Cabin in the Woods?

I am on a ridgetop and have not drilled a well yet. May do so this summer. I anticipate needing to go down 300 feet so it will be pricy. In the mean time I take 5 gallon containers of water which last a long time. I have a solar shower set up but that doesn't work well in the winter so I sponge bath. I have a chemical camp toilet that works great. I just pee outside. I have electricity so have a refrigerator and stove, microwave etc. I can be very comfortable but will be doing fine tuning this summer and as time goes on. The cabin was just finished last September. It has a living room,one bedroom, kitchen, 2 utility rooms for future, a big closet and a huge loft.

Oh yeah, one morning last week I saw 5 varieties of woodpeckers with 2 hours. That was cool.

Have you ever gotten laid in said cabin?

CrossFan wrote:

Funny this thread has popped up. I built a log cabin - started one year ago - here in Michigan, out of the dead ash trees from the Emerald Ash Borer problem. logs are 10'x12'. Am installing the pipe for the wood stove right now, and it will be inhabitable.

All dirt roads and trails. :-) Did it all myself, with a chainsaw and my own elbow grease. Hard work, rewarding and satisfying. Most expensive stuff was the stove pipe, almost $300, but not much else. Total probably under $500.

That is awesome. How much land is it on?

60 acres.

Try Newberry, Florida.

Crosfan wrote:

60 acres.

Do you have trails all over on that? You could have quite a bit on 60 acres if you zig-zagged enough.

CrossFan wrote:

Funny this thread has popped up. I built a log cabin - started one year ago - here in Michigan, out of the dead ash trees from the Emerald Ash Borer problem. logs are 10'x12'. Am installing the pipe for the wood stove right now, and it will be inhabitable.

All dirt roads and trails. :-) Did it all myself, with a chainsaw and my own elbow grease. Hard work, rewarding and satisfying. Most expensive stuff was the stove pipe, almost $300, but not much else. Total probably under $500.

10 foot by 12 foot logs? Huh uh. 10 inch by 12 foot logs are hitting ~200 pounds or more if they aren't fully cured. Would love to hear how you did the top of the wall logs and roof... if you did.

i want. wrote:

how did you deal with going to the bathroom and stuff? out of curiosity

also showering

I haven't slept/lived/stayed in it yet. Still finishing the wood stove installation. No running water and no electricity, so staying in it will be equivalent to what you do camping in a tent in the woods, basically.

It is near enough to my house where I was able to use the facilities there while working on it. It is in a rural area in "the country", but certainly not off in the wilderness somewhere like others have described.

Brandon Township, address is in Ortonville, MI. Southeast of Flint.

slackerdom wrote:

Have you ever gotten laid in said cabin?

I know this was a question for Top Cat, but...based on the time I have spent on it, it's doubtful my wife would be too thrilled about that happening any time soon... :-)

Crosfan wrote:

60 acres.

This was not my reply. Don;t know who 'Crosfan' is. ???

Anyway, my log cabin is on 2.25 acres. Not big enough for trails, but when my kids were too young to babysit but young enough where I could work in the yard, I would sometimes do laps around my yard to get my run in when my wife wasn't home. Rough guess was maybe a quarter mile around.

Of course. There are beds. Or you can do it outside if you choose

Skeptimistical wrote:

10 foot by 12 foot logs? Huh uh. 10 inch by 12 foot logs are hitting ~200 pounds or more if they aren't fully cured. Would love to hear how you did the top of the wall logs and roof... if you did.

The cabin is built with 10 foot and 12 foot ash logs. It is a one room cabin with a wood stove in one corner, which I am currently installing the stove pipe for. Logs ranged from 4 inches in diameter to 10 inches in diameter.

You are absolutely right, the logs that were larger diameter were very, VERY heavy. Ash is a hardwood and VERY dense (they make baseball bats out of it). I pretty much busted a nut dragging them around and lifting them up. I'd even say some were quite a bit heavier than 200lbs. I would work one end at a time, lifting each end in turn onto higher and higher platforms (like sawhorses or Workmates or whatever) until I could lift them up onto the walls. Once I got them up there, I would mark them and knotch them and roll them into place.

There were a few that I had to rig a rope kind of crude pulley system that I figured out how to do. But either way I did it, I had some failures where the logs were partway up and would fall, which was fairly dangerous with me beign out there alone working on it. One of those deals where you knew "Oh boy, this is risky." Some would say "stupid" and they are right, but I was lucky enough to not have any major accidents.

After peeling them and gettign them up on the walls, I cut them and knotched them using a chainsaw and chisel, very difficult, painstaking, tedious work. Hence, even a log cabin that small has took me around 6 months to finish the log parts of the construction (i.e. walls/roof beams).

I have pictures, but don't know how to post them anywhere, and I don't have my own website or anything.

Maybe this will work. ???

!/album.php?aid=2067685&id=1396402072

Top Cat wrote:

yes that whole Kickapoo River Valley is nice. I'm in the Grant River Valley and about 2 miles from the Mississippi.

Avalanche was my favorite. I have fished the Blue and Crooked Creek a little closer to your area (it is all pretty close though). Had a great day on Crooked Creek--must have caught 20+ in a couple hours, not much with any size on it though. We used to eat at the Silent Woman in Fennimore (best signboard ever) and stay at the attached hotel.

CrossFan wrote:

Funny this thread has popped up. I built a log cabin - started one year ago - here in Michigan, out of the dead ash trees from the Emerald Ash Borer problem. logs are 10'x12'. Am installing the pipe for the wood stove right now, and it will be inhabitable.

All dirt roads and trails. :-) Did it all myself, with a chainsaw and my own elbow grease. Hard work, rewarding and satisfying. Most expensive stuff was the stove pipe, almost $300, but not much else. Total probably under $500.

And you are what I would call a man.

If you've never read or seen the story of Dick Proenneke and how he built and lived in a log cabin in Alaska, you should.

I wish I had read/watched this when I was much younger...

Here's the website:

http://www.aloneinthewilderness.com/

The documentary usually gets shown on PBS during fund raisers - catch it sometime, then read the book.

Building it by himself, with only the use of hand tools. You should see some of the stuff he comes up with...

i want. wrote:

how did you deal with going to the bathroom and stuff? out of curiosity

also showering

I had a well and septic so I was all set in that department.