Paneling Begins

I made the trek up to the Shabin again last weekend. This follows a couple of inches of snow we received earlier in the week. I was the first vehicle to travel down our shared private road. The road to our land is 2 miles of ups and downs and hairpin turns. In other words, it was a nail biter.



This was especially true considering the 1500 lbs of wood paneling I was carrying in the back of my truck. At least all that weight kept the rear tires well stuck to the ground. I did not spin the wheels once! For paneling, I am using 5 1/8" wide rustic New England white pine flooring. Flooring for wall? Yes, and I will explain why. The only difference between unfinished pine flooring and unfinished pine paneling is the thickness. Paneling is typically 0.3" and flooring is 0.75" thick. Thicker is better! It feels more substantial when you lean on it, and you can nail a picture right to it. On top of that, flooring costs about the same or less than paneling per square foot.  I believe that is because pine flooring is a widely used product with a decent market, while pine paneling has become a niche product.



The best thing I did to prepare was to buy a pneumatic nailer. This is saving me, because paneling take a huge number of nails and this makes it effortless. I am using this inexpensive Hitachi Brad Nailer and it is has been working great.






The planks are tongue and groove, and I am blind nailing them, meaning that I nail into the tongue part and the groove of the next plank. So, I start at the bottom of the walls and work my way up.



The work is pretty fast for plain walls, but going around obstacles such as outlets and windows slows things down a lot. Much measuring, cutting, and trimming is required. I did luck out on my first outlet. Notice that the top of the lower plank landed just right so that I only had to cut an opening in the one plank above. None of the other outlets were so cooperative.



I am keeping to a rustic look, and I want to avoid putting up much molding. For trimming around the windows, I simply trimmed down some scrap planks and nailed them around the opening.



Here is a finished wall. I had been debating how to finish the wood, and I was leaning towards shellac. However, I recently saw this fantastic cabin featured in Dwell. I think it my the most perfect tiny cabin I have seen.  Its interior is unfinished New England white pine.That settled it for me, and I am leaving the wood unfinished to age as it will. I can get away with things looking rustic here, and it is certainly the cheapest and least effort approach.



This is the frist time I had been to the land in the snow. It is quite pretty and the shabin is very cozy.

After two days and 16 hours of work, I almost finished the downstairs area. I believe the downstairs will end up being harder than upstairs, due to all the windows, outlets, and divider walls. This pace is not has fast as I had hoped for, but not as bad as a feared. I am optimistic that I will finish the paneling during the next two day trip.

Insulation for Fun and Survival

I ventured up to the shabin this past weekend. The weather was crisp and clear, with the temperature ranging from a high of 32F to something in the 20s overnight. One nice thing about this time of year is that the views get better once the leaves have fallen. I arrived Saturday morning and inside the cabin it was about 40F. I fired up the little heater and got to work finishing the insulation. At the end of the last trip I put up some batts in the walls, just the easy ones I did not need to cut, and had not yet insulated the ceiling. The heater was only able to get the temperature up to about 55F.  If I was going to sleep comfortably that night, I needed to get to work!



I wanted to get the ceiling insulated first, so the first thing I did was to install vents within the rafters. These seem to be made out of the same foam material in which Big Macs used to be packaged. They create an space so that air can flow under the roof from the vents in the eaves up to the peak of the roof. Without that air flow, moisture can be trapped in the space, and moisture ruins the insulation.



Once the vents were stapled in place, then I could start insulating. The insulation in the walls is held in by friction, but the insulation in the ceiling must be stapled to the rafters. This was by far the most arduous part of the process, and it was dark outside before I was done.  However, as soon as all the ceiling insulation was in place, the temperature of the shabin began to rise dramatically. I then spent the rest of the evening finishing the wall insulation and stuffing insulation into all the little nooks and funny shaped spaces.



Morning came with ominous dark clouds moving over head, with occasional snow flakes. During the night, there were high winds and some freezing cold misting rain. However, it was warm and quiet inside the shabin. It eventually got so warm, almost 70F downstairs and 75F up in the loft, that I had to strip the blanket off the bed in the middle of the night. I continued working Sunday morning, framing in the walls for the toilet closet and shower area. The kerosene heater ran out of fuel without me noticing, and I worked inside for 3 hours without the inside temperature dropping noticeably. With the insulation and framing work complete, I am now ready to start on paneling the interior. I have ordered 700 square feet of unfinished white pine, so I expect my next post will show some progress on paneling.

Lights! Heat! Bats!

