Building a Remote Off Grid Cabin in the woods...Deep Dive commentary

abroad during the last weeks of this fall. I have been

building

this

cabin

in a

remote

section of wilderness, not far from Lake Superior in the upper Midwest. I'm nine miles from the nearest power line and seven miles from the nearest plowed road in In this video, I'm going to go

deep

er. This will be a

deep

dive

into this

cabin

. If you haven't seen the video of this cabin, the link is in the description, but today what we're going to do is I'm just going to go step by step over everything that happened and really dig into this construction project.

Now, in my opinion, the most important and difficult thing about

building

a cabin like this is finding the right site. I looked all over this property and I intended to build right here in this stand of clipped pine trees. I think these pine trees would look great and would be a nice setting. They are a little scraggly at the moment, but I think they would clean up nicely, but then just a little. Further into the

woods

I came across this spot, a clearing that is very conducive to a cabin and has this cute spruce tree in the center of the clearing to get a better idea.

I took and trimmed this tree just to get the feel of what it would be like with this tree trimmed 21 years ago Brooke and I built our first log cabin outside of Fairbanks, Alaska and we had a deck that we built around a spruce tree, that's An idea of ​​mine, for this place there is already a kind of natural path to this clearing. I just have to visualize how a cabin would sit here and if I like the way it would sit, I think this is where we'll get to now. I brought these 6x6s. contact with the treated six-by-six soil to build the foundation of this cabin, but I bought more.

I bought 10 footers when I really only need six feet so I can cut the end off a bit. I'm going to use those end pieces as dunnage to put my Sawmill up and running. I brought my Harbor Freight sawmill here and it needs a home, so I need to put some dunnage down so I can put the track on it, so I'm going to cut a piece of each one of these six by six and I will take it to the sawmill site. I'll take the rest to the construction site where the cabin will be located and it will be kind of a win-win.

Oh, this property is nothing but wood. There is very little clear area on this property, so some of the bigger stuff is there if there are bigger spruce trees that are dead or bigger white pines that are dead. I would like to set this mill up so I can get two by fours and two by sixes, etc., this property has some of the best lumber. I've seen big old white pines, old red pines, really pale logs that lumber companies would love to get, but I'd rather buy lumber than cut that stuff down, but if there's a dead tree I have no problem taking it down. a dead tree and grinding it down now, the reason I'm orienting the cabin this way is I think I can improve the view, which would be the view from the front window right in this area and this area would be where you would park and where you would enter through the window on the left you would see this feature of this big white pine and actually there's another big white pine right here that you can't see but you want these little overgrown trees to be clean.

I can see that really nice Big Pine out the right side window and then this is behind the cabin and it's right in your thick

woods

, there's really nothing to look at. Next on the agenda is to find a place to burn because I have cut down a lot of dead brush and I can't just leave this lying around, it has to go somewhere so I can constantly be clearing this site just 30 feet from the construction site . You can see there's actually a nice big area here that would be great for a fire ring and there are just two little white pine trees that need to come out to make I don't know a 25 foot circle now this is a place where I don't mind taking a couple of trees these trees are pretty central to this clear area you take these two small trees out here you have all the area you need for a campfire area where you could have a central fire ring and 10 people could sit around it.

Now the saw I'm using here is an Echo, it's actually the lightest saw that Echo makes, the thing barely weighs unless you're cutting firewood for a Winner, if you're just cutting small things, a small chainsaw like a small Echo , a small little steel husky, you really don't need it. It's a great saw to do this kind of work, oh my goodness, speaking of campfires, one of the disadvantages of this country is that there are no rocks. You could look at this property from one end to the other and you would be lucky to find one. suitable rock to build a ring of fire and I mean one rock not 10 rocks most of this country is nothing but sand.

Now, on each of these stumps, I'm going to take one of the large roots and cut it off. I don't have to do this on each of the roots. I'll just choose one of them, so it will be much easier to get them out of there. Now the downside to pollen stumps is that you need to do something with the stumps that you can. It is not enough to put the stumps in the stove and burn them. Stumps don't burn when I have a big fire. I'll go through these stumps and probably have to burn them four, five or six times before there's nothing left.

They remain because pine stumps like this, when first pulled out of the ground, were almost impossible to burn last year by Christmas. I gave everyone in the family one of these toe straps, the family farm had them for 9.95 cents a piece, they are incredibly strong, there is no gift that will make a teenager as happy as a toe strap under the Christmas tree. Now this will be where each piece of wood for this cabin building project will be placed. burn down and while I'm building I'm going to be constantly trimming the trees on this site, cutting off branches, cutting down anything that's dead and generally cleaning up all the time, so this fire pit is a big priority overseas here .

The color is fantastic, pretty, so now I'm ready to burn. This will make everything go much faster. It's amazing how quickly you can build up a pile of brushes, a pile of brushes that just gets in the way no matter what you're doing. you start pruning these trees and the branches have to go somewhere now the construction site is ready and I can start my digging and by digging I mean I'm going to dig some holes the size of post holes if you've seen this channel. I understand that when I'm doing any type of excavation I like to put the material on a tarp or on a piece of plywood because I don't want to just put sand and trash all over the places I like to build, as far as the cabin or the house or whatever.

Whatever it is looks like it's always been there, so it's important for me not to make a giant mess while I'm putting together the foundation of this cabin. Now all the wood that goes into the foundation of this cabin has a green ground contact treatment. wood from time to time you will see a green treated wood, it will be an all-weather wood or something like that, but it does not say contact with the ground. I don't know if there's a difference, but these posts are going to get buried. As far as I'm concerned, everything needs to be treated and has a ground contact rating.

I was looking on the Menards website recently just to see the difference between regular lumber and treated lumber in terms of price. I think treated wood costs about a third. more than just standard lumber and honestly that's not much, no big deal and you're only using a little for the foundation, don't waste money if you're going to build something and try to use just regular lumber for whatever goes down. The four corner posts should be square, they should be plumb and they should be the correct distance from each other and that's it, it's not rocket science if you look at what I'm using. for the nails I am also using a four inch galvanized ring shank.

