Rants from the Hollow

A nice sturdy pine stairway now provides easy access to the upper floor. Since my previous visit, tongue and groove had been laid on top of the heavy pine joists, the dormers were framed, and insulated ceiling panels were installed.  It is feeling more and more like a real house.

Its funny, but both Elizabeth and I were struck by the relative spaciousness of the unfinished upstairs, and had second thoughts about splitting it up with walls that will develop this piece of property into bed and sitting rooms, closets and a master bath.  Right now, there is plenty of room for a pool table and ping pong table, and it almost feels a shame to ruin that by making it livable.

Other than the stairway, exterior walls and the posts supporting the ridgepole, everything else is pretty flexible.  Walls can go just about anywhere, and Elizabeth has spent countless hours working on the original design, modifying it, and then rethinking it.  She spent an afternoon last week using blue tape to mark out some of the walls so she could better visualize the eventual room layout. The photo above shows the door and outside walls of the master bath, along with the toilet, shower stall, and sinks along the left.

Two other things limit our flexibility.  Running wiring in a log building takes some planning, and the builders have pretty much fixed the location of all roof fixtures. The hallway lights, bedroom ceiling fans, and wiring for ceiling lights and fans that will run down to switches in interior walls, was put into place before the roof panels went up, so the wiring could go across the top. Something else fixed even more firmly in stone, so to speak, is the heavy pine tongue & groove flooring over the living room. This is the only downstairs room with visible pine beams, and the top floor flooring serves as the main floor ceiling. The rest of the ceilings above the first floor are done in dimensional lumber, so we can put some sound insulating in. They will be drywalled below, and we’ll have to choose a flooring for the parts of the top floor that are done in subfloor right now.

Just before first grade, my family moved to a new neighborhood, and I have fond memories of wandering around inside unfinished houses with my parents and grandparents before the doors and windows went up.  Our cabin feels a lot like that right now, a solid yet unfinished atmosphere that comes from completed roofs and walls, but no fixtures, utilities, or windows.  Its a child of a house, and it reminds me of the newly hatched houses in my childhood neighborhood.

Just before Elizabeth and I left on Thursday, the builders had started trimming out the window, door, and fireplace openings, using a chainsaw and chalk lines.  As shown in a picture my father took on Friday, the window openings have all been trimmed to size and rough framed so the windows and doors can be installed.  I don’t know if that will be done before we return at the end of the month, but once the holes are plugged, the cabin’s character will change again. I’m glad I had a chance to visit last week.

[The first entry in the Building the Cabin Series is Starting The Cabin.  The next entry in this series is Fall Down at the Hollow.]

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 16th, 2011 at 4:06 pm and is filed under Building the Cabin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.