The Montana Cabin Builder

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Beams Going Up!

Here are a few shots of one of the ways we use to get our beams up onto the cabin. The beams are 36' long and 10 to 12 inches in diameter, making them far to heavy to lift by hand. We used the winch on Tom's truck to pull the logs up the opposite side of the cabin. A temporary post is anchored to the front wall of the cabin to hang a pulley on.

It's always fun to see these logs go up. Along with enhancing the appearance of the cabin these beams provide a substantial snow load support.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

A good start

Well the weather has cooperated as much as can be expected in the mountains in Montana in the spring, but we have been able to get our floor down finally. The flooring is made of tongue and groove fir decking which I finish by rubbing in stain and then seal with several coats of varnish.
We were also lucky enough to get our logs started before the rain decided to make a return visit.

I will provide more detail on the log construction in next several postings as we progress all the way to our first set of 35' Log roof purlins or "beams".

Neil inspecting the progress

Here is Neil inspecting his new deck and foundation.

The rest is coming soon Neil, I promise.

Green River Delay

Sorry for the delay on postings about the Montanan's Progress. I had to make a brief visit to the Green River Utah KOA and build two small rental cabins before they got up and running for their summer season.

Here are a couple of shots of that beautiful area and of one of the cabins I built.

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.