After a two-month hiatus, I made it back up to the shabin last weekend to do some more work. After opening all the shutters, I uncovered this cute pair of sleeping critters. I would have expected them to take off right away, but one of them opened its eyes and watched me, before flying away after I was out of sight. The other kept sleeping for a couple of hours before disappearing. I will apologize for the quality of my photographs. I forgot to bring a real camera and had to use my iPod touch instead.



It is getting colder, with temperatures below 40 degrees at night, so I now need heat. I eventually plan to install a vented propane heater. My cheap stop gap so that I can keep working through this winter is this kerosene space heater. It did an admirable job heating the uninsulated cabin all night using very little fuel. It is a bit stinky and requires cracking a window to supply it fresh air, so it is not a permanent solution. It did give me some idea that insulating the cabin will mean we can get by with quite a small heater.



I finished the electrical work I started back in September, meaning I wired in one last outlet, lights for the kitchen area, and this ceiling fan. The fan is out in the open vaulted part of the shabin, and did a great job circulating the heated air around the building. The fan was rescued from our house, which is now undergoing a major renovation.



Also rescued from the house were the cabinets I installed for my mud room project previously posted in this blog. I believe I will be able to use all of the cabinets to create the shabin's kitchen as well as general storage for stuff in the living area. I spent much of my time moving the cabinets from the truck into the shabin, and then reorganizing the piles of tools, hardware, and other stuff that had collected around the shabin into the cabinets.  As space is a premium, this was necessary, despite having simply set the cabinets temporarily on the floor.  Once I have the interior insulated an paneled, then I can start hanging cabinets on the wall.



And, speaking of insulation, I also brought up all the insulation and started work on installing it. I found a relatively new product that is not made with fiberglass. As anyone who has installed fiberglass insulation would know, the old stuff is very itchy and it take days for any glass fibers to work their way out of one's skin. This stuff feels like cotton and is a joy to work with. It is otherwise identical to fiberglass in its insulating properties and installation method. Because the shabin was conventionally framed with 2x4's that are 16 inches apart on center, I am able to just press the insulation batts into the voids between studs.

This was just a quick trip up at mid-day Saturday and returning mid-day Sunday, but I fell like I got a good deal of work done. My next trip will be to finish the insulation and, hopefully, get started paneling the interior.

Shabin Electrical Part 1

As mentioned in the last post, I was able to spend an entire weekend working on the shabin. I got enough done to warrant two posts. After finishing the loft railings, I got to work wiring the shabin for electric. My original plan was to wire the cabin for 12 volt DC power. The shabin will be off-grid, so the idea was to store power in large batteries, much like an RV.  As I got closer to actually doing the electrics, I switched to 110 volt AC. Technically, 12V power is more efficient for battery power, since the electricity is not converted. However, there are significant drawbacks. Because of the lower voltage, the current, measured in amperes, is higher. The higher current also larger energy loss over distance, which is dissipated as heat, not a good thing.  To alleviate that requires thicker and more expensive wiring.  Additionally, 12v fixtures, form switches to light bulbs, are specialized and more expensive. Finally, there is very little literature available on the best ways to wire 12v.

On the other hand, AC power is ubiquitous and all the necessary parts are cheap and plentiful commodities, and the knowledge on proper techniques is common and freely available.  AC is much more appropriate for moving power over longer distances than DC, which requires thicker and thicker wire as the distance increases. Therefore, AC allows me to move the batteries outside of the cabin.  The approach I took was to treat the shabin as one big AC appliance that I plug in. So, I ended up going with common household AC wiring



And here is the plug. This was the only unusual component I used, a 15-amp 110v AC inlet (inlet being the opposite of outlet, of course.) This was the one item I needed to order online. With this approach, I am free to use any power source, generator/solar/wind/grid, as long as it is converted to AC and has a power cord.



The rest of the electrics are standard, starting with the breaker box, which is where the power flows to first  from the inlet. I have done home wiring in the past, but this is the first time I had wired a breaker box. It was a bit daunting, but I read up on it and it turned out to be easy.  Typically, the most dangerous thing about the breaker box is the always-on high power line coming in from the grid. In my case, I was assuredly safe as long as I did not plug in the inlet while I worked.



Victory!  This was the first outlet I wired.  It is just below the breaker box. I plugged my gas generator into the inlet, and the circuit tester plugged in to the outlet lit up just as it should. That was a good feeling.



That good feeling was tempered when I nicked my finger with a knife shortly after this success. This would not be notable, expect that I forgot to pack the first aid kit. Lacking real band aids, I had to kludge together a paper towel and duct tape.



