I am clearly not the cook in the family but did rather enjoy this Caprese sandwich that I constructed.  I am nursing a back injury suffered while playing soccer on Monday and there is nothing like comfort food to help ease the pain. 

Before releasing refrigerant into the HVAC system it is necessary to remove all air and moisture from the lines.  This is done by drawing a 500-micron vacuum on the lines via a service port on the external unit. It was less expensive and more convenient to purchase a vacuum pump, digital micron gauge (the rectangular blue object), and the necessary fittings and hoses than to schedule a service call with an HVAC technician. Once the lines were evacuated, I charged them with refrigerant and proceeded to test the system. I only had time to test the cooling operation which worked perfectly and will verify the heating mode tomorrow. I am amazed at how quiet both the internal and external units are.  Whisper quiet is not an exaggeration. 

Working alone I made slow but steady progress on the inside walls today. Two more panels remain to be done on the first floor and a couple more to finish the loft. The “board seams” will be much less apparent when everything is painted white. I still have not decided how to cover the fender insulation but I am leaning towards 3/4″ MDF with all edges mitered and rounded over.

My sister, Alissa, has a daughter at Babson and a son working in Waltham. She came to visit them for the weekend but I probably got to spend the most time with her. We drove into Boston where we did a fair bit of walking along the Rose Kennedy Greenway, along the harbor, and around the Faneuil Hall  Marketplace where we had dinner. Between the buskers, kids playing in the fountains, and seals of the Aquarium we were treated to a wide array of entertainment.

Over the course of the summer I was approached by a number of early stage technology companies interested in having me consult for them. I put all of them on hold until September so I could maximize my time with Maya on the tiny house project. I have limited my aggregate commitments to one day per week. It will be a nice way to continue with my passion for high-tech engineering while remaining mostly retired. One of my clients is located in an area of Somerville with extremely limited parking availability. They were kind enough to reserve me one of their few spots.

The Phasmatodea are an order of insects, whose members are also known as stick-bugs, walking sticks or bug sticks. They are the longest insects in the world and if viewed from an engineering perspective, are miraculous creations. Imagine trying to construct a 3D model of one.  What materials would have the strength-to-weight ratio to hold up?  Normally their camouflage makes them virtually impossible to spot in nature.  Not so much when this one chose to climb onto our back door where Jeanine alerted me to its presence.

Occasionally I can’t resist capturing the simple beauty of flowers. The closer one looks the more there is to admire.

With Maya off to college, Kyle has stepped in to partner with me for the remainder of the tiny house build. He too is interested in learning the construction skills needed to build a house. We started today with interior walls. Normal homes use gypsum board (sheetrock) with joint compound to hide seams.  The racking forces on the frame of a trailer during towing would almost certainly produce cracks in such joints over time. We are using 1/2″ thick MDO plywood with flexible caulking between them. To hide the seams we rout vertical V-grooves on 8″ centers and half a V at the edges of each panel. Seams will appear the same as the other grooves. When painted this will look like wide tongue and groove boards. Preparing each 4’x8′ panel is very time-consuming and requires a precise layout for windows, outlets, switches other such features followed by the routing operations to create the grooves. It takes us about 2 hours per panel so this phase of the build is going to proceed slowly, especially in light of the fact that we plan to only work half days.

I have replaced Maya as Kyle’s workout partner joining him early this morning for a 90-minute session at the Thoreau Club. For all the strength I have gained while constructing the tiny house, my cardio has not experienced similar improvement and is not where it needs to be for the upcoming soccer season.  I focused my workout on the elliptical machine and will do so for the rest of the week before even thinking about weight training.

After returning, I insulated the trailer fenders (wrapped in 2″ thick foam core) and installed the strike plates for the front door (the door strike was precut but I had to cut the deadbolt plate recess by hand). I also built a router jig that will be needed for interior wall installation which I hope to start tomorrow.

Maya’s team was two of nine who successfully completed their first engineering project as part of freshman orientation. The details are not clear as I learned of these exploits by way of texts from Maya to Jeanine.  Something about building an enclosure to protect an egg dropped from a great height.

On the home front, Kyle assisted me as we continued work on the interior of the tiny house. Like his sister, he is also interested in learning the skills needed to construct a house. We tackled some of the most difficult remaining tasks (interior triangular walls for the end caps and the flooring for the storage loft behind the sleeping loft including a cutout and access panel for the circuit breaker box).

The day has finally arrived. Our youngest child is off to college. Jeanine, Kyle and I helped Maya to move into her dorm at Olin College of Engineering. Somehow, knowing she is only 30 minutes away made the occasion less traumatic than it was for the boys who chose schools half way and all the way across the country. After initial setup, I returned home to build a two-step ladder so Maya could climb into her ridiculously high bed, a 46-inch tall, 5 shelved, night table to augment the limited room storage, 6 drawer dividers, and a perfectly dimensioned piece of lumber to prevent her poorly designed dresser from tipping over with a drawer fully extended. I used up all the leftover plywood from the tiny house project and finished just in time to arrive late for dinner with her roommate and her parents.

It was 7 weeks ago to the day that the trailer for Maya’s tiny house arrived.  Maya was a recent high school graduate with no prior construction experience. I weighed 22 pounds more than I do today. This summer has been the most physically demanding and exhausting of my life and I will cherish it like no other. Working side by side with Maya, watching her acquire new skills and confidence every day, and building something of real substance and beauty has been one of the highlights of my life. When Maya leaves for college tomorrow, I will continue work on the interior at a much reduced pace and will plan to finish before winter arrives.

Not the most attractive addition to Maya’s tiny house, an essential component nevertheless, the external half to the mini-split system that will heat and cool the interior. With the addition of a pan heater that I installed, it is rated for operation down to -15F. Mounting it high will protect it from incidental damage and allow for operation with snowfalls up to 6 feet. Although this is the front of the trailer, it is the back of the house and the least objectionable location we could come up with.  Today was our last day working on the house together. Maya leaves for college on Saturday and needs the day off tomorrow to pack. Our ambitious goal for the day was to complete the interior ceiling and we managed to do so thanks to the efficiency of my new track saw and Maya’s clever idea for templating the triangular dormer side walls.

Over the course of the summer, Maya has developed from a good craftsman to an exceptional one.  Pictured below she proudly shows off the hand-cut circle she cut in one of the ceiling panels for a light fixture. I don’t think many professional woodworkers or builders could match her precision. She brought this level of craftsmanship to every aspect of her work and I took great pleasure bearing witness to her development.

With an early start and late finish to the day, Maya and I reached an important milestone this evening by completing the exterior of the tiny house.  Although the interior remains to be finished, the tiny house can now be sold in its current state of completion to a buyer who would like to do the remaining work themselves. Maya has several interested parties already. Kyle helped me to suspend the external half or our HVAC min-split system on the back of the house and I will make the refrigerant line connections tomorrow.