Happy 2025! We hope you've had a restful festive season 🎄🎉. Time doesn’t just fly — it seems to sprint when you’re building a tiny house. Going to pack updates for October, November, and December in this build update, there’s been a lot more construction than reflection and writing.

But, as we reminisce on the past three months, it’s clear how much we’ve accomplished, as we continue to chip away at our goals. From plumbing adventures to detours into Passive House design and marathon plywood sessions, every moment has been filled with both sweat (thank you 34 °C degree days) and satisfaction (seeing the house fully closed up has been so cool!).

Plumbing

October started with a visit from Warren, our plumber extraordinaire. Warren isn’t just any plumber — he’s an encyclopedic wealth of plumbing knowledge who loves a good yarn over a strong cup of tea. He spent half a day with us, not just helping with the plumbing but explaining the “why” behind every decision and helping us design our plumbing schema. Then, together, over the next fortnight, he walked us through installing all of our rough in plumbing. We glued down the bathroom tile tray, installed PEX pipes for hot and cold water, and drilled through the subfloor for the plumbing outlets. Warren even advised us to use red PEX for hot water and black for cold — a small but clever way to keep things organised. We learnt how the behind the scenes of rough in plumbing for the shower, sink, and laundry, shifting our perspective on pipe placement and future-proofing our design should we look to add more complex features.

A nugget of gold was Warren telling us why he hates installing kitchen taps with extendable hoses as they are prone to more leaks. Secretly Erny wanted to install one of these but we kept quiet this time round 😂. Another nugget was Warren questioning why we needed two sinks (one in the bathroom and one in the kitchen) considering we have such a small space. He wasn't sure that we would find an appropriate off the shelf small sink and that we would most likely need to design or make a custom bathroom sink option to do justice to the small space. With this in mind, we changed our design last minute (reducing cost for us!). Warren took the time to teach us novices instead of rushing to finish the job, so now we feel more confident knowing where all our pipes are going. We were so appreciative to work alongside someone so experienced, and we came away feeling much more confident in our approach.

See the photos and read more here!