The Tiny Life Reviews the Moschata Tiny House Plan!

Choosing a tiny house building plan is a big part of your journey toward living in a tiny house. But how do you pick one? Ryan and Amy at The Tiny Life just created an awesome resource to help make the process of choosing a tiny house plan much easier. They only reviewed tried and true plans for houses that have been built and lived in.

Ryan and Amy laid out 16 criteria for what to look for in different tiny house plans, from road height to roof type to number of lofts, and laid them out in a chart so you can quickly compare the features of different plans at a glance. They made recommendations for which plans suit which needs best, and how easy they are for new builders to follow.

The No. 1 Tiny House Plan, aka the Moschata, which we built in 2010 and lived in for three years was recently featured & reviewed for the guide. It's an older plan but still one of the "gold standards" for tiny homes.

The review has inspired us to give the plan an overhaul this year and release a fully updated version with in-depth details. Stay tuned if you're a tiny house enthusiast.

Read the entire review here: http://ift.tt/1NKV51N

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No. 31 - Fraxinus

Fraxinus is an 800 square foot small house

800 square feet of main floor living!

Fraxinus is a straightforward design with 800 square feet of first floor living space. It has a modest 20' x 40' footprint that can be easily and inexpensively constructed.

A Great Room for Gathering

There's plenty of space for entertaining. The great room has 10' paneled ceilings with windows floor to ceiling that take in a wide view and add a mid-century modern curb appeal. There's a modern kitchen with two doors, an eat-in island - though a modest dining table and chairs could be used as well, and a 20' wide living area. Best of all the entire great room enjoys a fireplace centerpiece (optional). 

Two Ensuites

There are two first floor bedrooms and baths; one a master ensuite, the second a guest room with a pocket door to create a temporary private ensuite.

Energy -Efficient

Fraxinus is super-insulated with R-60 ceilings, R-30 walls, and up to R-30 floors (slab). Insulation types & amounts can be easily adjusted to suit various climates and needs. The plans calls out for Marvin Integrity Wood-Ultrez windows and doors with an average u-factor of 0.28. 

A Perfect Airbnb Rental

Fraxinus was designed as a vacation rental for cosmopolitan Vancouverites looking for a clean, quiet weekend getaway . It offers a handsome balance of rural cabin and mid-century modern style and could be used as a rental or for full-time living.

Download free PDF Plan

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An a-door-able garage?

Hand built carriage house doors with steel strap hinges.

First floor & garage siding - done!

Brightly painted cedar bevel siding.

This week we finished siding all the lower walls of the house, so that only the upper gable end walls are left to do. It looks wonderful! We got our corners perfectly lined up despite not using (or having) a transit for the work, something that makes us feel good. We also finished siding the garage gable ends. That job took a considerable amount of time to accomplish and wasn’t without frustration. But get it done we did, and it’s splendid to come up the driveway and see the work completed. We did some odd jobs around the house (caulking, touch up painting and installing door handles) on Friday while waiting for friends to arrive.

Site-built carriage house doors

Last summer we built these colorful carriage doors for our garage and this week we finally installed them!

We wound up the week with hanging the garage doors, at very long last. Some of you may remember that we built the doors in July. They are now hanging and looking splendid!  Still need to put another door handle on and add some barrel bolts to the inside (cane bolts secure the doors at the base) and do the trim caulk and painting, but they are installed and now the carriage house effect is complete.

Next week

For the coming week we hope to check some more things off our list…those things will hopefully include installing the side garage door, continuing with kitchen cabinet work and finishing the priming and painting of the last three bundles of siding. Perhaps we’ll even get to begin the upper gable ends of the house. Time will tell!

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Can I buy printed plans?

Yes, beginning April 2016 low-cost printed plan sets can be purchased directly from THE small HOUSE CATALOG website. To order prints visit the ORDER PRINTS page.

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Back in the Siding Again

Island house living room, nearly complete!

To say that we got a lot done this week feels like an understatement. The weather is warm and we are busy as bees!  Here’s what we did this week…

Odds & ends

We started out by putting up all the face frames around the built in bookcases and got them trimmed and painted. What an improvement!  We also did a lot of odds and ends jobs (they are never big things, but getting them off the list feels huge!) including spackling some areas where the drywall was cut a little large around outlets and the recessed lighting, installing base trim moulding around the french doors and fireplace, and installing door handles. The rest of the siding was delivered early on Friday morning and the weather was cloudy but dry - allowing me to start in on priming right away. I broke out the paint sprayer again and remembered as soon as I started using it why it’s such a joy to use - what speed it provides!  We also installed the louvered vents in the garage attic and hung our medicine cabinet in the master bathroom.

More Painting

Me and my old friend, Mr. Paint Sprayer! 

I spent Friday and Saturday priming and got the painting done Sunday - we have a small amount of siding with its first coat of paint on but I’ll have to pick up another gallon of paint to finish the job. Still and all, we now have a huge pile of ready to go siding and quite a lot of good weather in the forecast. We also installed the handrails along the stair sand got them varnished and sparkling.