A good tip when using ring shank nails, never drive a ring shank nail where you don't want it to be because pulling the ring shanks is Now not fun, in any type of construction project, you need to know the square, which is the measurement from corner to corner and it's simple, it's the Pythagorean theorem, it's one of the only mathematical equations I know by heart, you take the length of your building and multiply that by the length, so if it's 42 feet you would be 42 times 42 and then the width, let's say it's 20 feet, you would say 20 by 20. now you add those two numbers and press the square root button on your calculator and that will give you the diagonal from one corner to the next, calculate the diagonal of a corner to the next beforehand on a calculator and writing it down is pretty much all you need to know when you're squaring up any type of building or concrete pour or whatever.

Now I'm placing this floor two feet in the center. You could lay a floor that is 12 inches on center, 16 inches on center, or 24 inches on center as long as you use plywood that measures four feet by eight feet. What are your options 12, 16 or 24 inches on center? I think it's interesting to note that the only tools I've used to put this base together are a hammer, saw, pencil, tape measure, speed square, level, and post hole digger. Very low cost of entry to get a building out of the ground with a treated wood foundation like this. Now, the board I'm putting in now is a kind of ledger board, the floor joists will sit on top of this ledger.

The board and ledger board will support some of the weight of the joists and the joists will also be nailed to that rim joist, which is the first two-by-eight I put in, so that divides the load being carried by the floor joists. up the rim beam and up that ledger board, kind of an interesting base system. I did this last year at the cabin I built in the fall of last year. I copied the idea from my brother who was building a cabin at the same time but I think it's a smart way to build it's sturdy simple it's very easy to understand anyone can do it it's not concrete just something basic but sturdy it's been a cold and dreary day here working alone in the forest and finally the sun came out for about 15 seconds.

I caught a bit on camera just as a test. Check each of your boards before laying them down just to make sure that if there is a crown, the crown will go up. One thing I love about this floor system. shortens the span that doesn't actually span 12 feet, it extends from this ledger board to the other ledger board, so the weight carried by the floor joists is divided by an edge joist and then that ledger cuts that post . a foreigner a little crooked I can nail my ledger if that ledger was a little crowned or a little sunken if you nail it without the floor joists there you might end up forcing all the joists up or it might not touch the bottom of the joist I always want to make sure I have a floor joist in there, so I can lift The Ledger up or I can force it down with the floor joists when I nail the joist and that way it will be in exactly the right place.

This ledger board has a little sag to it and I'm glad I didn't nail it. The other tool I forgot to mention is this Digging Spud, it's just an iron bar with some sort of spud on the end. It's useful for a million things. I'm using it as a lever to lift that ledger, but I used it to set the post to tamp the dirt back into place. I think it's thirty dollars from Home Depot or Lowe's. You'll find thousands of things to do with just a nice piece of iron like that, just to dig with iron.

Spud, any carpentry project will require cutting wood, so the most essential tool you can have is a hand saw, but it doesn't need to be fancy, my wife Brooke is on a construction project right now, so she has our saw. I went and bought this one so I could use it here. I paid 10 dollars for it and I really don't know if it's worth it. which doesn't even have a brand name, it just says circular saw on the label, but even though it's a cheap cheap tool it's doing the job, no, you could spend 200 on a really good hand saw, but you don't have to.

I like to start every construction project with a new blade, although a new, sharp blade is pretty good and I'll use the old ones. I will flip them back to cut roof metal when necessary, which practically destroys a good blade now. Last year when I built the cabin on this property I put plywood under the floor joists to seal the floor so mice and squirrels and stuff couldn't get in, but that really sucked lying on your back nailing sheets of wood half-inch plywood above your face was no fun at all, so for this base I'm placing all these stringers two at a time, they're all spaced exactly the same space from the top of the floor joist, you've got that little block as a spacer and then I will place strips of plywood as the backgroundout of a drawer and that's what the bottom of my floor will be, look at this guy, he's hitchhiking, come on, get off my plywood, great now, if you've watched this channel, you've probably seen me build several cabins.

I started building cabins about 20 years ago. The first cabin Brooke and I built wasn't a vacation cabin, it wasn't a hunting cabin or a fishing cabin or a recreation cabin of any kind, it was our home. We built a 12 by 12 log cabin and lived in it for two and a half years and the reason we went that route is because we bought a piece of land cheap, it had nothing on it but the wood had fallen, we had the logs to build on. I didn't have any money it just made a lot of sense and since then we have bought different properties and we like to have a small cabin at least on each of the properties so when we visit a property when we are in Alaska we have a place to stay that is affordable and you don't have than investing in building a house, which of course, who has the money to do that?

A cheap little cabin like this can be a great place to stay. for a week or a month or a summer, if you want, it doesn't take much to build a small building like this, it doesn't take much to clean it or heat it, it's just a kind of building, the cabins sink into you. Now it gets into your blood. This is by far the largest property we have ever owned. It's almost 80 acres and it was very reasonable for what it really is and the reason is that you couldn't live here all year round. There are practically no plowed roads.

There's four feet of snow here in the winter, you can't commute from here to work, so it's beautiful wild country with a waterfront that's cheap and the only way to get it is somewhere where virtually no one can live. If you watched this channel, you've probably seen the cabin I built here last fall. I wanted a place to stay for the winter. My idea with this build is to have a guest cabin, so if Brooke and I are up, we will have the other cabin to stay in and people can come visit us and spend some time on this property and they won't have to stay in a tent. campaign because the other cabin is definitely a two-person cabin.

This will also be a cabin for two people. but you couldn't fit four people comfortably in any of these places so that's the plan, just a simple guest cabin and speaking of the first cabin I built 20 years ago, this cabin will be built to the exact same design as will have. It will have half a loft, it will have the same number of windows in the same places, the door will be the same. I'm even going to build a deck around the spruce tree right in front of this cabin, so it will be very, very similar to the first cabin I built in 2001.