I continued to wire the rest of the cabin on Sunday. Since I want to insulate the walls, I ran the wires on the inside edge of the framing members.  This is done by snapping a two chalk lines one inch apart along all the studs of a wall.



I used my circular saw to cut 1/2 inch deep grooves at each chalk mark, and then used a chisel to create a notch in each stud. The wire is run and secured in the notches.



The wires are protected from penetration from future nails or screws which metal plates.



By the time I left on Sunday, I had wired in all the outlets, the bathroom light, and the loft lights as shown above. I had to stop when I ran out of wiring, so on the next trip I can finish the minor remaining tasks of wiring the kitchen overhead light and the living area ceiling fan.

Shabin Loft Railing

I went up to the shabin this past weekend by myself, while Lizz entertained an out of town guest. This afforded me two full days of work, and much was accomplished. The first thing I did Saturday morning was to finish the cable railings for the loft. As shown above, there are two railings.  Twelve cables run the width of the loft and protect the opening to the living area below.



Since the stairs run up through an opening in the loft floor, I wanted to prevent accidental falls into the stair well. For that, I ran cables perpendicular to the ceiling, which is set at 45 degrees. The cables also have the effect of eliminating the bounce originally present along the open end of the loft.



Here is the view down the stairs.  I think the railings turned out quite snazzy.

Loft Railing

We made a quick day trip up to the camp yesterday. The main purpose of the trip was to deliver our new sleeper sofa. When I designed the shabin, I used an IKEA sofa as a reference for the living area furniture. I assumed we would buy the Ektorp corner sofa with a pull out bed. A corner sofa would provide the maximum amount of seating in a small area. A pull out bed would give us the second sleeping area we needed. Given the small proportions of the shabin, and the tight tolerances for things like loft stairs, the exact size of the sofa became critical. I was quite dismayed when I recently went to order the sofa and learned it had been discontinued.



Craigslist came through, however. I found this beauty for sale less than a mile from home, and it only ran me $100. The left side pulls out into a full size bed, and the right side is an ultra comfortable chaise lounge. Lizz claims it is the most comfortable piece of furniture we own. The sofa is in pretty good condition. The fabric is a bit faded but sturdy and the pattern is not something we would not have chosen for ourselves. In other words, it is perfect for a cabin in the woods.



Here we see the tight tolerance between the couch and the loft stairs. While we were up there, I also started on safety railings for the loft. I decided to use steel cables for the railings. Cables would be strong and the least obtrusive with regards to light and air movement. I also figured that they would look pretty cool. I purchased most of the materials from E-Rigging, who I will say were extremely quick fulfilling my order and much cheaper than buying from Lowes.



The first step was to carefully measure all the mount points for the cables. That was a bit time consuming. Since everything up in the loft runs at an angle, I got to use my 9th grade geometry, go Pythagoras! I spaced the cables 3 1/2 inches apart, with the top cable 42 inches above the loft floor. For the cable mount points, I used #0 size lag screws with eyes as shown in the picture.



In order to maintain tension in the cables, I used large (3/8") turnbuckles rated at 2000 lbs. These have shackles on one end whose bolts are slipped through the lag screw eyes.



I used 1/8" uncoated steel cable rated at 2000 lbs. Each cable is looped through the eye end of a turnbuckle, and secured with two screw down clips.  The other end is secured in the same way on the matching eye screw. Once secured, the cable is tightened by adjusting the turnbuckle. I used galvanized steel for all the hardware, which should be perfectly fine for interior use, and is a huge savings over using stainless steel.



I think these are turning going to look great. This was just a quick day trip, so I did not have enough time to finish. I finished 8 of the 12 cables for the loft opening. I will also install a set of cables along the side of the stair opening to prevent falling in the hole from the other side.

Shabin Loft

We made it up to the camp again this weekend. This trip was marked by lots of progress in the sleeping loft. The first task was to install our air conditioner, which would make working up in the loft feasible in the 90+ degree heat. I purchased a portable air conditioner, the kind that sits in a room and vents out via a duct to a window. My idea was to use it instead install it as a tiny permanent air conditioning system up in the loft, from where the cold air would pour down into the rest of the shabin.



The first step was to cut hole through the rear wall of the loft. This was a bit daunting, given the implications of messing up, but I managed to cut the opening exactly the right size for the vent hose.



I sealed the vent hose to the sheathing with silicone sealant.



