So I built this tiny house about five years ago.
Wow. That's a long time. Finally, I've decided to establish roots.
I found a parking spot on Whidbey Island.
I'm renting the tiny house out on Airbnb when I'm not using it,
and so I thought maybe I can upgrade.
Maybe I can afford to put a porch on my tiny house. Finally,
I just think it's really going to improve my lifestyle in multiple ways.
Let me introduce you to my build team.
There's me and Nabil and of course my dog Salies
My boyfriend is an engineer,
so he was able to design the layout of the porch and he went all out.
I mean he wanted to make sure this thing was structurally sound.
We went and we got all the materials that we could from the local hardware store
here on the Island. The hardware store here is a bit limited.
It's like I had to wait weeks to get the roofing panels,
but I really enjoy shopping local, so I did it anyway.
The hardest part of the entire porch build was definitely leveling out the
ground. I was so frustrated. I didn't realize that this would take so long.
I didn't even really film it cause there was just so much shoveling and just
getting dirty and dealing with rain that there wasn't a whole lot to show that
took us a half a day right there.
It's just making sure the ground was level so that we could start the build off
right. I mean I'm used to building on a trailer,
but you just level the trailer and what's this whole leveling the ground thing.
But um, I'm glad we did it because now I have a level porch.
After we had a level area, we began cutting our four by six deck beams.
You'll notice throughout this video that I've used a combination of wood types.
For the most part I wanted to use Cedar, but it's really expensive.
So I used treated wood in the exposed structural areas and I used regular old
two by fours to save money on the areas that would be covered by the roof.
Salies was not a lot of help. She kept wanting to play fetch the whole time.
She kept running underneath the porch. She's just a distraction for me.
I just can't not pet her and play with her the whole time.
That's all the screws up there. Right.
So one of the saddest things about this whole build is that I had to remove the
porch post that I've had on the house for about three years.
So I found that porch post just happenstance.
As I was driving around in 2015 I found a beautiful piece of wood that was on
the side of the road, and since it was a fallen piece of wood,
I felt like that it was a sign that I could take it and it fit perfectly on my
porch. It's not structural.
It was just something that I really loved and something that was aging with the
tiny house.
But we needed a structural porch post for the extended porch that we were
building.
So I had to make a sacrifice and that sacrifice was my beloved old porch post
and she didn't go easily there.
We had to actually saw her off of the tiny house
and enough to catch it too, or I'll fall on your head.
RIP porch post. I miss you.
Next we cut our porch posts.
This required some math to make sure that the roof would have a slight pitch but
wouldn't be too short that most people would bang their heads on the beams.
Then we attached our posts to the deck beams on blocks
Salies this video isn't about you.
Next up we cut the deck and blocking and attach it 16 inches on
center
At this point I could see the portraits finally starting to take shape
Finally, we were cutting the Cedar decking.
We used a jigsaw to trim around the porch posts and the facia boards that were
already on the tiny house. I love cutting Cedar.
It smells so good and I keep all the scraps to burn later in my woodstove.
This porch is a separate structure from the tiny house,
so it's not actually attached,
but we wanted to make sure it would be as plush as possible.
We attach the decking, which took no time at all.
And by nighttime of the second day, which came around 4:00 PM and winter,
I officially had a porch
The next morning we were back at it. And so was Salies
One of the farm owners, Jake actually helped out with the build.
He helped us build the stairs on the front and back of the porch.
It's always great when you can get a little bit of a community build going on.
I did a lot of that when I was building the tiny house.
If you've been following me that long, you might remember I did the BB BBQs,
which was the build beer and barbecue in that order.
And uh, yeah, it's always fun.
when you can get friends and community members involved in your build.
We began attaching the roof beams using Simpson hardware.
This took way longer than it should have due to my butter finger syndrome.
So it turns out I'm a bit of a klutz
I can't seem to do anything right.
Once we were sure that we were square,
we began placing our two by four at 24 inches on center.
Nabil did a lot of the work on the trellis because he's so tall.
