ben is on the home stretch so he rallied a bunch of people – including Dee Williams, Angela Ramseyer, and Derin Williams – to help him out this weekend. I got to help with siding on the front of his house and finishing out his wheel well boxes. It’s coming along nicely and I’m so excited that Ben and I will be neighbors soon at our Tiny Cohousing Community, Simply Home!

On Saturday I worked on my front porch. As many of you know from my post Tiny Houses Turn Their Backs on the Street, I have been planning for years to build my little house so that the porch is over the tongue of the trailer. This way whenever I back my tiny house into a new driveway (and just about any other parking spot) my front door will greet the street. I also didn’t want a Shrinky-Dink Porch. It has to be substantial enough that I could actually use it.

It’s been awkward climbing into and out of my little house without a porch for the past couple months because I’ve had to clamber up over the tongue. It seemed high time to get my front porch built. Now that I have, I wish I’d done it sooner. But, as usual, there is an order of operations. I wanted to have My Arched Door in and my Siding on so I could arrange the details of attaching my porch since it will flip-up for transport.

I used a Getaround truck to pick up my supplies and got to work. My build buddy Laura was around this morning and she’s at a pause point on her own tiny house build so she helped me construct the frame for my porch with 2x2s. Then I laid out 1x4s and 1x6s over it, alternating them to create a little visual interest. I attached the decking to the frame with star drive decking screws. I added additional framing as necessary to strengthen the frame. It’s certainly not as beefy as it could be, but then again, I don’t really need it to be. I plan to sit on my porch plenty and I plan to put My Chiller: A Natural Refrigerator out there in the cool months, but I’ll probably host my dance parties just a few steps away in the great outdoors.

When I was done attaching the planks I had scraggle-toothed edge to my porch. And since this is The Lucky Penny and I’m obsessed with curves, I wasn’t done yet. So Laura helped me hold a piece of lath against the edge of the porch in a lovely arc. We marked this on the boards and I used a jigsaw to cut the ends of the boards. Then I added supports in both corners so that my porch is ready for the hoards of people who have registered for PAD’s Tiny House Mixer at Green Anchors on Thursday.

The porch isn’t quite done yet. I plan to add a fascia board around the edge to hide the hitch. I still need to stain the wood. And, of course, I need to add my hinges so that it will flip up for transport. But all-in-all, it was a good day’s work and it was fun to sit on my porch this evening to celebrate!

Musings on My Vardo Roof Box

Skylight box went up the third day of my build, getting dried in took over a month! Today I met with Fred at Taylor Metal Products and Tim Bancke, the roofer who recently completed the beautiful curved roof for Lilypad, a tiny house currently under construction for my friend Anita by Walt Quade of Small Home Oregon. I did the concept design work with Anita and the half-curved roof was my big idea so I'm thrilled it's turned out so nicely! You can read all about it over at Once Upon a Lilypad!)

Although I admire folks like Ben Campbell and my build buddy Laura Klement who installed their metal roofs themselves, I've decided to let the pros handle mine. I knew that my vardo's roof would be a design-build challenge, but I am enamored with curved roofs, so I decided it would be worth it. Now that I've finished Sheathing My Vardo Roof, I do still think my curved roof was worth it, but I would have done a few things differently. (For the full list, check out my forthcoming blog post ALL The Mistakes.)

I've found myself drawn to curved roofs for as long as I can remember. Street cars. Gypsy wagons. Sheepherders wagons. Barrel vaulted ceilings. To me this shape means freedom, whimsy, and exploration.

I adore the lovely curved roofs on little houses like Ben Campbell's vardo and Caboose at Caravan - The Tiny House Hotel. And I've been especially inspired by the exposed beautiful arched laminated rafters made by talented craftspeople like Katy Anderson who created PAD's vardo and John who built Big Maroon on the back of a 1949 Federal truck. Exposed rafters remind me of ribs and there's something about that structure that really appeals to me. I decided I wanted a curved roof, too, even though I knew it would take longer and cost more.

I knew as I was Building My Arched Rafters and Planing My Curved Rafters and then creating my Rafter Tales and finally Rafter Raising, that by exposing my rafters I'd be creating a roof system that would stretch my building skills and my budget. But I also knew I'd love it.

