To Build a Loft

With the chinking securely in place and drying, I moved on to thinking about a sleeping loft. A sleeping loft is a time-honored way of using otherwise 'wasted' space under the cathedral ceiling in a cabin as a warm place to spend the night. The warm air tends to get trapped up under the top of the ceiling, which by morning time is cool. While you are sleeping, you don't have to heat the downstairs quite as much, which saves on fuel. Everyone wins!

First, I had to decide how to layout my plan for the loft. I decided, after doing some research, that the best solution is to build a half-loft that clear-spanned the distance between the two side walls with beams. The loft would be built at a height over the existing floor to make the space feel unconfined downstairs, but at the same time provide as much headroom as possible. In the case of this cabin, the very highest point under the huge ridgepole was only about 13 1/2 feet high, so the loft ended up being only about 5 feet high. Bummer.

I also decided against building any kind of proper staircase due to space considerations. The loft would be accessed by using a purpose-built ladder attached to the front of the loft. When you open the door to enter the cabin, the ceiling would be full height at first, and 8 feet into the cabin, you would find yourself at the edge of the loft. I hope this makes sense!

I looked up the span tables for clear-span beams made fromgood, knot-free pine, even though I was using spruce, and found that a 4" wide x 10" deep x 15 foot long beam could provide adequate support for a loft with a extra capacity for storage and any 'jostling' which might occur during the course of events. I planned on having 3 such beams spaced equally on center and a ledger board attached to the back wall of the cabin to support that part of the flooring. The spans called for 1 1/4" thick tongue-and-groove plywood, so that's what I planned on. The landlord recommended just 3/4" stuff, but the charts showed 1 1/4" for my situation, so that's what I chose.

I had the sawyer, Pete, who is the landlord Jon's brother, cut me the 3 beams and a ledger board. I also talked with Jon about the best way to attach the beams to the existing walls and we settled on some substantial ell-shaped brackets attached to the logs and beams with 5 inch long, 1/2" thick galvanized lag screws. Jon bent up some 1/2' thick steep plates and then punched the correctly-sized holes in them and I collected the lag screws from one of the many buckets of hardware in his machine shop.

I had to figure out how to make the loft level and this is not as simple as counting courses of logs and just bolting them to the 12th course, as the logs are not all exactly the same size, and any difference in the heights would telescope into the squareness of the loft. So, I decided to read up on using a liquid level, which seemed to be the right tool for the job.

I borrowed a long tube of clear brewer's beer line from the brewery, got a couple gallons of water and some soap, and began the process of filling up the tube with water and no bubbles. Any bubbles in the line will skew the measurements. A drop of soap in the solution reduces the surface tension enough to encourage the bubbles to migrate up, and out, of the tube. Some people also add red food coloring to make it easier to see the meniscus. I messed around for about an hour before I was satisfied that all the air was out of my level.

I then decided on the height of the top vertical bolt of the brackets and set my zero height. Then I attached one end of the tube to the log wall and measured down from my zero height to the bottom of the meniscus in the tube. This distance, let's say 9 inches down from the zero height, would be the distance up from which i would measure to locate the height of the other brackets. I climbed down off the ladder, carefully holding the second end of the tube higher than the bracket height, dragged the ladder over to the next bracket position, held the tube up until the water level quit moving, and then marked 9 inches up from the bottom of the meniscus in the tube to located the top bolt position of bracket number 2. And so on.

I didn't find the process as easy as I had expected, but people have been using this method for thousands of years with great precision and accuracy. Practice makes perfect. You can also pick up a liquid level from the hardware store with all the pieces you need.

After all the holes were located, I double-checked the heights for level, and indeed, they were close to level, but not along any one course of logs. Good thing I didn't rely on the log courses to lay out my loft! I drilled holes into the logs about 3 1/2" deep and then hammered in the lag screws about 2 1/2" before using a breaker bar on a socket to turn them the rest of the way in. Hard work, this. I was so tired after doing this 12 times, let me tell you.

Then I had to get the beams up. I used a ladder and a bit of luck to work the beams carefully up onto the brackets and then proceeded with the drill/screw routine to secure them to the brackets. Of course, I had to cut the beams to match the walls, which are not exactly 15' across, so each one of them is scribe fit, so to speak.

The ledger board on the back was was installed in a similar way, but this time I just used a whole bunch of smaller lag screws and attached the board to the back wall at the same height as the beams.

