I love having my son around creating his own wood projects when I am in the shop. He has his own set of tools, and he finds scraps of wood in my recycle bin that fuel his imagination.
This is how I grew up — hanging around my dad’s shop while he worked on custom cabinetry orders. I didn’t realize until I started my own carpentry and timber framing business how much I picked up just by watching my dad and helping him here and there.
Yes, the words “Happy” and “Work” can be in the same sentence! Especially when my family visits, and I get a big hug from my sweet daughter.
One of my goals is to create worksites that are both healthy and enjoyable. A 40 hour work week means we are spending a quarter of our lives at a worksite or office. I am still living while I am working, and I want my life to be purposeful, fulfilling, and enjoyable. So how can I achieve this at the worksite for me and everyone I work with?
Seeing the frame of this tiny house being pulled by our truck helps put the size in perspective. As people learn more about the true cost to our planet of building, heating, cooling, and cleaning a large house, a tiny house becomes much more attractive!
The owner of this house will be living in 144 square feet with her four legged canine friend. And the lower cost of building and maintaining this house will allow her to significantly reduce her need to work for an income. If we are waiting for retirement to follow our dreams because we need to stick to a 9 to 5 job just to pay the mortgage, is there another way?
Besides the incredibly low cost for building and heating, this tiny house is easy to move, which is a primary reason why the owner chose this style. This tiny house was custom designed to suit the owner’s needs, and the foundation for the house is a steel frame that was fabricated locally. Jacks fit into each of the four corners, so the frame can be raised and set onto a flat bed trailer for transporting it.
Through rain and shine, we finished the cedar siding before the owner’s course of construction insurance expired. We enjoyed the added energy and comraderie of the two extra people that helped our usual crew to get this project done in time.
Cedar is a great choice for outdoor applications such as siding, decking, saunas, gazebos, and furniture because it does not need to be pressure treated or coated with harmful chemicals to preserve the wood.
The uneven ground on this house site made it too difficult to use scaffolding. Instead, ladder jacks gave us the range and flexibility we needed to install the tar paper and cedar siding up to 35 feet off the ground.
A cedar siding project came up this spring with a tight deadline. The whole house needed to be sided before the owner’s current Course of Construction insurance expired.
The pattern on this bathtub surround was made by using a 12″ by 12″ dark brown porcelain tile rotated to create the diamond shape and surrounded by long, thin glass mosaic tiles around the edges.
When this vanity was installed, it didn’t tie in with the rest of the bathroom until the tile backsplash was in place. The backsplash served two purposes. The first purpose was to protect the clay plaster wall behind the sink from splashing during regular use.