talkeetnaadventures

[talkeetnaadventures]

June 20

Another long busy weekend! I finished the subfloor with insulation and blocking for 12x12 space. The goal is to build the next cabin to be easily expandable into a long, narrow, trailer-style structure. So this summer is just tackling the first 12' section, to be added on to in the future. Also managed to get most of the walls up! One I built was too heavy to lift so it's patiently awaiting my partner to come help.

Another project for the weekend was to tackle more of the demolition of the old cabin. At first it was sad, but I'm not going to lie, it turned out to be really fucking fun to strap the walls to my truck and yank them down. At some point I'll do some video editing to make a compilation video of it falling.

[talkeetnaadventures]

May 30

Been a while since my last post! I've had a lot of time to think and assess; I think it's totally unfeasible to try to salvage the cabin. The best I can do is use the materials to build a whole new one. Thankfully I have plenty of land to work with 😀

Here's what I'm working with in terms if damage. There's not a lot I can continue taking apart by myself. Need another person to help/call 911 when it collapses on me. (Joking...kinda)

It was balls hot this weekend so I couldn't work much in the afternoon - took a break to go cool off in my friend's parents' lake. And I met a frog!

Back to work...

I needed some supplies so I went to Home Depot in Wasilla. Seems like I always have trouble at this Home Depot. While I was looking for nails for the nail gun, an employee came up to help me. He asks a few questions which I don't know the answers to. I knew what nails I needed but they weren't in stock. Anyway eventually he asks "Can you call him?" ....Him? Him who?? It's MY nail gun.

This is the same store that made the dollhouse comment when I was buying windows last year. Girls can build things too.

Well, this is what this girl managed to do this weekend:

Cut stumps and brush down to make another clearing for a new cabin

Stack 6 pairs of cinder blocks to make "feet" for the foundation

Nail together layers of pressure treated lumber, regular lumber, and plywood scraps to make "legs" for the cabin. It was much easier to just stack layers of wood into blocks of varying sizes to get the foundation level, rather than try to level the ground.

Slap together the subfloor and blocking

Staple in 8/9 pieces of batt insulation into the subfloor

I ran out of time and staples which is why 1 of the batts didn't make it.

I have 3 staplers and like 2,000 staples and yet somehow only a handful of staples matched the stapler. Just like how none of the hundreds of drill bits I have fit in any of my drills and none of them are the one I need... it's a conspiracy I say!

Subfloor pre-insulation.

I'm going back in a couple weeks so I'll have an update then!

[talkeetnaadventures]

April 1

Not an April Fool's Day joke, this is for real.

Today I met with the insurance inspector. The cabin collapsed even more from the last time I was here in February. At this point though it's a lot easier to do salvage because 2/3 of it is on the ground instead of looming dangerously above my head.

This was the front

Some roof that just kinda yeeted itself

What's left of the interior

The bright side is that one corner looked pretty stable so I dug my way in and rescued all my tools! And my helmet.

I cried for about a month but now I'm just ready to move on. Completely rethinking the design now; I've been humbled through all this.

[talkeetnaadventures]

Took me a while to post this because I was heartbroken but...it was a rough winter.

[talkeetnaadventures]

Oct 10

While I've been in Seattle, a friend of mine has been working on finishing my roof for me. I'm so happy with the results!

I was able to swing up there for a few days last week to clean up and get both cabins and my truck ready for winter. I had to put snowshoes, snow shovel, and winter clothes in my truck so I'm ready for the weather whenever I go back.

With the roof finally done, I had a few extra supports on the eaves to put up to handle the snow load this winter. I put up these little triangular pieces of plywood as gussets in the corners:

Also, my dad redid his deck in Anchorage so he saved the old decking for me. I have about 3/4 of the deck done now. Unfortunately I ran out of screws and the temporary plywood isn't secured on the back deck, so the back deck is a big safety hazard. I "roped off" two sides of the deck and the back door to make it clear to any visitors NOT to go on the back of the deck.

