Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Cabin progress.......

It has been a few days, but I haven't been idle. I have been searching for pictures to post. I found a few, not really the ones I wanted, but I hope they give you an idea of how the cabin was built.

So, we decided to build a small cabin to get us through the winter. We went to the back of our land and select cut a mixture of pine, oak and hickory trees to saw out the lumber. We took several days and concentrated on getting all the lumber we would need to build the cabin. John and I sat down and decided that 14 x 20 would be a good size cabin to start with. We got to work and had the lumber sawed in a week, we then went to work on the floor. Using 6 x 6 posts for the base and 2 x 6 oak floor joices the three of us (John, Gryffyn and me) had the sub-floor down in a week. We then enlisted our 2 older boys and our 2 nephews to help us put up the walls and the rafters.
Our Oldest son Josh, Above his head is the beginnings of the loft floor.
 It took another week to get the walls up, just because we had to wait on the boys to find time to assist us. I was super excited to finally see what the cabin was going to look like. We decided to put a half loft in the cabin to accommodate one of the children. The stairs would eventually be put in the corner behind Josh.
The front of the cabin, we chose to put a small porch and lap siding on it.
 The lap siding was a little difficult to figure out at first. We had to finagle the lumber on the saw mill to make sure we got an even angle on each pass of the blade, but we figured it out and soon became experts at cutting it. One thing to note is the Windows, I love having the big windows in the front of the house. All of the windows in the cabin were recycled from another house that was remodeled.
Our nephew Tyler, notice the different color tin. We got a great deal on "Rainbow Tin".
 Somewhere in this time frame we had taken the time to visit the local Mennonite community, where we found the "rainbow bin". The rainbow bin was where they put all the left over pieces of tin when they got a new batch in. They could not guarantee that the colors would match, but we were able to pick through and choose the ones we wanted. As you can see we didn't do too bad, but a few of the pieces are darker than the other. We got the tin for less than half the original price, and were stoked to get such a deal.
Left side view of the cabin, My husband is on the roof and our son Gryffyn is helping lift rafters.
 Due to lack of help and time constraints we had to work on certain parts of the house at different times, so it didn't go up in a traditional fashion.
John and Tyler, working hard :)
All of the wood that went into building the cabin came from our own land, including the lathing they are putting up here. My husband select cut the lumber so that the smaller trees would have time to grow, we even replanted some of the saplings that had popped up in odd places.
Gryffyn and Braydden hard at work.
Even the little ones found time to borrow daddy's tools every now and then. 
There is a l lot of junk in the yard, but this is a pretty good likeness of the finished product.
This last picture was taken many months after we finished the house. We actually got the house in the dry before Halloween, but it wasn't finished on the inside until much later, but that's another story.

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