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OutsideFun1
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# Posted: 3 May 2013 11:20pm - Edited by: OutsideFun1
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Hello Everyone!
I'm new to this online community but I've really enjoyed looking through all of your projects while I worked away one mine. So here it is...
Cozy Bush Cabin- Youtube
(Click the link to check out the video tour)
I built this bush cabin in Northern Ontario, as a church youth group project. It was a great learning experience for me and my youth! I constructed it in my spare time, and it took 8 months to complete. And it didn't cost over $500 to build!
Cabin details:
- I have no previous experience in construction, only a passion to learn and build.
- Keep in mind this is a bush cabin and I wasn't building it to code or anything.
- I built the cabin right on the ground, and although there has been lots of flooding in the area this spring, the cabin has been bone dry. Also there has been no signs of shifting.
- The cabin is 10'x10'. While the roof section is 12'x16'
- It has 52 logs, approximately 25 inches in circumference at the base. I left them with the bark on.
- It only cost me $15 worth of gas, and $30 worth of oil to build the entire cabin with my chainsaw.
- The floor is set on 9 patio stones, with 2"x4"s for support, and 2.25" thick rough-cut Poplar floor boards on top.
- I made square notches in the logs, which I found to be a sturdy way to fit the logs together.
- We didn't use any machinery (except for a chainsaw). Just good ol' fashioned man power.
- I used a heavy-duty tarp to cover the roof.
- To fill the gaps between the logs I used brown-coloured insulation. Not the best way to fill the gaps, but it's certainly cheap, quick, and efficient.
I guess I'm gonna need to get a Photobucket account to display my pics, but in the meantime, you can just click on the Youtube link. Enjoy!
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10sne1
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# Posted: 4 May 2013 08:18am
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Nice, great project with great resources.
You said you did a lot of cabin building research. I have a 5 acre pine wooded tract and know I would have enough to build a similar cabin. How long do you expect the logs to last? Will the bark start to fall off or the logs start to shrink? What type of logs did you use? How would pine logs work? Did you cure the logs. Just a bunch of questions that come to mind, as I would like to learn more about this type of build. Again, congrats on your cabin. Thanks for sharing. Tomm
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OwenChristensen
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# Posted: 4 May 2013 09:24am
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Thanks for sharing. That is very interesting. It sure looks like fun.
Owen
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OutsideFun1
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# Posted: 4 May 2013 11:45am - Edited by: OutsideFun1
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Wow I'm jealous of your 5 acre pine stand! Some day I plan to get myself a similar tract of land to build a log home from and on.
- If you properly prepare the logs it wouldn't be outrageous to have them last 100 years. Just take a look at all the abandoned log cabins that were built by pioneers and left on their own. They look pretty weathered, and the roof might be caved in, but they're still standing! Now just try and leave a stick frame house on its own and it might not be standing after 20 years!
- Since I was rushing to finish this cabin I skipped a couple steps that would make the logs last even longer. If I had more time though, I definitely would have done the extra steps.
- If I were to walk away from my log cabin today and never come back to it, I'm guessing it would last 10 years with the roof on (I covered the roof with very thin and cheap materials), and the structure itself could last 40-60 years. I can say this because I live in Northern Ontario where the gold rush is still on, and when I'm in the bush I still come across log cabins that were built by the first prospectors to the area and forgotten about 85-100 years ago.
- Now, back to how I could have prepared the logs to last longer. From what I've learned, the best way to prepare a log is this: Drop the trees you need in the winter and strip the bark from them right away. You can use a tool to debark them called a draw knife.
If you drop them and leave them with the bark on for too long (say a year or two), the sap-filled bark will literally glue itself to the tree and it will be very difficult to debark it after that.
You will want to debark the tree because the bark can trap moister inside the log and cause it to rot faster. After you've stripped the bark from them in the winter, you can either let them lay where they are to dry out a little bit. You can either leave them to dry for a year, or you can use them to build in the spring. I know people who build with dry logs and I know others who only build with "green" logs (logs that haven't completely dried out yet). I don't think either way is wrong.
Green logs are heavy, but easier to cut notches into. They will also shrink a little bit when they dry. So if you build with green logs you will want to let your cabin dry out a little bit before putting the chinking between them. Dry logs are easier to move around, because they're almost half the weight (water is heavy!), but they're a little harder to make notches in (no big deal though). With dry logs you will also be able to chink them right away because they're not gonna shrink much more, or at all.
You can also treat your logs to make them last longer. I'm pretty sure you can buy big buckets of treatment for logs. Maybe linseed oil? Does someone else know about this?
Also I would have raised the logs off the ground by putting some footings underneath them. Generally I hear that it's good to keep the whole cabin 2 feet off the ground for best results. Of course mine is sitting directly on the ground, which means my bottom row of logs is susceptible to rotting quicker if they aren't taken care of.
I used pine to build my cabin. Pine is a very popular choice for log cabins. Pine is easy to get, easy to work with, and they're quite straight with little taper. The absolute best tree (I believe anyway) is cedar. Cedar is naturally acidic, which means that it is possibly the only type of wood that protects itself from rotting. Cool huh? The bad thing about cedar is that it isn't always straight, it can be expensive to buy, and it tapers quite a bit. So it's hard to work with.
When I build my log home I'm almost certainly gonna use pine.
Thanks for all your questions Tomm! If you have any more I would love to answer them.
