Alaska Lake Cabin

Hi everyone!

Well, this is the Monday of all Mondays for me.  I've been off playing for the last two months, building this!

I can't tell you how much we appreciate your patience with us over the last eight weeks, as our time has been consumed with our cabin project that we did for DIY Network.  We are so thrilled to have an opportunity to share what we do with you in a new way, and can't wait ourselves to see how the show comes out.  I'll be sharing as soon a

Hello, Jacob here today.

Ana's still traveling, making the most of her trip to Atlanta by taking a few days to film video for Ryobi.

The kids have been doing suprisingly well, especially the baby.  But we will all be happy to see mom in a couple of days.  Maybe we will take a few days off and head down to the cabin.

One of my favorite parts of our cabin is the front porch with it's gabled roof.

Not only does it give the cabin a grand enterance, it

We've been done building our cabin for a month now, and are finally back to full rested.  That was quite an experience, and a whirlwind of long hours and back breaking work.

Why, then, could I be itching for another project after seeing all these photos???

Hey, we are all a little bit crazy, right?

In this post, I will show you how we put up the main rafters for the cabin, and finished up all the timber work.  This was my absolute favorite part (besides the fu

Thank you all for all the nice comments and likes last week!  We couldn't be more excited to have this opportunity to build a dream cabin in Alaska, share the process with you through blogging, and if that wasn't enough, get to work with DIY Network to film it all!  

When our new baby was just nine days old, we took a quick trip down to look over the property that we had just purchased, and I had not yet seen.  There was several feet of snow, so we could not find t

Hello, Jacob here today, with a cabin post update.

I have to admit that when we started thinking about building our cabin using a timberframe roof system, I was hesitant.  Up here in Alaska, where we have extreme cold winters, one side of your roof (especially with heat trapped at the peak) could be 100 degrees, and on the other side, it could be -60 below.  If not done right, this could become a condensation nightmare.

When it comes to building, I like to go the tried a

We've been busy working on the cabin six days a week, up to 12 hours a day.  But honestly, I almost dread the one day off a week.  In that one day off, I am busy preparing for the next week, making sure we don't run out of supplies, materials, or food for the next six days of working remote.  

We also are winter camping on site, so I've been bringing home laundry and dishes home.  I'm glad to be heading back to work today.

That's my excuse anyway for going so l

Hi everyone and Happy Monday!

Sorry about getting my latest post out to you so late this weekend (I aim for Friday) - our new smokehouse!

It's just a wood shed or outdoor closet - with a stove pipe plumbed into the back!  We've been enjoying authentic smoked salmon strips, and plan on packing school lunches with them.   Make sure you check out the smokehouse plans here - even if you don't need to process salmon, it would make a perfect outdoor shed or storage

Hello, and Happy Monday!  Jacob here today, with a new post on building our cabin.

We've been very busy working on our cabin, and are happy to share that we've got the roof dryed in.  I'll be posting more about this later on, but wanted to share a quick photo update with you.

Shared via Instagram.  Make sure you follow me on Instagram too - I'm sharing progress photos and other random Alaska building stuff over there too.

None of this work would have be

Happy Monday!!!

Can you believe we are just over a month into building and have gone from this -

Into this -

I can hardly believe it myself!

We've been working long hours, and we've got help - two of my husband's friends (pictured on the roof with Jacob) and our Uncle Bill have been vital to progress, and my sister has been babysitting when she can.  

But a big part of the reason this cabin has gone up so fast is we spent a couple

Hi everyone, Happy Monday!!!

We got a chance to sneak down to our cabin this weekend and pick some blueberries, and grab a few images for our DIY Network show that will air sometime this fall (will let you know as soon as we know on an air date!).

I still can't believe we built that cabin in just a couple of months!  Of course, everything was so rushed and under a tighter schedule because of the filming, but still!  So it's fun to get to go back

After a full year of prepping,

Weeks of ordering materials, planning, and hauling in those materials, the day finally arrived when we could actually start building!

It was a cold day in mid-April, with clear skies and an optimistic crew.

We knew we'd only have two days of framing while the film crew from DIY Network was here, and I'd committed to having three walls up in that time.  Doesn't sound like alot - two days to have three walls up, right?  

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While I've been making a mess in the interior of our Alaska lake cabin, good things are happening on the exterior. 

It's time to put in windows and doors!

By the time we started hauling in windows and doors, the snow had melted, so we could not haul in via snow machine over the lake ice.  Snow machine is preferred because the snow trails are smoother and the snow machine sled trailer is longer and can haul