Bring back the bat!
What a quiet summer this was. No buzzing. No flies. When the tools were still we heard only the peace of a snug house and the footsteps of a couple of righteous-feeling builders who thought they’d solved the fly problem.
In 2010 the log house was filled with flies who’d moved in the previous year, when the house wasn’t as well sealed up as it is now, and they were fruitful. We hung up fly strips everywhere, swatted flies, shooed flies out. The campaign cut the population but we still had them last winter and into the spring.
One day early in the summer I observed that all the fly strips were well-studded with fly legs. Legs, with no bodies, and no sign of anything messing with the sticky strips. How odd. In a couple of places there had been evidence of mice, but a mouse couldn’t climb up the log walls and onto a fly strip without getting permanently adhered.
Summer went along buzz-less, and so did early fall. Miller moths accumulated amongst the legs. Yuck. I didn’t take pictures.
One morning John took a closer look at a dark knot on a kitchen log, one that seemed larger than he remembered. “There’s a bat in here!” he hollered, waking the critter from its rest. A ruckus ensued, of flapping plywood scraps and brown wings, and in short order the squatter took up new digs in the great outdoors. Slam! Good riddance!
But guess what now … buzz!
Rejuvenation's Drake bat light. Customer service representative Andrea says it's "no bother", presumably meaning that it doesn't poop. But does it catch flies?
For what it’s worth, we’ve had the best luck with Catchmaster fly strips (ribbons).
Look! One room is finished! (the outhouse)
This is the place.
Company was coming so John built an outhouse for them. Okay, so it was a bunch of earthy blacksmiths from the Rocky Mountain Smiths, here to watch John give a demonstration in the shop, but we couldn’t have them doing all their business in the woods. (There are no toilets in the house yet.)
Door stays closed but needs a slide bolt inside.
Conforming to rural tradition, the biffy is built mostly of scrounged material. Lumber is either salvaged or milled from dead trees on a small Wood-Mizer sawmill. Corrugated roofing is left over from the house. A friend sold us the Sun-Mar composting toilet after he moved on to something else. Door, window, carpet on the ceiling, and clothes hooks are from the Beulah Inn cabins that were demolished some time ago.
This privy is powered by a composting toilet, not a hole.
Salvaged carpet gives acoustic properties. Or something.
Finishes used:
- Siding: Lifetime Wood Treatment chemically weathers and evens the color without looking coated like ordinary stain; may eventually turn silver. A very similar, if not identical, product is Eco Wood Treatment. Both of these products are claimed to have preservative qualities but I have not been able to confirm this.
- Door: Benjamin Moore MoorGlos semi-gloss exterior paint in Raccoon Fur, a deep slate gray.
- Interior: Benjamin Moore Regal semi-gloss interior paint in Daiquiri Ice, a pale seafoam lakeside bathhouse green.
- Moon: Fine Paints of Europe MV65 Epaulet. Left over from something else. Exceedingly good paint.
Painted popcorn can keeps mice out of the TP.
Speaking of tradition, people used to practice Halloween outhouse-snatching here in Beulah. EveryNovember 1 someone’s privy stood in the fire station intersection, at Grand and Pennsylvania. I suspect most were hauled to the dump, subtracted from Beulah’s stock of vernacular architecture.
Battered old faucet accomplishes at least as much here as it did in the odd-parts box.
In some parts of the American West a constant water supply can’t be counted on. There may be times when this “necessary room” becomes a real necessity.
Read about outhouses:
Wikipedia (includes the history of the term, Chic Sale)
Outhouse books available at Amazon
Biffy books available at Amazon
Privy books available at Amazon
You're always welcome at our "house".
Would you believe a plywood kitchen?
In 1933, when the prototype for our house was being built as the Valley Creek Ranger Station in Stanley, Idaho, they probably didn’t spend much time worrying how the kitchen was going to look. I, on the other hand, have stewed about it ever since the design process began. That was, let me think, four years ago? Nothing I hatched in my mind seemed right once it was translated into drawings.
Just recently, hunting on the Internet for pictures of old ranger stations, I came upon the Clackamas Lake Historic Ranger Cabin near Mount Hood in Oregon. Among the online pictures of this delightful cabin (which you can actually rent for a vacation) was a shot of the vintage Northwest fir plywood kitchen, glossily varnished and deeply colored with age.
