WE BUILT TWO CABINS...FOR $100 EACH

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Photos below tell the story of how authors Paul Scanlon and Bob Leveque built their log cabins. Each morning for several days, Paul and Bob cut red spruce logs, loaded them into their truck, and hauled them to a sawmill.

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How to move two families from city apartments to country cabins for less than a month's rent, as told by Paul Scanlon and Bob Leveque.

Not long ago, "home" to us was an apartment overlooking one of Toronto's busiest thruways. It's hard for us to believe now, but we actually paid $200 per month to live there, listen to the constant roar of cars and trucks, and breathe their noxious exhaust fumes!

Today our families live on 20 wooded acres near a river in Nova Scotia. Our dwellings-a couple of 1-1/2-story cabins that we went 50-50 on—cost us less than $100 each to build. We have everything in the way of conveniences we want ... and as far as we're concerned, the cabins are more aesthetic than any apartment building could ever be.

How did we manage to build our homes for so little out-of-pocket money? There's no "trick" involved. All we did was harvest our construction materials directly from nature and perform 100% of the work ourselves.

Before we built our lodges, we carefully surveyed our future homestead. And we came to the conclusion that most—if not all—of our lumber needs would be met if we could [1] utilize numerous blowdowns (trees that'd been laid on their sides by strong winds), and [2] thin some of the timber on the thickly wooded land. We probably wouldn't have to cut any really "good" trees at all!

Next, we did some inquiring and found that there was a small sawmill just three miles from our property. Since the owner of the mill was about as short of help as we were skimpy on cash, it didn't take us long to arrive at a barter: The two of us would work two weeks of afternoons at the mill in exchange for the "no charge" sawing out of our logs.

With these details taken care of, we set out to do some logging. Despite the fact that parts of our woods resembled a dense jungle (which really needed thinning), getting to the work area was no problem ... thanks to a few old logging trails which had lain dormant for many years. We simply parked our pickup, walked into the forest, chose about 20 red spruce, and began felling them.

The only trouble was, the trees had grown so close together that—in the process of dropping a few of them—we frequently managed to snag and catch the tops of our falling trees in the branches of the live ones which we wanted to leave standing. When this occurred, we'd dislodge the entangled spruce by attaching a rope to it as high as possible and then pulling it down by hand or—when practicable—with a truck. (Should you ever find yourself in a similar situation, DON'T try to shake the snagged tree down by climbing up on its trunk, or you could easily wind up underneath the falling mass, since trees often tend to twist as they drop.)

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