Kitchen Cabinet Face Frames

Shawn got started on all the face frames in the kitchen, installing the last of them before dinner this evening. Even seeing the cabinets with minimal framing on them makes such a difference!  All of a sudden, things are moving right along. We’ll hold off on providing any kitchen photos till next week, but we are well underway with the kitchen work now.

While there’s still a lot to do on our list - these moves forward really propel us in the right direction. 

Preparing for the final inspection

Blower door test results: ACH50 1.13

Last but not least, we accomplished a few of the requirements for our final occupancy permit - the inspection for which we’ll be calling for very shortly. We had the fire marshal out to examine the driveway and he okay’ed us on that. We also had our blower door test done - scored very high points on that one thanks to painstaking caulking and foam air sealing of joints and seams all along the construction path and our use of spray foam insulation. Average scores are 4 in our area and we scored a 1.13. To give you an idea of what that means, if you’re an energy geek (like us), Passivhaus standards are at .6 typically. We might have scored even higher - two of our outgoing vents (kitchen and HRV outtake) weren’t even sealed off. We were quite pleased. Lastly, we corrected a mix up with our septic inspection - we had it inspected and the report sent in back in November, but lines got crossed and the ok was never actually filed, unbeknownst to us. After a couple of phone calls, we got that straightened out as well. 

(A little) rest & relaxation

More exciting photos to come next week as we look forward to siding, kitchen work, and a weekend visit from friends coming all the way from Vermont!

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No. 30 - The Bohemian (Tiny House on Wheels)

Designer: Rebecca Jones

Drafted by S. Dehner for THE small HOUSE CATALOG

The Bohemian plan was completed in 2014 for a client in Canada. The design is both cozy and spacious for a tiny house on wheels and maintains an organic flair with cedar shingle siding and curved roof. It calls out for a set of retractable steps, a specific request made by my client for the dog who would be living with her! 

The designer also had a collection of salvaged windows and doors she wanted to incorporate into the house although the plan could be easily modified to utilize other windows and doors, new or used.

Details of this house include a bathtub, composting toilet & waste hatch, sleeping loft, separate storage loft, kitchenette, laundry closet, fireplace, and more. Plan includes trailer specifications, dimensioned framing plans, three-dimensional cross sections, and other helpful sheets, including DIY electrical and plumbing sheets for customizing systems to suit.

The tiny house plan is available as a free download. 

 

Download Get the SKetchup Model

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Siding in the sun!

3/4" x 8" cedar bevel siding, an easy & rewarding two person task.

Surprise - we had another week of warm weather and many sunny days! Trees are in bloom everywhere, a real brightener to the mental and the physical landscape. We’ve been working like the dickens to meet our self imposed goal of finishing the house by the end of May and we had good progress this week. Here's what we did:

Painting & siding, cont.

Siding goes up fast!

We started hanging our remaining primed and painted siding on Sunday and I finished painting up our last six 20 foot lengths of cedar siding the other day. We've now installed all that we had on the ground. The rest is on order, some of which will arrive on Monday. It’s time to get out the paint sprayer! Wow, suddenly we've got garage space and can now think about hanging the garage doors at last. 

Crowning achievements

Crown moulding on the first floor is installed in all rooms but the kitchen and the dining room lights are finally hanging! We also installed all of the upstairs bedroom and bathroom doors and have given them their painting. Today Shawn installed the moulding around the doors and I’ll be priming and painting them this week.

It’s a treat to see the siding going up and something to look forward to seeing when we come home from town!  The sunny yellow of the siding is especially cheerful when complemented by clear blue skies. Ahhh…perhaps there will be more in the week to come. More news next week!

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Preparing for Siding

This week the state of Washington rejoiced as sunny skies and temperatures in the 60’s made a long awaited appearance.

We took the week of sun and got outside…not only did we get to bask in the rays and savor several days in a row of perfect blue skies and afternoons warm enough for tank tops, but we made some wonderful progress preparing the house for the siding job…we may even start it next week.

For some reason I had it in my mind that we would just go out on the first sunny day and begin nailing up the primed and painted siding I have had waiting in the garage since my painting bonanza last fall. I had forgotten how much prep work is required before that can begin. So this week we got all of our prep work done.

Window & door casings

We started out by measuring all the doors and windows for trim/casing material and then beginning to prep the cedar and fir for the job. We ripped down rough cut island grown cedar to length and then pieced together all of the window frames. These we used pocket hole joinery to build the frames, tested for fit, and primed and painted. Friday we nailed the assembled window frames into place and today we worked on casing all the french doors. We finished the day up with installing the cor-a-vent bug screening at the base of the house and installing all the flashing over windows, doors and the pergola. 

The season of painting has begun!

While I was on painting duty this week, Shawn finished the outdoor wiring, including the flood lights, our entry lamps and the outdoor electrical boxes. We are now officially done with wiring, inside and out!

And we are ready to start siding! More photos soon...
 

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