When I think of a cabin in the woods , I picture thick pine logs crafted into a squat building with a purlin roof and a curl of smoke passing from a stone chimney into frigid night air.  I’m not sure when the dream to have such a cabin took hold of me, but it took a turn in early 2000 when I bought 30 acres of  remote Maine woodland.  On my first viewing of the property within the first few minutes of entering the woods, I saw several deer and flushed a partridge, and looking around the vista surrounding me, I knew this was the place to realize the dream of a log cabin.  Of course the dream met reality, and I had to scale back my plans to what a working Mainer could afford.  At first, I looked at the kits from log home manufacturers.   Then I looked into cutting the cedar trees already on the property and paying to have them milled, but it was still too expensive.  Then I came across rough plans for a vertical log structure, in the old “trapper” style, aptly named because it could be built by one person, and the was the style the old trappers used to use on their traplines for a place to stay for the night.  Having only the most basic of carpentry skills, I decided to take things one step at a time, rather than letting the whole project begin overwhelming me.  I began harvesting the cedar logs , cut 73 inches long with a chain saw from the property, stripped their bark in the woods, and lugging them out one by one over my shoulder to the place where I had decided to build the cabin.  Old books advocate cutting the logs in winter so they would dry slower and thus be less apt to “check” during the process.  I suppose there is some truth to that, but stripping off cedar bark during the winter is hard work.  Granted, if you wait long enough it does get easier, but in spring and summer I could literally peel them faster than I could cut them.  When the change came in late August, it was dramatic.  One week the logs were easy to peel, and the next it was a bit harder, and then as the trees got ready for winter, it became really hard work to get one peeled.  I used a drawing knife and an old log peeler found in my grandfather’s garage.  I did experience some checking with the summer cut logs, but it wasn’t all that dramatic.  The biggest problem was the mold that grew on the wet wood.   I waited too long to bleach it, and some of it was permanently stained.  It took the weekends of two summers to get the bulk of the logs cut, peeled, and stacked to dry.  With the wood stacked, and still some time before winter set in, I decided to tackle the foundation. The area I had picked was relatively clear and level, needing only a little tree trimming.  After thinking it over and reading a couple of basic construction books, I decided the most viable and least expensive option was sonatube concrete piers.  The biggest problem with piers for a foundation is heaving in cold weather when the ground freezes and thaws.  But the soil at the cabin site was sandy, which meant it shouldn’t hold too much moisture.  I relied heavily on a wonderful book called Back to Basics   published by Reader’s digest, for the basic foundation knowledge.  This book has a wealth of information about all aspects of the old ways and common sense construction, but I was unable to find specific information on how far apart the support piers should be placed.  After speaking with a couple of local carpenters I decided on a dozen.  I then got it all square following the directions in the book, and  got it level using the old style batten boards.  At this point I rented a power auger and drilled the holes for the sonatubes, four feet deep for each.  I lugged in all of the 80 pound concrete bags by hand along with the water, and then mixed it on site.  With the upcoming winter approaching, I was happy to stop at this point, and anxious to see how the piers would survive the winter.  That winter was quite cold yet the piers showed no signs of failure that spring, so I felt comfortable that all was well.  It was time to start building.  The sills went on first, attached to the concrete piers with screws and metal brackets.  The joists and floor went on relatively quickly, and with only a few problems, all of which were fixable with a little backwoods engineering.  I was dreading beginning the walls with my less than perfectly straight logs, but they actually went on quite smoothly.  I would hold each log up against the last one installed and turn it to get the best fit.  Sometimes a log wouldn’t fit at all and a new one was chosen.  The logs were toe nailed to the sills.  Of course none of the logs were perfectly straight, but by using a level and eyeballing, I was able to guesstimate when things were as straight as they were going to get.  My goal for the gaps between the logs was an inch or less, and for most of them it was a half inch or less, with a couple of 2 inch exceptions.  I had to tear out several logs and replace them at one point as they looked straight close up, but crooked from a distance.  I tried to make things easy and simple and towards that end I cheated a bit on the windows and door by using landscape timbers that were milled flat on two sides and rounded on the other two.  By putting two landscape timbers together on either side of the windows and door, I created a nice straight and level place to nail the header and fit the frame.  With the goal of simplicity, I placed the top of the window header at the top of the wall and used landscape timbers as cripples to support the bottom of the window.  The header attached to the two landscape timbers took any weight off of the window frame.  I put in three windows and a door using this method, and they all fit and worked fine.  Once the walls and the windows were in I placed two landscape timbers on top of the wall, staggering where they butted against each other for strength.  This really strengthened the walls, made them a little taller, and gave me a place to attach the birds mouth of the rafters.  I learned from the mistake of a neighbor who was also building a cabin at the same time, to shore up the walls before putting up the rafters.  The rafters put pressure on the walls, especially before the collar ties are in place, and my neighbors walls bowed out after he put on the rafters.  Another lesson I learned with this project is that dimensional lumber isn’t exactly dimensional.  Several rafters jut out past others because they were longer than 8 feet.  A professional carpenter told me that they know this and slice off the ends after the job is done, I thought I had somehow screwed up measuring or cutting, until I thought to measure the original length of the board.  I consulted a carpenter’s book for the roof, which was built conventionally with a birds mouth to fit the landscape timbers on top of the walls, collar ties, and a ridgepole.  The only part of the cabin I probably could not have done myself was the ridgepole.  I put plywood on top of the roof,  and shingled it.  I wanted a metal roof, but the cost at the time was prohibitive.  At this point fall was fast approaching and I needed to get the cabin sealed for winter.  To fill in the gaps in the logs I used backer rod, which is formed from closed cell foam.  I was able to find it at a local hardware store in the mason’s section and I was able to order different sizes on line from a log kit company.  The backer rod filled in any gaps that were 1/8 inch or greater, and then I  put log jam over the backer rod.  Log jam is expensive stuff, but in my opinion, worth every penny due to the ease of use.  No mixing, simply squirt in in the gaps with a caulking gun and tool the excess with a putty knife.  I used 15 gallons for the whole outside of the cabin, with some left over for any gaps that might open later.   For heat I installed a woodstove and a back-up gas heater, along with a couple of small solar panels for lights.  I’m happy with the way the cabin came out, and I feel a huge sense of accomplishment when I stand back and watch the smoke coming from the chimney.

This is a portion of the story I felt fortunate to have published in the June 2006 edition of Fur Fish Game.