Site Work

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The first step in any building project is of course the site work. I've picked the old parking slab beside the power pole as the site for our cabin for a number of reasons:

- It's centrally located and close to power.
- It's high and dry and gets blasted with sun throughout most of the day (no wood rot, good indoor air quality, passive solar orientation).
- It will be visible from the road and establish some presence here, at the same time shielding us from the road.
- There will be a wonderful view out the back of the cabin of the garden and barn and surrounding hillside.
- The parking slab is not usable structurally (it's thin and cracked and not level), but will shed water quickly and keep humidity down, thereby keeping the underneath of the cabin dry if we decide to go with a raised framed floor.
- But most of all it just feels like the right place to build.

But once the general location's decided, the real work begins. The exact position of the building needs laid out precisely. For this I use batterboards and line. I have a spool of masonry line, and for the boards, I'm going to use scraps from the wood pile. Here's a shot of them:

A book I have on building barns and outbuildings recommends using 2x4's for stakes to pound in to the ground to support the horizontal crossmember. I don't know what kind of soil they've got, but there was no way I was pounding an old 2x4 deep into the ground, even with cutting a point on the end and using my 2lb sledge. The boards split to pieces. I found a slim 1x2 stake works best. And if the stake isn't totally rigid once you've pounded it down, pound in another stake diagonally and screw it to it for a brace. It's important the batterboard never moves or it could throw off a line.

Here's a shot of Rachael and I methodically working away. She was critical for a lot of the measurements and checking level:

I positioned the cabin half in front of the garden, and half in front of the lawn. I put in batterboards at one corner, with the crossmembers level to each other. I then pounded in a stake at a distant corner, and ran a line to it so I could mark where the crossmember should go, level to the rest. I had to use a line level on the line to check level - not as accurate as I'd like, but my laser level was useless. Though the laser came on, it wasn't bright enough to put a red dot on where I pointed it - I tried changing the batteries, but it made no difference. Another high-tech piece of junk.

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Here's another shot of us measuring and working [Brooke's taking the photos], trying to get the layout perfectly square - something so incredibly frustrating I considered abandoning the whole project at one point and going back to work on the barn:

I felt like, with the barn, I already had a graded site, a stone foundation in, and the bulk of the structural framing done - why start over again from scratch? But I was nervous the barn was such a colossal project and would suck up so much time and money that I might not get it finished. I wanted something small to see through, from foundation to moving in, even if it's just a shell. So I kept plugging away at the cabin. I knew if I could get through the layout, the rest of the foundation would be mere gruntwork.

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Once I got the lines right and found square, I pounded a nail in to each crossmember where the line crossed it and wrapped the line around it. This would hold it in position.

Here's a shot of the southeast corner:

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Here's a shot of the site from further back:

With all the lines in, we dropped plumb bobs at the intersections to mark where the corner piers should go. We then measured down the lines and marked where additional piers would go - every 6 feet along the long axis of the building, every 8 feet at the short, with 12 in all. We dropped plumb bobs from these marks for the rest of the pier locations.

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Here's a pic of the finished site work, the lines level and square, the center points of the piers marked with tent stakes:

With the site work over, and stress, Rachael moved on to building a doll village for all her Barbies:

She's on the fort her and Brooke had started building last year. While Rachael hammers away at doll building (she's using lumber cutoffs I'd stored in the shed for firewood), Brooke takes clay from the barn and sculpts furniture.

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The girls have planted seeds in our pots and we put them in the sun for germination:

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They're going to be the chief gardeners this year, while I work on building.

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Return to Tennessee

. We packed up and left Atlanta for Tennessee on April 8th. We weren't bringing seedlings this time so we had a little more room in the car. Gardening is not going to be as much of a focus as getting a cabin built. We put our furniture in storage.

Here's the property as soon as we pulled up and parked in front of the pumphouse:

The barn is still in good shape, even after a long wet winter. Sealing the boards must have helped. Their color has faded, but there's no sign of rot.

Our old block fireplace made from debris from the fire hasn't changed. I need to take down the ramshackle board wall I put up to keep the wind from destroying our screened-in tent:

Remember the flycatcher that nested in our pumphouse . . . where I got totally fed up with her eggs' inability to hatch and her constant in and out so we had no place to rest, and when I went to move her eggs I found 5 little chicks? Well, she's nested in the pumphouse again (she gets in through the eaves - the door was shut and locked). But this time she's built a new nest at the back of one of the shelves. And she's already got one egg:

She's not going anywhere.

Here's a shot of the garden, with our old tomato stakes:

Our creek is full of more water than we've ever seen it before, which is exciting. So we will have a guaranteed water source at least half the year, besides our well:

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Here's a shot looking down from the gazebo over the property . . . no leaves on the trees, the sight rather empty:

The roof of the gazebo is basically destroyed. It looks like the weight of snow has ripped the canvas. We'll have to rebuild the roof with metal conduit and create some sort of custom-yurt covering that will shed water better:

But the pad we'd built for the gazebo is still in perfect condition. This is where I'd stayed all last year while the kids slept in the truck. It was comfortable except for the giant hornets.