Oh, I think it goes without saying that working alone like this is of course peaceful , but it's also really limiting. This 12 foot wall is all I want to put up with when it comes to putting up a sheet wall, no you have a couple of options if you want to put up a larger wall on your own, don't fool the wall, put up the wall as if outside a framed wall and then place the sheets after the fact or you can also cut them out. window and door openings that save a little weight also help you put up a wall yourself more easily now the sheet I'm using here is t11 it's plywood with a faux board face so here we are in the third day. floor built with insulated deck now I am ready to support the back wall.

I think I'll be able to support the front wall and then I might have to look for material now. The beautiful thing about t11 ​​siding is that it has a texture that looks like board and stick and all you really need to do is stain it like a log oil stain or like a deck water seal like Thompson's water seal or any type of oil sealant for stains and that's it. siding no house wrap nothing you just have a finished exterior wall and that's really attractive now if you're going to sheath a wall like this with half inch plywood right now it's going to cost about $23 24 a sheet as of today where t11 is closer to $45 per sheet, but actually the fact that it's a one-size-fits-all solution makes it really attractive.

This is a good time to also point out what I'm doing here: I'm building my window opening as a unit. before going into the wall this way you will have the best leverage and nailing angles available if you built it flat you will nail it on its side you will have to deal with other wall studs it is really helpful to build window and door openings as a unit on their own and then slide them into place on the wall and nail them to the top and bottom plate. One of the comments I get all the time is why don't I use a nail gun?

Well, I don't want to hear the generator running an air compressor and I don't have a nail gun. I will say that some of the battery operated nail guns these days are fantastic and you don't need to hear the equipment running in the background when you don't need to. They are quite expensive but easy to justify if you do a lot of this type of work. I think now is a good time to put that stud in there that I completely forgot about. I didn't even make a mark on it. The design is only missing the two-foot stud and many times only the nails have been swapped.

Take the big ones out of the bag. Put the small ones in the bag. I would have realized that the two foot stud wasn't there when I went to nail it. put it where it's supposed to be and the nails didn't hit anything, always start with a sheet of plywood or any type of sheeting from the same corner and then make sure it's flush along one of the two sides. all nailed flush and then you can work on the other side, you can move the framed wall in or out to make sure it's flush along this side because the four by eight sheets, the plywood will probably or the t11, are a lot more square than whatever you are building, the two foot measurement where you nail it is right in one of these spaces, so I have to set all the nails with this punch, thanks, so it is It feels like you're nailing everything twice.

You may notice that there is no header above the window or door opening on this wall and that is because this is not a load-bearing wall. The two I just put up are the gable end walls and they are not going to be weight bearing so they don't really need headers over the doors or windows. I have to start my layout for the center wall where the plywood will end that way everything will land in the center like now this wall is only supposed to be 11 foot five and the sheeting is hanging over the end so obviously I can't cover this wall and support it.

I have to hold this wall as just a frame of a wall and then I will have to put it in place. Once again, the tools you need for this type of job are just the basics: a tape measure, a pencil, a square, a hammer and a pocket full of nails, and that's it, no, it sure is a pleasure to be around. standing on this wall after the Now I'm going to shore up the corner of this building and level it before nailing one wall to the other. You really don't need to do this. You could just nail one wall to the other because the entire side is going to Rack until you put up the siding, but you'll need to make sure that corner is plumb before you start putting up the siding.

You'll notice that I nailed a 2x4 against the rim joist so I could attach the plywood. Now these two side walls are going to support all of the roof beams, so they are load bearing, not only that, but I am going to put up a log loft, so I need a header over both windows to hold the weight that is going to be support the window on these side walls, but I'm not going to clad that side wall and you'll see why here in just a minute I have three clad walls, four standing walls, I can't clad that.

Well, now I'm going to completely change direction and build a platform because I'm ready to do something different. So the plan with the platform is that it will be about eight feet away from the building. and it will be the same width as the building, about 12 feet, and the platform will be built around that fir tree. It will be very beautiful when it is finished. My plan here is to just put the frame together, it will be really pretty. fragile and I'm just going to hold it up temporarily by lifting it up and putting the 2x4 on top of it that way I can square up the frame as it exists and then I'm going to put the posts under the frame which you'll see here in just a second now because I want to wrap this deck around the spruce and we have roots of quite good size.

In fact, you can see that there is a root extending right where a post should be, so I'm not going to dig. posts for the deck, what I'm going to do is lay down a couple of four inch solid concrete block pavers and then a short section. A six by six post. I won't damage the tree roots because I want the tree to stay where it is in the first cabin I built, it was something that everyone liked when someone was on the deck, they always thought it was cool, you know, sitting by the tree that grows through the deck and there is a photo of my First Cabin at the same stage of construction with the deck temporarily held in place by some scrap tool bars.

I have some sand left over from filling in these post holes, so I'll use it as a nice bed. I'll put that tamper down and shovel the moss out of the ground right there, so it should be just mineral for mineral contact. I'll put a couple of blocks in there and then we'll cut ourselves a six by six now. I'm going to give this rig a little bit of sag, so I'm going to make sure that it has a little bit of sag before I take my measurements and cut my post, now marking a post like this dozens of times at the same depth and then taking the shavings is a very quick way to shape a beam like this, but on the other hand it makes a giant mess, so a quick tip that I never follow, but that you might want to follow, is to put something down to catch them all. these splinters so you don't have to pick them up later because you end up with a bunch of weird splinters once again we're going to use the big dog nails on this these four inch ring shank galvanized spikes and then that corner the post doesn't go to no foreign part.

I squared the frame and now the frame is square. The distance from this edge to the tree lands right in the middle of my layout, so I had to modify this layout. This first space is 24 and then it's 41 and then I divided the difference between these last three now, as a general rule, with the layout, you put it at 16 in the center, 12 in the center or 24 in the center, but that is due Because the plywood is eight feet long and four feet wide and you need to have nailers. where the plywood meets, but on this deck I can modify the layout as needed because I'm using 12 foot boards that will extend from one side of the deck to the next and I don't have to worry about the sheet.