I took it a step farther by adding the skylight box. The shape was inspired by the mollycroft roofs of gypsy wagons of yore and by my friend John Labovitz's tiny house truck Polymecca. I've never seen anyone put skylights on the top of the monitor like I've designed, but I'm enthralled with the idea.

I'm less enthusiastic about the amount of time it took to get my complex roof dried in! Once I'd created my Floorbox (and then reworked it with the help of Patrick Sughrue of Structures Northwest), My SIPS Wall Raising only took an hour and a half! The next day we completed My Tiny House Air Barrier. Because of supply issues, being rained out, and making a couple trips out of town because I was, well, Doing Life, it took over a month before my roof was dried in. That means I had to untarp it and tarp it back up again each time I worked on the house! (Mind you I did have the assistance of many Tiny House Helpers.) I ended up on Plan F: Take 2. During this time I was so anxious I didn't sleep well.

It seems the roof is both my house's crowning glory and it's Achilles heel. So I've been thinking of ways I could have avoided (or at least reduced) the anxiety.

What I've decided is that I should have built my tiny house roof (and floor for that matter!) out of SIPs, just like I did with My SIPs Walls. I didn't do a SIPs roof for one big reason: SIPs are flat and my roof is not. But I've come up with two possible ways to do it.

First, I could have done a curved SIP roof. Talking to Patrick Sughrue of Structures Northwest, I've learned that it is possible to have a curved roof built as a SIP. Wouldn't it have been amazing to have my whole house put together in just 1 day?! There's only one factory Patrick knows of that can do a curved SIP on the Best Coast (did I say that?! er, I mean West Coast!) It's also a fairly wasteful process because you start out with a big block of foam and carve out the curve, which produces a whole lot of material you don't need. Also, I probably wouldn't be able to get a curve with as tight a radius as the one I've got. However, I'm not sure that it has to be so curved. In fact, I've learned from roofers today that the snaplock panels which we're hoping to use on my house work best with a radius of 10 ft or greater. My roof has a radius of approximately 8 feet, so it will be a stretch to use this system. Maybe it would be okay to have a shallower curve after all. Especially if I could get the house dried in in a weekend instead of a month!

This winter Patrick and I will be working on a Vardo kit made out of SIPs so that folks who love the vardo shape can get their shell built in a weekend! If you're interested, please let us know!

However, this curved SIP roof wouldn't have worked with exposed rafters like I have. As I learned while Making Ends Meet, getting those two curves the same is a challenge. On the other hand, I could have done faux exposed rafters on the inside. I plan to try it on the next vardo I build. Besides, my skylight box would have been a challenge anyway. So here's the other option I came up with:

I could have had a set of long 1 foot wide SIP panels fabricated which would have sat on top of my exposed rafters on either side of the skylight box. Shorter 1 foot wide panels would go on either end of the skylight box at the front and back of the house. I would have put the rafters up as I did. I figure I could go through the same process of Ceiling Up My Vardo Roof with beadboard panels or I could install this material from the inside afterwards. Either way, instead of building the roof box, which required Eave Caps and Plan F and resulted in my first (and hopefully-but-I-doubt-it-last) melt down, I would have put the SIPs on top and attached them to the rafters. Then my roof would be both insulated and sheathed in one fail swoop. There would be triangular gaps at the top of the roof where the panels come together, so this area would be spray foamed and then cut back and covered with a flashing. The whole roof would then be ready for waterproofing and roofing.

Mind you, I'm not entirely sure either of these systems would work. Although theoretically they'd be fine, I'd have to try them to be sure. The design I've come up with for my vardo roof does seem to be working and maybe it's the best way to do it. If you have done either of these alternate systems or if you decide to try it now after reading about it, please report back. As I've noted in another (forthcoming) blog post, My Mistakes Manifesto, I believe sharing our mistakes is even more important than sharing our successes because we can learn so much from other people's mistakes! Also, if you have other ideas for creating an insulated and air-sealed vardo roof (especially with exposed rafters and a skylight monitor), please share them in the comments!