Building a HEATED DOG HOUSE for Canadian Winters

Due to an unfortunate and completely unforeseen fireworks accident, my dog ​​Bailey now needs a new home as it is the coldest time of the year. I decided to install a

heated

floor with Wi-Fi capabilities to keep her warm even on the coldest Canadian days. In all seriousness, this old dog

house

had the floor rotting and the tiles falling off and it was no good for anything other than firewood, so this construction will be a stretch for a dog

house

; honestly it's pretty much like

building

a small dog house but I've never built any outside structures before and I have some builds coming up this year where I'll be so this will be a great introduction and I'll be able to try everything out on a small scale and that includes sheet roof insulation, all of that, really everything except the foundation, so first I'm making a little platform for the doghouse to sit on and I'm using some cedar twos and fours and then I'll use Planks cedar deck on top I decided to use cedar because of its outdoor protection and I really like the look of cedar versus pressure treated and in the end I want to go with that kind of modern orange cedar look on this one because my dog You can totally tell, so after about an hour I prepped the frame and put some blocks around where the base of the shed will be for insulation purposes and now I'm ready to lay a platform.

I used some popsicle sticks to space the boards evenly and then I used my finger to space this screw so they were all in a relatively similar position from the edge of the board and then I just fastened each deck board with two two-inch screws. inches on each the stud on the last board wasn't the full width so I just measured it and then I'm going to rip up a board with my foreign Kreg track saw jig. Once I cut it out, I used a quarter inch round bit on my router just to give it the same kind of round finish as the other side.

Once the deck was done, I turned it on its side and I'm going to insulate underneath where the house will be, since the floor of the deck is essentially the subfloor of the house, so I have this two-inch rigid insulation and I'm going to cut it about a half inch in each dimension and then I will spray foam into place on the deck frame. I sprayed foam around all the cracks and gaps. so this seal will be pretty weather resistant once the house is on it, now I'm ready to start the framing and for this I'm just using some two by fours like you would on a house.

I made the stud spacing about 24 inches and made sure the bottom board of each wall was cedar so that water coming in from the deck wouldn't rot the wood, so I made the first three walls 24 inches high and The fourth wall will be 30 inches high and will have a two-style slim ceiling for the door. I framed it at 18 by 18 inches and on two of the walls I'm

building

this separate portion out of 2x3 lumber instead of two by four so it has a one inch indentation and then there will be these decorative cedar shakes in this indentation, once It's all done, which are going to be different from the rest of the walls, so basically I framed a 2x4 wall and a two by three wall and then I just screwed them together like one weird wall with all the walls laid out, all I had to to do was make sure each wall was completely square to the deck and with each wall perpendicular, then I screwed the wall to the foundation using a three inch deck screw about every Foot or so foreign foundation completely finished in about half a day.

Now this dog house is going to have a

heated

floor so for electricity I just have this 50 foot extension cord and I'm going to cut off the female end and plug it right into a junction box and then I'm going to have to plug the dog house into one from the outside outlets in the house for the winter, so I just cut three or four inches off the jacket and then stripped each individual wire and then installed two. four inch electrical boxes where I will connect all the wires and drill a hole through the base plate of the wall and floor to run the wire to the first electrical box.

By the way, I'm not an electrician. I do a lot of research. but don't take what I say here too seriously and always do your own research if you are building some holes through studs. I mounted another utility box and ran some normal 14 2 household wires from one box to In the other junction box I put another short piece of 14 2 wire that goes to the other box right above it and then I stripped the wires and connected the three wires blacks with one of these wire nuts and did the same with all of them. three white wires and the three ground wires and I also connected one of the grounds to one of the ground screws on the box, so this is the heated floor panel I am using, it is designed to go under the laminate floor and It's really easy to use.

