Tag Archives: Cabin

We were framed

Cabin, Family, Land, Nature, WV, , ,

We only got a chance to work on the cabin on Windday…I mean Sunday.  We framed a lot of the walls when my family was here last weekend so we started putting them in place this weekend.  Our plan was to attach the OSB sheeting and then set up the walls already covered.  We sized the walls so we could lift them with OSB already in place.  The wind, however, said differently.  We started to set up the first wall and nearly flew off the back of the platform.  I don’t know what the wind-speed was officially, but it was ridiculous-miles-per-hour by my reading.

So, Plan B…We decided to set up the walls sans OSB just so we can say we made progress.  There is a fair chance we will regret that later when we have to go back and hang the OSB, but doggone it, we have walls up!  Emily’s granddad came up to help us.  He’s been around the sun 86 times but you would never know it.  He was a huge help in getting these walls in place and we couldn’t have done it without him!

Poppaw...86 years old and we couldn't have gotten the walls up without him!

You may notice that these walls look a little different than most walls.  Good eye!  We are roughly following the Advanced Framing Technique.  What that means for us is that we are building with 2×6 boards rather than 2x4s.  We are also building on 24 inch centers (the space between boards) rather than the more typical 16 inch centers.  You can read the details on the link, but we are excited about the potential savings in materials costs and the potential for improved energy efficiency.  That and we like the weird looks people give us.  It sort of flies in the face of traditional house framing which makes it all the more appealing.

 

Building a wall…and the view out the front door!

 

Abigail surveying the scene…that’s as far as we got!

So, anyhow, we got the hardest walls set and plan to work more this weekend on getting the remaining walls up.  We will need to get the OSB started too.  I figure we will set up some elaborate pulley system to get the wood in place so we can start on the roof.  If we get wind again this weekend, I am going sailing.  Let’s see, I will need to get that old washtub and some sheets…what else do I need to build a sailboat?

 

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Product placements

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My parents and brother and sister-in-law came into town this weekend to watch the kids play soccer and to help us work some on the deluxe shed.  We pretty much finished up the sub-floor before the visit so my goal for this weekend was to get some walls built…and that we did!

As we always do, we loaded up the van with the generator and all of our tools, drove to our place and unload them once again (I can’t wait to be able to leave some stuff up there!)  I didn’t notice it at the time but in looking over the pics, many of which my Mom took, I noticed that we were like a product placement extravaganza!  See how many different brand name/logo shots you see in these pics…it is like we were setting it up!

 

 

 

Anyhow, my brother brought a propane framing nailer and it was amazing!  I have never used such a beast before, but basically, it is a cordless nail-driving machine.  With a regular hammer, it takes, I don’t know, 5 seconds to drive a nail, another few to get the next nail and set it, etc  Each nail and swing of a hammer takes a lot of energy so things go slower with each nail one drives.  This nailer drives maybe 5 nails a second and I never got tired.  Incredible!

So, we discovered another crazy thing as we all worked away.  It looks like a cow must have gotten loose in the neighborhood.  The prints were from a hooved animal but they were far too big to be a deer.  It looked more along the lines of what I expect an elk print would be, size-wise but I don’t think there are any elk around here.

In addition to getting a lot of work done, we got to goof around together which was nice too.  We talked about a little bit of everything and nothing is better than working on a common goal!    We also got to see, once again, just how beautiful our WV mountains really are.  The leaves are coming along nicely and will probably be at their peak next weekend.  I couldn’t take a picture that did it justice but it’s just amazing!

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We were floored

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Well, we were almost floored anyhow.  We worked very hard Saturday and Sunday on the cabin and made great progress.  We almost got the sub-floor done in fact.  There were a lot of joists to finish and then we put blocking between the boards to spread loads and add strength and stability.  It took a long time doing all of the cutting and measuring and so on but Emily, a friend and I had a good rhythm worked out.  My favorite part was the magic that Emily worked with a power saw.  She cut off boards and sort of earned her man-card.

 

My buddy working...or napping?

Isaac also jumped in and did a little of everything.  He nailed joist hangers, screwed in lag bolts and did about anything we needed.  Of course, he did find opportunities to hide now and then but we all needed breaks…some more than others.

Break time

Emily’s grandparents came out on Sunday afternoon and helped.  Emily’s grandfather is taller than Emily so he was able to do some of the high nailing from the ground that Emily couldn’t do.  That allowed me to keep working from atop the decking-in-progress.

I love this pic...the posts and piers and beams and stuff all look pretty cool I think

Emily's grandfather surveying our work

 

Subfloor - not screwed down yet but at least out of the trailer!

We have great neighbors on the hill too so Abigail took some time to play with the kids that are from the next field over.  They roamed around and found mushrooms and sticks and bugs and had a great time.

The one little girl said, “Don’t worry about us…there will be teenagers there too.”  Of course, that had quite the opposite effect on me but it all ended up good.  And most importantly, Abigail got to ride a horse which made her day.