Incomplete back deck with loose boards:

West and East side barricades:

Mostly finished front deck:

It was inevitable but while I was working on the deck, I fell between the floor joists. I was walking on the floor joists and my boot slipped. I would have landed straddling a 1.5" inch wide board 4 feet off the ground but managed to turn myself a bit so I landed on the underside of my right butt cheek. I won't subject my readers to a picture of my butt but the bruise on my butt/upper back of my thigh is the WORST bruise I've ever had in my life. I've been leaning to the left for nearly a week.

Despite my injury, I managed to do a significant amount of reorganizing at the cabin. It looks like a real workshop!

The next few things I need to do at the cabin are a 2 person job so I'm not sure when I'll be able to finish getting it fully enclosed. I need to buy and install 2 doors, and install the windows I salvaged last fall. I also need to do a little bit more framing on the east and west walls.

Open gap between the east wall and the roof:

Until next time!

[talkeetnaadventures]

Aug 22

Been a long time since I had an update here! I've been in Seattle working on some personal things and working on my mental health. But finally I have some progress on my cabin!

My amazing friend (who helped with the little cabin last summer) was able to work on my roof yesterday. I am very impressed with his work and eternally grateful. I'm SO happy since the roof was definitely not something I can do and it was stressing me out that I wouldn't get the cabin covered before winter.

He got most of the plywood up and some of the tar paper.

Staggering the plywood so the seams are offset makes the roof stronger, and honestly I wouldn't have thought to do that. So I was blown away when I realized he was thoughtful enough to do it. Cutting plywood sucks and I know he had to really dive in with the saw to get the halves to be able to stagger like that.

Also he dealt with our terrible rafter spacing wonderfully!

[talkeetnaadventures]

July 6

I fell WAY behind on posting. I was on medical leave for some time and had a lot going on. But I did find time to work on the roof with significant help from my partner and my dad!

I made all the rafter sets ahead of time and stacked them on the floor of the cabin

Here you can see us lifting a rafter up onto the walls. The idea is to get the ends up on top of the walls with the entire thing upside down in a V, and then use tall poles to flip it right and move it into place.

Once it's hanging upside down, we slid it along the walls closer to it's final resting place.

Here you can see us using long poles to move a rafter into place after it's been flipped up

Once a piece was up, my partner and I would hold it in place with the long poles while my dad climbed up the ladder to nail it into the strong ties on top of the walls. Then he'd put in blocking so there was something for the next rafter to lean against.

Repeat 17 times and voila!

It took a whole weekend of busy work but we got the rafters up and 3 sheets of plywood. None of us wanted to walk on the roof and we were tired so that's as far as we got.

I'll be taking an extended break from working on the cabin, so there won't be any updates for possibly a few months.

[talkeetnaadventures]

June 3

From here on, most of the work I'll be doing will be on a ladder. I am SO AFRAID of heights. Every little tasks seems to be taking 10 times longer than it should. The good news is that I'm definitely braver than I was last summer building the tiny cabin. Alas, putting the top plates on the walls was still way more complicated than it should have been.

To avoid climbing the ladder while carrying the top plates, I did this "walk up" method of using clamps to create something of a staircase. I would simply lift one end of the board at a time up each "stair" so I could still use both hands to climb my body up the ladder.

Here you can see where I finally got the top plate up there.

The next task was to create the loft. Below are the floor joists for the loft. Again I had to break out the ratchet straps to squish the tops of the walls together so they would be the correct distance apart.

Then I had to get the plywood my dad donated up into the loft. Last fall he showed me a technique to carry plywood up a ladder, but given that I couldn't even carry a board up a ladder without a panic attack, this method wasn't going to work. I ended up doing a modified version of his method where I slid the plywood up the ladder then gave it a good hard push at the top so the weight would shift and it would flop onto the loft. Then I could climb up on a ladder underneath and scoot it into place from below. Not exactly efficient, but it worked and I wasn't too freaked out.

And voila, loft done!

Finally, I built these giant triangles to go under the eaves to support the roof. I only managed to get one into place so far and it's not even completely nailed in. I can't really reach where it's missing nails; I think I need a deck first.

It was surprisingly not that difficult to get it up there. It doesn't weigh much so I just pulled it up from the other side of the wall by (you guessed it) ratchet straps.

