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