Look at those curved supports on the upper cabinets! Without them you'd really notice the disparity between the bottom edge of the cabinets and the window trim. The materials may be rustic but the craftsmanship is anything but.
The Clackamas Lake Historic Ranger Cabin, located on the Mount Hood National Forest in Oregon, was built in the same year as the Valley Creek Ranger Station in Idaho.
Finding plywood as pretty as this has proven to be difficult. If what we are currently finding is any indication, modern plywood has a looser, less elaborate grain. Maybe that’s because it is no longer made from old-growth timber. Does anyone know for sure? We did learn that it pays to check all your sources. One lumber yard’s plywood may have so many “footballs” that it’s unusable for cabinets, while another place will offer very nice stuff.
I presume that the deep color of the old cabinets is a result of age. To attempt to duplicate this look, I am going to try varnish tinted with a red-brown dye from Woodcraft. Another way that would work, but might not hold up to moisture as well, would be a thick-cut (dissolved with minimal alcohol) garnet shellac tinted with brown wood dye. Directly staining the plywood doesn’t seem to give quite the same effect that you get with a colored clear finish.
That old white sink with backsplash would be just the thing if we could have planned for it, but we have a new Kohler Bakersfield sink already waiting. It does have a Hudee ring (a metal mounting ring, now rapidly going extinct) instead of being self-rimming, so that makes it look relatively old. Also, the kitchen window sits too low on the wall for an integral backsplash to fit. Oh well. But we do have a fairly old white Roper gas stove, fifties era probably, given to us by a friend.
At one time we thought we would more-or-less pattern the kitchen after the one in the Valley Creek Ranger Station, now the Stanley Museum, in Stanley, Idaho. However, that kitchen has no log or wood walls at all so everything is painted. Although I had been mulling over painting with Valspar Spring Botanical and Fine Paints of Europe’s Mount Vernon Palladian White, in the end I just wasn’t quite willing to do that in our own kitchen. It has two log walls and having all these different surfaces seemed too complicated.
One thing that both of those 1933 ranger station kitchens have in common is a wood countertop. John’s been wanting one all along while I’ve vacillated between wood and laminate (Formica’s Virr Varr).
Formica’s Virr Varr laminate in White. I just found out that Formica has discontinued Virr Varr as well as all but one color of their Boomerang laminate. I get so aggravated by these myopically trend-oriented companies. If you think you want any of these patterns, order NOW before the warehouses run out. Laminate is inexpensive so you can overbuy if necessary. Good luck finding Boomerang in coral.
Seeing wood countertops in both of these historic buildings allowed me to settle on Virr Varr for the utility room and wood for the kitchen. If the wood ever turns out to be impossible to live with it can always be covered with laminate, I suppose, but by then there will be nothing available I’d consider compatible.
Laurii Gadwa tells John about the Valley Creek Ranger Station kitchen. Like the Clackamas Lake cabin, this kitchen has a wood countertop. You can’t see it in this picture but the right-hand side of the countertop was grooved to make a drainboard. I believe this was pretty common at the time. How did they do this without modern routers?
Maybe some future owner will overhaul all our work, painting everything pastel and installing granite countertops (ewww!) and stainless appliances (yawn), but during our tenure we will enjoy lots of wood, including wood countertops, and our old white stove.
Thanks go to Shannon Hopkins and Mike Hamel of the United States Forest Service for permission to use these photographs of the Clackamas Lake Historic Ranger Cabin. To read more about the history of this building and how to rent it, check it out at the USFS web page, Recreation Rentals of the Pacific Northwest.
Thanks also to Pam Kueber who writes the blog, “Retro Renovation” (www.retrorenovation.com), for the information on the Hudee ring and for posting the regrettable news that the metal-rimmed Kohler Bakersfield sink has been discontinued. I thank myself for worrying about just such a thing happening and ordering the sink long before it was needed. Ditto for the Formica laminate.
First light fixtures for the log house: outdoors
They don’t work yet, because we’re still running on temporary power, but we have some light fixtures in place! Thrilled at having reached this stage, we recently put up porch, yard, and flood lights. No real ranger station ever had so many fixtures, I bet. With great pride I introduce to you:
The skidsteer is the tallest ladder we have for this situation. I hope the inexpensive gray barn light weathers well because replacing it would not be easy.