The products have something underneath where they need to be nailed together. See this sometimes, in very, very old houses, the design of the studs in the wall is really all over the place, that's because they covered the old houses with one inch boards and just cut away. the boards to the size the design needs to be so that the board will land on a stud. The same thing happens with the platform, so these boards go from one side to the other so that the design can be whatever is necessary. Thank you now that we are. to the point where I need to do some trimming to cut the boards around this tree.

I don't want big spaces. I can always enlarge the spaces as the tree grows. It's a white fir and it's going to grow a lot. slow, so I don't want a big, sloppy gap around this, but I don't want it too tight where, if it's really windy, the trunk will be damaged by hitting the deck, so it's a happy medium, probably about an inch Wide. To go around the tree, a jigsaw would be better for the job I'm doing now, but the Sawzall is what I have on hand. I really love a deck wrapped around a tree and I had this tree, it was in the right spot in this clearing.

It just made sense, but it would also be wonderful to have a porch. That's a covered porch, you have one or the other. I can't have a porch and have this tree so I think the deck was the best option considering the site and what I could do with the site in case you are wondering too these are five quarter deck boards , you can buy them at Lowe's or Home Depot and by five quarters you'll know they're supposed to be an inch and a quarter thick. Well, I think it turned out pretty well. I like the distance between the tree and the house.

The spruce is not going to provide much shade, but it is a nice feature. Now let's really shift gears for a minute. I need to get the logs for the attic. There will be two logs that will hold up the loft and luckily I found a nice dead spruce tree that is only 100 feet awayfrom the construction of the cabin, so this is a no-brainer that I will have to find. another one of these, but this tree is completely dry, it's very close and pretty straight now, the reason I didn't cover the last wall is because this log Loft has to go in before the sheets are on this log and it settles on. of the window headers and if it covered the other wall you would never be able to fit the register, you wouldn't be able to fit it on the second.

I'm going to build supports for what you'll see here in a moment. and the second log that supports the loft can enter only once the wall is covered, but I have to place this one first before photographing that wall. Now to cut this log, it is self explanatory. I just nailed it. for a straight 2x4 and am using it as a guide to make a cut with a chainsaw. It's a nice change of pace to peel a log after lots of measuring and sawing and plywood and dimensional lumber. It's nice to have your hands back on something that's really natural, that's jagged and peeling a log is pretty stupid work.

It's something therapeutic. I wish my sister was here. She always said that she liked to peel logs. She would let him do the work. It's not cold enough outside. to do this without breaking a sweat, just take a breather for a second, let's look at this log and see how straight the cut ended up. This is the flat surface and I would say it is good enough by far, who needs Home Depot? Be careful in this forest because right next to each white spruce is a Balsam Balsam Fir Skin Balsam and all white firs are a good, stiff, decent wood to use.

I wouldn't use a balm at all. It is very soft, very prone to rot. You see it all the time in the camps around here, people cut up the dead balsams and put them in the campfire and you can hardly get them to burn. because the bark is impermeable and they simply rot from the inside. Everywhere you look Here there will be a white spruce right next to it there will be a balsam fur and if you don't quite know the difference, one stinks and the other. The wood is pretty good now, this log looks pretty heavy, but it's actually not that bad, it's very dry, there's no rot, there's nothing punk about it, it's almost perfect for what I'm using it for now, the frame is at 12 feet outside the exterior not counting the t11 siding that is on the outside of the frame, so this log should be 12 feet, maybe a little shorter, maybe a quarter of an inch, and then I want it the same thickness in both extremes.

I'm choosing four and a half inch arbitrarily, that's what I'm going to cut these ends to thickness and the bottom part will sit nicely on top of the window header. If you went and had a snack a few minutes ago and missed my explanation, it now makes a lot of sense why. this last wall wasn't fooled because I have to slide that log over the top of the header and then put it back in place over the other window header and if the wall was sheeted there is no way you can fit that log in that place, well, well.

I'm out of building materials right now, so I'll have to go look for materials. I'll be gone for a couple of days, so in the meantime I'm going to cover this with a tarp because I can't let it get wet. I need the tarp on this because I already insulated this floor. I can't let the floor get wet, but I don't have the metal for the roof yet and I don't have it built. I always tell people when it comes. to build everything is a sequence I needed to place this log, this will hold up the Loft, but I need them before I photograph this wall so I can build a homemade carnival scaffolding up here and then be able to get up and stand. the rafters without something to stand on there's really no way to put the roof on this thing well that'll be all for today.

In fact, I'm coming here with a friend of mine, we're just going to laze around, burn a couple. days, hopefully the weather won't be too bad and hopefully if it rains we'll be here to fix this tarp if there's any problem, well my friend John and I came here and spent a couple of days lazing around doing nothing and The canvas was fine. I ran down for more building materials and came back and found this: There's probably 40 gallons of water in there. I need to get all that water out of there without it exploding and soaking the floor because the purpose of the tarp was just to keep the water off the floor, obviously my tarp held up but the support that was holding the tarp broke and now I have a pool, not exactly sure how I'm going to deal with that, a ladder, a ratchet strap. and a five gallon bucket and that's what I came up with and it actually seems to be working pretty well, sometimes the bucket lands where it doesn't really get much water and other times the fuel pump fills the bucket, it's a situation complicated.

You can't get to the water any other way than from above, you can't make a hole in the bottom because even a small hole would cause the tarp to explode and then those 200 pounds of water would end up on your foot, which is the only The reason we put the tarp down in the first place was to keep the floor dry. Now we are going to work on the roof and we are going to build beams for the roof that will be this roof. an 11 12 pitch, which means for every 12 inches of travel you will have 11 inches of rise, so I'm building this special speed square with one corner of a piece of plywood, it measures 24 inches on one side and 22 on the other.