Basically, you just unroll it, cut it to the length you need, and connect it to the thermostat. As for the thermostat, you will need one that is specific for floor heating and I spent a little more and got this. one that has Wi-Fi so I can control the temperature and turn it on and off from inside my house and I don't have to go out and crawl inside the doghouse to change it, so to connect it I first took the temperature sensor that came with it and I put it in through the back of the unit and screwed it into its corresponding terminals, so you really only have four wires to connect, so I connected the black and white wire that comes from the wall and then the black one. and the white wire coming from the heating pad or charging, then I can install the faceplate and plug the doghouse extension cable into a power source and see if this turns on after running quick setup and failsafe, everything is working and the thermometer says it's definitely working, so I unplugged it and cut the sheet to size between the black strips and then used these pieces of Captain's tape to seal the end of the wires, then lifted the heating pad temporarily to prepare the floor underneath.

I had to chisel in a few spots for some wires and some connections on the heating pad and then sprayed foam in all the gaps to make this as weather resistant as possible. The heating pad here says it's waterproof, so it should be fine for any minimum. water getting through the door or any small cracks left, so I put down a couple layers of underlayment for added insulation and then taped the heating pad in place. I secured all the loose wires. I also taped the temperature sensor down about an inch. from the edge of the heating surface, then I installed the floor right away to protect it from damage from anything else I do on some cheap vinyl plank flooring and 100 waterproof vinyl so I don't have to worry about water getting in through the door or just on my dog's nasty body damaging the floor, then I used some silicone to seal around the door so water can get under the floor and now I can finish the rest of the electrical wiring to have these deck lights that I have.

I'm going to use them on the doghouse ceiling, but I want to run them inline inside the wall, so I cut a cut in the AC power cord and then I'm going to run them into this inline Smart Switch so I can control the power . with my phone I can now cut the plug from that and plug it directly into the junction box and now I'm going to do almost the same thing with some outdoor LED strip lights. Here I have the original 12 volt power adapter that I cut up. the end and instead I'm going to connect this to a 12 volt inline inverter so I don't need to plug it into a wall outlet and with that cable connected to the outlet I can then solder the Smart Switch to the AC input and then The AC cable coming from the junction box will connect directly to the Smart Switch, then I organize everything nicely inside the wall and connect both circuits to the second junction box, these circuits will control the deck lights, which will In fact, I am using the LED light strip on the ceiling light that will illuminate a decorative piece that I will build later.

Now I'm going to cut a jig beam so I square a line from the wall and then use something to space the pencil out a bit, just this USB cable was the perfect height and then I can cut it with a jigsaw so the beam fits sits perfectly on both walls, also a quick tip If you take your speed square and then line it up with your square line on the wall, I always draw a small mark on the speed square and then you can replicate that angle wherever you need it on the board , thanks once I was happy with how that was I simply labeled it as a jig piece and used it to cut five or six more beams.

Now I'm going to set them aside for now while I finish the interior walls to have this 3 8 inch finished. The plywood that I got super cheap at Home Depot is like 35 bucks a sheet and I'm just cutting each wall panel according to its dimensions and then nailing it into place with some 18 gauge brad nails on this wall that I'm cutting into. this six by nine inch access panel so I can access those smart switches if I ever have any connection issues overseas so I just used a little bit of white caulk to seal all the edges and the inside is pretty much done now I'm going to I insulate the walls and am using the same two-inch rigid insulation and some expanding foam around the edges.

I could cut off all the excess and now I'm going to wrap everything in homemade wrap, so I just taped it down. in place to start and then I started stapling it around the entire perimeter of the outside frame, then taped down all the little cuts I had to make and repaired around the door jamb. Now I have one of these shed siding panels and I'm going to use some white exterior paint and give it a couple of outer coats and then it dries overnight. I can cut my panels to size and start putting them up on some walls.

I nailed each panel in place with one and a half inch galvanized nails and only covered three walls inside it because the rest will be covered with cedar panels once I have the roof and everything else. Now I have this cheap 30 dollar window that I bought on Amazon, it's usually used on boats and yachts, but I'm going to use it in a dog house. It has two screws that allow you to open it from the outside, which will be great in the summer, so I can open this window and allow air flow in through the door and out the window. and reduced the heat inside the doghouse, so I cut it out with a jigsaw and then used this long drill bit and a square to transfer the general location of this window to the inside wall, then put a generous bead of silicone around it from the window and I pressed it into place and secured it with some screws and all pre-drilled holes, so this piece didn't actually come with the window.

