Easter Work-a-thon

We had amazing progress over Easter weekend! Tom’s father and little sister came down to help us, along with his brother and partner. The first thing was to add extra bracing and dwangs to that pesky East Wall we keep thinking we have finished. Tom’s brother, Jack and his partner Jule started on this job (after a brave early morning start following an after midnight arrival from Dunedin), while Tom and his father, Steve, discussed plans for the South Wall. The construction of said wall could then begin. This was much the same as the East Wall, creating vertical studs and nailing them onto the bottom plate, and lintels for the windows (for those that have been following our window dilemma, the plan is just to fit normal window gaps and grind a bit off the windows so we can fit reveals). Then the horizontal dwangs were cut. At this point, it was getting dark, so we called it a day. The next morning, the dwangs were nailed in (which, incidentally, is a real pain in the ass job, especially given the wood we are using, which is quite hard and likely to bend your nail). While we did this, Jack and Jule built us a fabulous temporary sink which will make life in the caravan a lot more pleasant and ensure the ground by the tap is no longer a soggy mess.

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After lunch, we had a monumental moment – the first wall went up on the trailer! We all held it into place while Steve nailed it in.

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Then, we continued on, starting yet another wall before dinner. Sunday morning was cold, and absolutely chucking it down. Tom and Jack spent a proportion of the morning organizing some electricity for the caravan, so we could dispense with our previous method of having to keep the window open to poke an extension cord through. This involved many blown fuses and curses from the boys, but, they eventually prevailed. Then I took Tom’s sister, Bella home for a while so she could have a respite from the confines of the caravan. While at home, I began the process of restoring the wine barrels – there will be more to follow on this in a later post. Bella made the most of the WiFi to ease her teenage deprivation of being away from internet. While we were away, the others bravely soldiered on through the rain, finishing and putting up two more walls!

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On Monday, we had slightly better weather – the rain had reduced to a slight, petulant drizzle. By mid-morning, it had come nice again, with even a hint of sunshine poking through! Jack and Jule started their day by discovering that the wall they were about to work on (one of the ones erected on the trailer) was no longer level. This, it was discovered, was due to the ground underneath the trailer sinking – the joys of building on an uneven surface! Having re-leveled the trailer and attempting to straighten the South Wall, which was about 6mm out of whack, we succeeded in pulling the structure 14mm out of line in the other direction. At this point, we decided it was probably best to leave it the way it was until we had erected all four walls (aka hope putting in the other wall would straighten things out and solve our problems for us).

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While Tom, Steve and I were working on the fourth wall, Jack and Jule had yet another frustrating job – fixing the corner of the South and East walls into place. This created a series of challenges, including the fact that they would cut a specific width piece of wood, which would then compress and not actually fit perfectly into the gap they had measured out. The hammering also proved to be a challenge, with Tom providing custom-made scaffolding as required…

Eventually, despite minor setbacks, we had the fourth wall finished and put up with the others. The structure fit together perfectly (always a relief!). Tom and I were finally able to walk around inside the main structure of our home, which was a highly gratifying moment. At this moment, it doesn’t really look like a “tiny home” – the structure looks more than big enough for us! The walls being up make the place look really big – although, after speaking to Jack, who built his own house, I am assured that this illusion will disappear when we start building the internal walls. For the moment though, we remain ecstatic at the amount of space we’ve created purely for us.

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After putting up the final wall, we had to fit the corners together, filling in any spaces with spare blocks, as Jack and Jule did on our more troublesome Southeast corner. The corners were joined together at the top using nail plates – pieces of metal with spikes on the bottom which dig into the wood and hold it together. The final thing we did on Monday was to fit beams into the top of the walls. These beams are integral for supporting the main structure and keeping it square, and holding up the roof. The beams are made from two pieces of wood at 190mm by 45mm, nailed and glued together to make one piece sized 190mm x 90mm. We lifted the beams together, passing them up between people at different heights, until we got them up to the height at which they could slot into the pre-cut gap. At this point, we were losing the light again, so decided to call it a day.

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We were so satisfied with the amount of work that was done over the weekend. The progress we have made on the house is amazing, and once again, we were very lucky to have people willing to give up their time and expertise to help us. Jack and Jule headed back to Dunedin on the Tuesday after Easter, while Steve and Bella will stay with us until the Friday to carry on with the project while Tom and I are at work. As well as the main structural things we got finished over the weekend, it was good to get some odd jobs finished, such as the power to the caravan, and the addition of the outdoor sink. For now, all that remains is for Tom and I to go back to work and hope Steve gets the roof on for us in the meantime!