If it were easy….

When I really think about it, years from now, do I want to be able to say, “Hey, remember when my girlfriend and I built that tiny house with our own four hands? That sure was easy”? At this particular moment, the answer is… YES! Yes I do! However, I know at the end of it all, I want it to have been hard. It might just be one of the toughest things I’ve ever taken on, and if you know me, that’s quite a statement.

The subfloor is just about 95% done. It’s been a heck of a challenge. I thought it would be one of the easier steps of the whole build. So either I under estimated how tough it would be or I under estimated my 38 year old body. The words, “if it’s not one thing, its another” have played like a broken record in my head the past few days. When last we spoke, the flashing was done. Next up, insulation…easy, right? Well, yes and no. Cutting and installing was easy. We decided to use Roxul mineral wool insulation for many reasons, one being how easy it is to work with.

We thought it was looking good, but so did hundreds of thousands of tiny gnats and other tiny bugs common to Missouri. They must have overheard that this was a tiny house and made themselves at home! See what I did there? Tiny bugs, tiny house? See? Ok, moving on. Pretty soon we realized that they weren’t just just landing on top of the insulation (and all over us!), they were getting under the insulation that had already been installed. It was now dusk and we were swarmed! We debated spraying all the Roxul with insecticide (YUCK!), but because we didn’t know how it would react, we decided to just let it be for the night and crossed our fingers they would be gone by morning.

The next day, after coffee, breakfast, and some procrastinating (our daily ritual), we made it out to the barn to assess the situation. The verdict? Not so bad. Maybe about 10% of the bugs were still there, however, many of those left were underneath the Roxul. So we decided to pull up each strip of Roxul, one at a time, and shop-vac the little bastards. The next step was laying down the Tyvek vapor barrier (a thin waterproof paper-like material) to be sandwiched in between the insulation and the subfloor. Buuuttt….it seems these bugs like Tyvek even more than they like freshly laid insulation! The battle continued!

We decided that the best way to get these little buggers off the Tyvek was to blast them off with the air compressor. After blowing apart two plastic air nozzles we had found in the shop, we drove down the street to buy a new heavy duty one. The new heavy duty one lasted about 10 minutes…..this is where I almost had a breakdown.

After a slight Andersonion tantrum, Amanda talked me off the ledge. I took it apart and fixed the brand new tool and we got back to work. It was a constant struggle but we handled it.

Flashing, check. Insulation, check. Vapor barrier, check. Onto the subfloor. I’ll try to keep the griping to a minimum, but, amongst some other technical issues, the circular saw was somewhat demon possessed, the humidity outside was at swimming pool levels, and of course, bugs (remember, we’re from LA, land of constant sun, fake tans, dry air, and no bugs). We pushed through, and made it work.

So now all I had to do was screw down the subfloor boards into quarter inch steel with self drilling screws. Self-drilling? I don’t know about that. I laid them down and went off for a few beers. When I got back, not one of them had done it’s job of screwing itself, so I started the tedious and exhausting task of screwing them in.

Almost 250 screws later, rubber arms, aching bones, and a few blisters, I’m happy to say that it was hard, really hard. I know that I’ll look back on all of this one morning next year, with coffee brewing in our tiny kitchen, looking out our windows at some amazing landscapes, and say “I’m glad that wasn’t easy”. The coffee will taste just that much better.