The cabin doesn’t look quite as small as it did when we were pacing out the dimensions on the ground.  I am finally starting to see it come together a little and we are so excited to get the first wall framed and up!  With any luck, we will start on walls this coming weekend!

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Tanlines and stuff

Cabin

Emily and I worked a bunch more on Tuesday (yes, still in the rain) and made great progress on the cabin.  I like the DIY part of this project for sure, but sometimes, it’s good to remember why inside jobs aren’t always so bad.  Anyhow, we started off in the rain but the sun came out sometime in the afternoon and pretty well cooked my head.  You see, I decided to forego the hat in an attempt to even out a tan line I got over the weekend:

Baseball hat tanline

Imagine, if you will, a bald guy wearing a baseball hat in the sun.  Most of his head is protected from the sun but the baseball hat, by design, has an opening at the back.  Said opening provides no protection from the sun.  Yeah, it looks pretty stupid and now I have a sunburn on top of the still-obvious hat-tan-line.

Over the course of all of this work, I have developed a few tanlines, some of which are pretty interesting…

Boot tanlines...or hobbit feet

 

My arm and neck tanlines…pretty typical I guess

 

Well, enough about tanlines. We did get the main beams for the cabin in place and we started laying the floor joists.  There is still a lot to be done to get everything braced and hooked together of course.  I am using 2×8 boards for the joists and they are slightly cantileved over the big beams attached to the 6×6 upright posts.  I plan to add bracing to support the overhang as the weight of the house really gets transmitted down the walls to the outer edge of the cabin.

The beams are in! The beams are in!

Emily is a kick-butt worker and the real reason this thing will be done right! I would definitely not call her a helper as she is every bit as capable as I am on building. She has a brain for this sort of thing too. Of course, part of working together is the brawling we seem to do to make our points, but I guess that’s part of the “fun”.  We hardly ever fight except when we work on stuff like this. Funny, isn’t it? Is anyone else that way?

Anyhow, this weekend we will be at it again!  I expect we’ll get the floor down and get our bracing done properly.  As weight build on the platform, it will become important so now is the time!

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And there was mud

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We went back out to the place today to work more on the cabin.  It rained…all day.  Since time off is limited, we pressed on and stirred up all of that mud that we made from the pier excavations.  Holy cow all of that mud was heavy!  This entire building process is exercise for sure and we definitely got our share today.  After awhile, we joked that we needed to scrape the mud off of our shoes so that we would have room for more mud.

 

We put a tent over the areas we worked and it wasn’t so bad I guess.  We made a lot of progress.  I won’t say much as the pictures show a lot of what we got done.  There is still a ton of cross-bracing to be done but we ran out of wood and, more importantly, nails.  We will be heading back tomorrow for more of the same minus the running out of nails part.

 

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Building our cabin

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We like going up to our land to hang out and enjoy mother nature on the weekends.  If you ask the kids, of course, all we do up there is slave away moving piles of dirt.  Emily and I finally decided to show the kids what it meant to move piles of dirt so we broke ground last weekend on a building to house a toilet.  That’s all that really matters to the kids – a bathroom.  Well, that and air conditioning.  Anyhow, as all ground-breaking parties go, it was more symbolic than anything.  The real work began on Thursday evening.  A buddy of mine came with us and we have abused him all weekend…you know, strong back, weak mind.  So, we mixed somewhere around 4500 pounds of concrete and filled 9 12-inch tubes (that’s just to brag, it isn’t meant to really have any real meaning to you, dear friends) on which to build this place.

 

This saves lives but also shortens lives. Post hole digging is faster and easier with this auger but it beat me to death!
Isaac hiding from work in one of our holes. We are building a post-and-pier foundation.

 

Post and pier foundation

Emily and I are building a house, really.  It will have more than a toilet.  Emily calls it our “deluxe shed” as it will be more of a small cabin than a house.   I have been fascinated by the small house movement (see Tumbleweed Houses for example) for a while now.  The idea is put forth as an alternative to the trend of increasingly larger houses over the last 30+ years.  I don’t care what size house people live in but the small house philosophy suits me.  In a way then, we are sort of participating in the small house movement…except it is going to be our second house.  I think that must somehow be against the point of the small house philosophy.  Still, we really like the idea of simplifying and someday, the first house will be sold and we will fit the bill.

It needs skin and lots of details, but this is the cabin we are planning to build

We are off from work Friday, Monday and Tuesday so we are plowing forward for 5 days straight to see how far we can get on this place.  I have been working on plans in Google Sketchup (you gotta learn to use this program).  My model is pretty rough but it allows me to know exactly how many boards I need and how everything needs to go together.  It will be around 400 sq ft and have one of the coolest views anywhere.

The view from the cabin spot

Emily took some pics today and they are just incredible.  Anyhow, I will keep posting as we make progress on this place.  Anyone else out there have a strong back and a weak mind?  Have I got a job for you!

See all of the progress on the cabin