Snagged

We left town for a week when the roof was supposed to be going up, and returned home with a message on the answering machine from the contractors. They basically said that the carpenter got to our site, took one look at the framining, called the inspector and put everything on hold. For a wall taller than 10 feet, apparently you can't just put a truss on the end and call it a day.

They were saying that we needed to tear down the end wall that doesn't have a loft/ceiling which would tie everything and have an engineer design a new wall. This would be a big set back. This would also cost a lot of money, but we are not to be deterred! I called the truss manufacterer, went over the scenario and came up with an alternative solution that only requires replacing the top plate (the horizontal 2x6 boards across the top) on the end wall with a ledge that will go from edge to edge. I'm pretty excited about this change, even though it will mean undoing some of what we did to get the walls framed. At the end of the day, we'll have a ceiling height ledge at the fireplace end of the cabin that we can put our antique cabin tchotchkes on. The boards for the ledge will be 24 feet long, and 16 inches wide, so I'm not sure exactly how we're going to get them installed... well, I now know how we will be spending our 4th of July weekend.....

crazy roof design

Sometimes it pays to call a professional... So our plan calls for a porch to go the whole length of the long wall of the cabin, with the roof of the main part just extending out over the porch. This would be what they call an Appalachian style cabin. So we originally planned to build the roof with individual 2x12" rafters and a giant ridge beam going down the center of the cabin. The porch roof would just be tacked on after the main roof was up. Once we started figuring out that the upper part of the roof where we would have to attach these huge boards would be about 30 in the air with nothing below, the thought of installing all those boards lost some of the appeal. So that's when we called the truss designers and changed our plan to use manufactured trusses.
The design we're using is a "vaulted parallel chord" truss, with the porch roof section cantilevered over the left wall. It can be installed without supporting the porch roof part. And, it will leave the main area of the cabin completely wide open, while giving the maximum amount of space in the loft for bunkbeds, etc. I'm pretty sure we would not have come up with this design on our own.

And a little more...

the Paulson 4 went back to CF this weekend, and for the first time maybe in a year it didn't rain, or snow, or hail while we were there. It was greatly appreciated by all of us who are used to waking up with all of our stuff covered in mud, or eating our dinner huddled under a wildly flapping tarp.

We managed to get all of our chores done, which didn't really feel like chores at all, considering the amount of satisfaction we got from each one. Well, speaking for myself, they didn't feel like chores. The camera was left at home this time, but the pictures wouldn't have had too much "wow" factor anyway.

• 6 posts cut and set to support the porch (yet to be built)


• new firewood caddy* built and placed near campfire ring


• loads of lumber and logs cut and stacked on aforementioned firewood caddy.


• rodent-stay-away screen installed around Fort Awesome (to discourage the littler furries from making their own homes too close to where we sleep)


• tire "bumper" installed on the tree at the end of the zipline. Seems like the heavier/faster riders can still hit the tree if they build up some speed.

*Calling the new stacker a "caddy" might not really do justice to the new addition. It's really quite good, if I do say so myself. About the size of a Li'l Tykes playhouse, and shaped like one too. We'll take a picture next time we go. Of course next time we go, we might be taking pictures of our new cabin complete with roof and walls! so the firewood stacker might not seem so cool by then.........

The walls go up

We just got back today from an incredibly productive long weekend out at the camp. In spite of the forecasted bad weather (and then the actual bad weather), several good friends generously agreed to spend their holiday weekend battling the elements to help make sure that the next phase of cabin construction was a success.

At this point we are putting up walls on our recently installed floor. We're using 2x6 framing to accomodate extra thick insulation, with walls that will be ten feet tall to make sure that everyone has plenty of head room. I could go on and on about this, but I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

When we got there on Friday, the lumber yard had left us a tidy stack of wood.

And by Saturday morning the walls started to go up....

Late on Sunday we pushed the last wall into place:

This is our first family photo in our new cabin! All are hot and tired, but excited to be standing there.

Speaking of hot and tired.... my apologies to the friends that pitched in, without whom this would not have been possible (well, not on the same schedule at least), of whom I have lots of pictures and about whom I have lots of funny comments to make, but I have to stop for now and sleep.

Special Features

In my haste to get a picture up of our new fledgling building I really skipped over some of the fun details. This post is mainly just to round out the pictures of our floor and explain little bit more about what we have going on there.

This is the view of the building site pulling up into the driveway. It doesn't seem like much from the road, and I'll be curious to see how the profile takes shape as we start building upward.

The blue tarp was put on by the contractors to help keep water from pooling on the plywood subfloor when it rains. I didn't appreciate how well they had tacked it down until we showed up this last weekend and the tarp I had put down to replace this one had blown almost completely off and was letting huge puddles of water form on the surface. I think we'll need to get this done quickly - we're not going to win a long term fight against the elements...

Another surprise development was the installation of our power supply. We had tossed around ideas for alternative energy sources, but we it came down to it, we were really close to the pole (across the road in the neighbors yard) and it just made sense to hook it up. So around the same time we got the platform finished we had the wires trenched in underground and a temporary pedastal set up. This will come in nice and handy when we start hauling up power tools for the next phase of the construction. Not to mention the coffee maker.
It came with a hook up for an RV too, but I don't think we'll be using that so much.

Final thought for this post: it may not be obvious to the unsophisticated reader, but I really have no idea how to format a blog! Katie had mentioned she had this problem when she first started this, but was able to figure out the tricks and get pictures to go where they are supposed to go. Maybe she'll smile on my troubles and will lend a guy a hand?

Back in the Saddle!

Hiatus: Cancelled. We are ready to pick up where we left off. Last fall we finished our season by hiring a contractor to install 15 concrete piers for the foundation of our cabin. We started this season by bring the same guy back to put in the 6x6 posts, floor joists and subfloor for the ground level. As much as I wanted to build everything personally, it just makes so much sense to get certain things done professionally, and fast.

Next stop: walls.

On Hiatus

Hope this post finds you all well. I am officially taking a break from blogging until the spring. Be sure and check back in March for updates on the start of the cabin build!