The Unturned Stone

The roof is on, the doors and windows are all in place, the sleeping loft is installed, the chimney cap is on, the floor is grouted and cleaned. The punch list gets shorter and shorter, as do the days. The cabin is 99% complete. This lovely door is super heavy, echoing the gravity of a stone house.

Votive candles adorn the numerous niches and shelves we built into the walls. One idea, abandoned as impractical, was to arrange candle shelves onto the fireplace wall in the form of the Big Dipper. Next time.

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We were able to finish setting the floor today despite the constant rain. A roof and a roaring fire helped. We did track a lot of mud in over the course of the day. Sometimes when I was working near the open doorway, I would have the fire blasting me from one side, and a cold wind-driven rain splashing me on the other. The white crate of splinters in the corner is Monday’s kindling supply drying out.
The floor is made of a Tennessee flagstone, a fairly flat and workable sandstone. It can be persuaded into most shapes with a chipping hammer, though the Beak helped as well. The only chisel I ever used on this was less than half an inch across and carbide tipped. Even that I only used to finesse the joints after the stones were in place. The thing that really draws my eye to the craftsmanship of stone flagging is consistent, tight joinery. It’s more time-consuming of course, but I love it when it looks the joints between all the stones were drawn with the same fine-line pen. Sometimes I sit in the loft- where this photo montage was taken- and look for letters in the joinery.

Click the image above for a GIGANTIC view.

I had a small fire today to shake the chill out of the air inside the cabin as I started working on the floor, seen above. The chimney draws well and will improve once all the windows and doors are hung and the chimney cap is in place.

Four of six windows are roughed in along the sides of the cabin, installed by Dan and his crew. The frames are bomber and look great. I have to admit that I don’t know how the actual window got to be so small. The initial designs called for a lot more glass and light. These are more like arrow slits than windows.

Pete’s old dog Tommy sacks out in the bucket of our skid steer loader.

The sleeping loft is the best place to check out the flagstone floor. This is how it looked at the beginning of the day. The wall with the fireplace is eighteen feet across. I was chasing the stone pile out of my way the whole day.

This is my new hammer by Trow & Holden

of Barre, Vermont. They call it the Stinger, but I call it The Beak. It has a carbide point at one end and a carbide blade at the other. This is the vertical blade model, though a horizontal blade is also available. A horizontal blade can be very helpful, but I prefer the vertical blade, as flying stone chips are less likely to tear up my knuckles. It only weighs two pounds, which means I can swing it all day.

Pete’s string for lining up the shakes dangles off the end of the roof.

Back in the loft to see the floor at the end of the day. We’ve got about a third of the floor in place.

Jody dropped the scaffolding at the end of the day, giving us a good look at the far side of the cabin. The first of the windows may go in early next week.

Here’s the first shot of the cabin floor. We’re using a Tennessee flagstone, a type of sandstone that’s quite flat and shapes well. I have a new hammer with a very fresh carbide blade that cuts this stone like butter. The floor is dry laid in pea gravel though we will grout the joints. I wouldn’t condone this practice for exterior applications, but the floor is well protected from the elements.

Jody rigged this trio of lights to illuminate the floor where we worked. I just thought it looked kind of cool.

Sunlight leaks through the open ends of the rafters. These will be closed up before too long, but the glow shows off the cedar roof and rough hewn rafters.

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The first row of shakes is in place. Tomorrow this scaffolding will come down and we’ll get a good look at this wall.

Things have been altogether too hectic lately, so this late night picto-blog will have to do for now.

We are in the gable, the very last stonework of the cabin structure. It’s a crazy complicated place to work; the rafters limit movement and getting material up to the appropriate height is very challenging. I’m cursing more these days, every time I bonk myself on a rafter. Ideally the rafters would have waited until the stonework was done, but we are weaving the roof and stonework together in an effort to get this thing done.

I just added to the Cabin Panoramic page with images showing the rafters going up.

The rafters are rough cut, true sized 4″ by 12″ timbers, bolted together with plates of steel. Overhead they resemble a fish skeleton.

We’ve been using our Griphoist winch to pull the rafters together before bolting them onto the sill plates.

Fall is coming quickly at 6,500 feet. The mornings are brisk, and the meadow is bursting with it’s last gasp of color. The bees are in some kind of nectar frenzy and the whole meadow is alive with their buzzing.

We have made decent progress on the cabin over the last month. The roof in underway and the chimney is finally done. The front gable needs to be done. It will include a small, arched window so folks sleeping in the loft can enjoy the views.

I recently updated the Cabin Panoramic page with a few images from the work we’ve been doing this spring and summer.

This is a view of the interior of the front wall of the cabin, showing the arched window and a shelf recessed into the corner. The beams above will support a sleeping loft, though right now they are being used to stage stone for the last little bit of wall.

The front rafter defines the limits of the stonework yet to be done.

We have been using a laser to level the sill plates. One misty morning, the invisible laser beamed brightly through the thick air. I’m trying to imitate Iron Man.

The scaffolding obscures the view, but this is a hint of the face of the cabin, with its arched windows and imposing door.

We’ve had help on the cabin, as we push to get it done by the fall. Bill, Grace and Kevin of Artisan Stoneworks of Spartanburg, South Carolina joined us for a couple of weeks. Masons we met through the on-line community, they were all skilled and talented and great to work with. With their help we finished both sides of the cabin and got the front door lintel set in place.

This last week ended a bit early with a torrential rainstorm that soaked us all through in a matter of seconds. When you’re working in the clouds, the storms just sort of appear. The arch over the front window is about half done. The keystone is shown here, rigged to the gin pole. In this image, it is strapped, but we have since drilled the top for the Lewis pins so that we can set the stone into the arch from above. The half-finished arch, with dry fitted stone awaiting mortar can be seen at the bottom of this post. Note the Lewis pins in the bottom image.

Stone masons love hammers. Someday I’ll have a web page devoted exclusively to cool hammers. Until then… Built by Hulme’s Tool Shop to Kevin’s design, this hammer weighs four pounds and is perfectly balanced. Both sides are carbide tipped.

Click this image for a full-sized view.