Tiny House Sustainable Living Australia

Hey there to everyone who’s been following my page…it’s been a long time since posting and there’s so much that’s happened this year, I’ve so much to catch you all up on!  The Tiny House renovation was completed earlier this year…it took a little longer than I’d hoped as most of the labour I did do myself…with some help from a few great friends…a huge thank you to Bowen, Sue & Julia…could not have managed without these superstars! I’m really happy with how it’s all come together and I’ll be taking you through each week, step by step to show you how it was all done. I’ve had my hands…

The past two weeks have been completely hectic, we have been at a bit of a standstill with the renovations due to some issues with the bathroom installation. The waterproofing was confirmed to have been compromised and the entire bathroom had to be taken down! As you can imagine this decision wasn’t easy…but a building inspection confirmed that if I proceeded without starting the bathroom again I’d have water leak issues which of course is the last thing I wanted. I’ve had some fantastic labourers come in and demolish the bathroom for me…all the tiles, the villaboard walls came down too, luckily we managed to save the floor and most…

While we’ve been at a bit of a standstill with the building progress I’ve also had the opportunity to catch up on some shopping for materials I’ll need to finish off the build. Austin has been dubbed site supervisor, quality control, purchasing manager and he’s made friends with most of the staff at my local Bunnings!  Too cute not to share!  Heaps to come so keep watching! Thanks for reading!  Jen 🏡 

I am running so much further behind with my Tiny House renovation than I thought I would be! We’ve hit a bit of a bump in the road with the bathroom installation, it’s not yet complete and I’m super stressed it won’t be done in time for my deadline to have everything finished by Xmas! This was supposed to be smooth sailing…bathroom finished and still be left with 5 or 6 weeks to complete the rest of the renovation! I guess it was silly to think everything would run to plan!  So here I am with 3 weeks until Xmas madly planning how to get as much done on time…

This week was supposed to be the week my bathroom was complete and I was working on the back exterior wall to tidy up the patchy mess I’d created using silicone like cake icing to patch up old screw holes. While our builders were working on the bathroom we’ve been prepping the back wall to neaten up the service pipes, all the silicone areas and repaint. After having the electrician cut the power and remove the messy conduit I tidied up the wall by grinding back all the remaining screws and patching those holes with silicone, sanding the messy bits with my grinding flap disc and then undercoating with a…

This week I’ve spent doing all of the finishing jobs to get the interior wall framing straight and ready for the walls to be put up! It’s been such a fiddly and time consuming job, lesson learned…take more time to get the framing straight from the beginning! If you read last weeks blog post I talked about the front wall frame and how it took a bit of extra time to get it straight given the uneven container walls it was going up against, but it’s definitely quicker than fixing up frames that have been drilled in unevenly!  I decided to pack out the walls using plastic packers & string…

Wall framing on the interior of a shipping container is a bit tricky and definitely really fiddly work! Used shipping containers have got knocks and dents in them so if you want your framing to be straight then there’s both packing out to do and cutting out to do! Emily and I have spent the past week and a half cutting the timbers to fit, sanding in grooves where there are bumps in the container and using packers where there are dents in the container! This prep work to get the wall frames straight is taking longer than expected but that’s ok, it’ll make the cladding job so much easier…

After all the weeks of demolition and preparation it was time for the walls to start going up! As I mentioned in last Monday’s blog post the screedings in the bathroom were being done that day so the week prior is when the framing, walls and floor for the bathroom went in and also the kitchen back wall.  It was a busy week! Getting these walls up is heavy work! It’s not a one person job and something I did need “muscle help” with! We started with the back wall, this part of the back wall, just the section for the bathroom and kitchen, was not framed, the insulation went…

I definitely did not expect the preparation work after the demolition to be as big of a job as it has been! But I figured if I was going to do it then I was going to do it properly!  I had no idea what I would need for all the prep work until the walls were down, and as time went on, and the job progressed, and I learned more about what I was doing, the list of to dos got bigger and bigger!  Tearing down walls and framework from inside a shipping container Tiny House leaves screws half hanging out of the walls, or just the screw holes!…

Something I haven’t talked about in my blog posts is the actual Tiny House Build itself, the construction stuff! Given I am currently doing renovations this is the perfect time to have a chat about it! I’ve mentioned before that I made so many mistakes when building my Tiny House…and in my third blog post “Time to Build! The Beginning of Your Tiny House Journey!” I mentioned that these steps were the hardest and most trying for me, particularly because I had little to no building knowledge at the time! I can not tell you the amount of times I have been in tears and left feeling completely lost and…