The Klamath Falls porch light from Rejuvenation was chosen for the roofless deck because it is waterproof. It has the caramel and white art glass option. Imagine how pretty it will look once we can put a bulb in it and switch the power on. This was the easiest outdoor light fixture to install because there are no logs here and no conduit was required.
Vintage flood light, probably from the seventies. An auction find, it came from a small apartment building in Oregon. There are four of these scattered around the exterior. No, we are not going to leave them on all night. I dislike that fad.
This Appleton explosion-proof light has an enormous white shade that, sadly, will not fit here under the porch eave. There are two of these fixtures and I paid a lot for them because of those shades. Had I known I could have bought two new fixtures without shades for about ten dollars apiece.
Shallow white porcelain barn light, one of two on the south side of the porch. I do not know what brand they are. The shades and sockets came from two separate auctions. Conduit is as thick under the porch roof as snakes in a nest. Bending it is quite an art.
For the west side of the porch I found two vented white barn lights with cages, made by Benjamin. There is a third fixture nearby that looks similar (no cage) but I believe it is an Ivanhoe.
At the front door: a little red-painted porch light with bubble shade. Another auction fixture. Because its base conflicted with the logs we built the electrical box out, then chinked over the resulting weird assembly.
At the side entrance, over the steps, hangs this small deep green porcelain fixture. The manufacturer is unknown.
At the side door we have this little copper lantern fixture with a nice patina on it. It came from Oregon. Was it one of your auctions, Chris? As with the little red fixture, the base did not sit well on the log wall so the electrical box was extended and chinked. Chinking is good for hiding a lot of things.
The electrician said “never again!”
“Never again!” said the salesman behind the wholesale electrical supplies counter. “I wired a log house once and I’ll never do it again! Too much work!”
We were at the beginning of the wiring phase, purchasing wire and boxes and asking for some advice. We figured this guy, a licensed electrician, was just being a bit melodramatic. Half a year later his words don’t seem so exaggerated any more but we sure do know a lot more about the subject.
Right here is where I tell you that the best way to minimize your troubles with wiring a log house is to plan your wiring scheme thoroughly, have a standard joist ceiling between the first and second floors (not boards resting on beams), check and double check that the electrical plan are sent to your log contractor so he can drill the all of the necessary holes right there in his log yard, and don’t change your mind about anything after the holes are drilled.
Yeah, right. The only step we followed was the first one.
Because our designer had a copy of the electrical plans, we assumed that he sent it on to the log guy with the rest of the plans. Nope. The logs arrived here in Beulah without being drilled. Throughout the frenzy of log raising, dodging helpers and keeping an eye out for logs being lowered by crane, John ran about trying to drill holes in each new course of logs. Some got missed and some didn’t line up quite right but nothing could be done about it – the next log was already swinging overhead.
Months earlier, in the design phase, the question came up about the nature of the first floor ceiling/upstairs floor. Should it be big log beams with boards laid in a charmingly loggish fashion over them, or should it be conventional framing? Log romance won out and we chose beams. They are beautiful and we love them, but without joist spaces where are you going to run the wires for main floor ceiling lights? Are you going to skip ceiling lights? I don’t think so, not for the kitchen and not with boxes of pendants from Rejuvenation and vintage bead-chain fixtures from eBay piling up in storage.
And of course I had several changes of mind about the wiring plan after it was too late to have changes of mind.
As with ever so many things you do when building a log house, the only way to approach the challenge was to get started with a cautious certainty that, for every issue, ingenuity and persistence would provide a solution, and so they did. Not every solution was as elegant as we might have wished for but heck, it’s “a 1933 log house” and it’s not supposed to look like something out of Log Home Living magazine.
Upstairs, where the ratio of logs to framed walls is low, the wiring was relatively straightforward. We already knew that the only way to get power to the ceiling lights and fans would be through exposed conduit. Old log buildings, with their retrofitted wiring, have conduit. It’s just part of the look. I’d made certain that there were no more outlets in logs than code required, and those few were a good test run for mortising holes in the logs to accept electrical boxes.
Needing to get some insulation installed in certain areas upstairs before winter, we decided to get the upstairs wiring done first. We could call Regional Building for a partial electrical inspection of just that area, do the insulating, and then go on to wiring the rest of the house.
