Tiny House Episode 12: Finishing the Interior with Pine
What's the best material to finish the interior of a tiny house on wheels? After a fair bit of deliberation we decided that pine tongue and groove paneling was our best option. Although, as you will see, installing the paneling ended up being a very time consuming process.
Conventional building materials, like drywall, were out due to both the weight and potential for cracking while travelling down the road. The pine paneling we chose is light weight, strong, and very thin. All positive attributes for a house on a trailer.
What I didn't expect was the sheer amount of work finishing the interior of the house in pine was going to take. The lofts, windows and doors, electrical outlets, and odd angles created by our shed roof made for tons of measuring and cutting.
I didn't want to have a ton of dust to clean off the walls so I made most of the cuts outside. A standard chop saw with a finishing blade was all that was needed for the straight cuts.
Left: You can see the stair stepping pattern that was the most efficient way to tackle longer stretches. Right: A pneumatic brad nailer was indispensable for installing the pine paneling. I nailed just below the base of the tongue at a downwards angle. This method was less likely to split the tongue and also holds the boards down onto the ones below better.
Most of the time hand strength alone was sufficient to set the tongue portion of the bottom board into the groove portion of the one above. Sometimes though the boards would be extra stubborn and require some extra encouragement. A rubber hammer worked well for this.
Cutting around the large number of electrical boxes and other items on the walls of the house was a tedious process that required a few methods. When encountering windows, doors, and corners most of the cuts were just straight. However for smaller objects small cut outs in the pine boards were required.
A jig saw was used for most of the small cuts.
A few times it made more sense to use a knife to remove small chunks of wood. Note that I am cutting with the grain and I made three tiny straight cuts with the jig saw to start.
I didn't remove much here but that is just the way the board lined up.
I was mostly done when these two pictures were taken. We decided to do the bathroom in cedar instead of pine and liked the color so much we decided to also do the entire ceiling of the house in cedar for contrast.That covers the majority of steps needed to install pine or cedar paneling. One more quick tip I should mention is that since the paneling is thinner than drywall you should recess your electrical boxes a little bit further back into the wall so the outlet cover plates are nice and snug to the wall.
In the following video, I talk a bit more about how I installed the pine paneling and discuss why I decided to use 11/16th thick cedar tongue and groove boards for the floor of our lofts.
That looks great! I bet it smells good too.
Yeah the cedar especially.
Coming along nice, you can begin see it it as a home now .great work!
That natural wood just got the looks. What is the area of the not-so-tiny house? :P
It is 200 sqft on the main floor and the 2 lofts combined are another 100.
Not so tiny after all :) Awesome!
What do you consider tiny?
Wait a second, you said sqft... I was thinking m2 :O So that makes 19m2 + 10m2. Completely different perspective. Yeah tiny indeed, but it looks spacious in the video!
Yeah m2 would actually make it a fairly large house. Ha!
We did our best to leave it open so it would feel bigger.
Canada is weird that way. Officially we use the metric system but all of our buildings are still built using imperial measurements.
You have my upvote!!! tiny houses are cousy and actually great to live in :)
Thanks! The pine gives it a cabin like feel.
Very nice! I am doing the same in our home i love the look. Very interesting cedar on the ceiling i may try this somewhere. Are you leaving it natural or staining it?
We finished it with clear water-modified polyurethane thinking it would be easy to wipe clean but a natural oil finish may be a better option.
That sounds like it's going to be beautiful. I have the same tongue and groove that I'm installing in our home now. I'm going down that same path with clear polyurethane. I have found you can get different wood tone effects with different clear poly's. I have tried the oil emulsified water based clear poly and it creates a golden glow. The latest that I really like is the clear water based from Varathane. It retains the lighter look of the wood. One more trick I tried was that on the doors that I built; I put one coat of teak oil; let it sit for 2 weeks; lightly sanded it. Then I put clear water based oil emulsified over it for the front door. This was a T&G Doug Fir hand crafted door. It gave it a really golden look. Have fun experimenting; it's a fun adventure.
Thanks for the encouragement! Not sure how you stumbled on this post but we actually finished the house quite a while ago. It looked really good with the plain polyurethane on it but we had some cracking in the winter due to the very dry winter air. I wonder if oiling the wood would help to prevent this?
Not sure, but i think the lighter look is beautiful. I have beams that check and crack and i kind of like that look. I even took a draw knife to spots on the beam's and then torched these areas, sanded a little then i coated them in polyurethane. I let the wife set the beams on fire, it made her day. When i tell people we need to set our beams on fire they kind of look at me funny :)
Sounds like it would look really nice with the added detailing.
It is starting to look like a home. Very nice!
Thanks!
That looks absolutely gorgeous. I hadn't thought about the fact that the pine would actually be lighter than drywall, and I guess the potential for cracking on the move is pretty big too.
Are you going to do anything to stain/finish the wood or just leave it natural?
We ended up giving it a clear coat with a water based Polyurethane. I'm not sure if it was the best option, maybe an oil finish would have been better but my reasoning was that this would be easier to keep clean especially in the kitchen where food splatters.
Can't go wrong with Poly! Spar varnish or Cetol marine finish are good too, but they can give the wood an odd color.
House complete, excellent work
Still much more to do ;)
This house looks amazing. I like the cedar/pine combo. I have to go back and view your other posts about this house.
Yeah we weren't originally going to do it but I really like the contrast of the two different woods.