Cabin_ Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine - Lou Ureneck [21]
To put me back in the right frame of mind, I reread books by that old cabin dweller, eccentric ornithologist and Adirondack trout fisherman, John Burroughs. It helped me get right again. His relationship to the woods was direct, his prose and life unadorned and his observations precise and utilitarian. He measured rainfall, noted the dates of the appearances of frogs and named the birds he observed in the trees.
I saw the construction as a series of steps to be taken in sequence. I would go from the ground up, and the outside in. They were:
1. Foundation
2. Frame
3. Exterior siding
4. Roof
5. Interior siding and finish
6. Plumbing, heating, lighting and cooking
Early on, I had decided against a cabin made of logs. A well-built log cabin is a marvelous thing to behold, and it makes sense if you are good with an ax and have access to stands of big straight trees. They are emblems of frontier America. But they have their drawbacks—they are drafty and cold and best when kept small, and they require equipment or many men to lift the heavy green logs. These logs can be laid up round with notches or made square with an adze; in either case, they require caulking to keep out the wind. For me, a log cabin would also mean excluding the big timbers I had saved for so many years. They would become unnecessary given that the log walls would support the roof. I like log cabins; I just didn’t want to build one. Maybe someday I will take one on. It would be an absorbing challenge with old tools. I could use it as a backcountry camp for a day or two at a time in deep winter.
My idea for the cabin’s foundation was a set of concrete piers set in the ground. They would be cheap, easy and effective. Resting on the piers, the cabin would hover over the earth by about two feet. The floors would stay dry, and I would have room enough to store a canoe underneath in winter. I didn’t yet own a canoe but surely would in time: a cabin demands a canoe. The only thing simpler than piers would be to rest the cabin on flat rocks set and leveled on the ground. Some of the old outbuildings in town were built just that way. I would have taken that approach if I didn’t fear the heaving of the ground from frost in the spring. Looking back, I wish I had done exactly that.
The frame was a more complicated set of decisions. The pile of lumber in Paul’s backyard was still covered with snow, and we had yet to sort it. At this stage, in March 2008, I still didn’t know fully what materials I would have to work with, though I had taken a few quick measurements to get a sense generally of the lengths of the beams. Of course, Paul and I eventually got to the pile in the fall, on the sunny day in September, and when we did, we made a list of the timbers we could salvage based on their dimensions and joinery, the ways in which they had been cut to fit together. It was essentially an inventory of our building materials. I wanted to work with what I had, and I hoped not to have to cut them, nor supplement them with additional bigdimension lumber from the lumberyard. We would fit them together and raise them up as if we were raising a barn. Or so I hoped.
The benefit of this sort of timber-frame construction is twofold: the beauty of the frame is exposed to the interior, and the frame carries the weight of the roof on the outside walls, which creates open interiors by eliminating the need for inside bearing walls. It is the method of construction that makes possible the vast interior spaces in old barns and New England’s colonial churches. Of course, I did not have in mind anything remotely close to a barn or church, but I would employ the basic materials and concepts of barn construction