The Cabin 1982 - 1986
To the trained eye, many things around our house may look substandard . Substandard may be a tad too harsh, though – I’ll go with “slightly askew” instead. If a contractor, or handyman, or anyone with a background in professional building was to stroll through the rooms and hallways of our home, their eyes may be drawn to a large accumulation of spackle in certain places, or to the occasional use of caulk on the corner junctions of a few slightly botched pieces of molding. They might also notice, if they took the time to look, the cleverly placed items my wife has used to draw one’s eye away from a bow in the wall, or a slight droop to the ceiling. For this reason, we don’t invite many people with trained eyes into the dwelling. The truth is that all of the updates and projects to our humble home have been completed by our own hands. I realized recently that there is not one room in the house that we have not fixed or transformed in some way. And I am not talking about merely painting a room, or hanging some curtains – I am talking about removing walls, adding additional closets, tiling floors, building lofts in the kid’s rooms, rewiring various spaces, and the addition of a bathroom, pipes and all. Our most adventurous undertaking came after the discovery of termites on the ground floor level of our house. Not a discovery anyone wants to make, and certainly not an easy fix. The solution involved completely removing a good portion of a wall and, in essence, rebuilding it from the ground up while our house was supported by jacks which we put under the main beams of the structure. The good news was that we had found the insects before they destroyed the entire house, and that our finished project included a new large window in the wall space and other updates to the area that we would not have done if it had not been for the voracious varmints.
And we did it all ourselves. My wife and I completed the smaller projects together, and we called in some family and friends to help with the bigger tasks, but the entirety of the work was volunteered and free – all truly D.I.Y. accomplishments. And I stand amazed at times that our hands created these things. Neither my wife nor I, or any of our volunteers have had any formal training in construction. These things were simply necessities, so we did them – we planned it out and we rolled up our sleeves and we jumped in. I think that is pretty cool. For my wife, the ability to visualize and create new spaces, whether they are indoors or outside seems to be a gift that may have been handed down through her family. She is continually perusing magazine pictures and finding ideas and designs to update or transform spaces around our home. She has a great sense of what will work, and can truly “design on a dime”.
I do not have this talent. Not even close. But if she gives me a picture, I can build something similar to what she shows me. It may not be exactly the same, but it will be similar. I like to deal with the internal structures, the frames, the part that will be covered and hidden from view. There is a larger margin for error in this work, less picky work, less attention to details. One of my favorite annual building rituals is the construction of a “wood shed” in the fall for the firewood we bring in to make and enjoy fires throughout the winter. The woodshed is used to not only protect the firewood from the rain and snow, but also to allow me to access it easily. To call it a “shed” is a stretch. It is really just a shack. A mixed pile of leftover lumber and whatever other supplies that I can muster which I somehow convert into a standing structure which, to date, has not fallen in under the weight of the snow or any other trials the northeast climate has thrown at it. This in itself is a small miracle, as the design and materials for the shed change each year depending upon what I have lying around to make it. My wife, God bless her, has put up with this tradition for some years, although she did have me build a pretty “screen” to hide the sheds from public viewing, and she is quick to remind me in the springtime that the shed should come down.
I have heard that many men have similar structures, “Man Caves” they are sometimes called, and the variety is as varied as are the personalities that create them. I know some men who transform their garages into wonderful living spaces with refrigerators, stereos, televisions, etc… Other men take over the basement or attic areas of the house and move in horribly ugly and wonderful couches, pool tables, posters of Led Zeppelin, and the like. But I am happy with my shed. I enjoy going out to it and collecting the wood for our fires, or organizing it, or splitting it with an axe. I really like being out there during snowstorms. It is so peaceful, and quiet, and still. It reminds me of some of the “man caves” of my youth.