I'm going to cut this corner and I'm basically going to build a giant velocity square that's specific to this roof, which is why I chose 11 12. As I worked out the calculations a few different ways and that was the closest I got to a 10 foot beam. now with 10 feet I can use original 10 foot roof metal and I won't have to special order or cut it, so this will be my square specially designed for this roof, use it to design my rafters. I'll see in a minute to see a board like this is missing the corner. This would be the way to orient this so that when you mark the peak you cut this corner with the chip missing.

I'm going to check each of these boards to see if there are any defects that I can remedy while I make these Peak cuts and there you see how that homemade Square works, it's pretty self-explanatory, any of the cuts that are vertical, you use the 11 inch side, any of the Cuts that are horizontal use the 12-inch side of the square. I also want to check each board for a crown if a board has a pronounced crown. I want the crown to be facing up. Here's another good example when choosing which end. to cut I get rid of that knot I won't talk to you for a second about wood there are a couple different flavors of wood here I think there's a little bit of yellow pine here there's a little bit of hemlock from the wood that I have here I have a little bit of hemlock and It has a very pinkish color and I despise hemlock and I will tell you why it is a very, very strong wood but it is also very brittle, it is very easy to split with a nail, especially when you are nailing into beams and you are nailing a lot into the feet, very easy to split.

I only have it because it's what I could find when I needed to buy it, otherwise I would always choose a pine or spruce over a hemlock, not only that but the knots and hemlock are tough. rocks I think hemlock probably has the hardest knots of all the trees here's a good example this board here just looking at the grain I'm guessing it's cut from yellow pine this one over here this pink colored wood this is hemlock I'm staying away from This, if I can, I will use it if necessary. Now I'll make all the beak cuts first and then I'll turn each of these beams over because I'll need the tip of that beak. cut to take the measurements for the other two cuts that I need to make so you can see I'm measuring directly from the tip and I'm measuring the speed up to 97 and 5 8. that's my diagonal, like when we squared the base.

I previously figured out the roof square with a little calculator work. I have explained it in other videos and now we are doing what is called the bird's mouth cut. We are using that diagonal to know where the wall goes. it intersects the ceiling, then I will do the wall cut and the seat cut the wall cut is the part of the cut that is flush against the wall covering the seat cut is the part of the cut that is flat at the top of the wall and then I finish them with a hand saw so they are nice and clean and I don't cut more than necessary and weaken that particular area of ​​the beam and it will be a happy day when I put this ceiling up and I no longer have I have to worry about this tarp, it's kind of a monster tarp and then once the roof is up, you know the weather doesn't matter as much as it does now, but to get the roof I have to build a platform to work on, which means that I need to nail this Loft log to make it solid, it's not going anywhere, I'm using eight inch spring steel ring shank barn spikes and then I can build a deck myself using a couple of flat two by four.

I'm using a ledger on each side of the building and then that log as support in the middle. I'll throw some plywood on top of this and then I'll basically have a walkway from one end of the building to the next that I can work on to get all the beams in now these two pieces of plywood aren't going into this building anywhere there's no room for them I don't need them but I have used those two pieces of plywood more than any other tool here. I put them on the saw horses to work. I'm using them now as scaffolding.

Buying a couple extra pieces of plywood is just strange, now that there are There are two ways to build a rafter roof: you could use a ridge board that would run along the ridge of the building and the rafters would be attached and nailed together. to the ridge board, but I am nailing the rafters with bracing like you would see on a truss, now the bracing holds the peak together, the ends of the rafters, of course, are nailed to the wall and the walls are held together on the left and right by the trunks that support the Loft.

There will be one more. Loft log, but there is one already in place, so the walls will never give way under a heavy snow load. Plus, with an 11 12 pitch like this, it shouldn't hold much snow anyway, you should be able to slam the front door and everything. the snow should fall now. I have nailed this 2x4, it is marked for the correct roof length and I need it in place, so when I put in the next set of rafters I have that 2x4 to nail. They stand up like they're supposed to lift the roof is a magical part of the construction project because it doesn't really require a lot of work, but you can see a lot of finished results, you know that just by knowing that you have something. above your head, the roof frame, makes you feel like you are making a lot of progress.

Now I need to place all the bird blocks. These go between the studs at the top of the wall. They keep the beams rigid. birds, squirrels, chipmunks and things on your roof, well I feel pretty good about that, the only downside is that it's supposed to rain tonight and I don't have the roof finished, so we're going to put that green tarp back on top. more time, hopefully, this will be it and then today, hopefully, we'll finish that roof. Another thing on the agenda today is filling in these gable walls. They will all need studs to nail plywood for framing. insulation to sit on and each of those studs has to be cut at an angle to sit in that space, so it took a bit of time, it was really boring and there's not much to do so I didn't bother filming it. and now we're going to plate the end of The Gables because that's the next step in the process and at that point we can finish the roof purlins, two at a time that we're going to attach the roof metal to.

We're going to place Squirrel blocks all over the ends of the Gable and then we should be about to start putting metal into foreign objects. If you've seen this channel before, you've seen me using this Hammer I've had. This hammer has probably been around for 22 years, but the only thing I don't like is that it doesn't have a nail magnet on the top, so whenever I do something like this with a high ceiling I use this one because it has a nail. Magnet for you guys who don't nail magnet much, you can put a nail on it and it will stay in place so you can sink it into a wall and then nail it so one of them places the plywood. top, put a nail in there and tap and then tack it in place.

Now we're going to nail the rest of these metal roofing nailer straps, whatever you want to call them, we're using two by fours, two feet on center, that's the roof. the metal is going to bolt down before we get too far, I'm going to put these on the other side of these raster braces and then it's kind of jungle gym territory, after that it's a fun part of the job, it's nice to be at the top of the ceiling, one thing to remember is that two feet in the center refers to what you want to be with these two purchases and the reason I say that is that if you are 16, they are almost too close together for your knees can be happy and if they are much larger than 24 inches, they are too far apart and you can't put your foot on one andrust the knee on the other, so two feet is kind of the magic number for the 2x4 nailers now, as far as laying down the metal, it's kind of a back-and-forth, whack-a-mole, gotta-go-up-on type situation. roof, remove the metal, go back down, take another sheet, this last sheet is always complicated.

