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Welcome to our tiny home journey. We're all about sharing honest stories, triumphs, and failures along the way. 

The Roofing Process For Our Tiny Home

The Roofing Process For Our Tiny Home

A roof over our heads

After completing the house and roof framing it was on to roofing. (More on roof framing later, but to sum it up... angles, angles, and more angles!) After sheathing the roof framing with sheets of OSB, we needed to add a water shield. We opted for Grace Water and Ice Shield instead of felt, since it's super sticky and when you nail through it, it creates a gasket effect and stays sealed! 

Keeping water OUT - Grace Water and Ice Shield

Grace W&I Shield can be difficult to work with, but also really fun! It's like a giant sticker roll.  It's difficult to apply in hot weather (which we did for the most part) since the stickiness gets so gooey. Spring or fall would be the best seasons for installing Grace Water and Ice Shield, in my small opinion. As we rolled it out and stuck it to the whole roof in overlapping layers, it was easy to see that our roof would be very well protected from the rain, if the rain ever somehow made its way through our Onduvilla roofing shingles.

onduvilla-grace-shield-installation

Choosing Onduvilla's interlocking roof shingles

Speaking of Onduvilla... after researching roofing options, we found a clear winner among other tiny home builders. These shingles are malleable and easy to work with like normal asphalt shingles, but they're ridged (and rigid) so that they can interlock to avoid being blown off in high winds (or when we're, for example, driving down the interstate)! After using the nail gun for all of the framing and sheathing, it was fun to have a break and to use the electric drills for Onduvilla's 3" roofing screws. They have gaskets built onto them to that you maintain a seal across the roofing.

I would definitely recommend studying the Onduvilla online instruction PDF before starting ANYTHING - the order of installing shingles is crucial not only for water flow, but in this case, for wind flow. The one thing the PDF won't tell you (because these aren't just for tiny homes) is that you should install from the non-tongue end of the trailer to the tongue end, so the airflow while going down the road absolutely won't disrupt the shingles. 

Cutting the pieces - hand saws and utility knives

It took patience to hand-cut the Onduvilla trim pieces (which curve 90 degrees from the flat part of the roof and attach to the trim along the roof's edges). You can use a hand circular saw for cutting these shingles, which I found very efficient, but not always as precise as I wanted. I tend to do things fast instead of best sometimes, so I had to make myself take some time and repeatedly cut lines through these little pieces with a utility knife. It was tedious, but worth the cleaner cuts and nice finished effect. 

onduvilla-roof-detail-tiny-house

Slow and steady...my biggest lesson

It took us very little time to cover the bulk of our roof with the normal shingles, but we slowed down a lot when we got to the valleys and edges. I messed up the flashing/shingle order for the valley where our 45 degree angle roof meets the dormer roof (keep water from sitting here is important). Thankfully Tom's dad is often there to make sure we don't mess anything up irreparably. ;) One of the biggest lessons I've learned from construction  - and this has applied to every single step - is that it's better to take extra prep time and do something right, rather than do it not-quite-right the first time and have to re-do everything. I like to see results and feel like we're really making progress, but some days that's just not what needs to happen. I think learning this this will carry over to the rest of life just fine. :)

Wall Framing: When It Starts To Get Real

Wall Framing: When It Starts To Get Real