The Ceiling Beams and Upper Walls

Height is a big issue for a Tiny House, if you want to be able to pull it down the road at least. There is a limit of 13 feet six inches if you want to be sure to fit underneath things, and also if you want to avoid an over-height permit. This means that every inch of space needs to be carefully calculated and there are some trade-offs along the way.

Since I live in a cold climate, insulation is a big issue. One of the reasons I decided to build my own trailer rather than just buying an RV is that I couldn't find an RV that was really built for winter. (There are some that say they are winter ready. From the research and looking that I did, none of them are very comfortable at -30 or -40, and they use huge amounts of propane trying to stay reasonably warm). In any case, I needed to have an air space between the insulation in the roof and the roof sheeting in order to avoid ice build-up on the roof, and I needed to have enough room to put some reasonable insulation in. (More on insulation later) Therefore, I changed the plan from 2 x 4 rafters to 2 x 6 rafters, and lost a couple of inches of head space in the loft. I decided to transfer this down, and made the ceiling under the loft, and the level of the cross beams, lower than the plan. In my house, the bottom of the beams is at 6 feet 3 inches, and the ceiling under the loft is at 6 feet 6 1/2 inches.

I'm not terribly tall (about 5 foot 8) and so this works for me. It's not great for tall people though.

The interior walls have been added here. You can see angle bracing in the walls, which very effectively cuts out any wobble in the long side walls. The first 4 x 4 beams are set in place here.

The wood for the beams is a red colour and comes from fir logs, cut by a neighbour down the road. The wood is beautiful, but it posed a bit of a problem as the beams were all cut to the full 4 inch by 4 inch size of an un-planed 4 x 4. In order to get them to fit on 2 x 4 walls, and in order to make the height correct, they had to be cut down with the table saw. This proved to be a bit of a grunt for the saw, and required two cuts in order to get through the whole thickness. Thankfully, most of them only had to be cut on one side. Also thankfully, a friend provided a large planer so I was able to run them through and save many hours of sanding. There is still quite a lot of sanding to do, but it's much better. (Thanks again to Jeff!)

The center beam is set here.

This picture shows the beam above the door, and the next beam forward. The plans called for a small loft at this end of the house, but I decided to leave the loft out here as I preferred to have as much of the spacious vaulted ceiling as possible. The second beam is a great place to hang things though, and will allow me to make a shelf at some point if I want or need to.

This picture also shows the first layers of the upper wall construction. You can see the two top plates on the lower wall. These are made so that the ends of the 2 x 4's overlap in different directions in each layer, giving a good corner tie. Next up is the 4 x 4 beam. As you can see, the end beam buts up against a 2 x 4 on edge that runs the full length of the house. The beam is also skirted by a 2 x 4 on the inside that acts as a spacer to extend to the full 5 1/2 width of the rear wall plate.

You can also see that between the beams there is a laminated layer made from a 2 x 4 and a piece of 1/2 inch plywood. This helps to hold the beams in place, and provides a spacer to cover the full 3 1/2 inch thickness of the wall. This continues all the way around the house. The three layers are held together with nails. I'm using a nailgun and have gone through a full box of 3 1/4 inch nails already.

This is the perspective looking from above the door toward the front. The interior walls are in place and the beams for the stepped sleeping loft are also set.

Looking down into the bathroom area from the wall above the sleeping loft, with all of the beams in place. The last layer of 2 x 4 is also in place along the front wall. This is a final layer that runs along the top of everything and ties it all together. It also provides the sill that the rafters will sit on (from the sleeping loft back) and the pony wall will sit on for the length of the sleeping loft. The pony wall will be between 30 and 34 inches high I think (haven't decided that yet) and will give extra space in the loft. The roof over the loft will have a lower slope than the rest of the house.