Nordhjem: Racing Mother Nature

Racing Mother Nature

It’s been over a month since our last blog entry and we have made significant strides in building our cabin. Our current race is against Mother Nature to attempt to close in the cabin before winter. Our definition of enclosing the cabin includes at least a roof covered by synthetic underlayment, exterior Tyvek, and windows and doors installed. Our definition of winter also may vary … especially since we saw snow this past Saturday morning!

We’ve accomplished so much its hard to know where to continue our blog.

After constructing the main cabin walls we built the loft floor. Our building method is best described as balloon construction. The cabin walls are 10’ tall with the rooms under the loft at the standard 8’ height. The 10’ wall provides a small knee wall in the loft. This made building of the loft floor easier as the floor is supported by a cleat on the end wall and a support beam that aligns (a small miracle) across the stair end walls which transfer to 6x6 posts in the basement and foundation. We completed the loft floor substructure in a day but that included a remodel of some of the side walls to support the double LVL center beam. At the end of the day we were pooped … dinner was at 9:30 and there was snoring for desert.

This blog would not be complete without including some insight into our trials and tribulations with gas combustion engines. If I even look at a carburetor is begins to spit and sputter and eventually die. So what did I do … I looked at our gas compressor carb and everything went to hell in a hen basket. Fortunately, our crew includes “Wayne the Carb Man” who came to our rescue. He diagnosed the problem to be a bad needle valve but then found that we could start and run the compressor with the gas only 25% on which worked until we purchased and installed a Chinese rebuilt carb for $35. Along the way I managed to break the recoil cord twice and eventually replaced it with paracord from Al. (I suspect his camper is still short a cloths line!)

Trusses Ho! Next up, the daunting task of installing the parallel cord trusses. But wait, before you begin, the trusses need to be carried somewhere near the cabin as the delivery truck was unable to make the final 100 yards. The problem was solved by 1 leadership coach, 1 engineer, 1 architect, and 1 perfusionist.

This brain crew figured out a way to piggy back the trusses vertically up and over the cab of the bobcat. Then by lifting the forks we raised two trusses at a time and drove/walked them down to the cabin. We “Got Er Done” but I would not categorize this in the “fun” category! We’re expecting a call from Macy’s to be a part of next years Thanksgiving parade!

We framed the first gable end wall lying down on the loft floor. We built the full wall, window headers, applied sheathing and Tyvek prior to lifting the wall with the wall jacks. The wall was fairly light but had a mind of its own as it traveled the last 18”-24” standing upright and held in place by the exterior bracing. A few of us had to change our shorts after that memorable moment …

Next, placing said trusses up onto said structure. That took 3 engineers and a leadership coach to design and build a 24’ mast from sandwiched 2x4’s. We secured the mast to the center of the cabin next to the loft. Installed a 10,000 lb winch on the loft floor (Wait, what? You don’t have a spare 10k winch AND battery in your truck? Shame on you … ) and using a pulley on the top of the mast we hoisted each individual truss up onto the side walls. Building a cat walk from the loft to the opposing wall allowed us to walk the trusses across the cabin walls staging them in order for installation. We used the mast to lift 16 sheets of roof sheathing onto the loft floor and to raise the final 2 trusses as well by attaching it on the west gable end wall.

We lifted the trusses in place manually. We placed spacer blocks on our top plates 24”oc. A pulley block we would place over the previously raised truss. With one lucky person, named Dave, pulling on the rope, your’s truly lifting the high end of the truss and help assuring we stayed on the top plates we raised the trusses into place. The only downside is that we work slow and the trusses sat too long on the side walls distorting the tails slightly. “Oh well”, we did the best we could and straightened what we could.

We raised the walls with half of the sheathing applied. This helped to keep the walls square. We later added the remaining sheathing lapping over the floor plates to tie the structure together. Next we hung as much Tyvek upside down as possible. Its our small way of telling Dupont that their rolls really only unroll one direction and if there marketing department had any brains they would print their logo’s both directions. But because they do not … we actually enjoy putting it on upside down as much as possible.

Gable End Fascia Holder

Truss Drop-In spacer

Fascia & Roof Sheathing Mkay cut the gable end lookouts faster than I could find my hammer then Bob & Mkay worked together installing them. To aid installing the fascia I designed some plywood jigs to provide extra hands which allowed my wife and I to install the fascia. If you look closely you will see that we use jigs and cleats a lot to simplify our tasks. The jigs I build are affectionately known as “DHFDF’s” (Do Hickies For Dum F____^TM).

Next up windows … our windows are a long story themselves. We’ve been collecting windows for our cabin for years. We’ve actually moved them multiple times to/from storage and new homes along the way. The reason for the window fiasco is to save $$$ which we did by purchasing about half of our windows from a construction outlet BMO (Building Material Outlet) in Eagan. BMO is a complete mess and finding matching windows takes an act of god but we did manage to find windows that eventually found their way into our dream cottage.

This past Friday Pella delivered the remaining windows for the cabin. I am still amazed and grateful that they would deliver to our remote property. The delivery truck was larger than expected and was at least 14’ tall so we received some driveway tree trimming gratis from Pella. The driver said he’s seen worse but rest assured the truck will never be quite the same.

Along the way some bonehead (yep, that’s me) bought 2 large windows that were a different color. Fortunately, Wayne the Carb Man is also a fantastic painter who restores corvettes and street rods. Wayne professionally masked off the windows and painted them a lovely Pella PR0151 brown and matched the sheen of the finish perfectly! He’s amazing!!

Get this … after all we’ve done installing windows is actually F.U.N.!!! It’s relatively easy when you have a fantastic ground crew that will prep the Tyvek and apply the sill plate to ready the opening for installation. I’ll spare you the details but I’m somewhat particular on how I prefer to install windows. The windows really change the look of the cottage both inside and out. The change was dramatic. Installing the French double swing door in the basement wasn’t as daunting as we anticipated.