Building A Cabin Solo In Alaska part 2 Vlog of Building A Dry Cabin start to finish

[Music] hey welcome to the video so this video is going to be part two of building a cabin in Alaska we're just outside of Two Rivers Alaska here and if you want to check out the first video I'll put a little thing on the screen here for that and that first video was going over building this pad we get a little bit in depth into geology and soils of Alaska and in this video we're gonna go ahead and get our pads port for our posting pad foundation we'll get our main beams installed floor joists we're gonna get our walls up and we'll see if we can't just roll right into getting the roof on this sucker get it dried in and get our interior put together so let's go ahead and talk about how we're going to lay out our building's footprint then let's set up some forms and pour some pads layout mark on the string line and we measure I measure crossways I get the hypotenuse and which in this case is well hold on for a helicopter [Music] so where were we oh yes so the way that this all starts is I started off of one point and this one was it because this is the lowest and least it looked the low so you'll see this mark here what I do is I start with the and a certain height really don't matter because you can change it I'll put my string line on there and I run it across that one that one in that one with this little guy here this is string level there's other ways to doing this using a transit and such I'll put a string level on there and then I run over to the other side with the string lifting it up and down till that bubbles level and I make a mark on my corner post and so then that puts a mark that's at the same level on each corner and I'll come back and when I put these Mountain boards on or whatever you want to call them I'll start with this one screw it in here and then I'll throw my level on and I'll lift this board up and down until my bubbles level and then same thing with this one screw this side lift that end up and down until she's level I do that on all four sides and then I have a nice place I put this string under the string over there not quite touching just about perfect and there you go so the way my layout is is they'll have a pure block here pure block their pure block there a pair of block there four of them and then I'll have two doubled up two by twelves and there's going to be three of them a set here so one two and three I've got to do a layout here I'll put a stake and a stake in a baton I'll run a string line across and I'll find my locations now once I find those locations what I'll do is I'll have my form boxes ready and I'll measure down off the string lines which will be over each form location and I'll know how deep I need to dig so if I need to the top of the forms to be about six inches below the string line but I measure down from the string line and it's only four inches I know in that particular form I need to dig down about two inches that way they all end up level here you can see that we've done just that dug out each footprint of each form ensuring that each and every pad will be at the same level alright so now it's on to mixing some concrete by hand of course and we're just using sand gravel water and Portland cement mixing concrete using its base ingredients like this rather than say buying a bag of premix a current works out to wanna see about a third less expensive depending on your location and Alaska is not always the best place to compare to for the lower 48 but depending on your location it's usually cheaper to go ahead and go this route instead of buying saccharine and of course where I'm at a concrete truck wasn't really a very viable option now of course bringing in my inner perfectionist I wanted to make these pads all nice and pretty a nice steel and finish but you know the rain comes in and just changes your mind on that so that's why these a little bits of plastic are there if they don't need to be a steel finish anyways no one's necessarily gonna see them now as we wait on our pants to cure out we've brought in our main beams our main beams are just two doubled up two by twelves now these douglas-fir beams they sit on just your average pier blocks that have an adjustable amount in them we'll cover those here a bit later so getting into throwing up our main beams and everything we're getting ready to put in our floor joists now these cross boards that you now see between the beams these are logged in there and there will also be strapped around the beams these keep the beams from twisting once the house is built on them and also because our ground shifts so much here in Alaska it keeps everything rigid and keeps them from deflecting to the left or to the right okay now we can start getting rim boards and floor joists put in now floor joists are 2 by 10 Douglas fir on 16 centers now I will say that I'm sure a lot of people would like to see all the lumber mill doff a trees from this land but unfortunately as you can kind of see here we've got mostly some birch and well there's Cottonwood and we get into a little bit of spruce it's a great little piece of property but unfortunately it just doesn't have the timber to support the lumber for a build like this now all that being said it is in my future plans to get a piece of property with timber that is adequate for milling and to build a mill to do that anyhow here's those straps us talking about that keep the main beams from twisting now we're at a point now where we can start putting the the deccan in or subfloor is 1 inch OSB plywood if you will now it's at this point that we come back once we've got our subfloor done and we go in and we re level the entire floor now if you're not familiar with Alaska those adjustable pier blocks come in handy down the road because hopefully this doesn't move too much but a lot of the properties up here in Alaska they move horribly so every year or two you'll want to real Evelynn your house or cabin that's why a lot of places are built small and wouldn't you look at that some walls snuck in on us and set up shop so unfortunately there were other pictures and videos that I