Don MillerWinter came a couple weeks before the calendar said it would. Lots of snow but also lots of rain that washed it all away. Temps are hovering around freezing and humidity is staying at just this side of drowning f you take a deep breath. It hasn’t bee too windy though. It would be miserable to have a freezing windy wet day to deal with.As it is I am getting by with cold toes and fingers and sleeping in all the clothes I can wear at one time.
I would not be surprised if someone looking at the current state of the cabin saying “What have you been doing all summer”? I am sitting here thinking the same thing so let’s go thru the efforts together.
I arrived back in town in April with visions of a shiny new cabin, complete with running water, electricity and heat. I am sitting here in December wearing all my clothes to stay warm, All of my drinking water is frozen and there’s not enough solar to charge my phone. I have definitely veered from my April hopes and desires. I definitely had higher hopes than were warranted.
I was finally able to drive into the property in April once but spring rains wrecked the road again until May. I was able to hike in and stay there. Mostly puttering around and straightening up. I hate working in the rain.
I was able to do the calculations for how much lumber I would need for the floors. It would have to be delivered so I had to wait for the road to get solid enough for the delivery truck. It wasn’t all idle time, I had about 3 much needed weeks to put together a list and order all brackets, braces tie downs that the engineer called out. I thought I designed a pretty simple cabin but all the expensive hardware called out by the engineer was crazy. I was beginning the think that the lumber was going to be the cheapest part of the cabin. Had to be bought though. I also ordered all of the window and the front door. Windows
Finally the 15 foot long joists and subfloor plywood got dropped off in Mid May and I got right to work lifting the first
floor into place. The foundation walls aren’t exactly square so I spent a week climbing up and down ladders with a notebook, calculator, measuring tape and a pretty much useless laser to find a straight line and 90 degree corner. I was happy when I finally got within a ½ inch of square all the way around. How that half inch shows up when I get to the roof is a problem for another day. Another few days to get the plywood flooring lifted and screwed down to the joists and I was happy. Until I realized that I was now going to have to build the walls. Here are the timelapse videos I made when we poured the foundation concrete back in 2022…..
The batteries died before the pour was finished but you get the idea. And the shorter video avoids the embarrassing blow out that we were just barely able to recover from.
It would have been so much quicker to build the 29’ walls in one piece but there was no way that was going to get lifted into place. I had to build it in smaller sections. The walls were still heavy and the result isn’t pretty but all the extra studs should make it even stronger. Working alone has forced me to come up with unique and somewhat dangerous ways to get a job done. It didn’t help that I got the wild hair to have 10 ft walls instead of 8 in the main room. That had to go through a week of re-engineering. Here is a video of me lifting the walls into place…..
I got most of the walls up but had to stop and wait for my Seattle helpers to come up and help take on the ridge beam. That was a huge job with plenty of risk for death or the painful crushing of important body bits. Everyone survived with not much more than a sore back and a couple splinters. Little did we know that there is an upside to the beams and of course we did the downside up. I think the only difference is that the downside is prettier than the upside so not too worried about it. Especially at 800 lbs.
I then had to finish up the second floor walls. They were much more difficult then the first floor because the header beam needed to span each window wall. And I had to work around the stair well. I solved the header wall by building them in place after the wall went up. Definitely not optimal but it worked.
Another big beam on the second floor was even harder because we had to lift the beam to the second floor first before placing it on the ridge posts. Another delay to finish this because it was another Seattle contingent effort. I rented a mechanical lift for this effort to avoid the suck and it worked short of the sketchy shift from the lift to the 2nd floor. Here is a timelapse of that effort.
The next few weeks were spent cutting and installing the heavy 2×12 rafters. More up and down the ladders. Then was effort of getting the plywood lifted and nailed down to the rafters. Some more very welcome Seattle help for this effort.
Good progress but there was still a big effort to do especially since it was already August and I still needed to get the deck roof done before I could install the metal roofing sheets. I needed to pour some concrete footers to support the deck posts. The engineer was very specific about how the needed to be done. Starting with backfilling the front wall so that I could compact a base for the post forms. Building the forms was easy. The hard part was getting them place exactly right so they lined up with the roof beams. That took a few days and to tell you the truth there was a bit of procrastination on my part because the next step was mixing and pouring almost 2 tons worth of concrete. I have a mixer but there was still a lot of lifting involved. I am still hurting from the effort. I seemed to have pulled an elbow tendon or two and my right arm has been extremely sore since. Just short of useless.
I had to wait a couple weeks before I could put the deck posts in. And a couple weeks wasted because once I got the posts cut, placed and the deck joists attached, I realized that there was something very wrong. And not my wrong. It took me a few calls but I finally got him to agree that there was a problem. Contrary to the engineer’s drawings, the posts need to go all the way to the roof and not just to the deck.
So there was a very nice and expensive post wasted. I was surprised to learn that I could return the short posts and get the longer posts I needed for just the difference in pricing. I got the posts a few days later and hauled them up to the build site. There they sat as I tried to figure out how I was going to lift them into their support collars. It took me a day to figure out how to lift a post into place using the tractor. It was pretty rough on the post but it worked and I was able to get the other 2 done the next day. Then I built the deck again.
I had to wait a few days for my Seattle muscle to free up and help me lift and place the deck beams into place. Now I could finish the roof. More heavy rafters and Plywood to lift but I am happy to report that it looks like the cabin was square enough at the foundation that I didn’t need to do anything crazy to get the roof to line up.
I did take a tumble through the not quite done deck when the plywood I was walking on slipped off a joist and flipped up when I stepped on. Pretty hard fall but luckily my face caught the brunt of it. That took a few days to get the rattle out of my head before I could get back up on the roof.
Noting left but the metal roofing. I was worried because it was now September. The shorter days were here and rainy season was not far off. The cabin roof would not last through a wet winter if I left it bare. My roofing vendor said that I needed to order quickly because every real house builder around was in a similar time crunch and there may be roofing availability issues.
I guess I was in the front of the line for roofing, because my order showed up a week later. My friend was able to help get most of the roofing on pretty quickly with the help of ropes and a safety harness. I have my doubts that they would actually do much other that slow the fall to a rough landing but the safety effort was there.
I hemmed and hawed about it but decided that a couple skylights would bring in some extra light during the darker months. I think I am regretting it. Besides the extra effort to get the metal sheets cut to fit around it, I got the flashing for shingle roofs and not metal roofs. They didn’t sell what I needed or even call out that I did need it. I got a temporary fix in place to keep the water from getting under the metal but will have to do a major fix sometime next year. Ugh.
I did get a couple of windows installed but they are too heavy to work with off the ground. Another job for Spring. One of many but most of the high heavy stuff is out of the way so I will focus on the inside next summer. Here is a walk around the inside of the cabin…
I did hire someone to install the septic system. I learned about halfway into the dig that the good dirt was just a foot deep and they couldn’t sink the leach field pipes very far below the surface. I had a dump truck load of dirt delivered so I could at least cover the pipes. Weather turned wet and the ground to soft to use the tractor So I had to move 13 yards of dirt in a little wheelbarrow. Its covered but I need a lot more dirt next year.
Trying to keep this short because I need to clear a spot for my Christmas lump of coal. In the meantime, there are some more cabin build videos on the youtube. The address is: https://www.youtube.com/@trippinwithdon7233
I have spent some Frequent Flyer miles to get to Europe right after the new year. I’ll update from there as the winter progresses.
Happy 2024