Tuesday, October 20, 2009

I've made some more progress on the windows, interior, and exterior siding. I've now got all but the large South picture window installed. The woodstove and hearth are installed and working. This project is close to being finished!

Here is a view of the Northwest corner of the cabin. You can see the windows, wood stove an hearth:



A close-up of the Jotul wood stove and hearth. The hearth is made from a monolithic slab of sedimentary stone, 3" thick and weighing close to 350lbs! It makes a great hearth for the stove and looks great. I've found that its hard to go wrong when you're building with real timber, stone, and iron...



The East wall is getting stud framed, and should be done with only a few more hours of work. I started by framing out the window cavities and hanging the windows. The top window is for the loft. Both of these windows are new, inexpensive single-hung windows that match the windows on the West wall. You can also see that the North side of the building is completely sided now:



From the inside, the stove pipe is centered between the two West windows:



From below, you can see the light coming in via the two East windows and the doorway:



Here is the assembled cedar log bed up in the loft. I've got things covered in plastic until the sawdust settles down. :-)



Here you can see the loft window relative to the cedar bed:



From the loft, looking down at the wood stove, stone hearth, and Western windows. This cabin is now cheery and well-lit, and the rough opening for the biggest, South-facing window is not even cut yet!



Several more days of work to go. Hopefully the weather will hold. I am nearly certain that I will be unable to side the South wall as I am running out of salvaged and weathered board and batten siding. That will most likely have to wait until next year.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

I've made more progress on the siding and windows! The North wall has been completely framed, insulated, and tyvek'd and about 1/2 sided. There is one window on the North wall with a great view of Moscow Mountain.

Here is the Northwest corner detail of the cabin:




Here is the window on the North wall. Since this is an old-fashioned picture window which I salvaged and restored, it seemed that the best way to make it work was to build a proper window sill. You can see that here in this picture:



The wood stove is installed and is completely functional! Here is a picture of the chimney coming out of the West wall and then going up past the end of the gable. It extends exactly 3' above the peak of the roof.






I had to build a piece of exterior framing to help support the chimney, since the chimney extends more than 1' past the exterior of the cabin in order to miss the gable-end overhang. I intend to sheath that piece of exterior framing in wood, probably cedar.



Today was the last day that I will be able to bring heavy materials up to the cabin job site until June 2010. It rained all night, and the Jeep trail was too muddy to make it up the hill without winching. It took an enormous amount of time and patience to get this final load of board-and-batten siding up to the cabin. I did it inch by inch by pulling my Jeep and trailer up the hill using my winch. It is hard to see from this picture how ridiculously steep this trail actually is.



When the weather improves, its more framing, insulating, and siding. I'll just have to hike up to the hill now to continue the work.