Progress, but still not the "good" stuff

Coils for radiant heat in basement

Subfloor

View from where the living room window will be

How is a cabin made?

The logs look like this when they arrive.
All of these pictures were taken on the builder's site.

Each log is hand-peeled by a guy hired to do only that.
Look at all of these shavings on the ground.

Joe and Lloyd are the builders.

The craftsmanship is amazing.  The logs fit together perfectly.

From the outside--the slits are where a door will be.

From the inside

The wall will be 12 feet tall when it's done.

Bruce helps to steady a log that was lifted into place by a forklift.
The guys then use a calipers to scribe where to cut the log so it fits just right.

Necessary...but not too interesting

Basement walls

Rock dug out of basement

This guy joined us as we looked over the house and just wouldn't leave.

Stone to backfill the drain around the foundation was delivered while we were there.

Basement walls are covered with this vapor barrier.

Escape window in basement

First View

They are working on the basement of the cabin.  Can't see too much yet but the views are great.  The reason it looks so shallow is that the house will be built up a few feet.  The basement walls are eight feet tall.  When they were digging the basement, they ran into a 8-12 ton rock.  Fortunately, the excavator was able to move it and lift it out.  Sometimes they have to dig a hole beside it and bury it.  FYI:  three inches of snow today in Whitefish which isn't that far away.  Yikes!

It's Happening

The cabin is started.  The basement was dug yesterday.  And today we got our first views of the cabin itself.  Do you think we are excited?  Can't wait to see it for ourselves in a few weeks.  These walls are not on our property yet.  The logs are put together, notched and numbered on the log guy's site.  (Not a bad view at his work site!)   Then the logs are reset on top of our basement walls.

Here We Go!

We signed the contract with the builder for the cabin yesterday.  Have to admit getting cold feet right before I signed it.  Just such a big step.  But as Bruce says, we've been dreaming about this for over 35 years.  So I guess you can't call it a quick decision.

Preparing the site

It was fun to be in Montana when they brought the excavator for the first time to clear some of the trees from the house site.