Oh one more thing. To avoid having ratchet straps hold my walls together forever, I did put in a giant beam in the center to keep the walls from flopping over, semi-permanently. One continuous 16 foot board would be better long-term but I just can't deal with that right now, so 2 8-footers tied together should work for a while. I'm going to make a 2nd one and these will also give a good starting point if I want to expand the loft in the future.

[talkeetnaadventures]

May 24

Walls: ✅

Sometime late last week I finished the last of the walls. They sat for a few days before I found a friend to come help lift them.

In the meantime, on Saturday I tackled the back part of the lot where I had a tree graveyard going since last fall.

Before:

After:

I still have a ton of felled trees to break down, but the end is in sight!

Sunday my friend Rebecca came up for a few hours to help lift the walls. Talk about girl power!

Front wall:

Back wall:

Bathroom:

I now have ALL the walls done!

Today I got to just chill and read and enjoy the space. Boy that's a hell of a sky!

[talkeetnaadventures]

May 9

The final result!

And my bbs signed a wall ❤❤❤

So grateful to have such good friends to help with the big stuff! I love being independent and doing this all on my own, but I do have my limits and I'm just very happy to have the help when I need it 😌

[talkeetnaadventures]

May 9

I haven't posted in a while because I've mostly just been breaking down all the trees that I cut down over the winter. It's the never ending task.

This is just one day of work here. I'd guess it was maybe 3 trees? I still have 15 or 20 that need to be broken down.

After I break down the trees into logs and haul all the brush deep into the woods, then I have to stack the logs somewhere. My original log stack is getting too big so I started another one.

I'm also running out of places to pile the brush. One solution: burn it. So I got a little fire pit!

My first burger on the grill met a tragic accident but the 2nd one survived. And I am now packing my patties thicker so they can't fall through the dang grill.

With the weather getting better, I started daydreaming about all the awesome summer activities Alaska has to offer. Even though the lakes are still frozen over, I couldn't contain myself and I bought a little boat! Then I had to run all over town looking for tiny doggy life vests.

Gratuitous Spaghetti picture.

I started seeing a chiropractor a few weeks ago and decided that I would spend this weekend undoing all the work he's done on my spine. It was time to get back to working on the cabin.

Another wall framed out.

This weekend I took advantage of Mother's Day, assuming that my friend from Anchorage would likely come to Talkeetna to visit his family. It turns out both his brothers were also around. They were on a tight time crunch but they said they'd come by on their way back to Anchorage to help stand up whatever walls I had completed. At this point now I'm hustling to get everything ready for them.

This girl really thinks she's doing something. Wow what an incredible helper.

2 walls framed out and sheathed.

And just in the nick of time, 3rd wall framed and sheathed.

See my next post for the final result after the boys came by!

[talkeetnaadventures]

Apr 18

Yesterday I slammed out 2 more walls! I didn't think I had the energy for it going into it, but at 2pm I was at Moore's getting plywood and by 5pm I was calling my friend to come help me lift again.

The day started with about an hour of getting the dogs situated. One of the neighbor dogs came by to visit which got CG all ramped up and sent Camel into a panic tail spin.

Eventually the neighbor dog left. The girls were LOVING the sun.

1st wall of the day framed out. I've been building the walls in place so they don't have to be moved much before or after lifting.

Plywood down!

I'm not really sure what Camel was doing here but it was cute.

Walls lifted and done!

Except for a small problem. A 1.5" problem.

My foundation shifted during the winter so it isn't level anymore. It was only lifted about 1/4" in the center which I didn't think would be a big deal. Turns out that 1/4" rise gets amplified to a 1.5" gap at the upper seam between my two walls. I was pretty devastated. And honestly too tired after such a long day to really think critically about what to do. So we braced the walls in place and left them.

Today I took a stab at mitigating the problem. I got the big ratchet straps out, climbed up there, and squished the two walls together. I got the gap down to about 3/4". I think that's the best it's going to get without shimming both walls at the base. I'm hoping as the ground defrosts and softens that the center posts will drop back down a bit but I'm not holding my breath. This wall isn't load bearing so it's probably OK to have a little gap.

I also threw in one window before I decided to spend the rest of the day laying on the floor in the sun.

View from the floor. I could get used to this.