John worked out a system for carving rectangular holes into the logs for electrical boxes, switching between the Fein Multimaster tool and a wood chisel. There were no major difficulties getting wires routed from the electrical panel downstairs. The wiring passed the inspection and we felt pretty good. This inspector is well known throughout the county for being rough on people doing their own wiring, and we’d passed on the first try. That salesman behind the counter may be an electrician, but look what we did! We must be at least as good as him!
Attaching an electrical box into a rectangular hole cut into the logs.
Then the inspector went downstairs to preview some work we’d started there and which had been hard to do. Holes that John had drilled way back during the log set were misaligned, too small, or sometimes even missing, so we’d gone through quite a learning curve coming up with ways to cope with the issues.
“Those boxes aren’t big enough for the wiring you’re putting in them.” Uh, we’ve already mortised them into the logs, and they fit the vintage Bakelite brown wall plates we’ve been collecting, and we have no idea if we can find bigger electrical boxes that won’t show and look awful. Worried about how ugly the solutions might be but fearful of having the inspector think we were ignorant dummies, we just said “okay, we’ll fix those things” and kept our anxieties to ourselves until he drove away.
A vintage brown Bakelite receptacle cover for a metal electrical box.
That day pretty much wrecked our motivation to do wiring for a while and we went on to other work like insulating and putting knotty pine car siding on some of the upstairs walls.
Meanwhile, John bought a copy of the 2008 National Electrical Code book, 2008 being the year we got our building permit – we aren’t obliged to meet the 2011 code. From the book he calculated how many cubic inches of electrical box capacity was required per outlet or switch based on the size of the wires and the number of them entering the box.
Matching those calculations to the boxes we could buy was, I think, harder than reading the code book, partly because it is not always easy to find out what a box’s actual rated capacity is. Even the guys behind the electrical counter don’t always know. Much of the information came from searching online through manufacturers’ spec pages.
Blue plastic boxes, fine for stud walls, were out for log walls because the blue might show between the logs and chinking. Metal boxes aren’t exactly beautiful but at least they are a little more discreet when they show themselves. That limited our box choices.
In most cases we were able to find metal boxes of greater capacity (deeper or with corners that are square instead of rounded) but still of a size that would fit behind the old wall plates. For some places a “mud ring” could increase capacity and save us from having to install a much bigger box, but we used these sparingly because it is, for all I know, impossible to find a vintage Bakelite wall plate to cover these. Here and there we resigned ourselves to someday covering an unsightly box with a big blob of chinking.
Eventually, it became necessary to tackle wiring again in order to meet a building inspection deadline. Nearly paranoid about the electrical inspector, we went to extremes to make sure everything was right.
Using leftover log ends that matched the ceiling beams, John built a mockup of the ceiling structure. A fellow blacksmith who also builds log houses told us about a wiring channel system that he’d used: use a router to cut channels in the top surface of the floorboards, run the wires in the channels, then cover them over with steel plate. We trotted this contrivance into Regional Building’s office and got an okay on it.
John made two passes with a router to make T-shaped channels in the upstairs floorboards. Wiring is laid in the channels to serve ceiling light fixtures below. Then steel plate is set in the upper channel and drilled for screws to hold it down.
As each electrical box was installed and wired, on the adjoining stud John wrote clearly the capacity required by the wires and the capacity of the box. This helped assure him that he was right and might impress the inspector.
I gave each light fixture a letter designation, then transferred that to the light fixture boxes and their associated switch boxes with matching colored cards that John could easily spot. If they were pull chain lights that was indicated, as were three-way switches (used where a light can be turned on or off from either of two locations). Outlets were marked with the number of duplex receptacles needed.
Electrical box tagged to match switches with light fixtures and show that a receptacle is to be installed in the box.
When finally it was all done, we cleaned the house top to bottom, took deep breaths — and called for the inspector. He spent most of his visit checking our porch wiring then zipped through the house, not even bothering to go upstairs to see the channel system. “Looks like you got it figured out,” he remarked, quite kindly for a guy that everybody thinks is an ogre, and he signed the inspection card.
We thought to ourselves, that salesman was right, it is a lot of hard work to wire a log house and it’s a pretty sure bet we won’t ever try it again. But we did it and it is done well, and I guess that’s what this whole project is about.
The guy who scared the bejabbers out of us.
