Well, a controlled fire really. But before we get to that, I get to talk about pine, lots and lots of pine. 

We ordered V-groove pine boards for the ceiling and walls. 

138 to be exact. 

I didn’t count. J did. 

Anyways…

J insulated the walls before hand so when his dad came out, they could get right to installing the boards. 

Piece by piece, it went up. It got a little tricky around the wheel wells, but they managed ok! We wanted a tight seal around the edges. 

Sometimes I was called in to help push a board into place. This gal’s not afraid to get her hands dirty! 

W “helped” too. 

Don’t mind her wacky hairstyle.

This mama has got some crazy hairstylin’ skills. 

Please excuse the mess. 

Next came taping off all the windows and the door. 

At this moment, the tiny house was too cabin-y. A few members of our family told us not to paint the walls because of the beautiful wood. 

But that wasn’t the look that we were going for. So we decided to whitewash.

And with whitewashing comes paint flecks.

EVERYWHERE. 

Hence the paper and plastic. Protect your glass!

To whitewash, we picked our gallon of white, then diluted it in a large 5 gallon bucket with water. Our ratio was 1:1.5.

We experimented with applying the whitewash and then immediately wiping off the excess, but we liked it better when it wasn’t wiped off. 

In the above picture, it has only been applied once. Not liking the patchiness, we put on a second coat and that took the patches away. 

Much better!

In our master loft, we wanted to have the headboard wall make a statement, but with a little one, we didn’t want pictures or shelves above our heads for easy destruction, so we opted for a color wash.
It’s very similar to whitewashing, but with, you guessed it, color. 

I think this ratio was 1:1. 

Now this is where we had an oops.

As we never had color washed anything before, we thought it’d be the same as whitewashing. 

Not so much. 

The color was so dark, it seeped into the dry wood faster than we could wipe it off. 

J also put it on right to left, instead of top to bottom. It made it so you could see the areas where he started and stopped.

It looked like giant dark lines dividing up the wall. 

Not so pretty. 

But what to do???

J decided that he wasn’t going to settle, so he decided to sand off as much as he could and then re-apply it with a more watered down color wash. 

What happened next turned our frowns upside down! 

Sanding it took out the dark lines, but it also exposed more of the wood grain and turned the whole wall into what we refer to as weathered wood. 

So much easier on the eyes.

Now for the fire.

I found a technique called Shousugiban that uses a huge torch to burn the wood and bring out the wood grain. 

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We absolutely loved it and wanted to use it for our accent wall and all the ceilings. 

Here’s the accent wall. 

Can you say “gorgeous”?!?!?

Now keep in mind, if you decide to use the Shousugiban technique, you’re playing with fire, so take the appropriate measures to stay safe. J burned on a concrete floor in the shop to avoid starting a fire outside in the dry grass, but he also had a hose and fire extinguisher on stand by just in case.

The main ceiling was next. 

To help join the two sides together, J and his dad ran a piece right down the middle. It didn’t stick out very far, so it created an illusion of a false beam of some sort but also gives an impression of a curved roof line, which I really enjoy. 

Can you spot the middle? 

After everything was nailed into place and wiped free of soot, J sprayed a clear water-based coat of polyurethane over every wood surface. This will help protect the wood from moisture and (hopefully) make it easy to clean off surprise works of art from little hands. 

I think it makes the wood glow.

What do you think?