[talkeetnaadventures]

Apr 16

Well it has certainly been a productive week! I finished out the two walls previously posted. I went to the hardware store every damn day because I kept forgetting things or just doing bad math. For example, I cannot get 2 27" wide sections of plywood out of one sheet, because 27×2 does not equal 44 like I originally thought. So my dumb ass had to go back for another sheet of plywood. Oops!

Now that I'm fully vaccinated, I've been trying to finally go out and meet new people. So I'm on a couple apps. I found a guy in Talkeetna on Tinder who was happy to come help me lift the walls in exchange for a burger and a couple beers. I am so excited to have those standing!

Still riding on that high, I went down to Wasilla to get more lumber and run some errands. I also bought a window. The man working in the windows and doors section of Lowes saw me carrying around this window and asked if I needed help. It would be a nice gesture except he followed it up with "Replacing a window in the dollhouse?"

EXCUSE ME.

WHAT.

Does it look like I'm building a dollhouse??

Some f***ing people. Seriously.

I should've told him off.

[talkeetnaadventures]

Apr 13

WALLS

[talkeetnaadventures]

Mar 21

Put the whole crew to work today but they spent most of the time chewing bones and tearing into the insulation.

Spaghetti was particularly obsessed with this little spot. Every time I caught her burrowing into it, I'd yell at her and carry her back over to the blanket. But the second I turned my back on her, she would run straight back over to it. You can see where she dug a hole in the insulation.

The stages of insulation:

And then vapor barrier (sorry Spaghetti, no more burrowing):

TA DA!!!

HELL YEA

[talkeetnaadventures]

Mar 20

Today I bought almost too much stuff. I've been doing hauls of 3 or 4 sets of plywood and insulation, but my parents offered to buy me the last plywood I needed to finish the floor. So we had a family trip to Lowes in Anchorage for the plywood before I headed to Lowes in Wasilla to get the insulation I like.

Lowes had to get out the Big Boy to get more insulation out for me. That's the first time I've ever needed the forklift - New Achievement Unlocked!

As if the forklift wasn't enough to convince me I had too much stuff, I also had to pull my cart backwards through the store because it was piled significantly higher than my head. I couldn't see over or around it to be able to push it.

Then packing the back of the truck posed some challenges. I had 2 propane tanks that needed to be accessible so I could get them filled on the way to the cabin. I had to put a pack of insulation in the back seat of the truck otherwise the bed would be too tall for my comfort.

Gratuitous picture of the girls just being cute.

In the past, I've dragged my plywood along its edge standing upright through the snow, which has been seriously difficult for so many reasons. It doesn't fit in my sled either, which is my preferred method of getting stuff over to the big cabin. Today I went for a new approach - drag it flat. Oh my god, it is SO much easier. Boy was I dumb before. I think my reasoning was to drag it on the edge so the face wouldn't get covered in snow, but to hell with that. I can just brush the snow off. Anyway, here you can see the tracks along the sides of the trail left by the plywood.

Tomorrow I'll start laying down insulation, but first I had to dig up the space I'll be working on tomorrow. I had not been over to this corner of the cabin in weeks so it had a strong foot or two of snow to clear out. I swear there are joists under there.

More to come tomorrow!

[talkeetnaadventures]

Mar 18

It's been a slow last couple weeks while I try to recover financially from the insane cost of plywood. But in my downtime I've had some great success chasing aurora!

This is an incredibly cold hobby. It's a lot of racing out in the truck in my pj's and often without socks. Plus I have to use my bare hands to operate my phone camera. Brrrr!

Here's my truck packed with the latest Lowes haul. I washed my truck like a week ago but you'd never know. The valley is all mud and slush all the time.

This guy. Terrible assistant. 0/10 would not recommend. Didn't help at all; just shivered and took his clothes off.

I abandoned the tongue in groove plywood since it's more expensive and I can't find any that's not warped. I'm not convinced it was going to be worth the extra cost and effort in the first places so no harm done. Just had to cut the tongue off one edge so it would run flush with the regular plywood edge.

Despite my useless subordinate, I am now over halfway done with the subfloor! Five more to go and then I can start throwing up walls.