Well, it had to be in one place after putting up the first half of the roof and unfortunately in the meantime it decided to snow a lot, so now I have to finish that roof and I'm dealing with snow, which is two. I don't love the things I'm not okay with either of them. Roofs, I don't love working in the snow, but honestly, I think I started this build on October 25th, so I really look forward to it when it comes to snow. I'm late to the party and this is what I have to deal with now, well now working in the snow is not ideal and definitely slows things down but the real downside to this is that everything has a nice thin coating. ice and work

remote

ly, work alone.

Roofs and ice, none of that goes together, so today I'm taking my time, going real slow, working really safe, and of course I'm going to get off that roof with a twenty thousand toe strap. pounds going down that strap is probably the safest way to get off a roof like this there is no way to get down and up that ladder cutting the bottom plate on the door sill is like cutting the umbilical cord on a construction project , it really feels like you've reached an important point in the process. Now is the time to pick up this gigantic mess.

I have the building dry, so if it rains or snows or anything, we're fine. at this point and this is a real milestone now I'm going to cut out these windows we're going to have light we're going to be able to put the windows in what a nice place to be now I need to go back outside and nail around these windows today is the opening day of the season rifles. I've heard a couple gunshots, they're pretty far away, but you know who knows who's hunting on the western state lands or the southern state lands, so I think I'll keep the hammering to myself today and then in the morning, I'll nail it. all of these things and I'm going to put these windows in.

In the meantime I'm going to pack up all my windows here and cut the plastic and get them ready to use. I know I wouldn't want to spend all year looking forward to deer season to go to the middle of nowhere and then have some idiot hammering on the wall of a cabin on the next property to disturb your peace of mind and your deer hunting. all year long, so I prepped those windows and stayed busy doing other things until the next day and then I nailed all those window openings, put a lot of caulk on them and now we're ready to fill in some windows that I'm just going to wear. this piece of plywood as support to ensure the window does not fall.

Will I go in? I'll check the gaps and they will look even. Is that what you want. You want the window to sit in that opening evenly. a space that is almost the same on all sides filled with spray foam and getting on with life abroad. Well, I have to say it's really nice to be at this point where the roof is on the windows. I throw a door in here and you could heat this place up pretty easily even though it's not insulated yet and I think that's where we are, we're about to need some insulation and some tongue and groove, but before we can do that.

There is one last thing that needs to be done. I have to put up that second Loft log and in the evenings, when I'm done filming and building for the day, when the light is too dim to film really well, I've been walking. out there and looking for another tree trying to find another tree that is dead straight white spruce that would be dead and I haven't been able to find it. I'm finding a lot of dead trees that are balsams. I find many dead trees. that are crooked I just haven't found the perfect tree so I'm going to cut down a green tree that's not that far away because if I don't find what I'm looking for I better get something close by so I don't have to pack up half a mile now in Alaska.

I have built two cabins with three sided logs and when you buy three sided logs it is green, they cut down the trees, they mill the three sided log that you build. with it as soon as you can, you can't make three sided mililogs and then let it season because it will warp, so you usually build three sided log cabins with green logs of wood, the only other option is to cut them dead. and Mill is standing dead and then you can build with that probably whenever you want because it's mostly dry or you're going to cut the logs, let the logs season and then mill them on three sides and then they should be pretty stable so although the first The log that I used was totally dry and dead and this one is completely green.

Both ways are pretty standard when it comes to building with foreign logs. There are so many videos on YouTube about building the cabinet and they are very popular and I think. One of the things that people really love about the idea of ​​building a cabin is that on a day like this you're in the middle of the desert peeling a log, it's quiet and nice and warm, good simple job, I think that's what long ago. Many people would really appreciate an experience like this. It's cold, it's below zero, but when you're busy you know it's okay.

It feels good tonight. I'm going to take all this mess I've made. I don't have a big fire I'm going to build a big fire and I can't think of anything else I'd rather do tonight than clean up this area and build a big warm fire and just sit here and listen to The Silence overseas. That is a very nice log. Now all these scaffolding have to be lowered in order to place that log. I could probably put the log in without removing any of this, but I'll have to lower it to isolate and fix my tongue. and slot and then I'll come back up.

I'm going to have to rebuild it all over again so I can insulate the roof and I can do the tongue and groove inside the roof, now what I'm doing here is I'm Building the support that's going to hold that other Loft log, I'm going to build it so that it has exactly the same height as the window header, then I'm going to cut that Loft log the same way I cut the first one. leave it there and I can build one side and then go to the other side, set it up, lift that log and then I can put those last two pieces of two by four in after the fact and that way I can put this log in place after it's done. seen the wall.

Thanks, foreign guys with asthma shouldn't do this kind of thing. Oh, tomorrow I'll nail them down and put some of that scaffolding up there so I can work. To that end, let's go make a fire, it sure turned out to be a fantastic night for a fire. Not only was I able to burn a lot of brush that had built up from trimming things, but I was also able to burn some scrap wood, that is. nice, just had a great time, well when it comes to stupid decisions I make my fair share of them, don't get me wrong.

I should have built this set of steps as soon as I built the platform and then I wouldn't have had to do it. I spent two weeks jumping up and down on and off the deck and now building a series of steps like this was kind of an abstract activity because the ground is abstract, you don't really have a difficult distance to go. I'm going to go a little deeper. The blocks and the two sides of the steps will sit on blocks, but they're not there yet and will probably be a little different in height from each other, so it's kind of a trial and error build.

Project me, luckily it's still warm enough that the ground isn't frozen. I mean, there's a lot of snow and the top of the ground is crusty, but you get underneath and there's still loose thawed sand and that's exactly what we need. To make it right now, you can see how these steps are going to go, it requires a little bit of fiddling back and forth, but pretty quickly I built both sides of the steps to make sure they were in place and they stay in place. and I'm going to screw them in from the back with those same big, heavy, aggressive screws that we used to attach the deck boards.