I had to 3D print this and it took me about three or four hours to make, but this is basically just an interior flange that covers the inside of the wall and I just siliconed it into place. Now I don't really need to access much more inside so I'm going to cut out a roof panel and put some rafters on so first I just put the roof in place and put the two end beams on top and then I just traced on the rafters exactly where it will be located so I can move it to the floor and nail the roof to those joists and once I removed it and made sure it would fit, I added two more joists and nailed everything solid to screw the joists into place.

I simply pre-drilled about a half to three-quarters of an inch and then used some four-inch screws to hold each end in place. now i'm adding the fascia board so i can start filling in the rest of the roof so i use my square to line up the position of the board and then i put two screws in each stud and then i installed the pitch board lining up i placed it with the end of the wall at one end and then I measured it and doubled the distance at the top, then added some blocks around the roof where I will need to put an exterior soffit and then squared it up. the ends and cut it flush with the sloped boards and this roof is now framed with the rest of the siding.

I have these six inch wide tongue and groove cedar panels that I'm going to install along all the walls that weren't covered yet and along the exterior soffit, so I installed my starter piece first after making sure it was completely level . Brad simply nailed it to the top and bottom using some galvanized nails. I made the initial piece a little narrower because I measured the entire width and was going to have ahalf inch piece at the end, so I made this first piece narrower to widen the last piece. Now I did almost exactly the same thing along the soffit, odd touch on the deck.

I have some spare boards for the deck, so I'm going to check everything out. I think this makes it look a little cleaner and you can no longer see the end grain of the deck boards and I also cut the door frame out of some cedar boards. quick after a little sanding it's time to stain and seal all of this cedar so I have this olympic cedar natural tone decking stain and I'm going to cover basically all of the visible cedar like I said I wanted that modern look orange cedar. On this one though the cedar would probably be fine without any sealer, but I really like how it looks so far, so I'm hoping once it has a black roof and a black fascia and trim it will look nice. crisp and modern right before I start staining, I also cut a bunch of these one and a quarter inch wide decking boards that will be used for some molding and accent pieces later, so I'm staining them all at the same time before begin. close the roof I'm leavingTo install these terrace lights, they are quite simple.

I really just drilled some evenly spaced holes and the light just snaps into place and then connected all the wires with the easy connectors. Now it's time for the roof, so I've never done any roofing. before, so stay tuned for my mistakes, but basically I have this aluminum drip edge from Home Depot and I'm going to align one end flush with the end of the roof and then I'm going to square the other end and cut it. with some tin snips which I later switched to aviation snips which were a million times easier to cut with foreign roofing nails every foot or so so the side pieces have the same drip edge and I lined it up with the top part and then I drew a cut line and then I just nailed it with a nail at the top, at the bottom I squared a line with the bottom piece of the drip edge and then I cut the top and under this piece I squared a fascia board line and I should have cut along this line like all the YouTube videos I watched said, but I thought about cutting this and then just folding the corner, but then I had to cut this anyway, so just cut this line. other people on YouTube who have actually done roofing work before know what they are talking about and I have picked it up again because this side drip edge should not be on until you put on the roof deck first and then the drip edge Go above , thank you and now it's time to buy some shingles.

I was going to put a nice steel roof on it, but it was going to cost four or five times as much, which seemed unnecessary for a doghouse, so I cut some starter strips of full shingles. just cutting them basically in half and then lining them up with the bottom of the roof with about a 3 8 inch overhang on the bottom and side, then I gave each shingle four nails all spaced about a foot apart , then I lined them up The first full shingle practically aligned with the bottom and side of the starter course. You also want to make sure the end of the shingle doesn't line up with the space of the shingles below and then I squared it to the top of the roof and gave it four nails, the next shingle goes right next to it and after nailing it I use the replacement shingle to cut the edge with the 3 8 inch overhang and once I cut it I used a leftover piece to sand it.

