Tiny House 5: The Work Resumes

I had to stop working on the tiny house at the end of January due to the onset of the rainy season, after a 24 day dry spell. The day before it rained I covered the whole thing with tarps (which are expensive!).

The tarps kept the structure dry through three months of rain and snow.

It looks like the rainy season is over (famous last words), and I’m finally at home for more than a week for the first time in a couple of months. So I had a big load of 1x6 tongue-and-groove pine boards delivered today yesterday, which are going to be used as sheathing. I pulled off the tarps and got to work.

Here’s what the sheathing looks like so far on the outside:

Here’s what the sheathing looks like on the inside:

The sheathing boards make a nice-looking interior wall, and on the outside they will provide a surface for house wrap, rigid foam insulation, and siding. This is the typical method of making interior walls for post-and-beam structures.

Conventional stud-frame sheathing usually consists of big pieces of OSB, which are plywood-like sheets made of what is essentially fancy particle board with large particles. OSB falls apart when it gets wet, and it’s very heavy and awkward for someone working alone to handle. Plus OSB doesn’t make a nice interior wall, so you’re stuck with using drywall, which also falls apart when it gets wet and is very heavy.

Using t&g pine boards like I’m doing here is more time-consuming than the conventional OSB method, because I have to custom-cut each board and then nail it in place. But it’s easy for a person working alone to do, because the pieces are so lightweight.

Eventually the sheathing will cover the entire structure, including the roof, except for the window and door openings.