I'll put the four on each of these now I'm making marks where the tread supports go, I want to measure eight inches down from the deck from the top of the deck and then another inch and a half down because the treads will be two by six, which is an inch and a half. half thick and I need to be an inch and a half under that twenty inches. Mark then the steps, actually it will be eight inches between one step and the next and then the strange platform History Each of these tread supports, I think they have two screws each because I was running out of screws, I was really running out falling short and then each of the treads that go on top of this, which you'll see here in a minute, each received a screw, so for the rest of this project.

Going up and down these steps I always asked myself: you know? They're going to hold up because I ran out of bras. Well, the generator just went out until now. I built this whole cabin with a gallon of gas in that generator, so I think it's time to take a walk, I'm sure they're on the property a little bit, we'll go get the gas can, which is a quarter mile away. that way, so if I need something from the cabin, the cabin I built last year is faster for me. through the forest back to the cabin you drive from one property to another this piece of land is actually two separate parcels but they touch, you know they are contiguous but they are not a single piece of land and there is no road that leads them connect the two, so you have to drive or walk.

I've timed it so I know it's a seven-minute walk from one place to another and then another two additional minutes to the outhouse, which is important to know. I think you guys will find this pretty interesting when we get here, this is the end of the trail and we come out through these trees and we turn the corner and there's my cabin and this is how you get there from a cabin. site to the other, why do I need two cabins in the first place? Well this is just a two person cabin and I would like to have other people up here for people to visit and just have a place for other people to go.

You know, if Brooke and I are up and it's cold, we'll both stay in this cabin, but I'd like to have a guest cabin so people want to come fish in the river or go up and fish in Lake Superior or something. The lakes around here will have room for everyone, take a minute, make me a late breakfast before I come back, I have some toast, I have some eggs, I have to balance this plate on this little stove, how do you know that this porch is It's become my favorite breakfast place, one of them anyway, if Brooke was here I'd offer you the first bite, so I'll do it, here you go, this one's for you and that's my breakfast.

See a kind of snowy forest and, for dessert, how. over a cherry pie filling, oh yeah, who figured it out? Foreign. You should make another toast and put the pie filling on top of the toast. I think I'll do that. Foreign beauty. How's that for dessert for breakfast? I think they should. have breakfast as dessert I always say that last piece of toast and just top it with strawberry jam, which is like dessert for breakfast, but I think breakfast should come with a dessert, oh yeah, it's even better than I thought. I hate these gas caps just take this stupid thing off right now if it works man I hate those stupid gas nozzles.

I would have just finished this with my cordless screw gun, but the cordless screw gun, of course, has nowhere to recharge it. than the generator and is practically tripped at this point. The underwear needs to put a couple of nailers. This is where the stove flange will go, where the wood stove comes out of the wall. I want to run a piece of triple wall insulated pipe through this section. and I just need some nailers, something to nail the sheet metal flange, so this is where we are, we're in the mid 20s for a high for next week, we have snow in the forecast.

I plan to be back here in a couple of days and finishing this up, but if I don't, this will be my goodbye for the year. I really didn't think I was going to be able to get back to the site, so I recorded this outing for this video which is kind of Long story short, two days later we ended up getting about eight inches of snow around Thanksgiving and then a few days of really warm weather, all that snow melted and I didn't have to use this outlet. I ended up back here about a week after I filmed this and got back to work see you soon actually a week after Thanksgiving the weather was better than the week I had just filmed it was warmer the snow was disappearing it seemed like We were going to have a second wind for the fall and I actually have the time it took to finish this project, but for a while I thought we were done for the year.

I'm using this super fancy compasshomemade to draw a pretty perfect circle now before sliding this tin shield. Here I had to cut all the nails from that stud that were nailed through the plywood on the outside when I originally put up this wall so I could slide that sheet metal in there. This is pretty much the same way I've been installing. chimneys from the first cabin I built metal plate on the outside of the wall metal plate on the inside triple wall pipe that goes through the wall and just works, it's very safe, it's very easy to install, it's a good way forward now People ask me all the time about these stoves.

Brooke purchased the first of these stoves for our black cabin. If you remember from the video, this is a stove that you can buy on Amazon as the company's Camp Chef and it is for a canvas tent with a wall. Spike Camp if you're hunting elk or you live in a walled city or whatever, it's a quote-unquote tent stove, but it's a fantastic little cabin stove. One of the only drawbacks is that it has a five inch opening, so it comes with a telescopic folding stove pipe that you can fold up and then you can put it inside the stove, but if you want to hook it up for a cabin, you have to find a reducer from five to six inches and are a little difficult to find.

Like many stoves, the paint they put on this stove stinks and you have to burn it outside from time to time. You'll get a stove, if you light a fire, it smells for a couple of minutes and then it's fine. This is not the case with these stoves, they need to burn for a couple of hours for the paint to cure and bake, otherwise it will stink from the cabin and you won't have a good time. I've been sitting here watching the stove cook for about 40 minutes just because next up is insulation and I really don't want to, we get about eight inches of snow for the two days before Thanksgiving, but it's been so nice, The last few days it has practically melted into nothing.

I'm just sitting here having lunch. If you're wondering what I'm making for lunch, oftentimes salted cashews and some type of dried fruit, you can just throw them away. the truck you don't have to cook anything oh well you can see our stove there it's working better not only is it steaming and smoky everywhere you can see it's nice and hot I haven't smelled it for a while either it probably still stinks but at least I don't know smoke like that is the question, sit here and watch the wood stove cook or go back inside and isolate, eh?

I guess there's nothing else I can do, install like I guess I have to insulate Years ago, I used to be a cement contractor and one of the best things about Being a cement contractor means you're doing a job that no one else wants to do, so it's very rewarding. I guess it's the same principle with these contractors, you see, who are just insulation contractors. Can you imagine doing this job all day and every day, but is it work? no one else wants to do it, so I'm sure you get a lot of work doing it and people are very happy to pay you for it overseas, but I'd rather do almost everything else rather than isolate, well, now that we're in the home stretch and I'm going to set up my little workstation here to cut this tongue and groove so I can cut the tongue and groove and just start slapping it on.

