Choosing Siding

Siding is the outer layer of the tiny house, and a large variety of materials are available for your choosing. Popular materials available are: Vinyl, Fiber Cement, and Wood.

Vinyl is famous for being maintenance free! The vinyl siding is available in many different colors, and you install the color that you want to use. It never needs painting or coating, as the vinyl is its own color. It is also very light weight, which is a wonderful bonus for a tiny house. The big weakness with vinyl siding deals with impact damage. Since it is made of weak plastics, it dents easily. It also doesn't hold up very well to strong winds.

On a tiny house being towed down the highway will expose the tiny house to hurricane force winds (64 knots or 73.6 mph) and road debris impacts on the siding. If you are never going to move your tiny house, vinyl may be a very simple option for your choice in siding material.

Fiber cement boards are much heavier than vinyl, but they are also much stronger. They hold up to impact and high winds much better, making them a wonderful choice for tiny house siding. Fiber cement does require painting, and this paint needs to be maintained over the years of the life of the tiny house. While this is added maintenance over vinyl, it does give you the ability to change the color of the tiny house over the years.

Lastly, wood siding is a wonderful material with the same benefits of fiber cement, but it is much more expensive. Wood siding can be finished with oils or varnish, letting you keep the look of wood that you can't have with fiber cement. Different woods can be troublesome to maintain painted. Some oily woods will be harder to make paint stick, and these woods will be condemned to paint peeling off the house.

If you decide to use wood siding, be sure that you select the correct species of wood for the finish that you want to achieve on your house.

Siding is Magical!

As you build, the tiny house will take on various appearances. When the wall frames are raised, the tiny house looks amazing. It just transformed from a flat trailer to a stick figure outline of the house!

Then the sheathing goes on and the house looks smaller all of a sudden. You can no longer see into the house and all of the internal components. Now it just looks like a small box on wheels.

Then the roof goes on and the windows are cut out, and it begins to look like a tiny wooden house on a set of wheels. At this point, the neighbors of the property you are building on will come over to see what you are making and tell you how awesome it looks! It seems that everyone has seen a tiny house show and they have enjoyed watching you build so far.

Then the wrapping goes on the house, and everything changes. Your cute wooden tiny house now looks like a black smudge in the yard. Neighbors will no longer ask to see the progress, but instead ask where the tiny house will be stored after it is completed. 

The black tar paper will begin to fade in the sun and make the whole tiny house look like crap. I got married after this step and was not around for almost a month and the tar paper faded while the tarp on the roof began to tear. 

Once I returned to construction, I cut the tar paper over the window holes and set the windows into the frames. At this point, the neighbors approval of the project returned slightly, but they were still not thrilled. Then the magic of siding was realized.

All of a sudden, the tiny house looks magical once more! It only took a few hours of work to transform the tiny house from a fading collection of tar paper to a gorgeous tiny house. 

The siding I am putting on is coated in primer, which gives it the gray appearance. Even though this is not a very pleasing color, I received many positive comments on the choice of color for the siding because it was such a great improvement over the aging tar paper.

Tiny House, Huge Window

The process of installing the windows in the tiny house is becoming a trying event. The house is not perfectly square, but the windows are! This means that one side of the window is a bit loose in the frame while the other side won't even fit.

The large window, which requires two people to manage, is test fitted into the hole where problem areas are identified. The usual culprit is the plywood sheathing. When I cut the window holes out, I wandered a little from a perfect straight line. These wandering a lead to small peaks in the plywood projecting into the window frame.

The window will rest on this small protrusion and rock to one side or the other, making one of the corners overlap with the wall and not fit into the frame. To trim off these small annoyances, I use a hand saw and cut flush with the 2x4 framing. This removes the error while providing a clean smooth surface to receive the window.

After several test fits, the window will finally fit into the frame! A few screws are placed on each side of the window to tack it to the wall and avoid any disastrous window jettisons. This allows me to walk away and observe the window from a distance, to evaluate the squareness from a far. If the window seems crooked, now is the time to correct it by placing small shims inside between the window and the frame.

Shimming the window is temporary, as it is only needed until all the screws are installed. Shimming also gives you the ability to hold the window in place while you re-evaluate its squareness. Building on a trailer not set on level ground precludes you from using a plumb bob or bubble level, instead you need to rely on your eyes. Comparing the sides of the window with the sides of the tiny house will tell you if it looks straight or not. In the end, looking straight is the whole objective!

With the window straightened out, all the screws are installed, wrapping the window in a barrage of tiny stud screws which collectively hold this massive window in place. Once all the screws are installed, it is safe to remove the shims as they are no longer needed nor functional in this type of construction.

Loft Windows

The loft windows are "replacement windows" meaning that they are designed to slip into an existing window frame. There is no flange that attaches to the sheathing, instead, the window simply screws into the existing frame. Shims are very helpful with these windows to get them straight and level.

After the windows are crudely screwed into place, the siding and window frames will cover up any voices and irregularities in the installation. Expanding foam will also be sprayed into the gap to seal out any drafts that could rip through the windows in the winter.

The loft windows will provide plenty of ventilation to the loft allowing us to sleep in there with comfort. The screens on the windows will also help keep any critters at bay.

These windows, with their eight screws, went in very easily and require very little skill to install. If I had the choice, I would say that regular windows offer more strength in their installation, but these windows install much more easily.

Installing Windows

Not the computer program, but equally as frustrating when trying to install!

I decided to install the smallest window first, as it is straight forward and low to the ground. This would be good practice for the massive windows that will fill the walls on the sides of the tiny house.

The back window is 36 inches wide, at least that is what the sticker on it said. So I built the tiny house to have a window frame that is 36 inches wide! When I went to install it, the window didn't fit because it is actually 36.25 inches wide. Oh joy!

I cut 1/4 inch notches into the frame on one side of the house and then began splitting the flat sawn 2x4 with a wood chisel. 

After mutilating 1/4 inch off of the the window frame 2x4, the window should now fit in its frame.

With the frame cut out to the appropriate size, the window was able to drop right in, be shimmed to level it, and then screwed into the sheathing and 2x4 frame. 

From the inside, an important step can be visualized. The tar paper that was covering the window should be folded into the window and wrapped over the frame. This will help keep that wood from rotting away because of rain water seeping in around the window frame.