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Since the gazebo's out, we first move into the pumphouse:

It's pretty cramped for the three of us, but we've got a space heater, and at night we stuff all the cracks in the door with sheets, so we stay quite warm.

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Our first project is to move the gazebo down to the barn to create some sort of livable dwelling while we build the cabin. I place a board between two corner sections and carry that, while the girls each carry one corner. We walk it this way down the hill to the barn.

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But unfortunately it won't fit through the big barn opening because it's too tall. I foolishly try to turn it on its side to bring it in, but it's too heavy and one of the metal crossbars bends. It doesn't break though, so it's not the end of the world. The only thing to do is to remove the roof to get it in, which takes a while.

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We put the gazebo in the center of the barn to use the posts to tie tarps to. And the floor is graded level with no vegetation, so there will be far less bugs. And it's much closer to the toilet and building site and our source of power, so it will be a far more convenient place to be.

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Once the gazebo's in, we lay old boards down across the dirt for a floor:

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I put a large blue tarp up for the roof, folded in half and doubled over to give it extra strength. We then put up our gazebo mesh and bamboo blinds. Once the futon's in, and a rug, it's like a little apartment:

The earth behind the barn where I'd cut out for the dwelling has caved in a little and washed over the corner and sill plates. At some point I'm going to have to cut the land back, and create a 10' wide aisle like I did on the side, so that the land slopes down and away from the building at all points. Hopefully I won't be doing that by hand. For now I just shovel out the dirt that's spilled over the foundation:

The borate-treated sill plates show no sign of rot, which is good. This building gets a tremendous amount of sun and that helps keep everything dry.

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We move more tents into the barn area to use for storage. The barn becomes 'tent city'. If you look closely you can see I've put a little cook-slab out in front of the refurbished gazebo:

We use this slab not only to cook, but a place to continue our daily practice of making green smoothies. The dandelions are in flower everywhere:

Here's a shot of my collecting bag full of flowers, and the creek-water and bananas for our smoothie:

Here's another shot of the property. It's quite cold for April, and Rachael's got her sweater and hat on:

The first rainstorm that hits pretty much soaks everything in the gazebo, and I'm depressed. Rain just blows horizontally through the mesh and makes sleep impossible. I think about it for a while, then decide to run to the store for tarps to use for makeshift walls. The tarps can hang from the frame and be lowered or raised depending on the weather.

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We put the tarps in, and it works! With the mesh, and blinds, and tarps, and board floor, the place, though only 12x12, really feels like a home. Not only does no rain blow through, but wind doesn't either, so it's much warmer and feels more secure. We even bring the space heater in during extreme cold, and it warms up fast.

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This is where we'll live while we build the cabin:

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The Post and Beam Cabin

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Here is the cabin where I left it at the end of July, basically dried in and missing only the additions and siding (the missing window in the top center has since been put in).

The frame is post and beam, close to 16ft high at the peak, the footprint 16x25, with a large wraparound loft. Here are some interior shots:


The area beneath the loft, where ultimately the bathroom will go:


The temporary kitchen counter, where the kitchen will go:


The french doors, which will go out to the 12x26 addition (living room):


Here you can see I've done the pier foundation for the addition, and it's ready to go for framing:


Here's a shot of the cabin behind the sunflowers:

And a shot of us visiting Big South Fork National Rec Area:

When I can find the rest of the pictures I'll do some articles on the pier foundation and post and beam building, as well as how everything went up there the last 4 months!

Homesteading / The Cabin

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We've been up homesteading in Tennessee now for a month. The weather for the most part has been wonderful, outside of the last 5 days of rain, which has drenched all the South.

The gazebo canvas roof was torn to shreds from snow when we arrived. The girls and I moved it down to the center of the barn. I had to disassemble the roof to get it in. We laid down old boards for planks for the floor, I got a 16'x30' tarp which folded in half made a roof which I tied down to the barn framing. Ultimately we added 4 more tarps which wrap around the entire dwelling, which can be rolled up or left down, the front tarp often rolled up to get in and out. With the bamboo blinds and tarps, the place is like a mini-apartment and very comfortable. We've weathered several severe storms in it - it stays totally dry inside. I put in a $5 clamp lamp for overhead lighting, there's a rug down over the old planks, and the futon of course, now with a double futon mattress - very, very comfortable compared to last year.

We've planted one peach tree and several apple trees. We'd like to eventually have a whole orchard of apples . . . they seem to do well here.

We've got 7 large garden beds planted this year, not only tomatoes and melons, but a whole bed of giant sunflowers also. My wife did a lot of the planting. The girls helped.