A visit to the Valley Creek Ranger Station
What luck! I won an eBay auction for a Cushman Trackster located in Burley, Idaho. John had some vacation time scheduled in early May so we could go pick it up. By adding an extra day to the trip we got to see the inside of the 1930s Valley Creek Ranger Station in Stanley, Idaho. That’s the prototype for Blizzard Gulch “Ranger Station”.
Four years ago, when all we knew was that we wanted a well-built saddle-notched log house, we went to Challis, Idaho to meet Jeff Pedersen the logsmith. Along the way we took pictures of log houses. Idaho is rich with them. The old ranger station in Stanley, sitting right beside the road with a big parking area, was a convenient stop so we snapped a couple pictures of one side of it and took off again.
Later, when one floor plan after another fizzled, I looked at those two pictures of the museum and found inspiration. Having no idea what the interior might be like, I just used my imagination to fit the rooms in … and it worked. Later we received some pictures of the building from Gretchen Roman, the wife of Trent Roman who formalized our plans, and discovered that where we had attached an addition shaped like a fire lookout, the original building had a high gabled porch, which I assume was the family’s front door.
Gretchen Roman’s picture of the gabled porch. This door leads into the residential part of the ranger station. We completely missed this the first time we were there.
Although the museum was not yet open for the season, Laurii Gadwa of the Sawtooth Interpretive & Historical Society kindly agreed to let us in. Snow had fallen in the area the previous night and the building was unheated. Everyone was layered up for the cold. John and I were excited and anxious to see if our interpretation of the old ranger station had any basis in fact. As it turned out, not much.
Laurii Gadwa shows us around. Shes articulate and well accustomed to answering questions. Here she is showing us the little cupboard that once housed the ironing board. The wainscot is a brown-painted fiberboard embossed to resemble small subway tiles.
Inside the ranger station, no logs are visible. All the walls appear to be finished with cement plaster or to have been replaced with drywall. I guess in those days “the log look” didn’t have the value that it has now. Having flat walls certainly is more practical for installing cabinetry, wiring, trim, and so on. Having seen this, I still wouldn’t cover up any more of our log walls than necessary.
At the museum, the first room you enter is the ranger’s office, by way of a side door. That side door became our front door. This little map cupboard is so clever that we had to find a place to build a similar one. An unintentional nod to our lookout-shaped dining room hangs at left.
In a house like ours, granite countertops are simply inappropriate. Even laminates offer few acceptable patterns. This board countertop, made from one plank, settled the question for us. We’ll cut boards from a beetle-killed Ponderosa pine that had to come down. We’d already been planning for a sink with a Hudee ring or rim like this one. Notice the official, and highly collectible, USFS china on the table at left.
Throughout the museum, ceilings are low, no more than 7 and a half feet. The rooms are small, and the overall footprint of the museum is less than ours.
A peek into the bathroom. I wonder if it’s the result of a later remodeling. That looks like a 1950s light fixture. How about that cast iron vent pipe dressed up in what appears to be a plastic tablecloth?
Throughout the house, fine cabinet and trim work speaks of an excellent craftsman. In the more formal parts of the house a cherry-like varnish has been used. Elsewhere the trim is painted but is still of top quality.
As with most local museums, this one is filled with local artifacts, none of which we paid any attention to. That built-in storage unit sure is nice, though.
We didn’t expect to find such elaborate trim work in the old ranger station. Our trim will be much simpler than this.
As we get less enthused about doing earthen plaster on all the interior walls at Blizzard Gulch, the question came up: how else should we finish the block column of the chimney chase? We thought of local creek rocks, or flagstone like the hearth, or brick veneer like the chimney outside. Though we didn’t care much for the shiny brick fireplace at the Stanley Museum, it helped with the decision to go with the brick veneer in spite of the expense.
The little brick fireplace with its fine mantel.
Heading upstairs. Think you could get away with stairs this steep now?
Sloped chimney chase in an upstairs bedroom.
Upstairs door trim is much simpler than that downstairs. Our whole house will have this type of simple trim. I was leaning toward five-panel doors but I really like this unassuming single-panel door.
Here’s one exception to the finished-wall interior. This is a little unfinished space in the gable of the residential entry.
