Our Cabin in the Snow

Just thought I'd share a glimpse into our world this week. We are in the northern part of Upstate South Carolina.    

 

 

Cabin Chronicles Part 12 - Reclaimed Barnwood Kitchen Cabinets

This project was my favorite part of the construction of the cabin.   Building the kitchen cabinets from salvaged barnwood!   A quick story on the barnwood. The wood was milled right up the road from us by a neighbors dad. It was used to build one of his barns in the mid 1900s.  His dad passed away a couple of years ago, well into his 90s. The barn was starting to collapse and our sweet neighbor asked us if we wanted the wood. Are you kidding me? Of course we wanted it! There was only one catch, we had to take the barn apart piece by piece and denail the wood. What a wonderful blessing for us and it keeps his dads barn living on.  

 

Cabin Chronicles Part 11

All of the rooms are starting to take shape now that the floors and walls are finished.   Here's a pic of the back bedroom.   One wall is log and the other 3 walls are board and batten. This room is small, so we decided to paint the walls white to help it feel brighter. Don't worry though, it still has plenty of rustic elements.   The wood above the white walls is rustic pallet wood. The trim is pine and it is stained in a dark stain.  

  This room has one window with chunky pine trim

Cabin Chronicles Part 5

Chinking between the logs on the outside of the cabin was the next step.

After this job is complete, the main part of the cabin will be closed in!

The first part of this job was to cut metal lathe into strips and nail the strips in between the logs. This became my job. We found that I was better at cutting the lathe without tearing up my hands with the sharp metal edges and he was better (a lot faster than me) at spreading the chinking compound over the metal lathe.

My husband did a lot of research beforehand to come up with a recipe for the chinking compound. It is a mixture of red brick sand, lime, cement and water.  The mixture was trial and error at times to get the right consistency for the chinking to stick and stay. It couldn't be too wet or too dry. We learned that it was best to slant the clinking at an angle between the logs so that the top part was indented some and the bottom part came right to the outer edge of the log. This allows the rain water to run down the logs over the chinking and not "puddle" on top of the logs anywhere.

 

 Of course, our faithful helper, Madison, was always there to cheer us on.

This is the back wall of the cabin completed!!!

 

 

Only 3 more walls to finish...

 

 

2 walls done - 2 left

 

Almost done with the 3rd wall. Thankfully, my husband was very good at this and the process moved along rather quickly and smoothly. We did find that if it was really sunny out, it was better to cover the wet chinking with a plastic sheet to allow it to dry slowly, otherwise, it cracks while drying. We actually did this job in the evenings after work and it took 3 or 4 nights to complete, including the time to cut the lathe and nail it in.

YAY!!!! It really looks like a cabin now!

This was around the early summer of 2009. We started with a pile of logs in March of 2008.

If you would like to go back and follow along from that pile of logs click HERE.

 

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you'll come by again next week - we added a back room onto the cabin next!

 

'til next time,

Adina

Part 6

Cabin Chronicles Part 3

Time to raise the roof! 

After a great deal of research and a mutual decision that we could use an educated carpenter at this point we hired one of our neighbors, Roy, to help build the roof rafters.
His experience and expertise saved a lot of time and insured that the roof was built square.

Roy had a lot of handy tips on how to figure the angles and calculate the pitch, making quick work of constructing the rafters. Two support posts were placed in the center of both of the side walls to connect the main roof beam to and then each rafter was measured, cut and nailed to this main beam along the front and the back.

The cabin is definitely taking shape now!

Over the next couple of weekends we framed out a chimney with 2x4s and covered it with plywood.

Notice the blue tarps? They are hurricane leftovers from years of living at the beach. Who would've thought they would come in handy while building a log cabin? They aren't very pretty but they did a great job of protecting the structure until we had a chance to actually get the tin on the roof.

As you can see by the fall colors in the background, we are months into this process now and are working on attaching 1x3s horizontally across the rafters to attach the tin to.

The tarps are finally gone and the tin is on! We have a roof! There is nothing more cozy than falling asleep to the sounds of raindrops on a tin roof.

If you would like to see how this all began read Part 1.

Thanks for following along and there are more posts to come. Can't wait until it's done and I can share the inside projects!

'til next time,

Adina

Part 4

Cabin Chronicles Part 2

If only the building process went as quickly as it appears in pictures. With the foundation built we moved on to building the floor joist. We built them out of 2 by 12s in two sections on the ground and then moved them onto the foundation. Once the two sections were in place and secure it was time to move on to stacking the logs!

Stacking the logs actually did go pretty quickly. At first my husband said he was going to rent a piece of equipment to help lift the 300+ pound logs, but he decided we were strong enough as a team to do it ourselves. So here goes...

