Cabin Chronicles Part 4

Now that the cabin is under roof, it is time to start closing it in. I will apologize in advance for not having the foresight to always have a camera with me. There are a few steps that do not have "during" pictures.

I'm going to back up to Part 3 for a minute. While we were building rafters to support the roof tin we also framed out the upstairs loft walls.

Here's a view from the inside downstairs looking out of the front door.

At this point, I was beginning to have my "moments". I didn't think we would ever get finished with this project. I did not sign up for this. I really wanted my beach life back. Playing in the ocean seemed so much more enticing than spending another weekend in the blistering sun or freezing cold with a hammer and a saw. As discouragement was setting in, my husband shows up with a pair of rocking chairs for the front porch. WHY? Why rocking chairs and why now? If only they were beach chairs. He did have a reason. He sat me down in one of the chairs and had me envision what it would be like to be sitting here, one day, when the construction was complete. I guess it helped a little, if I closed my eyes really tight.

Enough dreaming, back to measuring and cutting.

We had purchased old windows that we refurbished for use in the cabin and needed to cut openings to fit two smaller windows on both sides of the chimney upstairs along with a larger window for the opposite wall upstairs. We also needed to cut four openings downstairs in the log walls to fit two windows on each side of the cabin. Once the openings were cut out we framed them in 2x6 lumber and hung the old windows. We also framed the openings for the front and back doors with 2x6 lumber and installed both doors.

This is the part with the missing pictures, so here are a couple that you can see the front and back doors in, however, the chinking in between the logs is already done in these pics and we haven't really done it yet.

Now we were able to start closing in the upstairs walls with really heavy, thick plywood and then we proceeded to cut battons to add some character to the plywood walls. Then we went on a hunt for a stain that would closely match the log color and were not successful at finding any, so we mix our own blend of three different colors to achieve what we thought was a pretty good match. We painted the plywood and battons with our stain blend with a couple of coats to make sure it was sealed and protected.

Maybe you can pretend that the chinking isn't completed in the above picture also, because I do not have pics of these steps. Although I probably should have. My husband, who is deathly afraid of heights and myself trying to balance large sheets of plywood on ladders with hammers. I bet it was a sight:)

The next step to close the cabin in is the chinking and I will share that with you next time.

Thanks again for following along. I hope you have a great weekend and remember, if you get discouraged in the midst of a huge undertaking, stop and daydream a little about the end result of your hard work. It actually does help to picture it complete and imagine the sense of accomplishment you will feel then:)

 

Sometimes it helps to look back at where you started to see just how far you've come. If you'd like to look back to where we started go to Part 1.

 

'til next time

Adina

Part 5

Quick Garden Freebies

Celery and scallions for free!

I work part-time at a restaurant and decided to try a tip that I had read a while back. Place the end that you cut off of your celery stalk and scallions in water to grow another plant. I am able to have both of these items from the restaurant anytime, for free, because they normally just get tossed into the trash.

I used a ramekin and toothpicks for this project. It reminds me of growing carrots in a paper cup with toothpicks in elementary school:) These are the results after a week in the water! This is so much easier than starting them from seed and a lot faster too.

The celery is just starting to grow roots and the scallions have plenty of root growth already, so I'm planning to move them into the soil in the garden this weekend.

Do you have any easy garden tips? I'll take all of the help I can get as a newbie gardener.

'til next time,

Adina


Linking to:

Tin Pie Pan Makeover

Another Monday Mini Makeover

Tin pie plate repurposed into wall art

I found this pie plate at a goodwill for $1 and loved the scalloped edging and the fact that it is a little rusty and well used. This one was going home with me and I already had an idea of what I wanted to do with it.

I was hoping to find a more vibrant vintage pie image, but to no avail. Then I stumbled across a picture of a vintage ceramic pie plate with a strawberry pie recipe on it and decided to print a copy of the picture and cut out the center of it. I preceded to coat the back of the image with mod podge and center it on the bottom of the pie plate. After smoothing out all of the air bubbles and letting it dry for about 15  minutes I coated the front of the image with mod podge to seal it. It just so happened that the recipe image portion of the picture fit the center of the pie pan perfectly!

Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?

There was already a small hole on the edge of the pie pan, so I cut a strip of cream colored duck cloth fabric and tied a metal ring to the pie pan to hang it with and made a simple bow with the remaining fabric.

A quick, easy and inexpensive way to recycle a pie plate.

I'm already on the hunt for another one. I'm thinking chalkboard paint on the center of the next one. What do you think?

'til next time,

Adina

Linking to:

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

Large Fork & Spoon Wall Art

Mini Monday Makeover

How fun are these, oversized fork and spoon kitchen wall art!

I picked them up at a garage sale for .50 last Friday. They were old and very dirty, but I liked something about them. I brought them home, cleaned them up, sanded through a layer of blue paint, next a layer of yellow paint and then primed and painted them black.

Little did I know, when I gave them a makeover last Monday, that they were Pottery Barn mini knock offs! I was just browsing through the online catalog today and ran across these. (I guess my garage sale taste isn't so bad after all)

Funny how my vintage version is almost identical, except for the size. PB fork and spoon measure 48.5" long and mine are 20" long. They both are metal, have simple lines and even the handles have similar details.

Maybe you've got a set packed away somewhere that could use a makeover?

'til next time,

Adina

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

Old Soda Crate Turned Garden Tray

Don't you just love old soda crates?

I love any kind of old crates.

I've had an old faded red coca-cola crate stashed away, with it's broken, loose and missing dividers and black permanent marker writing on it. (Don't you just hate it when someone writes in permanent marker on them?) I decided it was finally time to pull it out and give it a facelift. I'm calling this my Monday mini-makeover.

After the broken dividers and metal trim were removed, all I needed was a little sand paper, primer, white paint and clear sealer to bring this crate back to life.

I gave the edges a quick rub with steel wool to scuff the white paint and add a worn look and finished up by replacing the metal trim.

So many possibilities now! Maybe a serving tray at a summer party carrying mason jars full of fresh lemonade, maybe a magazine holder, maybe a caddy to corral miscellaneous items or perhaps a garden tray?

What do you use old crates for in your home? I'd love to hear more ideas.

'til next time,

Adina

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