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.