Slowly simmering but still cookin'

Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Inauguration Day- that happened, Happy MLK Day, Happy Groundhog’s Day, and Happy Valentine’s Day. Whew, it’s been a minute. Little Wayne has been in a slow simmer pattern on the side burner the past couple of months, amid holidays and travel, etc. but we still have lots of updates to jump right into.

We are nearing the stage with Little Wayne when each day’s progress will be visible progress, i.e. walls, paint, flooring, cabinets, sinks, the good stuff! And we are nearing the end of behind-the-walls (more boring) subjects like plumbing, electrical, waterproofing, and insulation. But we must get those parts right in the beginning in order to have a functioning trailer in the end.

So, we begin with power. It’s done! We double and triple checked all of the wiring, enlisted the help of an electrician friend to check our work, and then we flipped the breakers. I gotta say, it is pretty glorious to have some can lights installed in this thing. Not to mention, we are no longer relying on long chains of extension cords to plug in a saw or the Makita buffer.

Cass running wires:

 The electrical inspector:

 Making some custom ceiling beams to level out the bathroom ceiling over the shower:

I spent some serious hours before the holidays working on waterproofing the shower. We decided to go with a custom floor and drain system because it turns out our small shower space of 26.5”x 27.25” is not a standard size. The steps involve building a sloped mortar base over metal lathing and then gluing/stapling in a waterproof moisture barrier, followed by more mortar and lathing and then, finally, tile. The step that took a while was the leak-proof moisture barrier part. In fact, once I succeeded with this step I decided to move to other projects and come back to the shower later because plumbing is kind of a pain…remember the sewer story from blog #1?

It took 3 tries to create a leak proof drain—meaning it passes the test of holding water for 24 hours. The next step from here is to put in durarock walls to which the shower tile will attach. The next layers of mortar on the floor will then seal the seam where the floor meets the durarock wall and follow a ¼”/ft slope to keep the water running to the drain. But before doing all of this, I needed to attach the ceiling.

In order to close in the ceiling I needed to finish waterproofing, running the wiring, and install insulation. Talk about one project leading to another. We have been fortunate to have had an unseasonably warm winter in Nashville this year, which has made long johns almost optional and has given us motivation to get outside and get stuff done. Below are a few pictures of the wiring, insulation, shower in its current state, and…sheetrock!

My first attempt at drywalling went ok so far. Will update once the taping and mudding is complete. I found the Harbor Freight jigsaw that Larry gave us to be our best friend in getting clean cuts on the drywall and for cut-outs. Besides the 3 durarock walls for the shower, all the other walls and ceilings in the trailer will be ¼” birch plywood.

You will also find more pictures of Little Wayne’s skin below. Cassidy has stepped up her polishing game, and the results are awesome! She did a bit more research and decided to try Nuvite brand polish with larger buffing pads. This combo is a game changer. Look at the door and bottom right side of the skin. Our friend and neighbor John noticed the difference all the way from his house 2 doors down when he happened to glance over our fence. We will be going back over the old sections and giving Wayne a thorough NuShine treatment.

It's kind of hard to see in the dark, but check out the bottom right corner. That's NuShine :)

Cassidy after 2 intense hours of polishing:

Getting a few projects across the finish line has given us a fresh burst of inspiration, and we are excited to keep forging ahead! Speaking of inspiration, we are out in Angel Fire, NM for a few days to visit the Troms and family. Not only is their house a UUGE inspiration (see Larry's blog at https://www.ownerbuilderbook.com/blogs/users/The-Last-Rodeo.aspx), but they also took us to see a local artist who creates furniture, all kinds of woodworking and an insanely cool tiny house. I only captured one picture because I was in awe of this thing! The level of detail was truly amazing.

More updates to come....

Going-going, back-back, to Depot-Depot

It has been a minute since our last post and we apologize. On the upside, this means you will find a lot of new pictures below!

We took a 2-week trailer hiatus in mid-October during which Cassidy flew to Tanzania and hiked Mt. Kilimanjaro and I went to Seattle to record with some SoBs.

We both kicked some butt in our respective adventures—especially Cass the mountaineer--but it was good to get back home to each other and pick up where we left off on Little Wayne.

I’ve been working on getting the utilities buttoned up. I installed an outdoor tankless water heater, connected in our water supply pipe, and ran the hot and cold pipes inside the trailer. The heater is a Takagi and based on our water usage calculations it should provide plenty of hot water to run the shower and a sink simultaneously. It’s 100% propane powered which is nice because it won’t draw any electric power. I attached galvanized steel pipe to the PEX we had already buried in the ground, hooked it into the water heater, and then ran through the floor underneath the trailer. This process involved many trips to HD to swap out pipe fittings and buy more Teflon tape. I still need to put insulation tape around all of the galvanized lines.

Then I needed to frame out the bathroom, and, luckily, framing is something I really enjoy doing. It’s not a lot more than careful measuring and cutting boards, but when it’s done the changes are pretty dramatic. Cass and I went back and forth on different design ideas for the bathroom. We are working with pretty tight space constraints on the whole trailer, but we wanted to maximize the bathroom as much as possible. Do we put the bathroom all the way to one end, a la the Airstream design? No, because then headroom is very limited. Do we extend the shower into the kitchen window? No, that’s funky. The biggest challenge was negotiating with the wheel well, which was previously used as cabinetry. That really made the bath tiny. We ultimately decided to make into a shower bench. Here are some photos along the way:

Toilet will be in the back right, sink in front right, and shower to the left including the bench over the wheel wheel. We will tile the shower and put glass up between the shower and the rest of the bath. It will be tight, but ya know it’s a trailer! We found a 12” deep vanity/sink from IKEA and a cool German toilet whereby the tank fits inside a stud wall. Then the toilet bowl sits flush with the wall. You see these a lot in… Germany. They also have self-cleaning toilets at Autobahn gas stations. Way ahead of us in toilet technology. Will post pictures once this bad boy is installed.