Edge that is actually really satisfying. On the next row, I measured a six inch offset and then I lined up the bottom of the shingle with the bottom white line on the shingle below and then I drove in our four nails and we're going to continue doing the same thing. offset six inches on each row above the outside, once I cut the overhang I was able to bring these pieces back to the right side and fill the initial space and once I got to the top I trimmed off all the excess and then Using a From these four-by-four-inch pieces of aluminum flashing for the top edge, I traced cut lines on each end and cut them with my aviation snips.

I left this little notch at the top to cover that protruding piece. of the drip edge, then I applied two beads of some roof repair and nailed it on top with two nails spaced about every foot and moving on to one of the last steps, here we're going to work on the fascia, so this is a fascia that I bought at Home Depot and it's actually designed for two-by-six lumber, so it's a little finished for what I need, but I cut a short piece here and I'm going to put it on that open end of the wall. that's still exposed and the width I needed lined up perfectly with one of these fold marks so I'm just going to fold this over and make a 90 degree angle to cover up the weird back like I said this fascia is for a frame 2x6, so I'm going to remove a little bit here for my 2x4 frame and I notched this piece around the vertical wall and I'm going to leave this little tab here and fold it over so it looks a lot cleaner. and it's more finished than a cut edge, then I traced the final lines and instead of cutting them right on the line, I'm going to cut them about an inch longer and then install them on the fascia board, tucking them under. the drip edge and that little one inch tab I left on each end.

I'm going to bend and make a 90 degree angle around the outside corner for the last two pieces. I could cut the ends completely flush, other than that I had to cut. this little tab to allow this piece to overlap the other piece and I could slide it into place under the drip edge, I just went around and secured the whole thing with some aluminum brads and then used some black silicone to seal any rough edges or exposed. The nails just put in some finishing touches, so I'm making this kind of cedar slat accent piece that's going to be lit from behind, so I basically just covered the indentation on the top and bottom and now I'm going to mount this LED strip. on the bottom board, the adhesive was not good on this LED strip, so I just used a little silicone to keep it in place better long term, just taking those one and a quarter inch wide pieces of deck board that I dyed before and spacing them out. evenly around this corner now I just have some little pieces of cedar here that I'm painting black and white just to fill in some trim.

Thanks as a last step. I have these vinyl flaps that are always used to maintain temperature. in hockey arenas and I don't know where else I'm Canadian so I just cut them into strips the length of the door and placed them between two boards and I'm going to screw them inside the door in the

winters

to hold the heat from the floor with heating inside to some extent strange, just casual, the everyday doghouse is now completely strange, so the LED lights seem to flicker here, but in reality it's just the frame rate of the camera, it They look completely solid in person in terms of warmth on a fairly normal winter day of about -6 degrees, the temperature inside the doghouse was around 10 degrees, which is probably perfect for Bailey this time of year, since which has a lot of winter wool and you don't want it either.

It's hot there. I can control both sets of lights from my phone with Wi-Fi and also adjust the thermostat temperature from wherever Bailey spends most of her time in the house, but she is a country dog ​​and likes to hang out a lot. of time outdoors, especially at night or when we are away, and this gives him a good place to warm up even on the coldest days when we are not home. Total power consumption with everything on is just over 100 watts, so the $30 power bill to keep my dog ​​alive for three months of the year seems pretty reasonable.

This was a super satisfying build with how quickly it progressed and I think the end result looks pretty impressive again. That's probably way over the top for a dog house, but like I said. before I have a bunch of builds where I'm going to build structures similar to this and this was a really good test for that, you could also scale these dimensions and make your own shed or small house that looks pretty similar to this with the using exactly the same techniques, so I see it basically as a two thousand dollar educational career. I'd love to hear in the comments below if you think $2,000 CAD is unreasonable for a dog house or if that's just what things cost these days if you're into this sort of thing.

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