I'll get to the soffits in a minute, but first, let me finish the siding. As you'll recall from my last post, my nephew Bobby joined me to help install siding around the trapezoidal "bump out" over the trailer hitch. Here's Bobby caulking the last couple of pieces he installed that day.
Bobby did some great work, and I was super pumped that he was skilled with the chop saw. It made things move quickly in a complicated phase of the siding install. Here's where we got to by the end of Bobby's visit:
Getting so close!
But it was clear I was going to have to finish this siding by myself. So, a few days later, I got to it. The aluminum flashing over the window was tricky because of the trapezoidal shape. When I got to that point there was some head scratching, but here's how I ended up solving it:
There's a liberal amount of Lexel under all the flashing parts to seal any gaps and to help make the siding, trim, and flashing all work as one complete system shedding water from from the outside of the Tiny House.
I finally finished all the siding work, and was super excited with how things looked! I was probably extra excited because when we originally pulled the Tiny House into our new Vermont home I thought it looked like an eyesore! And I was a bit worried the neighbors would see it the same way. (If you missed it, you can see the Tiny House getting its new home here.)
But as a reminder, here's what it looked like back then. Take it in, in all it's bedraggled glory:
This is, of course, before I'd pulled off three pieces of warped plywood sheathing, replaced them, and re-did the Tyvek before starting the siding. (You can see that blog post here.) But the poor Tiny House really did look that bad by the time we got it to Vermont.
Aaaaaaand, here's what it looks like with the siding on!
Deep breath...
Now it was finally time to give some attention to the roof. My carpenter friend Brian (who makes several appearances in this blog) talked me through the idea of a "hot roof" which was new to me. In reality it's not new, it's old. The common practice since the late 1900's has been to build ventilated roofs rather than hot roofs. Ventilated roofs ensure that the underlying materials remain dry and that the roof in general remains cooler.
But Brian seemed to think a hot roof might work for our Tiny house. Part of the reasoning was that we'd been planning on using spray foam insulation throughout the project. There were several reasons this would help, especially in the roof:
Expanding foam insulation would offer the highest insulation (or "R") value. (This felt important because we'd chosen to use 2 x 4 rafters which would only provide a three and a half inch cavity for insulation);
The installation process would would seal any air gaps in the roof; and
As the foam cured, it would stiffen the whole roof structure.
But as things progressed, two developments affected our final choices:
The first was that there was (and is) a ton of new research coming out regarding spray foam insulation. While it certainly offers great air-sealing qualities and a high R value, it comes at an environmental cost (it's a nightmare to dispose of), and often is not installed properly (allowing water infiltration and internal rot inside walls and roofs). There are a lot of differing opinions out there on the subject, but in the end, for us, we decided against spray foam.
The second factor was that as we were discussing final roofing materials, Jenna felt that she really, really, really wanted a black metal roof. I definitely wanted a metal roof, and I love the way black looks, but I was concerned about how hot it would get. But the above three "reallys" got to me. We decided to go with black metal.
I didn't want install black metal on a "hot roof" with no ventilation. So that meant I would also be installing soffits and a ridge vent. If you are unfamiliar with the components of a vented roof, here's a simple visual illustrating the three main components of a ventilated roof:
A ridge vent along the top of the roof was no problem. During the drive up from Virginia, we discovered that we had the clearance for an extra inch or two at the ridge. (You can read about that learning adventure a few posts back where my friend Romie who was driving the truck pulling the Tiny House up Interstate 95 says, "Jim... I almost threw up!")
But I was concerned about soffits sticking out wider than the walls of the Tiny House because I'd been concerned about the overall width of the structure not exceeding eight and a half feet. But I wanted soffits and a vented roof more than I wanted to be under 8.5 feet, so I decided to build some svelte soffits.
The first step was ripping back a bit of the plywood sheathing on the roof and extending all the rafter tails enough to fit an inch and a half continuous soffit vent under the rafters.
Here you can see the plywood sheathing cut back and some of the rafter tails installed. The white metal stuff is the continuous soffit venting. I spraypainted the underside black to match the trim.
Here's what it looks like underneath:
I worked my way 'round the house...
Then I ripped some new strips of plywood to cover the extended rafter tails:
Here are the plywood strips I'm ripping. This photo is the very beginning of my woodshop in the basement. It's not set up yet, but more on that eventually. I'm showing the shop here just because it's so fun and convenient to have tools set up to do a simple process like ripping plywood safely and easily!
And here's the final product!
After this, I was tired and wanted a break. Also, we got a kitten.
So, I moved on to some cat-friendly indoor projects:
Next step... black metal roofing!
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