I grew up loving wood and building many things from entertainment centers to bunk beds to bathroom vanities.
It seemed that making sawdust was therapy for me. I even helped with the building of my first home and worked along side one of my best friends, Bob Manning, as a carpenter. I loved the ‘look’ of wood…I loved the challenge and I loved the satisfaction I felt after a build. But never in my wildest dreams did I picture myself where I am now! Building a log cabin…from scratch! And to make things even better my wonderful wife Bonnie was eager to share it with me. This blog is to share with you our experiences. Enjoy!
It started in 2012 when my wife(Bonnie) and Kim(niece) attended the Onalaska Log Cabin School in Onalaska WA taught by Jack and Sharron Tipping. http://www.onalaskalogbuildingschool.com. It was an intensive day of ‘hands-on’ learning. The most encouraging ‘take-away’ for me was that I could do this without any prior log cabin building knowledge.
The summer of 2013 was spent looking for property.
We live in the Melbourne Beach area in Central Florida during the winters but want to spend the summers in the NW. I am from the NW and my kids all live on the west coast. After looking at over 100 properties between the Pacific Ocean and Montana we eventually choose to stay in Western WA and found 28 acres north of Montesano on the West Satsop river.
We have over a half mile of riverfront and a nice high spot overlooking the river and the Olympic Mts. We choose the high spot on the property to build our cabin. In the photo you can see the area we eventually cleared for our garage and cabin. The small white top is our pop-up trailer. Soon we added a 10’x20′ steel framed car port to protect us from the rain and the sun. Under that we had our kitchen area complete with stove, coolers, water and a food prep area.
We even added a 50 gallon water retaining barrel to store water for our dish-cleaning station. I thought it may have worked for our shower but I found out that our shower needed at least 25 psi to operate. In case you thought we were really ‘roughing it’…you should know that we have a very hot shower…outdoors of course. Our 5 gallon propane tank lasts for over half the summer. Our water pump on our well is run so far by our generator…so the generator must be running for the water to flow for our shower. Small price to pay for a hot shower. In 2015(our second summer) I added a roof to the shower…actually a sky light roof.
logcabinfromscratch 