have parently lost but we'll just make do with what we've got so at this point we've got some main walls up and short of the door I actually didn't frame in any other windows mainly because I wasn't positive on how I wanted the interior layout to be and I also didn't have the windows yet so I didn't know what size they were gonna be now it was just about at this point on the build that I actually ran across a local add one of our local glass companies was actually changing the brand of windows they carry and they were selling a bunch of their old stock and all their display windows for about $50 a piece and these are triple pane windows so basically brand new triple pane windows in the whole house and I basically bought almost all of them and sold a couple which paid for all of the ones I bought that's really something to point out when you're doing something like this is to have a general idea of what you're gonna do but be scrounge and Craigslist and the Facebook ads and all that jazz but for building materials you know you can get things pin on the dollar sometimes new or close to new so as you can see now we're framing in a window or two now you'll notice that headers kind of just one board deep and usually it's at least a four by over the window there but what we're gonna do up here is that there's gonna be two two by sixes that are sandwiching a two inch chunk of foam essentially this is all in the name of trying to provide a thermal break whereas a traditional header it would allow cold to transfer from the outside to the inside if you're building a place in cold country it's really worth it to look into stuff like this that being thermal breaks in tips and tricks as far as insulation goes everything you can do in a place that gets historically below negative 70 as far as insulation and thermal breaks in your wall system goes it's really beneficial both in you know energy wise as far as trying to heat your home and retaining that heat there is a place here in Fairbanks called a cold climate research facility or something like that anyhow you might go to their website and see what they have to offer they also have a bunch of YouTube videos so moving on obviously you can see we've started to put our second floor in now this is 2 by 6 tongue and groove pine flooring and I absolutely love this stuff it feels great it looks great it's just and it's actually not too bad to work with either now a person might want to just get their roof on before putting your flooring in like this cuz it's kind of risking some weather damage on it which luckily didn't happen but again doing this all by yourself it it's kind of nice to have a floor to stand on when you're putting your roof up so the beams for our second floor doubled up two by tens and they're actually lagged into from our top plate of the first floor up and then the framing of our roof will lag into those beams so now speaking of the roof here we are getting some house wrap on in prep for the roof and we'll start cutting all of our our pieces for a roof now there's math that you can do with your framing square and all that but I cheated and I hopped on AutoCAD and drew it all out because it it was easier and here we are doing just that in the place I was living in well building the cabin this is what I called the moose Hut there's a video on and living in it I'll put a little post to that right here it's basically a seven buddy foot tiny house anyhow so here we are back at it after doing our math we're cutting in our Ridge and Eve cuts and our bird's mouth and then once I had them all cut of course transfer them up to the second floor and start standing them up and here you see the very first set of her rafters put up now these have a caller tie that's a 3/4 inch piece of plywood on either side right there at the top so I'm not using a ridge pole on this roof and then we'll have of course battens that our tin will be screwed to now you'll notice the house wraps going up as I'm putting up our rafters because it was well they decided to rain on us now never mind in the rain as I stood up the rafters as I traveled I'd get the house wrap put up trying to keep everything as dry as possible of course I had plastic on the floors at the time to aid with that now doing it this way I wasn't able to get the roof battens on as I traveled so what I did was had temporary battens essentially on the inside of the roof and then once all the house roof was on I was able to come back and put battens on over the house route now with all the rain I'd about had it and decided it's time to take a trip into the back 40 a real nice little part of this property is the backs up to a bunch of state land so a little trip into the back and there's plenty of rose hips and blueberries raspberries and such to be found it was real refreshing to break away from building and you know construction and hammer nails and all that jazz and get out there in the God's country and enjoy Alaska for really what would come here for on that note bunny also decided to give me a call and say hey you want to take the jet boat up on the Yukon that says sure our timing wasn't quite right but man it was great to get out on the Dalton Highway and get down on the Yukon River for a bit we kind of got skunked our timing wasn't right on the fishing but we did manage to catch a catch a few she fish now I rather be catching fish but sometimes I guy just feels pretty dang blast to get out there on the water or check it out in the woods just get out and do stuff so this here this is actually a Yukon River Bridge now this little raft here on the river pretty cool deal with them tents on there that's Neal a buddy of Mines friend and he's actually a pretty cool dude he's got a book wrote called Alaska ivory hunter really kind of a neat read if you're into Alaska stuff on that no another really great book that you should read is a shadows on the Koya cook by Sidney Sidney something well it's been a great little two-day holiday but that Midnight Sun is burning so let's get back to work that's actually a Midnight Sun at 2:00 in the morning now the only reason I actually did break away from this project to