Building Our Dovetail Log Cabin
Follow along as we build our Dovetailed Log Cabin!
We had been dreaming of living in a cabin in the middle of nowhere in a forest for a very long time. Honestly, Josh was reading books about building cabins from almost the time he could read. Our original plans started with saving money. At first we each put five dollars in a box a week and started saving all our change in jars. From what we could tell, it would take a great deal of money to even buy our dream land, but you have to start somewhere.
We live outside of a small town in rural Indiana surrounded by mostly corn and bean fields in an old farm house that has a mortgage. Although, we outright own about 2 acres next to the original property that was originally farm land. It felt good to own just a little bit of property to say this is our piece of land, everything on it. The total property with house and original land with house totals about 4 acres more or less. Over 20 years we have planted many trees and gardens but it is still not 20 or more acres with a forest of trees, wildlife, and natural water. We dream big! Who doesn’t want to just get away from it all and just be in the middle of a woods with nature.
Our dream just felt like a dream. It felt so far away. I can be a little impatient. It should be mentioned, I have always called Josh my little genius. I have never seen him not be able to make something if he put his mind to it. Anyhow, the dove tail cabin all started with myself making subtle suggestions, “Hey, Josh we could build a small cabin on the land we own.” He had many reasons not to do so at first like the fact it was not in the middle of the woods in our dream location. Where would we even find logs. The trees on our property had only been growing for 20 years at the longest and that is not even many.
One summer day a few years back, I go outside to see four large rocks moved with each rock in a corner to form a square out in the land we own. Oh, and at the time we called that land the weed patch. It started just as that. An old corn field that weeds and the such started growing in. We would mow paths thru it to walk around and for the kids to play. Over time we let selective trees grow and planted other trees.
Josh says, “This will be a place to build our first log cabin. I picked out the flattest big rocks from the rock pile in the yard that will be sturdy for the foundations corner stones.” Yay! I am so surprised! When will we start? What is the next step in this process? Oh, I cannot wait. Well, as everyone knows, life is busy and many things can get in the way of a person’s dreams and aspirations if their not careful. Fast forward a couple years later. The rocks are still sitting in the same spot. Everything looks about the same except for some new weeds and trees growing in the area. I decide to plant a pumpkin patch because it already has a nice outline with the rocks. At this point, I do not even know if a cabin is really ever happening. Like I said, I can be just a little teeny tiny impatient.
I am not sure what sparked in Josh. He may or may have not heard a few comments while I was working in the pumpkin patch that resembled things like, “Man, I wish we had built that cabin. Sigh.” But once the pumpkins and gourds were harvested, he is out there moving the corner stone boulders and leveling them. He says he is getting it ready for the cabin. What!? I did not think it was ever going to happen at this point.
Josh measured out the size of cabin we could build due to various factors including what kind of logs would we even be able to find for free and move to our weed patch by ourselves. We finished setting the corner stones for the sill logs to set on. A stone at each corner and a few larger stones to support the middle of the sill logs. Truthfully, Josh was the brain behind the leveling and setting the rocks. I was just the manual help. But, Hey it was a great workout moving very large rocks of about 300 pounds and moving them from about 50 yards away! My co-workers began asking me how I was loosing weight and getting in shape so fast. I told them it is the cabin exercise program! Once these very heavy boulders and rocks were in place we, i.e., Josh, leveled everything as best we could.
Prior to starting the log cabin build, Josh researched saw mills. He thought this would be a good way to saw the logs for a cabin flat on two sides. We love to do things old school, but realistically we are not getting any younger and we knew it would be a great deal of work to use a broad axe like so many before our time have to hew logs. As it turns out, saw mills are expensive. To expensive for our small budget. We did not want to spend anything we did not have to so we could put that money in the “Dream Cabin Fund”. For that reason, my little genius, Josh, figured out how to build a sawmill using scrap metal and other materials he had laying around. He did have to buy some materials but the cost to build saved us a very large amount of money.
So we had a saw mill but no logs. This is quite a problem if you want to build a Log cabin. One of the reasons, Josh thought I may be crazy to want to build a log cabin in the “Weed Patch”. We needed to find logs in a bad way and they needed to be straight long big logs that we could move on our own. Of note, from what we could tell, it cost a pretty penny to actually buy logs for a cabin. It took a great deal of searching and making deals along the way but over time found just enough logs to start the first square of logs on the foundation boulders.. With a great deal of hard grueling work moving logs around that weighed over a ton.
So now that we had four logs we could at least get a square of logs set on our foundation stones!! Our sill logs are sawn flat on the bottom to set nicely on the flat stones. A couple of the stones were rounded so we coped our sill logs to fit as a type of “Ball and Socket” joint on the stone.
We have a round of logs finally!! Our sill logs are white oak and were extremely heavy. At the time we had no way to lift or even move these logs other than using our muscles. Our first few rounds of logs were lifted and set by hand.
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