^^^ With the walls in place I connected PEX to the galvanized supply lines and ran lines to each fixture. Now I need to pressure test and hope for no leaks! Cassidy ran Reflectix insulation on all the interior walls, and it really makes it look cleaner inside.

We also got a sliding bathroom door installed. It was a trial and error process. I was able to make it all work by ripping down 2x4s to 1&1/8" on the table saw and then screwing together the framing. 

Next on our list was electric hookup. We had already run our lines in conduit underground from the basement out to the yard. From there I needed to get the lines into the trailer and install breaker boxes. I installed two 70A breaker boxes (the smallest I could find), each receiving one 240V / 30A 8-gauge wire. Cassidy used the dremel to cut out a hole for running the lines into the trailer. Then I concreted a 4x4 pole (more post hole digging!) to which the conduit would be attached for support.

I counted 79 Home Depot trips (give or take) in one weekend buying more conduit, more fittings, and shopping around all the stores in Nashville to find what we needed. I also learned to use a rivet gun (we got the manual kind) and attached a new aluminum panel to cover the hole where we ran wiring into the trailer. I think the rivets look pretty rad and they’re easy to install. The whole project took way longer than I expected but it felt good when it was finally completed!

From here we will install a 15A and a 20A breaker in each box and run all of our lines to each receptacle and switch box.

Cassidy has been polishing like crazy (Little Wayne’s skin is lookin’ good!) and researching and ordering sinks, toilets, tile, shower fixtures, etc.

Speed 2

First step post-demo was to put in some new sub-floors! I took a spill trying to walk on the steel frame in the dark and caught a few good bruises. Actually had the same injury in college when my good friend Ryan Gurney tackled me playing football in the snow and I nailed my rib cage. I did not want this to happen to Cassidy…although her brain generally prevents her from doing the dumb stuff that my brain doesn’t seem to prevent… So anyway, we got going on the sub-floors.

This was a multi-tasking situation where we were able to knock out floor, insulation under the floor, and plumbing. Meanwhile Cass worked really hard on the windows, polishing the skin, and getting the roof vents to function. I’ll let her explain her successes and frustrations…

She also helped with the floors. First we screwed 1x4s into the steel beams. There were existing screw holes from the old screws we had painstakingly removed with vice grips in demo stage. My method was to clamp the 1x4s in place, go underneath and drill through the existing holes, and then tie the wood to the steel with 1.5” trailer floor screws picked up from Fastenal. Cassidy’s method was a lot simpler—spray paint under the steel beam to reveal the holes, turn the board over and drill, then re-align and fasten with the screws.

Next we stapled in bubble insulation on top of the 1x4s and then attached the ¾” sub floor with regular wood screws. Getting the floor under the now sagging frame was a challenge (Note for the future, put shims in right after demo!), but we managed to jack it up enough to pound the plywood in place with a sledgehammer sort-of carefully:

I took a break to head down to Texas and pick up… a pick-up! I flew into Austin on Tuesday, and got to spend the day with the generous host and righteous dude Howard Coffman. Howard graciously picked me up at the airport and took me out for a migas con huevos breakfast. He gave me a tour of Elgin and spent the afternoon giving a run down on the truck—it was extensive, but the main points were: 1. Don’t let the gas gauge get even close to ½ tank and 2. Dump this ether in the carburetor if it won’t turn over. 

The ’81 F150 in Howard’s garage:

We drove the truck to Bastrop and ate some top notch Tex-Mex food, drank a margarita, and went back to Howard’s and made a couple last minute repairs to the truck—which might have involved blowtorching a rusty gooseneck hitch out of the truck bed. It was an awesome day.

I hit the road at 4 the next am, and made the jaunt back to Nashville in time for dinner. The truck did great on the trip. The next morning I put it right to use as James and I loaded it up and took the demo pile to the dump. Even though I’m a big dork I sure feel cool cruising around in the old truck with James, or even better with my beautiful wife ☺

Cassidy backing it into the driveway, looking like the badass she is:

 Diggin' it:

First Depot run:

Cass finally suggested that I stop finding excuses to drive the truck and get back to work! She also suggested that we get the plumbing rough-ins done while the floor was still partially open, and what a good call that was. This was definitely a project requiring research, lots of trips to Home Depot, and an expert—i.e. Larry. Thanks to Larry for his patience answering our frequent questions and for always knowing the answer.

On an unseasonably hot October Sunday, the sequel to the sewer escapades began. Ok really it was nothing like the first sewer event. In scope and entertainment value it was akin to comparing the blip-on-the-radar sequel Speed 2 to the original Speed, a cinematic masterpiece and one of Cassidy’s favorite movies to this day. No, babe, I do not want to watch Speed again tonight!

I did have to crawl under the trailer and dig out about 18 inches so I could chop the Wye fitting off the main stack line…out came those lovely sewer gases again. The place where I initially had the Wye connection (just above the driveway height) was too high to run the pipes at the correct angles because the axles were in the way. So I connected a new Wye a couple inches lower and ran the plumbing beneath the axles. Having no floor really really really helped this project.

A first sketch which contained many errors:

And the floor all closed up:

So we know where the rough-ins are...

More to come from Cass!