Next trick was getting the very heavy plywood up the ladder onto the beams. I struggled mightily, but managed to get them all stacked up atop the new beams without incident. I had, however, dropped one of the beams across my chest earlier, which was rewarded the next day with plenty of pretty purple and yellow bruises across my pecs and biceps. Be careful with big, green beams!

I cut the plywood to fit in place and then squeezed out a thick bead of construction adhesive on the beams before setting the first piece of plywood into position. Then I screwed it into place with only a few screws, just in case I needed to adjust the position of the wood before screwing it all off.

I made sure the seams all fell on the middle of a beam, and I also staggered the seams as recommended so as to not have one seam running all the way across the width of the loft. After I got everything glued and initially screwed down, I checked it all for squareness, and finding it to be acceptably so, screwed in the rest of the screws as per standard practice, which is to say, field screws every foot or so, and edge screws every 6 inches.

My next task was to cut the collar ties that were right in the middle of the loft space out and think about getting some Sheetrock on the eave walls, now that I had a loft!

The Chinking Process

Never having built with logs before I felt the need to do some research on "best practices" before I jumped into my new project. There are many excellent books on cabins and how to build them including a publication from the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation titled "Alaska Log Building Construction Guide" by Michael Musick, which is an excellent source of information regarding methods to retrofit a draft cabin with weathertight details and how best to take the vagarities of log structures and their tendency towards significant settling into account when building.

A wood pecker is pecking on the side of the cabin as I write this passage...How nice to hear him thumping away as he hunts for an elusive bug...

I purchased a few other books on traditional cabin building methods and found that one of the key steps to cabin warmth in bitter cold (besides a low ceiling, which I don't have) is proper chinking. There is a long-standing product line called 'Perma-chink" that promises to seal the gaps between log courses and stretch as needed when the logs settle from shrinkage and my research pointed towards their 'Energy Seal' line of chinking as best for my needs.

After striking out at the local Big Box stores, I went to the local high-end construction supply store, Spenard's, and looked at their selection of chinking products. I found a 5 gallon bucket of 'Desert Tan' Energy Seal on the shelf, along with a special caulking gun and bucket follower to dispense the material, but what I wasn't prepared for was the price. The chinking cost $180.00, the bucket follower, $60.00, and the caulking gun, $75.00. I estimated that the 16' x 16' foot cabin would need 4+ gallons of material to chink the 17 courses of logs, so it was cheaper to buy a bucket than large tubes. I also picked up a spatula and masking tape, as the chinking was supposed to applied over some kind of 'bond 'breaker' to ensure the product stuck to the top and bottom surfaces of the gap between logs.



The logs on the cabin are 4-sided, 6" square logs and the inside gaps of the logs have been routed to create a beveled joint. My first task was to cut away the extra fiberglass insulation from in-between the log courses to allow space for the chinking material. I donned gloves, a mask, and work clothes and began the careful trimming which lasted 2 days. After cleaning up the waste fiberglass trimmings I taped off the gap between the top course of logs on one wall and then taped off the wood above and below the gap to keep the chinking material from running wild all over the beautiful logs.

Then came the learning curve. I had decided that I needed something other than just a spatula to 'tool' the surface of the chinking after application, and it seemed to me like a spoon was the perfect fit. I also found an old spray bottle and filled it with water. I should mention here that this cabin is 'dry,' meaning that there is no running water. All water has to be carried in. Before tooling, and after application, the surface of the chinking needs lubrication to ensure that the resulting finish is smooth and beautiful. Using the large caulking gun took a little practice. The nozzle of the gun unscrews easily, revealing the inside of the gun's tube. The charging procedure involves placing the open end of the gun in a bucket of water and pulling water into the barrel to lubricate the next step. Push the water out by pulling the trigger release then stick the barrel on top of the bucket follower, which is a kind of steel disk with a gasketed hole in the middle surrounded by a neoprene material which makes a tight seal on the inside of the bucket. With one hand, push the release lever, with the other, pull up on the gun charging handle while forcefully pushing the barrel tightly on the follower's hole and with any luck, the chinking material will flow slowly inside. A kind of clumsy orchestration of pushing and pulling is needed to make this all happen and a little practice doesn't hurt.

Gloves on hands, the next step was to lightly wet the wood with the spray bottle and begin squirting the caulking into the prepared gap. The chinking is quite thick, almost like peanut butter, and is composed of water, a gritty, sand-like component, and 'acrylic polymer' a plasticizer that reminds me of latex. A significant amount of hand strength is needed for dispense the chinking and I can see why the pros use air/electrically driven guns for big jobs.There is a not-unpleasant chemical smell to the chinking, and nothing that would warrant a protective mask. The vapors didn't cause my eyes to water, which is usually a good sign.