These days it's hard to find anyone who knows anything about log cabin building. And I'm not talking about the builders who put together the pre-made cabins from the factories, I'm talking about traditional log cabin building. It truly is a lost art. I couldn't find anyone who had the skills or experience to teach me, because they're all gone now. If you can build a log cabin Tomm you're going to learn a lot, and you'll be preserving a set of skills and knowledge that would otherwise be lost to the next generation. I think that's pretty awesome.
I learned how to build log cabins by watching the old documentary called "Alone in the Wilderness" by Dick Proenneke. Back in the 80s (I think) a guy named Dick sold everything and moved to Alaska to build himself a log cabin with nothing but hand tools. He lived there alone for many decades. If you can buy the DVD it is amazing to watch!
Since we're talking about a lost art here, some of the advice I'm giving you is stuff that I've figured out. So some of it might not be "right". So make sure you keep asking lots of questions and doing lots of research. I researched by looking at old pictures of log cabins and looking at Youtube videos of other people who built their own.
In my experience I had a lot of people who gave me their "advice" on how it "should be done". It was pretty discouraging to listen to all their "should dos", and if I listened to all of them I never would have built the cabin. But I realized that for all their advice, none of them had ever built a log cabin. So at some point, you just have to go ahead and do it! You'll learn as you go. Building a log cabin is like putting together a puzzle. Sometimes you'll have to stop at a certain stage in the building process to figure something out, and after a night or two of sleeping on it, you'll have it figured out. It's a fun process!
Anyway there you go. Forgive me if I overloaded you with too much info.
Nathan
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OutsideFun1
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# Posted: 4 May 2013 11:46am
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Thanks Owen for checking out the video!
Nathan
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OutsideFun1
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# Posted: 4 May 2013 12:00pm - Edited by: OutsideFun1
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Here's some pics finally!
Click this link to view the Youtube Video Tour of my Cozy Bush Cabin
Concept
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Progress 1
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Progress 2
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Progress 3
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OutsideFun1
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# Posted: 4 May 2013 12:15pm - Edited by: OutsideFun1
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pics
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OutsideFun1
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# Posted: 4 May 2013 12:18pm - Edited by: OutsideFun1
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pics
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OutsideFun1
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# Posted: 4 May 2013 12:24pm - Edited by: OutsideFun1
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pics
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Interior 1
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OutsideFun1
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# Posted: 4 May 2013 12:31pm - Edited by: OutsideFun1
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pics
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Interior 5
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OutsideFun1
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# Posted: 4 May 2013 12:34pm - Edited by: OutsideFun1
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pics
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Interior 8
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10sne1
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# Posted: 6 May 2013 07:18pm
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Nathan, thanks for the info and time it took to write. I have some time before I can get started, as my property is 8 hours away from my home. But I do plan on doing some research for the future. I wander if I could prep a few logs each season and after I have a stock pile, start the build? I am also interested on how to build it off the ground, as I like how your cabin just came up out of the ground, but can see the benefits to have a base plate under the first run of logs. Our property is in Georgia and we live in Florida. There is a 30x30 cabin on the property already, but my in laws have made claim to it. My wife and I are going to ruff it in the 12x24 storage shed the first few years, but building a cabin with the trees from this site truly is a project that would be time well spent! Keep in touch, Tomm
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fpw
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# Posted: 6 May 2013 08:52pm
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Nice work. Just decide what you want and move forward. Eventually, you figure it out.
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mojo43
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# Posted: 7 May 2013 08:30am
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Very nice cabin, way to go!
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littlesalmon4
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# Posted: 7 May 2013 11:44am - Edited by: littlesalmon4
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Dick Proenneke actually started building his Alaskan cabin in about 1967.
You are correct, it is an amazing and intersting story.
I love your cabin, a very interesting build.
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countrygirl
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# Posted: 17 Jun 2013 10:40am
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cool cabin, nice work. love all the pictures, can't wait to see what you build next!
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leonk
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# Posted: 17 Jun 2013 05:15pm
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where in ON r u? nice work.
properly build log structures last for hundreds of years.
My father in law lives in a log house that is about 100.
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OutsideFun1
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# Posted: 29 Jun 2013 01:18pm
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Thank you for all the comments.
I built this cabin in the Timmins area.
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Truecabin
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# Posted: 1 Jul 2013 01:34pm - Edited by: Truecabin
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i would say a true cabin I like to see people who like a real old style cabin so many are just a small house which is ok but so few truecabins its good to have some or its a lost art as you said
can i assume it came out better than you expected and now you might want it off the dirt
i know you it would have been a lot of work to peel the logs but soon enough you will be sorry i can't help you on that was a decision that seemed OK at the time but if i was you I would get four 20 ton jacks dig outside the corners and lift it up and put big rocks or under it get it off the dirt before the sill logs start to rot that will be a big loss
you can lift this little cabin and make it last more than 10 years easy
dont use more than 4 rocks you cant control the settling of more points maybe put a bag of fencepost concrete under each rock to lessen the settling thats 4 bags you got to carry in and makes it easier to not disturb the soil below the rock
fencepost concrete you dont even have to mix if the ground is wet it will harden enough just put it down like gravel then cover it with dirt
i know you are not me but i would do it this summer and you can pat yourself on the back in springtime 2014
maybe i shouldnt write easy but i can see that you can do this work
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OutsideFun1
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# Posted: 2 Jul 2013 10:27pm
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You are right Truecabin. First I was going to build a nice fort and then it ended up turning into a cabin. If I could do it over again I would have built it on proper footings. This summer I do plan to raise it off the ground if I get the time. I'll keep your suggestions in mind if I do. Thanks.
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