Growing up, our back yard bordered a large forested area. The woods had a long, wide logging trail that ran through them, and many smaller trails that branched off from the main one. Somewhere in my younger years, probably after watching an episode of “Grizzly Adams,” I reckoned that it would be a fine idea to build a cabin in those woods – a homestead for myself. I suppose I thought that I would meet a wild animal of my own out there, just like Grizzly had met “Gentle Ben” the bear, and we would have some grand times together. So that is what I set out to do. My first “cabin” consisted of five pieces of plywood, attached together with a few bent nails and some rope. It was basically a box, and the only way to enter the thing was through a hole on top which I cut out to the best of my ability. The plywood pieces I had found around our house were all 4 feet wide by four feet long, so there wasn’t much space inside the thing, either – certainly not enough to fit a bear and myself. And it was also pretty dark once you lowered yourself in. The only light came from the doorway itself, and from every corner of the cabin – none of which lined up quite right, allowing outside light to filter in. The floor was dirt and pine needles at first, but was upgraded to some lovely laminate flooring scraps which a friend donated after his family had their kitchen floor re-laminated. As more and more friends began to visit and became interested in the cabin, it became clear that we would need a bigger space to fit them all.
My next cabin was a much bigger undertaking. It started off as a one room structure “with a proper doorway on the side” and eventually had two rooms, a wrap around deck which could only be accessed by climbing up to the roof, a large sandy area outside with a fire pit in the middle, a couch, several lawn chairs, and a large metal oil barrel that doubled as a woodstove in the winter “although it never worked very well, and usually left the users choking on smoke which filled the cabin and made it quite uninhabitable.” Although the project was bigger in scale and more impressive to the eye, it was built with the same pathetic skills, shoddy materials, and overall lack of structural soundness and proper supervision as the first cabin had been. All of the plywood from that first venture was dragged to this new location and recycled into this effort. There were, in fact, no supplies which were purchased by us at all. Some were donated by eager parents “like the old couch, and many scraps of lumber,” and most were simply taken from the garages, workbenches, cellars, and storage sheds of the unsuspecting families to whom they belonged. My father, for example, could simply not understand where all his nails, rope, shovels and hammers had gone when the occasion came up to use them at our house. I would usually try my best to slink away on those occasions, pretending to look for the items around our house. Luckily for me, my father was woefully disorganized with such things, so I could simply stick the missing hammer or shovel back somewhere in plain sight, and he would assume it had been there all along.
Looking back on it, I’m grateful that none of us kids who built that cabin had parents that were involved with it. It simply wouldn’t have been the same if someone’s dad had showed up with all of the proper equipment, and blueprints, and the ability to make walls that didn’t bow outwards and meet each other at very odd angles. The whole project – the magic of the thing would have been lost if that was the case. We all learned a lot from constructing that place, and we were proud of what we had created. It was ours – all ours. It gave a sense of being grown up and of having a degree of independence and freedom out there in the woods. We had countless adventures at the cabin, and most of us would continue to maintain and build onto that place until we eventually moved on to driver’s licenses and steady girlfriends, and greater freedoms beyond the cabin in the woods. But my most lasting memories are of trudging out there through deep snow in the winter during snowstorms and how quiet, and silent, and peaceful it was.
I look forward to building my wood shed each year, but I don’t always enjoy DIY projects now. There are times when I really wish I could afford to have someone else do them for us. Or at least do one of them. Or even part of one. I complain sometimes about things that need to be built, or fixed, or maintained around our home. I know in my heart how spoiled that is. I know that I have so much more than many others in this world. I also know that these things are luxury problems, and that at the completion of any project I always feel a great sense of accomplishment and pride. I feel like I am a part of our home – like I have risen to the challenges it has given us, and that I understand it intimately. I have learned over the years to detect the cause of every squeak of the floor, every rattle of the pipes, every inch of the house, and I am very proud of what my wife and I have created together – on a dime, with minimal supplies, and without proper supervision. In the end, I really wouldn’t want it any other way. It might just take away the magic…
I also remember chairs, tables, umbrellas, etc. disappearing. The Laresch family still talk about it. Can you imagine if poor Uncle John got involved in the building?
The Farr home is one of my favorites! Charming, cozy, unique, stylish, and best of all ~ welcoming!
You forgot to mention the zip wire across the firepit… Also the customized parking area for the mopeds ( and freddy’s kermit ) : )
Brian , They where great times with great friends , The original E street gang!! If you ever need a hand with anything please give me a call . 727 7781 . You where like a brother to me and I want you to know Im here to help.
Yeah Bill … The zip line was not one of our safer ideas , but what a crew we made