The Rustic "Temporary" Microhouse

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Floor and ceding are planks fastened over the joists. It's best to edge floorboards with tongue-and-groove molding or a simple rabbeted lap joint to keep out drafts. The lumber mill can do this for a fee on its table shaper, or you can invest in a dado set for your table saw to cut rabbets, or in a heavy-duty hand-held router and a set of T&G rabbeting bits and do it yourself at home where you likely have a shop, or a hard-floored garage or driveway to work on, plus plenty of electric current from your friendly utility company.

You'd have to look hard these days for a shanty like the one that Thoreau took apart for its edge-beveled wall boards. If you like power-planing or hand-planing, you can bevel the outer top edge and lower inside edge of all your wall boards and lap them horizontally on the posts with feathered edges overlapping top-over-bottom to form a more or less watertight joint. During the summer, Thoreau enjoyed the breeze that his feather—edged walls let in, but when winter threatened, he covered them with shingles he made from sawmill scrap.

You too can waterproof horizontal sheathing by nailing or stapling on hand-split or bought shingles or clapboards, though they'll cover your sheathing screws and make eventual disassembly more of a hassle. You can sacrifice siding material and go modern: if the house must be moved, nail on your wood plank sheathing, staple on windproof and energy-retaining Tyvek housewrap, nail on an inch of rigid foam insulation and then the shingles or clapboards. The siding can be pried off from inside when it's time to move along.

It's also possible to fasten edge-moulded boards horizontally, with overlapping joints that will shed water. You can also fasten horizontal furring strips of 2 x 4 lumber every 18 inches or 2 feet, up and down the posts. Sheathe them with edge-molded boards. Easiest is to sheathe with butted square-edged planks. Then cover the seams with thin board battens. A layer of tarpaper (building felt) under the finish boards is traditional and helps weatherproof the house, but isn't consistent with healthy house theory.

Before tarpaper, the old-timers caulked the cracks of board-and-batten siding with rag strips, then wind-proofed further with newspaper flour-pasted to the insides of the boards. Thoreau mentions no such measures; he plastered his inside walls to keep out the cold wind. Today, you can pack Coming's new Miraflex itchless fiberglass insulation into the interior walls; it comes encapsulated in its own vapor barrier like sausage. Then apply easily removed edge-moulded boards with screws or easily pried-off finishing nails, or another type of interior wall.

Old-time inside wall coverings can be as complicated as Thoreau's lath and plaster or as quick and simple as burlap or canvas stapled onto long strips of half-inch by 1 1/2-inch lattice boards that are fastened to the wall top and bottom. Then the fabric is pulled tight at the sides around more lath, and sprayed with water to shrink it taut. In the old days, they made walls and even ceilings this way and shrunk the fabric by painting it. You can also attach reclaimed paneling from a recycling center or thrice-accursed gypsum drywall if you like to carry, score, split, tape, and paste the infernally heavy, brittle, dog-awful ugly stuff. It also must be painted or papered immediately or the paper covering will absorb every vapor, stain, or smear it can. Removing drywall without destroying it a impossible.

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