joshua tree workshop 2018

Monday, June 3, 2013

A recycled barn wood/fence plank ceiling in a tiny house on wheels



      So call me insane, but the last two weeks or so, I've taken it upon myself to design and build a tiny, tiny cabin on wheels (or a bunk house, art studio, or whatever else it could be used for) to debut at the Yestermorrow Tiny House Festival in Warren, VT, where in two weekends, my brother (Dustin) and I will official open the first day of festivities and speakers with a 90 minute talk and demo on salvage construction- basically, "How to save a crap load of money when building". 
    Which ties into this: This planked roof was absolutely free. Yes, it might weight a little more than a plywood roof of the same size, but I think the look is ten times better in the end run, and it has a cool tale behind it. This cabin, for the time being will only be a seasonal weekender on wheels, so we won't insulate it, but should we later choose to, the joist pockets are already there. Meanwhile, we do have this character-laden ceiling to look at when we sleep.

The planks: They were the storm-damaged fencing (true 1" by 6" spruce planks, 8' long) at a very well to-do residence one town over. I passed these blown down, fence segments for weeks until I finally located the residents mailbox, left a note asking if they might be getting rid of the wood, and blammo!- pne phone call and TWO entire trailer loads later, I'm up to my eyes in free wood! It never hurts to ask!

I'll have much more on this tiny cabin soon, one I've dubbed "The Cub" (a name I used for another design wayyyyy back, that never saw the light of day), and might even blog in a step by step manner on this....

 Above, you can see a splash of "tester" paint I used, a color I called "baby puke green". It was a $7.00 "Oops" can from Home Depot, but its not going to be used for this project.

Also, pre-painting the rafters saved me the hassle of having to carefully "cut in" with a brush if I were to paint AFTER the planks were installed.



-Derek "Deek" Diedricksen