We successfully moved the first row of four logs into place and secured them to the foundation. Then row by row we continued to stack the logs. Kindof like when you played with lincoln logs when you were a child, but a lot more straining. We figured out a system for the higher rows. We would prop the end of a log onto the top of a ladder and then both of us would lift the other end of the log and hoist it into place. This was a bit nerve racking to me. I was concerned that a log would fall and really hurt one of us. Really I was worried that my arms would give out just when he needed my support and we would drop one. Needless to say, all of the logs went up without any slips, drops or falls and we didn't get hurt. Not even a splinter.

Of course a project can't go that smoothly. The label tags indicating which logs go where were not all correct and the notches were not fitting together properly so we had to break out the saw and make some adjustments. In the end, it all worked out and the structure was within 1/2 inch square. Staying square is super important and being that close with 150 year old logs was incredible. Miracles do happen!

I guess I was too busy lifting logs that day and didn't take any pictures of the process beyond the first two rows. However, the picture above shows all of the rows in place and the framed knee walls for the loft area. It also shows where we cut out and framed the front and back doors.

 Notice the front porch in this picture? The deck of it was actually added in one piece. A friend of mine had a large deck leftover after moving a mobile home and we were able to cut the size portion that we needed from it for a porch deck. What a sight this was. We borrowed some muscles and a large car hauler trailer and moved the cut portion of the deck, about 8 miles, to our property. Then our wonderful neighbor, Mr. Jackson, brought his tractor over and lifted it into place while my husband leveled it and bolted one side of it to the front of the cabin.  We propped the front of it up with cinder blocks until we were able to install 4 large posts to support it. We were able to salvage the railings from the same porch and cut them down to fit our dimensions.  

Those logs are starting to look like something now!

In case you missed it, here's the link to Cabin Chronicles
Part 1

Stay tuned for part 3 next week.

Thanks for following along our biggest DIY project to date.

Adina

Part 3

Our Biggest DIY Project to Date: Building a Vintage Log Cabin

Now that we are finished building our vintage log cabin, circa 1860s, I wanted to take the time to chronicle the construction of it. Mostly for my benefit to always remind me that I CAN and to hopefully inspire you to tackle that dream that you think is a little too big. I hope you'll follow along through this journey with me. I plan to post a "chronicle" weekly leading up to the completion of the cabin and then continue with the fun part, our current decorating projects on the inside!

It all started with a dream. My husband's dream to build a vintage log cabin from the ground up, all by himself. We began dating shortly after he had purchased land in South Carolina and started envisioning a log cabin there. His construction plans quickly included me as we proceeded to get married and move our lives from the beaches of South Florida to a different world state. This beach girl was now newly married at 33, living in the middle of nowhere, away from family, friends and anything I had always considered home. I jumped on board half-heartedly with this plan to build a cabin. I can't see it, my dreams of it were more like nightmares, I don't know a thing about construction or tools and definitely had never spent my free-time working harder than I did at work. Well, unless you count working on your tan on a boat in the ocean hard work:). I wanted to be a "good wife" and support my new husband in his endeavors, so he handed me a tool belt and we began. It was during the winter of 2007, six months after we were married, we were taking a drive through the mountains of beautiful Cashiers, NC and stumbled on a log structure that was for sale. By March 2008, we had ourselves a set of logs, from the 1860s, delivered to our address.

Once the logs were neatly set in piles on our ground and the delivery guys had left, we were there, all alone with these HEAVY logs. Even my little dog, Madison, wasn't so sure of this.

Each log was tagged with a wall side A,B,C or D and a row number 1, 2, 3 - 9. Now what? I can kindof see how this is going to work, but not really. With a lot of arm twisting encouragement from my husband and his "you can do anything you set your mind to" attitude we began. Foundation first, made sense to me, but how? He did most of the research and studied a lot before each part of the construction process to gain an understanding of how to and our states building code requirements. He had decided to build the cabin foundation on 9 concrete cinder block pillars that were reinforced with steel rods. In order to determine the placement of these pillars, we had to lay the first row of logs out and raise them up on blocks to level them. It was time to grow some serious muscles and quick. Bring on the spinach.

We dug shallow squares into the ground, built wood frames to fit the squares so that we could pour concrete into them to make pads for each pillar. We decided that if we filled the bottoms of the holes with the small rocks that had been dug up it would take less concrete to fill each form for the pads.

With that done, we poured the concrete, stacked the first row of cinder blocks, reinforced them with steel rods, stacked the remaining rows of blocks needed to make things level and filled them with concrete. Now we had 9 pillars! We've actually started this and not without mistakes on the first weekend either. You'll probably notice that some of the pads were put in the wrong place the first time and had to be redug, reframed and more concrete poured to fix them.

The next step was to add the top block to each pillar and secure it with concrete. We put additional threaded rods through this block in order to have a way to attach the wood foundation frame to the pillars.

Well, there you have it. The foundation! Yay! I can start to see it now, maybe!?!? If only I knew then how many more weekends would be spent like this. It was exactly how I had always pictured my life as a newlywed. Note the sarcasm there:)

                                        I'm so glad you stopped by and I pray you have a blessed day,

                                                                  to be continued next week...
                                                                                Adina

Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9