Moving to the Log Cabin

Well, the basement is pretty much finished. All I have to do now is to place a few columns under the floor of the upstairs section to get rid of the springiness. The span across that section of the house is probably around twelve feet, so the floor sags a bit.

I’ll give you a little background into the room I’m talking about. The main part of the house we have here is post and beam construction. Please see the following picture.

According to the previous owner, the main section was built after the “log cabin” section was. I’m not sure how old that part is, but I’m guessing it was built just a few years before the main part. And that was 1990. The log cabin section has six inch thick logs, covered with pine siding, to match the rest of the house. It kind of sticks out like a sore thumb when looking at the house as a whole, but the area is pretty nice and that’s why I’d like to fix it up and make it livable. And by “livable,” I mean warm. The windows are horrible and the area doesn’t retain heat very well.

You know all about my insulating endeavors of the basement already. That story is old by now. I’m still going to post some final insulation photos below, but I’m pretty much finished with it. Like I mentioned above, I need to move onto the next phase, and that’s making the floor solid and to move upstairs to begin work. I’ve got a checklist of what I need to do:

– Place a 4×4 beam across the ceiling of the basement and use pressure treated 4x4s as lally columns to shore up the sagging floor.
– Remove and discard carpet in the log cabin.
– Remove sheetrock ceiling to expose 4×6 inch beams that run across.
– Remove pine tongue and groove to expose roof rafters to get access to roof sheathing.
– Re-insulate roof and either re-install the pine tongue and groove or use sheetrock.
– Frame out entire room with 2x4s and re-insulate on the inside.
– Build a wall and install a door to give access to the basement.

That’s it – I think. There’s more stuff like putting in a floor and all that, but that’s later. I want this room to hold our wood stove, so really, the insulation is key. My eventual goal is to make this house the most insulated in a 30 mile radius. Just by re-doing the bathroom, I’ve already made a huge difference. You should feel it. Remarkable.

As you may well have already guessed, I’m going to post pictures all along the way of re-doing this part of the house. It’s pretty exciting for me because I love fixing up things and making them more efficient. I don’t think this room will be difficult. It’s already insulated by six inches of wood, but that can be better. Wood has a notoriously low r-value and is actually termed a “thermal bridge” in some circles. Insulating it shouldn’t be difficult though.

As promised, I’m posting the final pictures of the basement insulation. The next go-round should be the installation wooden columns. That should be a thrill.

I decided to take these two pictures after I cleaned up the basement. After all the water came in there, I thought enough was enough. Now I keep the floor clean, so nothing gets wet.

Insulating the rim joist that runs parallel with the rest of the floor joists can be an issue at times. Like the one in the above photos, there oftentimes isn’t much room to work with. Since there was already fiberglass insulation installed in this case, I decided to simply seal the area with rigid foam.

And I did the same thing here, albeit there was more room to work.

These were the two final areas that needed to be insulated. They are only partially exposed to the exterior siding, but I figured I should tackle them anyway. And as you can see, the rim joist insulation was simply folded over itself, to doubly insulate the rim joist on that side of the space.