Part IX - Evaluating the logs/Taking a break

December, 2009

It’s one thing to disassemble a log cabin. Piece of cake. Putting it back together, like Humpty Dumpty, is another story entirely. Especially when you’re an amateur and have never done anything like this before.

One thing I learned is that it’s good in any endeavor to have at least 1 optimist and 1 pessimist involved. In Iraq, I served in a position which allowed me to sit in on videoconferences with many of the top generals. Gen. David Petraeus was an eternal optimist. His subordinate, Gen. Ray Odierno, was always a pessimist. They each learned from each other, and each fed off each other. It kept them both grounded in reality.

Having my brother Ray to bring my optimism short was useful in this project. Eventually, I began to realize how naïve were some of my own views, and started adding a discussion with my imaginary pessimistic friend in any planning session I held on the cabin.

When I originally looked at the cabin, I saw only the rosy side. The logs on the North and East side, which were heavily weathered, looked terrible on the outside, but fine on the inside. My thought was that since I was going to build an internal wall, I could just flip the logs and cover up the bad part of them.

Some of the logs were hollow inside (cypress rots from the inside out, unlike most wood). I thought I could somehow “fix” such logs.

Yet the more I began to look critically at the situation, I brought myself to reality. This would not be as easy as I thought. Some of the logs, I would learn, weren’t just ugly, they were downright dangerous.

Once the logs were relocated to the site of the new cabin, it was time to evaluate them. I could roll each log over, kick it, drill test holes or whatever to determine just how sturdy they were.

My initial look at the logs on the actual building gave me hope that I would only have to replace 2 or 3. This was good, because Texas cypress is now protected (as it was not in the 1840s when the cabin was built), and getting replacements would be very difficult. The only logs you can harvest, in fact, are logs which have already fallen down or from trees which have died. I’d seen a few such logs along the Medina River (the original source of the logs for the cabin back in the day), but few were big enough to meet my standards (15 feet long, 8-10 inches in diameter).

As I began to review my logs now, however, I realized I was not in as good of shape as I thought I was in. I didn’t need 2 or 3 new logs. I needed 7-10.

This created a huge problem, and meant I would have to spend a lot of time searching for replacements.

At the time this was happening, I was working in one particular job which suddenly went away (my boss was essentially removed from his position, and I wasn’t inclined to stay without him). So I went back to work for myself. Working for myself, I made decent money, but didn’t have a whole lot of stability. So it was a time to watch my finances and not get too extravagant.

Thus, between March, 2009 and December, 2009, I did not do any work on the cabin. All the boards from the frame part of the house were safely stored in the barn, and while the logs were in the yard at the cabin site, I would roll them frequently to keep them from weathering unevenly.

I focused on all the problems involved in running your own business for those few months, but in my spare time did some research on places to get cypress logs. After I found a few promising leads, I decided to go back to my site, canvass my logs and then take my order shopping for quotes.

So here are pictures of some of my several log assessment sessions:

To evaluate each log, I took a picture of it, along with a marker of its name. The naming convention is as such: The building has two main parts, the log cabin section and the frame add-on. The former is section I and the latter is section II. All logs are I something. Log IR6 is the log six from the bottom on the right side of the building as you face it from the front. Left is L, B is back and F is front. Not too complicated.

The log above is IR6.

In my project notebook, I noted the placement of each log within my pile, and I graded them A-F. Originally, I was only going to replace the Fs, but in the end, I would choose to replace all the Ds and some of the Cs.

This is the above-mentioned IL6, one of the worst logs on the cabin, which got an "F" rating. You can see that virtually the entire middle part of the log is gone. Only the side of the log facing inward (as it sat on the cabin) is there. The rest has been gouged out by rain and time.

The log third from the bottom in the above pic has severe rot. The inner section is actually very sponge-like. This one went on my "replace" list.

The log seen above is hollow inside. Also on the replace list. Not all of these are total losses. At the doors and windows, the cabin had "short" logs, of five or six feet long. Some of these can be replaced by salvaging the good half of an otherwise bad long log. Or the cypress wood can be cut up into pieces for other parts of the house. A door handle, a trim section around the window. Whatever.

My assistant log examiners are not very helpful.

Up to now, I've been showing bad logs. Most logs were good. Here are some excellent specimens. Of the approximately 30 full-sized logs on the cabin, I decided to replace one-third.

IB2 in the notes.

IB2 on the ground.

This guy had a hollow space, but I wanted to see how far in it went, in case I can reuse part of it. The photo shows it's pretty bad.

Some of my logs got confused. I did not want to use permanent markings on the logs, so I wrote in pencil. This didn't hold up after the logs got rained on, but I was able to re-identify most logs by comparing the logs on the ground to my many photos.