In the little gable space we found out a little about the plastering on the sloped stairway ceiling. If you look closely in the middle of the picture you may see metal lath over wood lath. It almost looks like they started with wood lath but that perhaps it didn’t adequately hold the plaster on the underneath side. And then maybe they applied metal lath for a better grip.
The ranger’s station’s wrap-around porch, which covers one full side and wraps around to cover the ranger’s office entrance, was one of its most endearing features. In our version, car siding with the V groove showing clads the underside along the slope. At the Valley View Ranger Station, a flat ceiling was built, with an attic space above. It never occurred to us to do that.
I don’t know how many of these access panels were included. In this enclosed section off the kitchen, as well as in the rest of the wrap-around porch, lovely beaded board was used as a finish surface.
If you get a chance to visit Stanley, Idaho, perhaps to float the Salmon River, go after Memorial Day, during the tourist season. You will have no issues with whether any of the restaurants are open and you will have many options in lodging. In early May we were exceedingly fortunate to find the Bridge Street Grill open the evening we stayed there (we had succulent fish and chips), and they served a hearty breakfast the next morning as a special kindness to us and a few workmen who were in town. Our room for the night was a small log cabin at one of the Triangle C Ranch’s cabins.
You will also be able to see more of the museum than I have shown here. There are a number of interesting outbuildings, including a double-walled icehouse that was originally insulated with sawdust.
And you will be gladly welcomed if you should decide to pay your dues and join the Sawtooth Interpretive and Historical Society. We did!
Postscript:
Getting the Cushman Trackster strapped down for the trip from Burley, Idaho to home. This was Reddy Pickup’s first big trip in years.
Something else is done: tongue and groove car siding ceiling boards
&All the tongue-and-groove pine “car siding” (as it’s called locally, perhaps a misnomer) is up on the bedroom ceiling and the entire second floor. No more unattractive OSB (oriented strand board) saying “boy, do you ever have a long way to go!”. Actually, we finished this job several weeks ago but I haven’t had a chance to blog about it.
When I looked it up on the Internet, I found that true car siding has a double teardrop profile and looks a bit like lap siding.
#117 true car siding, according to some people, anyway. This is not what we have. The name came from a similar profile used on early railroad cars.
OSB on the right, "car siding" on the left. I’ve been led to believe that this is not true car siding but rather "twin V-joint". It is just T&G boards with a V-shape grooved down the centerline of the board on one side, and with a v-shaped joint. Here we’ve turned the V groove so it doesn’t show. Outside, under the roof overhangs, we turned it the other way.
Chop saw station (my job) and rolling scaffolding, two vital tools for this work.
This two-sided four-foot ladder has been useful in overhead work like this. We had two of them set up in the basement for installing heat tube between the joists.
Sometime the boards don’t want to slide together. John is using a "cat’s paw" to encourage some reluctant boards.
Awkward position.
Both sides done!
We bought an entire bunk of this car siding from Rush’s Lumber in Pueblo. There’s enough left over to do a lot of walls. That will be faster than the earthen plaster we originally planned for most of the stud walls. “Faster” is getting to be a bigger issue than it used to be. I don’t know if we will apply any finish to the ceiling, but the board-covered walls will probably require the same acrylic finish from Perma-Chink that I used on the logs. Or paint. I think about butter yellow, 1930s green, and off-white. That’s too much to get involved with now, though, when there are doors to varnish or paint.
More pictures of our prototype in Idaho
Recently I received from our house designer, Trent Roman, some new images of the Stanley, Idaho museum which is the prototype for the Blizzard Gulch “Ranger Station”. Gretchen Roman was down that way recently and, knowing that I’d never taken pictures of this side of the museum, took these nice shots.
Stanley Museum (Valley Creek Ranger Station) from the highway.
This view, of the gabled main entry, is one I did not have when designing our log house. Had I known about this gable I might have felt obliged to copy it instead of drawing a hip-roofed dining porch. For our setting, though, I think the side gable entry might have been too grandiose and not located in the right place anyway. Due to the slope of our land it would have required a lengthy staircase.
Originally the “new” Valley Creek Ranger Station, replacing a 1909 ranger station, the building was completed in 1933. Ranger Merle Markle cut and hauled the logs, his wife Kathleen helped with peeling them, and a crew of men constructed the building. It had nine rooms and a bathroom. (I’m glad I didn’t know that, either.) Other outbuildings that still remain are a log garage/telephone office, log-sided barn, and woodshed/cellar.
