How to Disassemble a Log House in Less Than 5 Hours!!

June 8, 2010
The "Queen of de Construction" here! If I owned heavy equipment and had an endless supply of cash, I'd be very dangerous, (and very, very happy)!

Today was a big day and mostly full of surprise that it only took about 4.5 hours to take the house down. It's been standing in a temporary position for the past 3 years,,,,waiting to move. Jason and his band of brothers are amazing. Jason's mastery of lifting the 22.6' logs off with the Sky-Track without a teeter or twitch was fascinating to watch. The easy part is over, tomorrow we start trimming and leveling the end part of the logs and start laying the foundation logs and spiking them together. (I say "we" like I'm out there with chain saw and a hammer in hand,,,not a chance)! Jason will start notching for the electrical and drilling for wiring and then we move on up with the logs to the 2nd (3rd) level and lay in the floor joists. Roof trusses will be here on Thursday.

When I set out to design this house, the non-waiverable condition was that it MUST be green. So, the original floor joists from the 1896 house and all the yellow poplar boards will be used in this house. Jason is getting original floor joists from another old log house, along with 2 old logs to replace rotten ones. I've (with a little help from my baby brother) have hauled beams left over from an old barn to use as part of the post and beam construction in the framed connector between the two houses. We're planning beautiful quarter sawn barn lumber for the oak floors.

As an artist, I see things most don't and see form, texture and color differently. It's exciting for me to think in layers instead of linear for change. Alas,,,,, reality is around the corner and I'll have to get back to thinking like everyone else fairly soon. Until then, I'll be the happy little artist I am.