We Have Walnut!
Goodmorning all! Today’s post is a pre-written post from the end of September – to be honest I had forgotten about this draft, and as things are progressing quite quickly on the house, I wanted to get his out there for timeline purposes. Enjoy!
Hey y’all!
Another tiny home update coming at you – today we’re discussing all things exterior design!
When dad and I were discussing exterior design plans over the summer (again, hey if you’re new here! My dad is acting foreman of this project as he has much more construction knowledge than I do – I’m the design and budget manager, he’s the building foreman. It’s a great partnership and I’m so thankful we work well together!) and were throwing around ideas of using T1-11 siding on the exterior, finished with the Shou Sugi Ban charring effect. However, we knew before we decided on a plan exactly, we needed to test out the charring and made sure it fit my design ideas.
So we made the trek over to Menards, spent $33 on an 8×4 piece of T1-11, brought it home and cut off a section of it. Dad used his weed blower (essentially a miniature flame thrower, shit is pretty cool) to char the exterior layer of the T1-11. And boy, it did not go to plan.
Per several Google searches and YouTube videos, we believed our charred wood would turn out like this
She’s rustic, beautiful, cozy. Instead, our T1-11 siding did not take the heat very well, and we ended up with this zebra striped ugly ass shit
I was pretty upset when the T1-11 siding plan fell through – why do the professional DIYers on the YouTube world make it look so easy? Why does mine look nothing like theirs? I could have gotten lost in my frustrations, but dad had an idea to pull off a piece of oak siding and run it through the planer. We had no idea what was underneath 70 years worth of weathering, stain and paint. Turns out, it was a gold mine.
Before 
After
Turns out, the assumed oak exterior was in fact walnut. Walnut!! Can you believe it?! For those who don’t know wood, walnut is used primarily in furniture building; it runs about $15/ft at our local sawmills, and is slow growing and rarer than other types of lumber, like oak or pine. And I have a whole building sided with the stuff! Pretty unbelievable, and a definite blessing.
Upon removing the few boards we used for the experiment, I went ahead and popped off all the walnut siding. Thankfully, I was able to complete this project in a day – as for hammering out all the nails, that’s a constant project. Spare hour? Hammer some nails.
With our newfound discovery, dad and I began brainstorming for a new exterior look. I really like the look of deep wood and black metal, and began pulling inspiration from other tiny houses around the web. I love the modern cottage look of the below, and would love to create something similar.
I love the black metal and wood mixture on these, and am hoping to create the same on mine. I will use the majority of the walnut on the northern side – the side where my door and big kitchen window are. The rest will be repurposed on the interior as built-in bookshelves, countertops, bathroom vanity, and stair treads.
Another detail you might have seen in the inspiration pictures above, are the beautiful black windows, a stark yet stunning contrast to the pale wood. As you may remember from my last post, I already have windows, WHITE windows. When I started this tiny home journey, I knew I wanted black windows, however they are astronomically higher priced than white ones, so I decided to DIY paint my white ones black.
Stay tuned for my next post to see the process behind painting my white vinyl windows black!
And yes, it can be done š
Sincerely,
Sarah
signedsarah.com 