go fishing was because I was waiting on tin that's not entirely true it would have gone fish nice anyhow I was waiting on tend to be made you can get tin formed and cut to the specific length that you want for your roof if you didn't know which is fantastic so obviously here we go put it up on the roof easier said than done actually it's not too bad to do if you're doing it by yourself you just kind of hold it behind your back climb up the ladder and then you can climb up the mountains all the way to the top now when we're talking about battens actually I'd like to pause right here you notice that when you look under the battens that's the two by fours that cross over the Lowe's house wrap you'll notice some little white that's what those are our foam that keeps the house wrap pushed away from the roofs battens that's what the tin is attaching to that allows air flow from your eaves to your roofs Ridge the whole idea here is you want to keep the tin from getting warm and melting the snow underneath of it now this roof is deep enough it should shed snow pretty well even if it doesn't you don't want the snow to melt and then that water's gonna drip down towards the edge of your roof and then it's gonna form what they call a ice dam and that's not good speaking and not good that's a feeling you get on top of that ladder they're putting the sheathing up there at the top of that wall speaking of things that are funny I had this squirrel join me for a lunch on this day and probably got the best picture of the year out of it and I think it's kind of comical so all squirrels aside with most of the roof and tin on oh it's time to get some windows in now we missed out on all the pictures - cutting these windows in unfortunately but today that's alright at this point is really feeling like I was starting to get some we're starting to get some things you know plugged into this place and a little spoiler alert on the side and here a I had to have a buddy come over and help me get that window in that sucker was heavy that big will not be window but the big window a big shout out to Josh for helping me with that one if anyone needs a horse shod in Fairbanks area he's your man now it may have become obvious to you that we're putting siding on I had decided on most of the structure to do a tin skirting and then from there on up about four foot up would be exterior-grade plywood that's stained a couple of times and then we'll have rough cut strips on it and it'll give it the board-and-batten look the Stute among us may have noticed that we're framing in our Arctic entry Arctic entries are great because it gives you a break from Lutton cold air enter the houses warm air during the winter I suppose you could also call it a porch or a mudroom and it does service both those purposes as well but that winter break from open and one door entering the room closing it and then opening the door to the main house makes a huge difference in heat in the house now had a whole mess of things going on not just putting the siding up in a tin but putting the siding up doing the tin getting on the trim put in and at the same time working on the inside that house about this time on the inside of the house has drilling and installing all the wiring so that I could get insulation put in vapor barrier foam then get our wall sheathing on the inside the house put up now I did about three layers of stain on the exterior and the way I did that is after the first two I did a third one that was intermittent and I would favor one side or the other of a 12 inch Center so the reason for that is as you can see here with the batten strips on there it kind of looks like individual boards in between and it loses the look of just regular exterior-grade plywood now these battens that give it that clapboard look and as well as the what you see there on ends of the Gables the trim around the door the trim around the windows along the eave so this is all local rough cut timber it really gives a a really great look and I think it turned out fantastic so as things progressed as far as finishing up the exterior of the cabin here it was time to get the gable Ridge and Eve flashing on had have a couple of pieces custom made in town unfortunately but getting it on was not the easiest thing once you've got all the tin on the roof it's not easy to crawl around on at 12 and 13 roof that's like 47 degrees so two ladders and various ways of strapping them to different objects or the ground and that was how we got this stuff up I only had one near fall that was well let's just say that I had to change my shorts afterwards so with a desire to do something a little bit more down-to-earth and a fresh pair of shorts it was time to bury our electrical line couple hundred feet of direct bearing a cable that scorned off of the Craigslist really awesome and this old little track hoe we got that accomplished got a trench dug got the line in got it buried up and got power from the power lines to the cabin so let's hop inside of the cabin and start getting some insulation done so as you can see by this time I had been able to drill and run all the wiring as well as get most the insulation on the upstairs and done Josh come over help me get the vapor barrier here up on this that was a big help big old schita plastic there the fewer cuts you can have then the vapor barrier the better it is that vapor barrier leads a major role of keeping the hot air from escaping the house and cold air from coming in so here we just go through some shots the first floor of course I got the stairs kind of put together there and we're getting insulation in the walls and once all that installations in we can get our vapor barrier up and tape each and every one the seams in just a few short months the Midnight Sun gives way to the Northern Lights and it starts to remind us that winter is right around the corner and really lights a fire under a but to get this thing done before the first snow and speaking of light in a fire the best way to keep the heat from a fire in is to put foam on the inside of the house you can put on the outside too now the idea here is that you want two-thirds of