We have made amazing progress. I am humbled by the support of family and friends as we work together to build our small cottage in the north woods. It's amazing to watch friends working together, finding a rhythm, and behold a wall appears!
We started by framing the basement walkout lake wall. That included using laser levels and story boards to make sure our floors would be level. We spent a lot of time calculating where the beams and support posts needed to be to support the floors above. It's no surprise that the engineers we had helping were great with math. What I did learn is that I stink at explaining what I'm trying to accomplish! After multiple scribbled drawings we actually came out with a plan that worked.
We've made some "field modifications" along the way. One of the larger changes was to invalidate our truss warranty by changing the floor trusses. Since we ended up with a walkout we needed to make a couple of changes or you would walk down the basement stairs and smack your head dead center into our floor furnace hanging from the floor above. Not to mention it blocked the window we worked so hard to align with the stairs! Oops ...
We made great progress during the first two week period. At the end of the two week period we had all the main floor walls up, plumb, and braced, along with the loft trusses in place. We returned Labor Day weekend to complete the loft subfloor and to build the east gable end wall. We also moved the roof trusses closer to the cabin by saddling them over the top of the bobcat and lifting the front end with the forks. <<Add Banjo Music Here>> We added aluminum flashing with hopes of mouse proofing the cabin.
The cabin walls are 10' tall and best explained as balloon construction where the wall studs run from the base plate and up to create the loft stub wall. The loft floor is created by having an LVL cleat attached to the east gable end wall at 8' and a double LVL beam that is supported by the stairs and basement posts below (see math 101 above for the layout). All the headers are double LVL's ... yes, it is overkill ... but to date, nothing I have built has ever fallen down!
The window seat will be a focal point of the small cabin. It's large enough to sleep in and is surrounded by large windows. The views will be spectacular with the front window running up into the dormer to create a full 8' window to the lake. At least I will know where to find Mkay!
Lessons Learned:
- Measure twice, cut once, and rent a board stretcher
- Have a bonfire each night to burn your mistakes
- If you are doing the hokey pokey around a standing sledge hammer and you still cannot see it, it's time to take a break
- Build walls before Scotch
- Rough framing tolerances vary greatly
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