Cabin restoration project – A cabin is (re)born!

“Another cabin post? Hey Weekend Woodsman, why don’t you just change the name of your blog to ‘The Cabin Restoration Project Blog’?” I know, I know. The simple truth is that I haven’t been doing any bushcraft, camping etc. since earlier this year because I’ve been spending my free time working on the old farm property. Now that the sauna building repairs are finished for the year and a professional has begun work on restoring the cabin, I can spend more of my free time on outdoor pursuits (e.g. Alex and I are planning an upcoming camping trip). But for now, here’s another installment of the cabin restoration project!

Last time around, I mentioned that any restoration of the old farm house has been put on the back burner due to cost and time constraints, and that for the time being the project will revolve around the restoration of one of the farm’s outbuildings instead. The building I speak of is called an “aitta” in Finnish, and the English translation for this word is usually something like “shed” or “grainery”, but I don’t really think either of these words are a good match. An aitta is a log building usually made up of two or three conjoined rooms, each with its own door to the outside. The rooms are unheated and can be furnished as living quarters or used for storage. I think one of the rooms in the aitta at the old farm may have been used to house animals, because it contains what looks like three animal stalls (this particular room will NOT be reused in this project).

The current phase of the project involves the dismantling, reconstruction and conversion of the other two aitta rooms into a  two-room cabin with a loft. The aitta in question:

Here’s what’s left of the building at its original site:

After choosing a new site for the building, the contractor broke ground:

In the ground around the concrete block and timber foundation, he constructed what’s called a “salaoja”, or “hidden channel” covered over with gravel, which allows rain and snow-melt to drain away from the building area quickly. This prevents the moisture-related problems which plague so many old log buildings in the north country. Following this, the contractor removed the tin roof from the aitta and carefully dismantled the building, log by log. Before he did this, though, he numbered each individual log to make it easier to put the big jigsaw puzzle back together again later. Then began the process of reconstructing the building on its new foundation. For insulation between the logs, the contractor used some sort of natural-looking fibrous material (I’ll have to ask him about this). In the old days, sphagnum moss and old clothing were used instead! The pictures below show the current state of affairs. The contractor is jumping back and forth between different projects at the moment, so the work will not be continuous. He put a tarp over the whole shebang to keep rain and snow out until he puts a new roof on, which is the next step in the process.

Needless to say, I am very pleased with the work so far. A cabin is really beginning to take shape. Before long, this century-old homestead building will be brought back to life, its latest incarnation being a 30.5 m2 (330 sq ft) recreational cabin!

Interested in seeing how log buildings like this were constructed? Check this out: