Here we are again with more tips and short cuts to building a cheap and simple log cabin. In this post we will talk about one of the primary componets of a log cabin..... logs.

The logs arrived today all the way from Wisconsin where they were carefully cut and hewed into shape by the Amish (I kid you not). Stephen spent many months on the phone figuring out the logs, buying the logs, comparing the logs, shipping the logs, etc. so naturally he was very happy to see the logs sitting on the drive way.

Nice truck, with even nicer looking logs, for our even nicer log cabin to be.

You can unload 25,000 pounds of wood by hand, or you can rent a lean, mean, log moving machine. It let us do the work in one day what would have taken us weeks to do. The only catch was that we had to drive the fork lift about 20 miles from the rental place to home. which was a little freaky roaring along our country road with a 16,000 lb machine that does not have suspension and the steering is attached to the back wheels. I quickly learned how to drive it with about 40 cars lined up behind me eagerly observing my progress. Over all it went without a hitch and we only crunched one small tractor, two cheap sedans and half a dozen mail boxes (just kidding).


Thats 4000 pounds of logs. Each load had to come off the truck and get hiked through the woods and over rocks to the building site. It was like driving an ATV with two elephants attached to the head lights. Well not excatly ('cause I have never driven an ATV with two..... oh, never mind. You get the idea).

Lots of help from the boys to set things in the correct place. It all got done in one day with everyone working together. And then we got back to moving the studio. More about that in the next update. Stay tuned. Don't go away. And that concludes our broadcast day, etc.

PS. We got the logs for a much reduced price from a company in Wisconsin. Really nice people who have been more than helpful. Check them out when you get a chance:Classic Log Homes, Inc.Contact: Jeff Glaza(715) 887-2550http://www.classicloghomes.biz/

Now here comes the fun part, adding the insulation and the flooring. We have worked quickly and efficiently without delay. Actually the back property sold so it looks like we will need to move buildings, clean up stuff and clear off four years worth of junk (err, i mean storage) . But at least check out how far we got before we stopped for a couple of weeks.

Dale and Sam had a great time putting in one thousand screws to hold the OSB in place. Note the insulation, which did not fail to go in like normal insulation does..... with lots of itching. But still we moved forward.

John added the steps to the front porch. He did an awesome job and they came out great. Serious solid steps to match our seriously solid cabin.

Welcome back! Here's the latest on the progress with the cabin. Check out what's been happening.

Okay, once all the piers are nice and dry you can add a little wood on top to make the floor.

And then you can add a little more.

And some more

And if you feel like it a little more.

John led the way when it came to figuring out where to add more wood. When the pro's examined what we did they thought we used a little too much wood. Oh well, it was fun framing in the floor.

Today we wanted to show you the next step of progress and what is happening now that the cement is dry.

We have these nice poured little cement blocks in the ground with little strings around them to show where we were suppoesed to put them.

Not just one of them but many, all dried nicely in the San Antonio sun and ready for the next step.

Here we are building the piers. I mean not we, just John again actually. I was too busy taking pictures to actually do any work. NOT

All the finished cinder blocks are in place. We filled the load baring holes with concrete and rebar. After all that the professionals told us they are all going to fall over anyway. Oh well, the bumble bee is not suppoesed to fly according to the professionals. So, we taped bigger wings on to the bumble bee (adjusted things slightly) and now it flies much better.

Now that we have collected everything, we need to start on the actual project. We figured it was a good time to.... well actually start. So on a tuesday eight weeks ago... we started.

And the first step in starting was to dig but in our case we pounded and pounded and pounded some more . Here is a pic of the guy that did most of the work. He is sort of short and yellow and says brute on him.
PS John we feel you also did a lot of the work.

After a week of fun filled pounding we had 15 of these little cute holes in the rock face. at this point we felt unconquerable like real men should.

We formed up the the holes after much measuring and leveling. Actually we did that before we even started pounding. but we did it all over agian right before we formed up with rebar drilled into the rock. Then we got this old cement mixer and it was suppoesed to change our lives, but it didn't quite perform as expected. But we got our money's worth out of it... I think.

Dale closely surprivising the pouring process.


Adding the finishing touches. We showed great care in getting these just right and made sure they looked good, even though it was obvious to all of us no one was ever going to see them.


All of us professionals feeling very impressed with how hard they worked and what a good job they did.



Yours truly carrying the lunch box and an occasional bag of cement. I am being modest here, we had to hike about 90 bags of them in all. Makes for a good work out.

Here come the supplies. Did I mention that you might need building supplies? Well just in case I didn't, I will mention it here. YOU NEED SUPPLIES. (PS this is not an advertisement for Lowes. Most any hardware store will carry building supplies, like for example the Home depot may also sometime have some building supplies. It's the store with orange everything, where they love to annouce that they are working very hard everyday for your safety, so please bungee down your children or pet Alligator to the shopping cart so they don't get run over by the fork lifts.)


Speaking of fork lifts, here is a picture of a nice forklift that came with the lowes truck, that nicely forked our new supplies into our new pole barn for safe keeping from the elements. (Lowes offered us the fork lift in exchange for a good word about them and some biased honesty about Home Depot. but we could not afford the gas so we had to politely decline.)
Speaking of gas prices its at $3.60 a gallon at the moment. There are two ways to beat the rising prices according to the professionals, you need to either buy a bicycle or buy a gas station. buying anything else just hurts when you need to fill up.

Okay, now you need a pole barn to store all your supplies. Check out the proper post pouring technique in this picture.

And just put in as many posts as you like, or think are needed. At least one for each corner is recommended.

And once you have the posts in place it's really straight forward, you just add the roof.

And before you know it you have a pole barn for keeping the building supplies out of the weather for your quick and easy cabin project. You are welcome to try this at home.

And you need good equipment. Here we have our very cool Generator/arc welder which the Lord supplied.

Also check out the jack hammer which we could not have done without. More about that later. The Lord supplied tons of neat tools in the months leading up the to project. All that to say, to build a quick and simple cabin, tools are a must.

And rather than walking for miles each day to and from the shop for our tools we decked out a covered trailer to be a our mobile sound machine which also we keep our tools in. It has been awesome to have it all on site.

First you need a good work crew who are willing to put in the hours and know how to handle their tools well.

Meet the full team. James, John, Sam and Dale and I am behind the camera

And you need a truck with big tires.