I bought this Tongan group from Menards, it was 17 a piece for a 12 foot tongue. and groove now there are some local guys on Facebook Marketplace selling it not far from here and if I need more I'll buy it there. Menards Generally has very good quality wood and you can choose whatever you want. you can pick it up but the 12 foot stuff is inside the building so you put all this in a cart and you end up with 500 pounds of wood in a cart and you have to pick up 200 pieces to find 50 of them that are good because that's how it is with this type of wood, people pick and pick and the ones that are broken or cracked or the tongues are bad but the grooves are bad they don't remove them as soon as they get them In a shipment of a hundred there are still a hundred in there so they say on the website that They have 200 pieces of tongue and groove, 50 of them are calls that should be burned and that everyone else has rejected and 50 of them are new things that came in, of which maybe 10 20 are also called, so it is very difficult for the Tongue and lion's groove is kind of a time-consuming process, you have to choose a lot, so even though I've liked Menards for a long time. of things if you're in the Midwest and have good language and rhythm, but if you can find an independent provider you'll probably be better off now, my work day working remotely this way is basically dictated by Dusk and Dawn once Se It gets too dark to see or too dark to film.

I just turn it off for the day. I return to the cabin, light a fire and enjoy the rest of the night. I usually do a lot of editing too, but hopefully by the end of today I'll have most of this tongue-and-groove finished and I'll be able to install at least one light strip and have some light here and then I'll be able to work after dark, which would be awesome, it would be kind of a revolutionary part of the process and I'm using that little piece of pencil to put that mark back between the window and the tongue and groove, then I'm going to go back outside, cut my piece, bring it back in and install it, you can seeing that we've practically lost all of our snow, which is wonderful, it really gives you a second wind in a job like this.

Stranger, cute, cute, cute, my brother Ryan showed me these lights, they put out a lot of light, they don't take much juice. He used them on his cabin project and our brother-in-law Scott Harem showed these lights to Ryan, who uses them on his off-

grid

cabin. Excellent solution, they are cheap and easy to find. They turn off a lot of light. I don't use much energy once I assemble and install this fireplace. I should be at a point where all the exterior stuff is done and I can focus my attention on what's inside the cabin because it's a blur too cold and I don't have anything to top off the Gable lens so I'm pretty much ready for the exterior work in this cabin at least for this year, but you can see that a single strip of LED lights makes a big difference in the visibility inside this cabin. at night, oh hopefully the copyright will be removed, but there is Christmas music in the background.

Thanksgiving was last week. Fortunately, most of the snow from our project here has melted and I have a couple of days of decent weather where I can work on it. Because? I'm wearing a T-shirt because I just finished insulating the roof, the peaked roof, and it was basically like drowning in the insulation. Oh please forgive me for not filming it, but there is no way I don't have the insulation for the ends of the Gable. Know? here, but everything else is isolated up there, what a nightmare, here we go. We have a winter weather advisory for this county tomorrow.

It's also supposed to drop from the mid 30s to around 20 degrees, so today might be the last chance. I have to do something here during the year, so it's been a Mad Dash all day. One of my top priorities is to get all the tongue and groove that I cut, put on the wall and nailed because I don't want any. of that, just sitting, especially under a tarp or in a pile, or just, you know, leaning against the wall somewhere, those things are quite expensive and they have to be placed correctly in case I don't come back here to work on this . cabin again until spring, other than the tongue and groove, the other priority I have is to install the wood stove inside because then we will have a heated space, if I can come back here with materials I can work on this all winter, see you later.

Since the space can be heated, I'm going to put down a masonry base, put that stove in there, connect the stove pipe and at that point I can light the fire. Ace Hardware is a fantastic place to buy that five inch two six reducer. inch coupler which makes this stove usable with six inch pipes. Ace Hardware is a great place to find it, but I also bought most of the rest of this stuff at Ace Hardware and probably paid twice what Family Farm and Home should have for stovepipe. half that price Menards has a stovepipe for half the price Ace is good for a lot of things good for those hard to find things but save yourself some money and get your stovepipe somewhere else the other thing in the What you should think about is whether there are more than two people who want to come and go snowmobiling to this area.

Two people can stay in this cabin during the winter. It's just an unfinished box, as long as they have heat because I'm sure this place will heat up just fine despite the Gable. the ends are not yet isolated. This door is very ugly on the other hand it is rusty and needs to be painted. I hung it this way so it looks better right now, but from the other side it's actually quite ugly and should be that way. hung in the other direction so it turns to the right just for the layout of the cabin where the kitchen will go etc etc.

Well, after a full day of hustling and bustling, it's time to take a well-deserved rest. of that time to come back to it oh, there's something really special about lighting the first fire in a new cabin it's like christening a ship foreign I can already start to feel a little heat coming from that stove even though I just lit it on fire This place can heat up pretty well, I'm sure, and it's wonderful to see smoke coming out of that chimney. One of the questions I know I'll be asked a million times is what caused all this?

I now estimate the cost of the place to be around five thousand dollars, but I haven't calculated the receipts yet. Now they are all piled up on my desk. I feel very grateful to have had this break in the weather after eight inches of snow. Last week not only that, but I had enough time to clean up this mess, that wood stove and at the end of the day, about 15 minutes in, it got really bright outside, like it was almost going to be sunny for a minute and I got some nice final shots of the cabin well everyone this is as far as I'm going to get this cabin project for this year tonight it's supposed to rain tomorrow it's supposed to snow we had eight inches of snow last week and I was lucky to have this little break in the weather.

I've been so busy that I was able to work on the t-shirt and that should say something, it's about 35 degrees, thank you all so much for Looking, I'm glad you came for the construction. My name is Dave Whipple and you've been watching Push Radical Be Radical. See you soon.