After laying in an appropriate bead of material into the gap, the next step is tooling. First, mist the bead of chinking with water, then wet the spoon. Carefully run the convex side of the spoon down the bead, ensuring that the spoon remains in contact with both the top and bottom bevel. The spoon works best if held at an acute angle with regards to the face of the logs, and most times I needed two passes with the spoon, and even a little touch-up work after that, to get a reasonable-looking finish. After performing the same steps on the next course's gap, I would peel away the protective tape and examine the bead of caulking for any mistakes and correct them before moving on.

I was doing this work after a normal day's work, so the progress I made was a bit slow at first. After some practice I picked up a little speed and the whole process took me about 10 days to complete. A leisurely pace, yes, but one of the ideas behind taking on this project was to learn and enjoy doing it. I also took some time to stuff small strips of the waste fiberglass insulation with my trusty spatula into the cracks which naturally form in the logs themselves, as the spruce trees in the Interior of Alaska tend to twist and bend when drying, which opens up the grain. I heard that the previous tenant has 'froze his ass off' when the bitter cold of deep winter seeped through the unchinked logs and I didn't want a repeat of that nightmare when I weathered January at -45 F.

I learned a few lessons about chinking along the way. Good preparation is paramount to a good finished product and is most of the work. A fair quantity of water is needed to clean up the tools at the end of the day, especially to get all the chinking out of the gun before it hardens into a thick gummy mass. The cheap masking tape I used as a 'bond breaker' proved to be false economy: a few of the seams of chinking opened up along the tape over the following months but nothing drastic. I think the super-sticky, premium 3M green tape would be the best stuff to use next time.

There is one recommendation in the product application instructions that I did not follow and that is the insertion of backer rod into the gaps before applying the bond breaker. The gaps between the log courses on this cabin are not that big, maybe 1/8 to 1/2 of an inch and I didn't feel it was necessary to fill the space with expensive, closed-cell foam rod. Time will tell if this was a mistake, or a modest stroke of financial/labor-saving genius.

A note on the costs of materials for this project. The landlord and I agreed that I would start out with a $1,000.00 budget for necessary purchases, which would be reimbursed. The labor I performed to fix up the structure would be returned in the form of rent, which suited both of us well. This was all on a handshake and in verbal form only, which some might say is a bit foolhardy, but this is the last frontier and a man's word still means something. At least I like to think that's the case...

Next up: I decided I need some place to sleep. A loft is in the offing!

I'm going to test a new function at Googlemaps and see if I can imbed a hybrid satellite map of the cabin location:


View Larger Map

First Look At The Cabin

When I arrived in Fairbanks after my drive up from Portland, I immediately started inquiring if anyone knew where a fella might find a little cabin to live in. As luck would have it, Jon Holmgren, who is a life-long Alaskan from a long line of pioneering spirits, told me he had a cabin behind the sawmill in his machine shop yard that needed a little work, but was vacant and looking for someone to occupy it.

In my mind's eye I pictured a dilapidated frame cabin festooned with blue tarps and spray foam and a yard filled with lots of junk cars/refrigerators/old stuff "too good to take to the dump" that formed a battlement to confound any efforts at laying siege. I arranged to meet with him to take a look at the cabin, and I was surprised at what I found.

Jon's machine shop is located just down the road from the Silver Gulch Brewery in Fox, Alaska off of Goldstream Road in a tailing pile leftover from the glory days of Alaskan mining. The Trans-Alaskan Pipeline runs up a hill only a short distance away, and Goldstream bubbles merrily by only a few feet from the cabin's front door.

The cabin was not finished; actually more of a shell with windows and doors, but I saw that with a little work it could be a wonderful place to live. The nearby sawmill had since changed hands, but during the previous owner's stint as a sawyer, the logs for this cabin were cut, stacked, and assembled, if only in the "butt and run" fashion, which is quick and efficient, but not energy friendly or very craftsman-esque. Orginally built as a kind of showroom office as an example of what could be built with the sawmill's product, the cabin had seen one previous tenant who experienced more luck with running the business end of a bottle than hammer. Or so I was told...

