Our $150 Home In The Woods
(Page 3 of 7)
March/April 1972
By Mary Lee Coe
We stood 8' beams on four of the six points where rafters would begin and end: one on each of the south corners of the house and one in the middle of each of the long 25' sides. We set a 12' beam upright on the northeast corner and for the northwest corner of the building, we cut a standing dead spruce, trimmed it to a length of 15' and chiseled out two notches on its south and east side where horizontal beams would later be joined 8' above ground level.
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The spruce was chosen because it was already dead (having just bought the six acres of logged-over land in June, I still had an aversion to cutting live trees) and because spruce is a soft wood which is easy to hew and chisel. Three of our friends helped us lift the fifteen footer into place, brace it and toenail it in position.
When our six vertical beams were in place, we took down five more standing dead spruce, hewed a flat surface on what would later be the top side of each and notched these soon-to-be horizontal timbers where they would meet the standing beams. We then placed the five joists parallel to the ground, eight feet above its surface and running east to west (1) atop the south corner uprights, (2) spanning the two middle vertical timbers, (3) connecting the two north corner uprights at their eight-foot level and (4 and 5) one each from the north corner vertical timbers at the eight-foot level southward to the tops of the middle uprights. All a matter of clean, simple logic.
Van and I next completed the frame for the highest part of the house by adding a 4' upright to the middle eastern vertical timber (making it a total of 12' tall) and setting a 7' beam atop the upright in the middle of the western side of the house so that it matched its 15' spruce companion in height. This would give the roof over the loft area a slant of three feet (15 minus 12), west to east . . . and a 1'h pitch (one-and-one-half inches of slope for every foot of roof).
The two 15' points were then connected by a horizontal beam (as were the two 12' points) to give the rafters for this part of the house something to rest on. We divided the south wall of the loft into thirds by setting two oak 4 x 4's (graduated in height) vertically between the cabin's middle east-to-west horizontal beam and the roof line of the loft above. The basic framing of the house was then completed by setting vertical 2 x 6's every two feet along the sills around the circumference of the entire lodge. These 2 x 6's, of course, were graduated in height along the sloping sides of the kitchen section and the north face of the house to give the roofs proper support.
At that point, the structure still swayed and shook when we climbed on it (it would get steadier as we closed it in) but I was proud of our work. The hand-cut spruce in the building's skeleton gave it a log cabin down-home effect and the old barn lumber exuded an aesthetic feeling of strength, age and wisdom. Our new home was already a tempered and weathered part of the woods.
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