I believe the building at left, with some replacement logs showing, is the garage/telephone office. It could also be the barn. Maybe someone can tell me.
All information about the Valley Creek Ranger Station (Stanley Museum) is from Les Joslin’s book, Uncle Sam’s Cabins: A Visitor’s Guide to Historic U.S. Forest Service Ranger Stations of the West.
Here are the pictures that I had when designing the house:
View from the parking lot. This side entrance became our main entrance.
Rear view of the Stanley Museum, from the parking lot.
At the time we were there, in the spring of 2006, the museum was closed and drifts of snow made looking around difficult.
Useful web links for new old houses and log homes
When you’re hand-building a period house, with unusual characteristics, in a rural area with wild critters, thinking of adding solar power and trying to incorporate some “green qualities”, you of course poke around on the Internet. It’s amazing how many resources there are!
Smith and Speed Mercantile homestead supplies and tools.
Cut and Dry Wood Chinking chinking with saplings, also restoration.
Formica VirrVarr and Boomerang classic countertop laminate. Edit 4/21/2011: all of these except Boomerang in Charcoal Gray have been discontinued by Formica. There may be some stock lingering in warehouses.
Historic Colors of the National Trust for Historic Preservation Valspar paint website.
Brown wall plate screws for those vintage brown bakelite switchplate and outlet covers from eBay.
A History of the Architecture of the USDA Forest Service
Forest Fire Lookout Association
University of Idaho native plant seedlings
Orchardgrass seed (naturalized in Beulah)
Harlequin’s Gardens well-adapted and native plants for Colorado.
Western Native Seed native shrub, wildflower and grass seed for the Rocky Mountains and western Great Plains.
Beulah School for the Natural Sciences webcam
Retro Renovation is an online decorating newsletter for 1940s, 1950s and 1960s homes.
Controlling Nuisance Woodpeckers in New Mexico
American Restoration Tile has period colors, shapes and patterns. Very beautiful, very expensive.
Our custom log builder, Pedersen Logsmiths, has a lot of information about log construction that is useful in the initial planning stages.
PEX tubing: what it is, what it’s used for, its advantages.
Edge trim for laminate countertops: New York Metal, Eagle Mouldings.
Door and window details in PDF, DWG, and DXF formats. Without the DWG details to import into AutoCAD, I’d have had a much harder time designing the house. Thank you! to Eagle Windows and Simpson Doors.
Working With Linoleum Flooring by This Old House magazine
Discussion of the use of linoleum as a “green” countertop surface.
Another discussion, ditto.
A YouTube scene from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
Another YouTube scene from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
The Preservation of Historic Log Buildings (National Park Service)
Rent a historic Forest Service cabin, fire lookout or ranger station
When visiting Grand Teton National Park, make reservations at Colter Bay Village, a collection of historic cabins refurbished for vacation rentals. Our bedroom is patterned after one of these cabins.
Cabin 1009 at Colter Bay Village, Grand Teton National Park. We copied the low-pitched roof, the ceiling boards, and the sliding bedroom windows.
Deco to Disco “20th century furnishings for the 21st century”. A shop in Portland, Oregon.
Log Set Part 2 plus a log building bibliography
Let’s continue with the log set. Back to Part 1
In reality it took several days of work to get all the logs up. Don’t let this post lead to you to believe it was all done in a day!
This particular style of log construction is called “round log chink style” or “saddle notch”. Chinking between the logs, which I’ll post about another time, fills the spaces between logs and allows for the taper and bumpiness of hand-peeled logs. There are attractive qualities about Swedish cope or “chinkless” construction that we considered. So, too, with square-hewn logs with dovetailed corners as well as the massive logs typical of Alaskan log buildings. Hewn logs are as typical of the early West as are round logs, and historically there were many hybrids and uncommon or regional methods of construction. These days you can have anything, including adobe/log combinations. At one point we even considered a log/straw-bale combination but that turned out to be too complicated. It was the log ranger station in Stanley, Idaho (which I talk about in my first post here) that finally settled the question of what style our log house would be.
You can learn more about styles of log construction at Pedersen Logsmiths and at the websites of other log builders. Various notches are pictured and described at Jeff’s website.
Okay, on with the show!
