This past Thanksgiving weekend I headed out to Jim and Ali’s land out by Calabogie for what Jim called a “Good Old Fashioned Cabin Raising”. Well it didn’t take too long before I decided that there wasn’t too much about this cabin raising that was old fashioned. I mean we were using air tools and power tools…the only old fashion part was the hammering we had to do. :)
I drove out there with Steve and we arrived on Saturday morning just before 0830. We were the first to arrive (except for Jim of course). We got started right away, working on bracing the floor joists which had been started the day before by Jim and a couple of guys from the company that sold him the kit, Wilderness Homes. More people showed up as the day went on and before long we had the entire floor down.
We had a wonderful lunch which was supplied by Ali before getting back to work. We built the first wall and sheathed before raising it up. When it was lying on the floor it didn’t look too large, but as soon as we raised it up, it looked super tall! After bracing it with a few 2x4s, we got to work on the opposite wall. That one seemed to go together a bit quicker. I guess because we were all pros by this point in time. :)
After raising up the second wall and bracing it like we did the first one, it was time to put the ridge beams in place. This is where things got a little crazy. The basic plan was to put one end of the beam on Matt’s shoulder while he climbed up a ladder and slipped it into place in the ‘pocket’ at the apex of the wall. After it was slid into place on one side, set the other end down on the floor and then repeat for the other side, being careful not to pull the first end out of the pocket it was sitting in. It all seemed so crazy to me…there must be a better way to do this given all the technology and tools we had at our disposal. Well it didn’t matter, we followed that plan and it worked out. I’m still amazed, even now that nothing went wrong. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, there were two ridge beams that had to go into place, so not only did we have to execute this crazy plan just once, we had to do it twice!
After getting both ridge beams into place, I climbed up and secured them with a couple of pieces of plywood and some nails. What a rush being up 25 feet in the air, hanging on with one hand while you hammer with the other, praying you wont fall.
We decided that we’d like to get the third wall up before dark so we got to work on that right away. The two guys from Wilderness Homes took off and left the rest of the job in our hands. The third wall took us a little longer than I thought it would, but we got it up without too much trouble. After that we took another break for supper. It was dark by now. After supper (a delicious chili made by Ali) we got out the big flood lights and continued work on the 4th wall. There was only 5 of us left at this point. We had the 4th wall constructed and lifted into place before midnight and decided that was enough work for the day. We set up camp inside the cabin and settled down for some sleep.
We were up early the next morning but it took us a while to get going in the cold. People started showing back up sometime after 0900 and we got started on the first interior wall we needed to build. It was a simple wall, one to separate the two bedrooms, so it was an easy way to get started. Before long we had lots of help on site again and the next challenge presented itself. While all the outside walls had been pre-cut and numbered for us, none of the interior walls (there were only 2) were set up that way. It took a little more thinking to come up with a plan but eventually it happened and the big wall (with the support post) was built.
I stuck around until about 1430 or so on Sunday before I had to take off. At the time I was leaving, we were just getting the last of the floor joists in for the loft. I’m anxious to see just how much more they got done. Did they get any of the rafters put in? I’m hoping Jim will fill me in this week.
You can check out all the photos I took at Jim and Ali’s place this past weekend on Flickr.
P.S. The cabin we were building was the Lillooet model from Wilderness Homes.