We continue to compost humanure, and have bought a mower - it's the ultimate "cover material harvester". Why pay for all that straw? Grass and weeds harvested with a mower are a far better and denser cover material, full of nutrients, site-harvested, and cutting the grass occasionally has kept down the ticks and created more living space. Good humanure compost needs high heat from thermaphilic bacteria, and grass clippings get unbelievably hot inside just sitting in a pile for a day. It's a great discovery.

I'm building dawn to dusk again, and have gone back to my original plan for the cabin in general. I've built 12 16"x16" concrete piers, digging down about 30" for each, putting down packed gravel, a concrete footer with 1/2" rebar, and block with rod and infill where the piers come up substantially above grade. All the block piers were then covered in surface bonded cement for additional lateral strength.

I put in 3 big girders, each 25' in length, composed of tripled 2x10's. On top of this went a 2x10 floor frame. I'm almost finished with the 3/4" flooring. I've ordered the wood for the post and beam frame and rafters. We're still sticking with the additions. Framing lumber is really cheap right now - they say the cheapest in 30 years. I got 16' lengths of 2x10 for only $9 a piece. Last year they were more like $14/$15.

Though ideally I would have liked to do straw bale, we need a cabin ASAP, and once I saw the size of those piers I was putting in, I knew they could support the weight of the entire building. The cabin footprint is now 16x25, and we're going higher, with more loft. Loft will cover most of the upper space and be used for bedrooms for both us and the girls. The final height of the building will be 15', with a short gable roof coming down to 13'. We'll still have clerestory windows over the north and south-facing additions. My wife's been buying windows from Builder's Surplus.

This cabin is going well and one of those projects we're finally going to see through! (though we're already talking about going back out to New Mexico for months - to take the girls to all the places we camped when they were little and now don't remember).

I'll add photos when I can.

1880 Farmhouse

. I took the girls out to Girl Scouts in Johns Creek, so it was a good chance to stop by Autrey Mill Nature Preserve to see the old farmhouse again - and this time get some photos!

The giant oak out front was probably a much smaller tree back in 1880, when this farmhouse was built. Though it appears some foundation work has been done to keep the house from falling apart (the entire house has seriously rocked back on its pier/sill foundation), it is a vintage home from that period, not a replica. It is almost identical in size to the cabin I'm starting to build in a week. However instead of the traditional front porch (there is just too much traffic in this world to properly enjoy a front porch), we are doing a greenhouse/sunroom.

Here are some shots of the interior. The plank walls:

The doorway from one room into the other (the house is divided into two large rooms - each 15'x16'). It's difficult to see from this image, but the entire doorway is rocked to the side with the rest of the house and nowhere near plumb:

The sign states how everything was reused or recycled back in 1880 farm life - almost nothing was thrown away (i.e. food wastes to pigs, used fats for candles/soap, old clothes for quilts/rugs).

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The stone fireplace:

An old hutch, with an oil lamp nearby:

A rear doorway, with an old zinc washtub up on the wall:

The plank floor, with a beautiful oval rug on the floor, possibly heirloom:

Here's a shot from outside. It's very difficult to show how much the house has rocked backwards on its foundation, because there's no plumb point of reference. However if you look closely, the small tree is essentially plumb, and you can see as you look higher up on the building it leans back:

Here you can see a pier made of block that has rocked backwards - who knows when this was put in . . . and obviously it didn't do the job:

Here's the rear sill which holds up all the framing in the back of the house, half-eaten away in places:

Here's one of the many joists totally ruined with decay:

The house is essentially ruined because the pier foundation failed. Obviously whatever went underneath each pier wasn't sufficient. Maybe they were stacked above unchanged ground. It's definitely a lesson for the prospective builder - no matter how beautiful your dwelling when first constructed, the question is, will it last?

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A little past the farmhouse is an enormous tipi:

The interior is rather claustrophobic and dank with a mildew carpet down, and a fire ring:

It reminds me (in a bad way) of the traditional Sioux sweat lodge I did out in Gila, New Mexico, with the moldy carpets, being way way too hot (football-sized glowing rocks, brought in with a shovel), and I couldn't figure out how to breathe the hot steam, so it felt like a torture chamber. However if there were some other type of flooring down, and furniture, it would make a very nice shelter.

Nearby is a hunting lodge made recently by a Native American (I believe Cherokee):

It's essentially a hunting blind where you can take shelter during a hunt. It's ingeniously built. Look at the roof from below:

All site-harvested materials. Here's a closeup of the overlapping bark roof:

The cobb walls begin on a foundation of rock:

Here you can see the straw in the mud. When you knock on the wall it feels like concrete - very solid:

Here's the interior:

And here's how the wall ties into the roof. Again an ingenious use of the local trees and branches. Though twine is used, I'm sure he could easily have used cordage, if given enough time - especially considering how much native yucca (yucca filamentosa) is around:

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