From the outside, the vent is unobtrusive.  This model of conditioner is designed to expel most or all of its moisture in the air venting to the outside.  It also has a water reservoir and a fitting for a hose to drain the excess if it falls behind.  For now, I will leave the drain alone and see if it becomes an issue.  If it does, I plan to put a pipe through the outside wall as well to continuously drain any water.



After installing the vent, it was simply a matter of plugging in the air conditioner to an extension cord running to our generator.  Ah, wonderful cold air!  At 10,000 BTU the conditioner does not have the capacity to cool the entire uninsulated structure.  It was enough to make the loft livable. Once the shabin is insulated, I expect it will be enough to take the edge off the hottest days.



Once the air conditioner was running, I got to work laying down a floor in the loft. As I described in my last post, I got a click together laminate floor. Not having to deal with glue or nails was nice. The flooring also came with a thin foam underlayment layer already attached. It turned out that the pieces did not really just click together easily, but were rather obstinate. However, after a few rows I worked out the right techniques to deal with them, and the floor went down a few hours.



Here you see the finished floor. The last part over by the edge was the slowest. I had to cut lots of irregular shapes to go around the opening for the stairs, as well as the small rail I screwed into the floor. That rail is important to the next project, which is to install safety railings along the open end of the loft and in front of the stairway opening.



My last project this weekend was to assemble a bed for the loft. I found this simple steel frame on Amazon. The frame does double duty substituting for a box spring. It also provides plenty of space underneath for an all important storage area, without raising the mattress up too high to the low ceiling.



Moving our mattress up to the loft exposed open space downstairs, which was largely taken up by the mattress on the floor. This makes room for the craigslist prize we will bring up on our next trip, a sectional  sofa with a fold out bed.



We made it down to the river on both days for much need cooling off.  Here are some pictures from our time down there.

Loft Stairs

As planned, we went up to our camp this weekend to recreate and put some more work in to the shabin. This week's project was to create easy access to the sleeping loft. My original plans where to have a simple ladder that could be hooked to the loft edge for access, then hung out of the way on a wall during the day. However, a ladder is not the safest or easiest way up and down. Also, since head room is an issue in the loft, I also wanted to come up near the center line. Putting a ladder in the middle of the room would really intrude on the area below, where we want to have a pull out bed.

My next plan was to install stairs. Given the space constraints, I wanted to put in alternating tread stairs. An example is pictured at above. They provide the same foot fall and riser height as normal stairs, but they require one to always alternate stepping up or down the same way, allowing them to take up roughly half the amount of space. In our case, the stairs would run from one side of the shabin up to the center line, where I would build a landing on the front of the loft. The stairs would hang over one end of the sofa we plan to put downstairs. After some thought, and staying in the shabin a couple of times, we decided we really needed something that would get out of the way. So, I changed my mind one last time and decided to go with the more conventional pull down attic stairs. Those are available as assembled kits from any home supply center. The typical ones are a bit flimsy, so I special ordered a set of heavy duty stairs.

To use the stairs, I needed somewhere to hang them as well as somewhere to land when you reach the top. I built an extension to the front of the existing loft, a little over two feet wide. On the left side I framed in an opening for the stairs, and on the right side I would add more floor. In the picture above you can see my framing for the extension, with the stair kit already hanging in its opening. The loft was originally half the total space, leaving eight feet open to the living area below. Now we have about six feet open. I think this also adds some critically useful space to the loft, enough to stand at the end of the bed and change clothes. The feeling of openness downstairs is largely the same, so I think this was a good compromise.

Here we see Lizz making the inaugural climb up the stairs. I guess she had some confidence in my construction abilities. I did hang the stairs using twenty 3" and 4" lag screws, so there is a pretty good chance it will hold up. At this point, I still need to trim a bit more off the bottom of the stairs, which is why they are a bit crooked. Still, they were perfectly functional and much easier than clambering up and down a ladder.

Here is a shot of the stairs running up to the new landing. I am hammering down the particle board flooring to create the landing. For our next trip up, I will lay down the cherry laminate floor and we will move our mattress upstairs. I plan to finish the loft with a set of safety cables to serve as a railing. I may wait until the walls are finished to install those, though.

It was not all work this weekend. Carleigh got some quality time in nature. Here she is teaching Buzz Lightyear about nature, showing him the leaf she found. We made it down to the river on both days. Carleigh loves to swim in the cold water, and I really appreciated cooling off in the water after working in the heat.

I should also share what everyone else was doing downstairs while I labored above. Note that Carleigh only eats the middle of Oreo cookies. It was great that we got to relax a bit, and the stairs were a fun project. All in all, it was a really great weekend.