Sunday, September 21, 2008

More Interior Walls and Power Washing

Rick didn't get much done on the interior walls, he decided it is a lot easier with two of us. We got most of the interior walls built, but the doors we like have to be special ordered. When we get the doors in, we will finish those walls. Here is Rick measuring for the tallest section of the wall.




We decided that we would power wash the exterior of the cabin this fall, let it weather over the winter and put the preservative on next spring. Since the weather was nice this weekend and we can't be sure what it will be like for the rest of the year, we decided to power wash this weekend. We got a Troy-Bilt 2500 PSI power washer, it works real nice. It has a container you can put soap in so you can wash things off. We put some fence cleaner in there and soaped up the walls, then rinsed them off. We were able to remove most of the dirt and smudges on the logs. Plus, rinsing down the chimney removed all of the dust and the stones really stand out now. The log across the middle of the screen room was really dirty and stained. After I was done, it looks good, not great, but good. It will probably need to be done again in the spring
.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Installing the interior walls

Installing interior walls in log cabins has a couple of extra steps that you don't have to do in normal construction. The first step is to saw two lines in the logs. They are wide enough apart for the a beam and 2 pieces of dry wall.


The next step is the hardest, for Rick at least. I tried this and didn't make any progress at all.
You have to pound a crowbar into the wood and pry the wood out.



The beam is a wall stabilizer and is constructed with 2 2x6 boards separated by some 5/8" pieces of OSB. These beams are bolted into the wall with honking big bolts.



The actual wall is just normal 2x4 construction nailed down to the floor, but you can't just attach it to the ceiling because of the shrinkage of the exterior walls. Since the logs Lok-n-Logs uses are kiln-dried there will probably only be about 2" shrinkage.


So the walls are about 4" shorter that the ceiling. And you attach a 2x4 to the ceiling and bolt the wall to that board. The hole in the wall section is larger that the bolt, so when the outer walls shrink, the bolt will just move down in the hole. When you put the wall board on, it doesn't go clear up to the ceiling. You leave a gap between the top of the wallboard and the ceiling, then attach some molding to hid the gap. I don't really understand how this will look, but I'll post pictures when we do it.



This is what you do for the walls that run parallel to the wood beams. For the walls that run perpendicular to the beams, it's even more complicated. The walls are bolted to the beams and boxes are built to put between the beams. I don't know how the wallboard is attached, but will post pictures when we get to that.

Here I am, bolting the wall in.


We got the downstairs done in about 2 weekends, the started on the upstairs. There are 3 walls that will have to go clear up to the highest ridge. I helped set up the scaffolding, but then it was time for me to leave. Rick is staying up there this week and is doing the hard part of building the walls that go clear up to the roof beam, at least that is what I think he is doing.