It was just so much easier for him. I mean,
I was happy filming and playing with Salies
We also cut and attached three one by fours which will be used later for
attaching our Polycarp roof panels
At the end of day three, Nabil tested the strength of our work. Oh,
there we go.
It took us about three days to construct the porch and to the trellis.
We didn't get to the roofing because of weather and because I was waiting on the
roofing panels, so for a while I just had a porch without a roof,
which was great, but Oh gosh, it's winter here in Washington. It rains a lot.
I really needed the cover.
A few weeks later we obtained the roof panels.
I was lucky that the panels came in eight foot lengths,
which fit perfectly on my deck.
I bought six panels and I didn't need to cut them at all.
Aside from a few notches.
For the roofing panels,
we actually had to notch them out a few times just to get around some of the
trim on the tiny house and in order to do that we would normally use 10 snips.
But in this case we didn't have any, so we used garden sheers.
It worked
we went with the semi clear panels.
They're actually just like slightly tinted because I thought that would be a
great way to let light in on the porch.
I was a little hesitant because I'm afraid of all the debris from the trees
around falling on it and it getting really dirty and it being just a huge task
for me to clean it off all the time. But I've loved it so far.
It's really increased the amount of light that I have on that porch.
So I think it was the right decision to make
because my roofing is ribbed.
We also purchased the wood spacers that line up the panels you can see to be
placing them here.
So Nabil who can actually reach the roof on our little step ladder is
screwing in the roof panels now
the height comes in handy at this point, right Nabil. Always.
Always? Didn't you just hit your head when you went inside the front door.
Okay. It doesn't always come in handy in a tiny house.
It's impossible to film with Salies right now. Look at her.
She's just putting her butt in my face. It's like obnoxious
One of my favorite things about the porch is the lights that I got.
I love them because they can change colors.
They are controlled by my smartphone. They can be put on a timer,
so the majority of the year I'm going to use the tungsten balanced,
just regular, you know,
warm white color light by during Christmas or maybe during a Seahawks game,
I might change the colors just to put a little flare out there.
The porch was a lot more expensive than I originally thought it was going to be.
It costs me about $2,000 in materials.
I haven't upgraded this house in five years except for like buying new sheets
and pillows and a couple of small things.
So as a homeowner I think that it's a small price to pay.
and I extended my house another 60 square feet. So Hey,
I no longer have 165 square foot tiny house.
I have a 225 square foot tiny house.
At least that's what it feels like.
One thing I really love about what the porch has done is we've created an
entrance way.
It's always been kind of awkward that the front door of my tiny house is on the
back of the trailer. So when you back in the trailer to a parking spot,
you end up having the tongue side of your trailer facing the parking lot.
So when people come up to it, they don't see the doorway. They're like,
how do we get into this thing?
They have to walk around the house to find the door or the staircase and the
porch itself sort of leads people to my front door.
So I think it's really an improvement of an entryway. If nothing else.
I also included a staircase at the front of the porch.
The idea is that maybe in the future I'll put a barbecue out there or a firepit.
I might hang some hammocks and just sort of make that into a nice little Oasis.
Another thing I've noticed, my house is cleaner. Now.
I've enforced a no shoe policy since there's a big enough porch,
you can take your shoes off outside, store them outside,
so no one ever wears shoes in here. Oh my God. Game changer. I mean,
I always knew that if you didn't wear shoes inside, it would be cleaner,
but that was just really too difficult with my little two by two foot porch.
Now I have a spot for shoes outside on the porch and my life has changed.
Everything is awesome.
It didn't really solve the problem of Salies tracking in mud though.
What can you do about a dog? I mean, can you train her to wipe her paws?
If you know how to train a dog to wipe their paws,
you just put that video down in the comments right now because I need to see
that. I just do my best. I wipe off her paws. Sometimes she tracks in mud.
I have to clean it up. But you know, it's kind of part of having a dog.
It feels so good already that I can just go outside and enjoy my coffee in the
morning, look out in the beautiful forest that I have in my front yard.
It's amazing.
So I hope you enjoyed seeing a little piece of my lifestyle and how I'm
expanding my space.
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