Tiny home 20 years planning

This is my first post here.  It's kind of offbeat but most tiny homes are one of a kind. Please note, appliances, fixtures and plumbing is all RV style.  Total off grid, no well. Deep cycle battery bank, inverter, super quiet generator, solar panels (useless, lots of trees). The system has been a 20 year work in progress that is now finished.

I've got a ton of photos if anyone is interested. I'm shooting video that I'll edit over the winter.

Our tiny home started as a sun porch built in 1962 that was attached to a trailer in a very rural area of northern Michigsn. The trailer fell apart but the porch remained. It has 16 windows, early 60s style. When the trailer fell apart, a back wall was put on the porch. 10 years later my wife and I got married and spent our honeymoon working on it - a bare shell.

Think of it as a half of a doublewide mobile home.

The porch is 8 ft x 32 ft. I  put 2 walls up, 10 feet in on each end to stengthen the structure. One wall is for the bedroom - I built a cedar 4 post cedar bed. The other walled room is storage.

20 years later, we retired and I put my construction experience to work. I replaced and insulated that back wall, bought an Amish structure, lean-to style and had that delivered. I cannot say how well these Amish structures are made. They would make (and do) make great tiny homes.

Long story short, the addition has the full kitchen, a 30  gallon potable water tank, full bathroom (composting toilet). The addition is 20 inches higher than the porch side so it's split level. The porch side (other than the 2 rooms) will be the living room.  

Sounds great. I have been building mine for 42 yeras!

Welcome to Permies Max! We love to see pictures of projects. Please do share.

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:Welcome to Permies Max! We love to see pictures of projects. Please do share.

Thank you for the welcome Joylynn! The work we've been doing has been long and hard but it's really coming together exactly as I had planned it.

I'll add that I also use a 4g cellular amplifier and antenna tower to get 4 bars (usually) while nearly 20 miles from the nearest cell tower.

I've got 2 shared albums on my Google photos but I've got a few on the computer as well. These albums are public so you can share them.

This one has the building material deliveries
https://photos.app.goo.gl/azNsfRwi1uPkGbbA9

This second one gives you a much better idea of the build process. You can see the old crappy kitchen area before I tore it out and the actual delivery of an Amish structure.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Vh5iJ9WZHj5k8RZ47

All appliances are RV. The fridge is an AC/DC fridge/deep freeze, 40 watts power needed. The shower is an RV shower pan, coroplast for the surround, total cost < $200.

The wall for the bathroom will have a loft above it for storage. After all tiny homes need to have a loft, right?

For insulation, I'm using R13 for the walls (because I had a boatload of it sitting around) and Reflectix on the ceilings @ the R21 method.

The paneling in the addition is Sumauma Plywood Underlayment. The porch side will have brick, distressed barn and white Oak paneling. The ceilings on the porch side are also cathedral style.

The stairs between the porch/addition sides are just two boxes stacked.

John C Daley wrote:Sounds great. I have been building mine for 42 yeras!

In northern Michigan, especially in the snow belt where we are there is ALWAYS something that needs to be done. I just noticed I need to paint.....again. On the inside, as I'm tearing out old stuff and putting in the insulation and paneling, I'm also caulking all the seams and gaps to both keep the mice at bay and stop drafts. We're not up there in the winter much but from April to June it gets mighty cold still. This year it snowed until May.

And with a 60 year old wood structure you can imagine how much painting and caulking there is to do. Another tidbit is that we're 4 miles from the national guard artillery range so broken windows like to show up fairly often from the concussions.

Try acrylic in your windows, they may not break.
I have clad my timber weatherboards with sarking , battens and metal sheeting.

John C Daley wrote:Try acrylic in your windows, they may not break.
I have clad my timber weatherboards with sarking , battens and metal sheeting.

My replacement of choice is Lexan.