by Paul and Makenzie Benander
My partner and I have been building a tiny timber-framed house for a little over a year now. We thought you or some of your readers might find it interesting or helpful to hear about our project. When we started our build we had a hard time finding other people in the tiny house community who were doing a timber frame on a trailer. I’ve attached some pictures of the frame raising and some recent shots, as well as a brief synopsis of the project. For more pictures we have a blog at TinyTimberHouse.wordpress.com
Thanks for your time and keep up the good work! We’ve spent countless hours perusing your blog throughout our journey and gotten lots of great info and ideas!
The Project:
We first heard of the tiny house movement during our senior year at college. With so much up in the air in terms of job opportunities and additional schooling we were immediately intrigued by the idea of living simply and taking home with us where ever we ended up.
We got the idea to try and do a timber frame construction after I had taken a timber-framing workshop. We had always loved the look and feel of post and beam construction and after putting together a small shed in the workshop I had attended, we thought ‘Why not a tiny house?’. Two major factors to consider in a tiny house frame are strength/stability and weight.
As it turns out, timber frames have a long history in New England and are a tried and true form of construction that relies on careful joinery. They are however, traditionally heavy frames. We decided to go with 6×6 hemlock timbers as opposed to the standard 8×8 to save on weight and room. Once the frame had been planned out we were then able to calculate the wet vs. dry weight of the timbers to know exactly what we were dealing with. As another precaution we also opted for a new trailer (as opposed to used) rated for 10,000 lbs.
Equipped with a mallet, set of chisels and books, we began construction on our tiny house in October 2012. The winter was spent working on the timbers and preparing the trailer and this May we were able to have a ‘tiny house-raising’ where friends came and helped us to raise the frame.
Since the raising we have spent the summer and fall months closing in, insulating, installing windows and doors, and beginning our systems work.