Planning

The kids got back to school this week and I spent some of my free time sketching out floor plans for the cabin. I am certainly not an architect so it will be a major miracle if these chicken scratches are somehow translated into a real building. I need to buy some graph paper and a big eraser and start refining these to scale. Finishing these plans is going to be a wonderful winter project. So far, though, I think I am headed in the right direction. There will be two small bedrooms and a loft that should accommodate at least 4 kids. The main floor is around 750 square feet and the cabin as a whole is just over 1000 square feet including the sleeping loft. It was tricky to get the wood stove centrally located so it would heat the whole building, but also in a place that would be outside of the main traffic flow. I also tried to locate the bedroom doors so as much heat as possible would blow in there. I assume we will need some kind of supplemental heat for those rooms, probably electric baseboard heaters, especially in the dead of winter. But we'd like the wood stove to do the bulk of the heating. I also situated the kitchen and the bathroom so the plumbing would all be in one wall. I am trying to plan this so the construction will be as simple and straightforward as possible. The footprint of the cabin when you include the wide front porch, is a 32 foot square. Ray was thrilled when he heard that. Apparently, squares make figuring out the angles much, much easier. Now we can take some stakes and rope up to the property and stake out a building site. It will be good to have some rough idea of where the building will be so we can property situate the well and the driveway. Progress continues on Fort Awesome and it should be ready for transport by next week. The whole family is looking forward to getting back up there. Most likely, we only have a few weeks left in the season, so we want to take full advantage of them.