The logs were not chinked and I could see daylight peeking through cracks in-between the courses. The only power came from a long extension cord plugged into a regular outlet at the sawmill. Inside were one tacky chandelier and a Laser kerosene heater. The door had been kicked in and red vapor barrier tape covered the hole where a door knob would go.

However, the inside of the cabin was all wood and crafted with relatively big beams for the Interior of Alaska, which is home to not so many big trees these days. Recalling timber framing, the cathedral ceiling had collar ties about 10 feet off the floor and the resulting lofty ceiling was grand as only a 16 foot by 16 foot cabin with a cathedral ceiling can be...There were also exposed rafters on 4 foot centers and a small porch in front.

I asked Jon what he thought a reasonable amount for rent would be, and he said "You fix it up and build it, you can live here." Sounded good to me!

That's how my cabin building experience began and although I've made quite a bit of progress over the last year or so, I'll take you along from the start so you can learn what it means to "fix it up and build it." Buckle up and prepare for a bumpy ride, constant reader!

Until next time,

Oopala

The Background Story

Welcome to my blog! I thought I might share my experiences and lessons learned while building a small cabin in the frozen forests of the Northland. But first, I should tell you a little bit about how I got here, don't you think?

I have lived in Fairbanks, Alaska, on and off for the last 25+ years in between jaunts to places far away and near by. Most recently, I moved to Portland, Oregon in the fall of 2005, where two of my siblings live, in an attempt to give the "big" city another try and see if I could find a full-time job and maybe enjoy some of the many benefits that come with living in a hip, trendy Pacific Northwest city.

My time in Portland was a mixed bag, honestly. I searched earnestly for a job in the Information Technology sector, and found the market to be unexpectedly tight, so I also applied for a number of other jobs that might get me started: glass caster at Bull's Eye glass, bread baker at Ken's Artisan, pizziaolo via an anonymous Cragislist posting, industrial production baker at Bob's Red Mill in neighboring Milwaukie, Fred Meyer cashier, Best Buy Geek Squad member, with a few interviews, but no job offers.

My sister had some contacts at a temp agency from her job with the previous mayor of Portland, Vera Katz, that did not specialize in IT but were willing to interview me for a possible position with a major family-run real estate investment firm downtown. The position was for an entry-level help desk job, which was a bitter pill to swallow after my previous employment as a Systems Manager, but things were getting a bit desperate. I interviewed for the job once with the HR VP, who was very kind, and once with the IT manager. They let on that they were interested in having me on board a few days later. I was sure my sister and brother-in-law were politely hoping I would find work so I could move out of the back bedroom of their beautiful house, so after unsuccessfully negotiating a $25/hour rate, I settled for $20 and started my new job right away for the New Year.

The shop was a small one, with a manager and 3 in-house techs supplemented by a variable number of contract experts to help run the complex server bits and configure the upper-level network components. My closest associate, whose desk looked like a grenade had exploded and spread computer shrapnel all over his cube, was fairly new to computer support, but was a natural in many ways, with a great people skills and a quick laugh. I'll call him C.W.

The first thing I did was to start cleaning up the ginormous mess. If not kept under tight control, computer stuff tends to die of old age in a few years and get stacked up "just in case." I inventoried and organized the hundreds of software applications, cleaned up the server/storage room, which looked like a larger version of C.W.'s desk with more cable spaghetti and really crusty computers that were begging to be taken to the dumpster in the basement for a final journey to the big tech bone yard. I also found that, as previously experienced during my much earlier tenure as a bit janitor, the customers were not very friendly and at this point in my not-so-illustrious computer career, I had had a bellyful of rude, angry computer users who vented all their spleen at me. There was one user in particular who used a proprietary application that had a critical function for the "hiding" of money from taxation in an "art foundation" and was in desperate need of updating and repair. I knew absolutely nothing about this product and soon found myself in a morass of long tech calls, attempted patches, and one very irate user who decided I had broken the whole system with commensurate vein-popping, heavy sighing, and set-jaw behaviors. These I well knew, and dreaded.

I ended up going to my boss and telling him that I thought he should speak with the user and let her know that I was doing my best and to give me a little break. He didn't seem too interested in backing me up, but I later found out that I "always treated customers poorly and with disrespect." I never did get along with that particular customer, who I found to be immature, grumpy, dumpy and disrespectful to me. If you want me to help, at least have the common courtesy to be polite and adult about it!

C.W. wasn't too hot on my being there, as he was bucking for the soon-to-open Network Adminstrator position in the company, as the current admin was moving on to a position with Symantec, and he thought I was trying to steal the opportunity away from him. There was some thinly-veiled animosity from old C.W., but I could tell it was there. I was just trying to earn some money at a dead-end temp job until I could find a solid.

