Friday, April 27, 2012

Foundation For The Montanan

The weather has been great and we are making progress.

  Foundations can be as varied as the locations you choose to build your cabin on, but the goal is always the same.    We want a solid base which lasts and protects.
Whenever possible I like to use the natural landscape in my foundation designs. I hate scarring the site with excessive cuts and leveling.
For this purpose, I used a two level design which eliminated the need to cut deeper into the hillside.
The upper portion of the foundation will mainly support bedrooms and therefore need less of a crawl space.  The lower portion of the foundation will contain our plumbing and most of the electrical
and so here is where I want a crawl space which is easily accessible and tall enough to comfortably work under.
Here is how we did it.
First we poured an 8x16 inch footer around the entire perimeter. 
Next we built up with block until our wall was level all the way around.
We utilized some of the old trailer's foundation for retaining walls.
After that it was just a matter of attaching pressure treated plates and floor joists.

We still need to put in our insulation and then we are ready for the beautiful tongue and groove fir flooring.
Check back soon!





Sunday, April 15, 2012

The Montanan

Well it's Spring in Montana and time to start a new cabin project.
I will be building a new cabin in the Little Belt Mountains, near Monarch MT.
Neil Bricco is funding this project and he has bought a nice site for me to build on up there.
Upon completion this cabin will be up for sale for anyone interested in a nice weekend cabin or summer home in an absolutely beautiful recreation area.

I will be building the " Montanan". This is a cabin of my own design and its specifics can be viewed on my website. The style and look of this cabin will be similar to the Monarch Cabin which is featured in the video on my previous post.
The Montanan will be larger however, with two bedrooms and a fun sleeping loft for the kids.

I guess it's time to get started!

Here are a few photos of the new site.
Our first project was to remove an old unlivable trailer, several unusable outbuildings and a lot of JUNK.

Next we put in our new utilities and prepared the site for the new foundation.


We are now ready to start our new foundation and cabin.
Check back soon to see the progress!