How To Build A Real Log Cabin – Welcome to another annual Log Home Tour series, in honor of National Log Home Day! Today I’m sharing the story of Rock Heart Cabin and a resourceful and determined couple who have spent the last eight years on their own!
National Log Cabin Day aims to help us remember the rich history of log cabins as well as enjoy what they have become today. National Log Cabin Day is the last week of June. I love the opportunity to shine a light on all things log home with my annual Log Home Tour series.
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The story of Rock Heart Cabin caught my eye on Instagram a while back. You don’t often see people who have the strength and skill to build their own treehouses on their own property while still being single. It was truly amazing to watch their construction progress. They’ve come this far, but they still have a lot of work ahead of them, so be sure to follow @rockheartcabin on Instagram to see all their posts and videos of their creations!
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And now I’ll let the people who built it tell you the story of the Rock Heart Cabin… Enjoy!
This is extremely exciting as I have been following The Roots of Home on Pinterest and Instagram for years. It’s a real honor to represent here.
Essentially, our log home is a traditional two-story gable with a full-length gable roof in the rear and a full wrap around log lattice porch in front. It sits on a 28′ x 42′ concrete foundation, walkout basement and large stone retaining walls.
We used a Swedish stake to stack the logs and a saddle to cut the corners. The type of wood we used in our construction is mainly eastern white pine. However, maple, birch and oak can also be found throughout the house.
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We started our adventure by buying land off a dirt road in the woods that was 100% raw land. We wanted to build a very basic, conventional prefab house, but at the time the banks weren’t interested in lending to self-builders who didn’t want to take on too much debt. Who would blame them, foreclosures were everywhere.
So what does a motivated young family with a beautiful piece of forest and a strong faith in God do? They grab a chainsaw and start working. Now I know that some people say that we have built or are building, and by that they mean that they have postponed construction or bought a new house that is being built for them. This is not us. I will tell you that we built this cabin ourselves, completely DIY.
First, we would pull over and park on a dirt road next to a village, and my husband would get out of the truck with a chainsaw and just cut trees. We did this every night after work until we finally had enough room to turn off the dirt road onto our land.
When we reached about 50 feet, we were so proud and felt like we had come so far that we invited some family members over to share our progress and celebrated with a campfire. I remember cooking steak and potatoes for 8 on that fire.
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Every day he would continue to cut the driveway, creating bushes and rolling trees to the side. The tree was beautiful. It was strong, direct and healthy. It seems to be a sin to open firewood.
After the summer clearing, we cut a road about 300′ long. We still had 300′ to go. But the stumps and mud made it semi-impossible. We took it as far as we could by working at night with hand tools.
We called several excavation companies and were told it would be about $10k to haul out the logs and put down the gravel. We saved money and thought about doing it. The problem was that we had it. We will still be stuck with logs and logs everywhere and no way to move them.
After much debate and many searches on Craigslist we agreed to invest in a piece of heavy equipment. Even if it took longer and was more labor intensive, all he had to do was finish that one project and the backhoe would pay for itself.
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My husband grew up working on a dairy farm and was used to heavy equipment and what they were capable of, so I believed he would be able to pull it off. That’s what we did, not knowing much and on a leap of faith we bought a 1982 Ford 555 backhoe. It changed the game, it increased our skills and we started to see things differently. What was once a huge log in the road has become a valuable resource.
One day he read about sawmills in the back of Popular Mechanics magazine. So he began his research. He went to the Wood Mizer website and found that you can get an entry level sawmill. We watched the videos and saw that the sawmills we looked at were able to easily cut 36″ diameter logs and 17′ long logs, which is huge.
The largest trees we cut down were about 30-32 in diameter. So we did it. We bought a Woodmizer portable sawmill. LT15 Vide. We researched the history of eastern white pine in this country and realized that we have plenty of it, and if it was good enough to build ships that could cross the Atlantic, it was good enough to build a home. That’s how the idea to build a log cabin was born.
We could see God’s plan for us and how He brought us here. Everywhere one looked, there was nothing but huge, neatly arranged pine houses. Really amazing! He wound the large logs on the saw and cut them into logs 10 and 12 inches in diameter, piled them into large piles, probably a hundred logs split into pieces so they could dry.
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Whatever came of the rest was made into 2 and a half thick boards which we piled into 8 foot high piles. The sawmill was a dream come true. It exceeded all our expectations. The only limit was our imagination!
However, our imaginations created a project that exceeded what a single backhoe could do. We had to be able to reach higher, dig deeper and lift higher if we wanted to build the home we designed now. We agreed that an excavator was the solution.
It was terrible, at that time we only had one vehicle between the two of us and instead of buying another vehicle, we had to buy a used excavator. We got a lot of weird looks from friends and family about this financial decision. What do you do when one of these old pieces of junk dies? You will be ready! We knew we could do it. God would not leave us this far just to destroy us. We had to look for that loan in many banks. They don’t like to give loans to excavators for private consumers, but we do. We bought a 2004 John Deere 120c. It’s awesome.
The clearing of the construction site went without a problem. Once the site was cleared he dug the foundation and we had so much fun setting up exactly how we wanted our cabin to stand. When the foundation was poured, another year had already passed. Spring came and he started building. He lowered the pressure plate, the support beam and installed the floor joists. That fall, the first felling course began.
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When we started all this we had 2 sons and in the third year of building our log house we had a third son. Those days were hard though. My husband never stopped working on it, and I was excited about children, breastfeeding, and marveling at the idea of how it even happened. It is amazing that our sons have witnessed such hard work and invaluable skills all from their role model father.
The cutest thing I appreciate most is that our three boys have been finding heart-shaped rocks on the ground for years and proudly giving them away. I kept each one and will incorporate all of those hearts into our stone fireplace. Thus the name Rock Heart Cabin was born.
We have come a long way. I started by packing a cooler in the truck with the kids’ toys, a picnic table, and a screen tent to enjoy camping with all the gear. He tells me, “We have this,” and I believe he does. Right now I am