I interviewed with the City of Portland after an informational lunch with the CIO through one of my sister's contacts and did all the things in the book: shiny shoes, carefully proof-read resume on heavy paper, eye contact with each member of the interview committee, plenty of smiles, a "thank you" to the secretary on the way in and out, thank-you notes, and all the rest. Alas, to no avail. The job was for an entry-level help desk grind, which seemed to be the only IT job available to a guy like me, but I was hoping to get my foot in the door, bust hump, and move up. Plus I wanted a job with benefits and not just a full-time temp job with no offer in sight.

I think I applied for a few hundred jobs using the old school "want ad" response method, and a few dozen using the new-fangled network contact method with about 20 resulting interviews, but still no job offer. I joined in a number of networking groups and met many other people in similar situations. Misery loves company, they say...

Some family friends were leaving the Portland area and had a huge house in the hills near the zoo, and they offered to let me live there while they tried to sell it. They were living in an apartment downtown and were no longer occupying the house. I could walk down the steep road to the zoo and conveniently catch the Max to work. I loved the fact that the house was in a wonderfully-thick forest with few cars and big lots. Most nights I read the remaining books on the library shelves in the office in front of the gas fireplace after tramping up the rainy hillside. They soon had an offer for the house, and I moved back in with my sister again until I could find some new digs.

After a quick search for a new place, I moved out of my sister's house into a wonderful garden apartment building with 10 units, hard wood floors, a telephone nook, faux fireplace, original fixtures, and a wonderful kitchen and bathroom. I was so excited to be in my own little place. My excitement soon turned to "renter's regret" as my next-door neighbor, with whom I shared the entry porch, tended towards an ogre-like existence: the space inside his apartment that was visible to the outside world was piled high with detritus of a supermarket diet. Empty soda bottles, piles of newspaper, chip bags, and the like formed a midden of modern man's bachelor existence. My neighbor was also fond of wearing only a pair of shorts which exposed his morbidly ample girth to all onlookers. This predilection to a natural-style of living didn't quit at the front door, as "Shrek" would sometimes come out of his den and into the sunlight to bedazzle the stunned passers-by with his pale, hairy mass. He was harmless enough, my 60 year-oldish neighbor, but he could have easily starred in the lead role of some horror movie with the proper script and some fake blood.

Then there were the thin walls. I could hear everything, and I mean ev-er-y-thing from the adjoining two apartments. I was sure they could hear everything in mine, too, which made me paranoid that they were experiencing the same thing I was. When the girl next door came home, who moved in shortly after I did, I could hear the key in the lock, the purse hit the floor, the TV turn on ("Friends" was a favorite), the kitchen cabinet open and glass of wine pour. "Shrek" would often get up to use the toilet when my alarm went off. I could hear him roll over in bed and often was serenaded by his snoring as I counted sheep and tried to ignore the hissing and rumbling of the train yard by the river, a mile away.

Needless to say, I was very glad the lease agreement was month-to-month, as I quickly found a mother-in-law apartment in the West Hills that fronted on a common Japanese garden courtesy of the very kind landlord and lady, "D & D." I was able to walk to work from the noisy apartment, but the new place was not easily accessible to public transportation. I eventually found a route that let me get downtown without adding my car to the growing congestion on Route 26. I walked 1 1/2 miles to a bus stop, which was served 3 times in the morning and 3 times in the evening, rode for 30 minutes to the Max station, got on the Max and rode for another 30 minutes and then walked the last 15 minutes to work. A long commute, for sure, but I relished the exercise and found my routine to be solitary and enjoyable. The apartment was on a cul-de-sac, but the feeder road had grown from a country lane into a major commuter vein for Portland. Hundreds of cars a minute zipped by, with bleary-eyed, single drivers at the wheel, coffee/cell phone/makeup/newspaper firmly in grip.

Long story, shorter: I was not offered a job with the real estate investment company so I quit. C.W., in the meantime, had become a good buddy and recognized that I was just trying to make a living and not put him out of his. I immediately got a date with a cute gal who worked at my ex-company (no dating work colleagues rule, I guess), gave notice to my landlord, went to the beach to relax and have a picnic or two, and generally enjoyed my last few weeks in Portland before driving back up the Alaska-Canadian Highway to Fairbanks.

And this is where our story really begins...