An update on the interior

I really want a cottage feel to our interior so I painted it a creamy white (Freshaire Choice non-VOC, 'Poetic Light').

I like the effect of the lights at night bouncing off the walls and ceiling, and even on a grey day, it's much brighter inside even without the lights on.

Some tips

Lesson learned: don't try and save money by purchasing cheap screws or bits. Cheap screws have a relatively high rate of loss due to malformation, and they strip, bend and even break. If they strip and you can't get then in, you will probably have a hard time getting them out too. Then you've wasted all sorts of time, not to mention all the junk screws you tossed out. Cheap bits break, and then you have to go buy a new one. More time and money gone.



So it's often best to just get good stuff to start with. We've found that torx (also called star) head screws stay on the bit, and so don't strip, far, far better than either box or Philips (cross). The problem is, they are harder to find. A lumber yard we go to carries them, but some of the big stores don't. We've also found that screws that self drill are supper cool. You can identify these because they have a notched tip.

Next tip: guess how many times I would have to run up and down this ladder to put 1 screw every 6 (along seems) to 12 ("in the field") inches through the plywood and into the studs?



My knees would really not like me and it would take forever. Solution:



Setting up the saw horses with 2x6s (left over from the trailer deck) for a scaffold floor took maybe ten minutes. It probably saved me an hour and lots of knee pain.

Result:



Sheathing is done.

As always, there are more pics here.

We Have Walls

Well, the wall framing is complete. This first picture is where we started today. I am finishing up my last quarter at Cal State East Bay, so over the last two weeks, Arlene has been building the frames daily after work. (Note: as always, we've posted more pics than we've blogged here.)



We pretty much had all the walls together and ready to go up when our helpers, Rick and Scott, showed up. Arlene had put the walls together on the floor of the house. This made her feel more comfortable about getting the measurements right. It made me less comfortable (than if she'd built them on the build space floor) because I worried about our brand new douglas fir floor. But she was careful and it turned out alright.

Once a wall was up, we'd level, plumb and brace it. We used long screws to attach the base board of the wall frames, through the douglas fir floor, and into the floor joists.

The second wall we put up was the shorter of the two long walls. Our porch will be about a 2.5 x 2.5 foot corner taken out of the front of this wall (In these photos, we're looking at the back of the house, which is the front of the trailer).

The third wall went up fairly easy. Then we lifted the toilet and refrigerator into the house since getting them in later would be - difficult (our door will be custom and narrower than most).

I'll try to get some pictures of the framing in the front of the house later. It is hard to see how it turned out in the these shots.

Basically, we have 3 walls that form the front of our house. One, the lager, will have 2 windows in it. The next will have the door, and the last will have one more window.

When we had the walls in place, we put a few 2X4s on top to keep everything together, plumb, level and tight.



Done!

Thanks to Rick and Scott!