![]() ![]() Once the laterals are in place, you tie four strings between each opposing lateral to form a square. You can use a simple eye level to get them true to each other (the Egyptians used a pan of water) or a transit, if you can get one. These horizontal boards or “laterals” are all level to each other. A horizontal member is screwed to the posts (use a portable drill and self tapping screws). A few feet outside the expected foundation square, three posts are driven in at each corner. This method has been used as far back as ancient Egypt in exactly the manner I show here. The first step in actual construction involves the use of batter boards to establish the exact location of the foundation. This photo was taken in late May 1997 when the snow had finally melted away and we could actually begin construction. We submitted the plans to the Kittitas County Building Dept in January 1997 and got them approved by March 1997. ![]() ![]() During the winter of 1996-97 I worked with an architect named Tom Veith on the design of the cabin. The next few years we spent putting in the septic system, leveling the building site and developing a water supply. We put a trailer on it in 1993 and built a shed roof to keep the snow load from crushing the trailer. ![]() The idea was to build a recreational cabin so we have been in no great hurry to get things done. We bought this property in the summer of 1992. To see my cabin plans, elevation, floor plan and water system. To Skip’s Page – The Log House Builders Association of North America Just looking around the house is worth the price of admission, you might just look them up. They teach the class from Skip’s later constructions, a series of finished houses located north of Duval, Washington including his enormous “cabin” that was used in filming several “Northern Exposure” scenes. But Steve White and Skip’s son Ellsworth have taken up the challenge and are teaching classes for the association and they are pretty interesting guys too. Skip passed away in 2008 while he was living in Daanbantayan Cebu, in the Philippines with his new family. I’ve also finally gotten around to building my own log cabin so if you want to follow the links, I’ll take you through the steps. Many years later I’m sitting pretty, so I thought maybe I’d try and spread the word a little bit. Now I didn’t run out and build a log house, but I followed his advice using stick construction. His class was about how to build freedom. He taught us how to do this by building log cabins but his message was really much bigger than that. Without the burden of a mortgage to suck up a person’s money for 30 years and tie them to a job and a bank, real freedom could result. He told us that all a person had to do to secure their own destiny was to build their own house. He was an amazing teacher, an anarchist of the first water, a prodigious collector of strange artifacts and a sly and generous soul. He only had one completed structure but it was sure pretty. This guy was living on a five acre ranch near Redmond, Washington surrounded by log structures he had built for demonstration. It was taught by a man named Skip Ellsworth, one of the few truly original characters I have ever met. In 1974 I took a course offered by the University of Washington’s Experimental College called “Log Construction”. ![]()
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