At the lumber yard

On April 1st, California will hike its sales tax by 1 whole percent. So it has made sense to do some spending up front. To that end, we've spent the last few days spending money. We've purchased a hot water heater, a refrigerator, a heater, scissor jacks and a toilet. We've been getting bids on other building supplies, like insulation, windows, aluminum flashing, PEX piping, sealant and on and on and on. We should have our order in for these items early next week, for delivery at the end of the week.

Today we went to the lumber yard. I love wood. Good quality wood with beautiful grain... I see exotic woods and I want to incorporate them into our house. How about a teak floor? Birds eye maple cabinets? Trim in ebony? Ok. Maybe not that combination. Anyway, we need to watch our weight. We're hoping to build a mobile house, remember?



But we're also interested in avoiding the formaldehyde that off gasses from plywood and particle board. So we need to use light weight, quality, solid wood materials for the inside of the house. (We will use exterior grade plywood for the sheathing that goes outside of the framing.) We can do this by using 1/4" tongue and groove for the walls and ceiling and 3/4" tongue and groove for the floor. So we just have to settle on the type of wood. And these are big decisions because we both want our place to be beautiful.

But we don't have to make all of the decisions right now. As you might expect, we'll be building from the bottom up, so we need to decide on the materials for the foundation and floor now. By this last statement it is probably apparent that we don't plan to buy all the wood right away, even though we could avoid that 1% tax increase if we did. For the wood, we'll order as needed so we don't have wood sitting around that could warp on us. Plus, we figure we'll have less waste this way.

So what's next? We have to finalize some orders, move a bunch of tools from storage to the build space, get a trailer... ah. The trailer. It is the foundation of our home. Well, more on that later.