your insulating mass to be on the outside of the vapor barrier and the reasons for this have to do with the dew point and condensation collect and on one or the other side of your vapor barrier that's something you all might want to research yourself if you're building a cabin and looking at getting the best out of thermal efficiency the second thing about the foam either on the outside or the inside it it creates a thermal break between your studs here in a window open and you'll take note of that red tape that's sealing the vapor barrier against the window box in a similar manner we seal the vapor barrier to the floor to eliminate any air transfer through the floor and the base plate of the stud wall this wall is going to be stood up and make a little room kind of it can in the future be a bathroom but we're not going to have a bathroom or plumbing in this building at the time at all so we're gonna have an outhouse this is what you call a dry cabin up here in Alaska pretty common in interior Fairbanks Alaska and now not everyone lives in them there's plenty of plumbing in town and even outside of town people have plumbing but there's a higher expense of having plumbing keeping things from freezing half the year round and sometimes it's just simpler to use an outhouse so naturally the place that we go to do our nature will make somewhat more attractive and do it up like we did the siding on the main cabin back inside the cabin once we're done with talking about nature huh we're getting all the finality is kind of finished up starting to get the walls put together the wiring put together slap some paint and stain all over the place bye no the rest of the world had kind of slowed down and had some friends that were able to stop by and give me hand putting some paint and stain on the interior which was a huge help and the fumes are sure to get everyone high that's for a fact but his anyhow I digress as you can see slapping in cabinets get into the windows all trimmed out that was kind of a nice little job to do and I would absolutely love to build the cabinet's but I ended up purchasing them at the what was it Lowe's but I think I had like a 20% off coupon so I bought a bunch of stuff all at one time and got a smoking deal on it all so as this kind of cabin project starts to you know kind of play out and get finished up there's all the little things that had to be done all these light fixtures and painting and getting the floors stained and sealed and all that jazz and you know this it's funny once you get down to this stuff this stuff seems to take the longest time all the little things you gotta get all your switches in and your sockets in every little bit of trim and molding all your switch plates and then of course your flooring and such that Florin was actually pretty sweet yeah what was it called Peugeot I got it for a quarter of the price I don't know why but Home Depot had a pallet of it that they were selling for like a dollar a square foot and the stuff cost like five dollars a square foot so that was really a sweet score now reflecting back on building this place you know it sure was a lot of fun and all just fair warned you not a professional carpenter well heck I'm not really a professional anything of course people have been fooled into paying me the dollar to to do this kind of work from time to time and if you're thinking about going out and building the cabin or something or a shanty or a Shack a mansion hey all the power to you that's kind of half my reasoning for throwing this video together help encourage you to get out there and build something maybe you're looking for ideas whether it's building a cabin up here in Alaska or I don't know down in Tennessee this is give you some different ideas maybe more in particular or some cold country stuff and you know obviously smaller square footage dwelling but you know it's limitless out there the world's your oyster as they say there's so many things that could have done different that what you know looking back on it now that would I like to tweak that do something a little bit different there but you never really know until you do it so just you know get out there and do it now all this being said some resources for information again that cold climate research facility in Fairbanks Alaska that's a good one to turn to for some of this cold weather stuff they do a lot of stuff regard and testing different building materials and subarctic conditions and then also your local and State Building Codes the American wood Council is another great resource for information and different data as well as southern pine Products Association and similar associations and entities such as these you can get different information from mom from span tables to wood framing standards and codes you get all kinds of different information of course we got all kinds of different outlets for getting information on building something and getting different ideas from I mean from these different online resources that I mentioned to well I guess the Pinterest and and the tweet Facebook or whatever all those social media stuff is these days personally I grew up watching Bob Vila this old house classics and the new Yankee Workshop that's where I learned a lot too he's like giving in to all this of course things are different these days without YouTube and such and speaking of YouTube thanks for watching the video I hope that helped you somehow and maybe you just enjoyed the little of journey anyhow take care get out there and build stuff and enjoy life we'll catch you next time [Music] all right it is what time is it yeah it's uh 12:19 and focus I am where the heck am I there's the truck I am weird uh-oh I'm somewhere between talk and Delta no no I'm past that past Delta Delta's down there Fairbanks is down there somewhere and it's a beautiful day or night and I am making a well shot of coffee because you've seen how easily I could remember where the hell is it anywho the old Toyota is running pretty good Oh

Channel: GoNorthOffGrid

Views: 50,898

Keywords: alaska cabin building

Id: 1-D9TZX7YIU

Length: 26min 36sec (1596 seconds)

Published: Fri May 29 2020