DIY Tiny House Wall Sheathing

Hey guys it's Lindy and Mike here and this is T.I.Y. The Tiny It Yourself Channel and today we're going to talk about how we're sheathing our house in OSB as well as some extra triangulation we've added just for more structural support. Yes we are using OSB oriented strand board we are doing 7 16th inch thick and some of you might be saying why are you using plywood well we actually did the research and found that this was just as structurally sufficient holds up just as long as plywood and it was cheaper so we went with it all right so watch us make this house more like a house do it all right so now that we got some gear on we're gonna show you how to do OSB on one of our smaller walls this is our hip side wall it'll be easy because there's really no cutouts it's just a blank yeah we're gonna start off by measuring and making sure it's square by doing the diagonals and then if one diagonal is longer than the other we're gonna use this ratchet strap to shorten it up so they're both the same length and it's perfectly square yeah so then once it's square we're gonna take the metal uh scrapping we're gonna add that so that it stays that way and kind of add some structural integrity as well and then we're gonna put the OSB sheets on show you how to cut them and anchor them on all right so from top right to bottom left we are 120 and a half inches and now top left to bottom right what are we lindy oh snap so we got to go an inch which means we take half an inch down alongside that will make the short side a half inch longer and we'll be perfect okay since this right here was the longer side that means that we had to attach our ratchet strap to this corner and have it pulled down here to kind of square it up or this way for extra triangulation we'll be using this metal hanger strap it comes in 50 foot rolls at three quarter inch it is a 24 gauge galvanized steel as you can see here we've already used quite a bit of this first box just to do one of our small walls and while we bought two packages we're probably going to need closer to four or more for adhering our metal strapping we're just using the same screws that we did for our metal studs they aren't self-tapping but we're using that because we want them to be tighter and they also have a flatter head so they lay a little bit more flush if we're going to put OSB over them okay since Mikey is obviously the taller of us too we just sent him inside to tack the first one on this corner because it's easier to pull it down than to try and pull it up okay so since when you get down to like the smaller rolls in the circle of the metal strapping it has these bumps everywhere and you don't really want that you want to be as straight as possible so that it has really good tension so we're just taking this kind of like metal crimper flattener and just kind of ironing out a lot of these kinks get those kinks out you can either bend this stuff back and forth where you want to cut it or you can just cut it with some shears easy peasy all right now we're getting the bottom left corner all tightened in all right now that we have our x done we just did two screws per corner as well as one each in the middle and we'll be moving on to OSB all right right now we're using a chalk line to mark this board so we can cut it down to the height of our wall bam now we're ready to cut all right so we're putting down our first sheet of OSB and it will actually go in the middle here and because of how our trailer is we need to cut out these little pieces here so that it sits actually flush lower down all right now that we've got this sheet all notched in and it's laying right on the center of these studs we're ready to screw it in all right even though we don't need to be up to code for a trailer building we are going to be up to code on our fasteners anyway especially because they're for high winds and that is six inches apart for the fasteners along the edges and then 12 inches through the middle so we're just making marks so that we get it every six inches or so and then in the middle we're going to do that down the middle beam every 12 inches and this is the front wall so it's going to get all the wind so we definitely want to get all the fasteners in on this piece so we'll first be using this countersink head so that our screws do not sit proud in the OSB we want everything to lay as flush as possible and one little hack here that's definitely worth mentioning because it can save you a lot of time and effort is to just countersink while you're on a horizontal surface before putting it up that way you're not getting any sketchy angles of the ladder and you can easily just countersink that hole so these are screws we'll be using to actually adhere our OSB to our metal framing they have an easy start zip tip helps it kind of just drill directly through the metal instead of us pre-drilling all right our first piece is officially on now we need to cut those two other side pieces and tack them on as well another important thing to note we actually overlapped this edge about half an inch so that when we put sheathing on the other wall the corner would be completely covered all right the wall is complete and in case you're wondering why there aren't any windows or anything like that that is where our tongue box is going to be where things like our solar batteries and our compressor for our heat pump will be that's a mini split all right now i wanted to take a look at a more complicated wall and how we're doing it this is our left side wall you can see we just did a very long piece of strapping there which is going to help triangulation a lot and act sort of as a cable to support this overhang here and then this piece of plywood gives you an idea of how you might want to cut out a window sort of just notch it out which is pretty straightforward and then we're doing horizontal pieces all the way along the top all right i figured we'd do a progress update we're probably two-thirds maybe three-quarters of the way done sheathing we have now even sheathed the front of the overhang wall we have yet to do the bottom of it though because we just put in these wooden rafters which we will attach to soon here is the very back side as you can see we've left this giant space open for windows all of this is going to be windows from there all the way down to right there and we'll custom make those in a future video uh this is the front right here i thought it'd be cool to get an idea of it sort of half finished here and the next piece we're going to put on is right here waiting to go on puzzle piece on so that's going in the back corner as you can see we've also finished the back side of our house which without any siding on it looks pretty boring but it's done starting to look like a house on the inside which is pretty cool all right well hopefully now you guys realize how easy it is to do your osb sheathing along with some of the metal strapping it's a really pretty easy process you don't really need many tools it's just a little bit more tedious yeah now you know how to actually build a house this feels so much more housey than it did before and so i feel great about it yeah so if you haven't already like and subscribe and also check out our instagram tinyityourself all right see you next time