Think of how Lincoln Logs go together. Of the first course of logs, some have to be half logs, split in half lengthwise. Otherwise, you'd end up with a gap between logs and floor. Well, to be technical, this is the subfloor, painted for weather protection. The finish floor is a future operation, but if you look close you can see a 3/4 inch plywood rim that holds the logs above the subfloor by the thickness of the finish floor boards.
Where logs end without being notched together with other logs, such as at door and window openings, the log ends are held in place with vertical rebar and small plywood spacers. Here one of our helpers cuts plywood into 3-inch squares for the spacers.
Another helper cuts slabs of fiberglass insulation to place in the saddle notches (where logs cross).
Saddle notches are half-round-shaped cuts that allow logs to overlap. Here we have two courses of logs plus a half log. Eventually the half log will be trimmed out at the doorway. Notice how much redder the subfloor has become. The porch decking is so filthy it looks like the logs are sitting in dirt.
Here's where the big living room window will go. You can see the notches where the ceiling beams will fit in.
Jack Ferguson's boys spent all day balancing on the highest logs, guiding their dad as he lowered logs into place with the crane. Here it's a ceiling beam.
An early snow left the ground muddy. I've gone over the house several times trying to remove the red clay mud that got tracked all over but I bet I will never find it all.
Jeff Pedersen, our log guy, is as fearless as the Ferguson boys. And as muddy.
Jeff Pedersen had his hands full coordinating the crew of firefighters, neighbors, crane, and teenage boys. He is the best, no doubt about it. We found him by doing an Internet search for log builders. There was something about what he says on his website (www.pedersenlogsmiths.com) that we really related to, and a special visit to his log yard in Challis, Idaho, confirmed our choice. Jeff does perhaps a half-dozen houses and restorations per year. One of his early projects is featured in a book called Hands On Log Homes: Cabins Built on Dreams by Cindy and Art Thiede.
The big ceiling beams, which came from Canada, are supported by several log posts and one metal post.
One of the Ferguson boys keeps himself occupied.
Jeff sharpens his chainsaw.
In the main part of the house, the first floor logs and ceiling beams are in place. There will be two courses of wall logs above this, to form a kneewall in the second floor. The house is actually a story and a half, not two full stories.
I must have fizzled out about the time the gable assemblies were hoisted into place because I have no pictures of that. At any rate, they got there and now they are pinned together by purlins (roof beams). Someone has begun laying the tongue-and-groove boards that form both the ceiling for the first floor and the floor for the upstairs rooms. These, too, are now red with mud.
My watching and snoozing post, a storage container converted temporarily into a bedroom.
Firefighters can do anything, including laying floor boards.
Joseph, Truck of Many Colors, is a major contributor to the house.
Porch posts. The porch is tied to the house by an extra-long wall log.
With the porch posts in place all our crew (with the exception of Jeff, who had window and door bucks to install, and Jack, who would be needed in a day or two when the roof panels were installed) departed and the thrill of the log set was over. It was a grand time, made even more so by all the people who gave up a day (or two or three) of their time to help us and to share the work and excitement. Thanks to them, this will always be a house built with love.
Sometime I’ll tell you about the time when a bunch of folks came to help John install the floor joists under the subfloor. They kept us on schedule to get the logs raised and the house more-or-less dried in before the winter of 2008-2009.
A LOG BUILDING BIBLIOGRAPHY
These are the books that helped form our taste in log homes. For books that are out of print, check eBay and ABE Books.
Building with Logs: Western Log Construction in Context. Jennifer Eastman Attebery. University of Idaho Press 1998. 0-89301-208-4
Hands-On Log Homes: Cabins Built on Dreams. Cindy and Art Thiede. Gibbs-Smith 1998. 0-87905-80 5-6
Rocky Mountain Home: Spirited Western Hideaways. Elizabeth Clair Flood. Gibbs-Smith 1996. 0-87905-704-1
The Mountain West: Interpreting the Folk Landscape. Terry G. Jordan, Jon T. Kilpinen, Charles F. Gritzner. The Johns Hopkins University Press 1997. 0-8018-5431-8
Uncle Sam’s Cabins: A Visitor’s Guide to Historic U.S. Forest Service Ranger Stations of the West. Les Joslin. Wilderness Associates 1995. 0-9647167-1-2
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