The land had an existing, though dilapidated, cabin that we took apart. The remnants of the existing cabin were formidable, two stories with very heavy oak and walnut woods that had been saturated with water from a leaking roof and damp forest. We organized a “work party” where family and friends came down and helped us take this old cabin down. We spent several weekends pulling nails to salvage wood and took many trips to the local dump with old box spring mattresses and other “junk” that were left to rot in, or around, the old cabin. We also had to restore the road to the cabin in order to get a truck close enough to haul out all the junk.
We spent a year doing some modest landscaping to minimize erosion and to restore some of the natural space of the area. During this time I researched construction techniques and chose to build a post-and-beam style structure. I designed a set of plans and checked on their structural integrity by consulting an architect. The following year we staged a work crew (another work “party”) to begin building. The construction of the building was divided into several smaller projects, both to simplify the process and to fit within our available schedules for time to work on the weekends. A deck was first constructed to provide a flat place on an otherwise very steep hillside. We then constructed the supports for a loft and roof, and then the roof itself. Finally, we built walls using conventional frame construction techniques and integrated these with the post-and-beam portions of the building.
The (almost) finished cabin
Work Party Camp-out
The old structure