About a decade ago, I bought a sign-making kit which quietly sat on the shelf til very recently. At the time, I had thought I would make some cute signs for sale or as gifts, things like “GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE” (to be placed by a river or woods…) or “MORDOR – NO PEDESTRIANS” (one does not simply walk into… well, you know), “FIRE SWAMP”, that kind of thing. I never did make those signs — I may yet — especially now that the prospect of actually living in the woods is coming a reality. I could set up a few of these for fun for guests to discover. For now, though, I thought to make a simple two-slat sign to bring with us next time we go to the land, to stake our claim, as it were. Shown here, the sign after initial painting, before any finish work (or the second coat of paint, for that matter).
The sign itself has a few imperfections — as does the house, as does all of life. There was no need to make the sign more perfect than the rest of life. What’s in a name? Hoverbirds (what most people call “hummingbirds”) are the unofficial homestead mascot. They’re small (as is the house), efficient (ditto), fierce when they need to be, highly agile, and require just tiny sips of nutrients to keep going. Seemed like a good choice. They’re also the inspiration for this desideratum: find the sweetness, be the lightness. Indeed, good advice. Especially for a soon-to-be tiny house dweller. But good advice more broadly.
I’m back from hiatus and getting organized about what construction progress I can make between now and the end of the season. The “end of the season” is whenever it’s too cold to safely use power tools in the workshop (which is both unheated and unheat-able) or too cold to work in the house itself. Now the house is insulated, but the things that I intended to make and keep it warm aren’t ready to do that, yet, so working in there is still subject to ambient temps, more or less. I suppose I could set an electric heater in there if needs be, but if it’s that cold, chances are it’s too cold in the shop to be building stuff for the house anyway. Depending on how the weather goes, “the season” can extend into early November, more or less. Still plenty of time to get things done between now and then — especially if I’m organized. Which is why I’m spending some time getting organized 🙂
To ease back in, today I spent a little time contemplating the tub filler. What’s that? It’s this:
Obviously, that is neither my tub nor my house. Instead of mounting to a wall or the tub or a deck, the spout comes from a free-standing pedestal. Perfect! I didn’t even know these things existed til I found them online. It’s exactly what I need for my tiny bathroom.
The first question is how to get the water to it. That’s not nearly as simple as it would be in a conventional house — you know, the kind with lots of clearance around everything. In mine, the filler needs to go in a corner and it’s not immediately obvious how to get it hooked up without some crazy tight angles or wacky flying pipes. Just move it out from the corner? Nope, can’t do that, the tub is in the way. It doesn’t look it from here, but the angle is deceptive. There’s not much room between the pedestal and the tub and the tub is shoved as far into the corner as a rounded thing can go. You can see the hot & cold lines passing through the baseboard en route to the kitchen (technically, from the kitchen). I have a temporary tee there (stubs to the left) as a place-holder for the tub tap.
But there’s no tidy way to get those stubs hooked up to the hot and cold inlets for the pedestal (if you look closely, there is a dark red and dark blue cap at roughly 3 and 9 o’clock on the base flange — those are the inlets). And of course I want local cut-offs. And I have to be able to reach them. This corner is pretty cramped now and it’s mostly empty. When it has the tub filler in it, there’s no reaching down there to turn a cut-off valve. I can get to this corner from around the tub at floor level (the tub is smaller at the floor), but it’s still quite awkward. I’m going to have to think about this a bit. I think some highly flexible hoses are in my future, like the kind you’d use to hook up a sink faucet. I still need to put the cut-offs somewhere and have them be solid enough that they can be actuated without stressing the pipes. . . . and be actually reachable . . . and not detract too much from the room aesthetics. I definitely have some thinking to do on that.
While working on my get-organized document, it occurred to me it was time to think about lighting, too, at least for the T.H.R.O.N.E. Room. I’m thinking LED strip lights in corner-mount diffuser channels run along the perimeter of ceiling. That should provide adequate ambient light and allow for soft mood lighting for relaxing in the tub. While I have no interest in dynamic color changing and so forth, a full-color system can also provide numerous static options for lighting. What I didn’t want was some overly complex control system or remote — most LED controllers are either too simple or too busy with features that don’t interest me. I did find one that seemed to be about perfect.
This one has just the right degree of complexity – set any color you want, a quick on-off button that you can find in the dark (if you know what corner it’s in), and two user presets. As it turns out, this model also can act as a remote control receiver.
So who wants a remote control for the bathroom light? At first it seems silly. When I tell you “sure, but wouldn’t it be nice to be able to push a single button and the whole house lighting goes into ‘night mode’, where most lights are off but the bathroom has a dim glow you can use to navigate to it for a midnight pee?” Why yes it would, in fact, be a pretty nice feature to be able to do that, from bed, just as I turn in for the night. I don’t need anything really complicated, but this feature has merit. I have a length of LED strip light on order now, along with the diffuser channel mounts and this controller widget to evaluate. If they work well and look good, I’ll buy more and use this system for basic lighting throughout.
While I was researching lighting, I was pleased to see a large array of 12V LED-based lights in many formats besides RGB variable color strips. There were standard E26 bulbs in many shapes and sizes. Excellent. Lots of options for low-power lighting. I’m not ready to think about that a lot right now, but it’s just good to know it won’t be hard to find low-power lights that look good. I can use these bulbs in standard fixtures if I want — tons of choices. That’s all I need to know today.
So what’s next? I dunno. That’s why I need to spend some more time getting organized! There are lots of things partly done. It’s time to itemize and prioritize these so I can make the best use of the next two months or so before putting it away for the winter. That’s first on my list for tomorrow morning. I already have that list started, I just need to shuffle it around a bit and make a plan.