Part III: Removing the south section

November, 2008

The next task is to disassemble and remove the southern section, that of frame-and-board, from the house.

The idea of this project has alwasy been to rebuild the house as close as possible to the original. This may be difficult to achieve, because so much of it is rotten, termite-eaten or otherwise damaged. Nonetheless, each piece that comes off the building (excluding shingles and other small bits) is meticulously numbered for future assembly. Where the pieces are too damaged to re-use, they can nonetheless serve as patterns for their replacement.

Boards which cannot be used in their original location, but which may nonetheless be useful, will be incorporated in interior walls. For example, most of the exterior boards are heavily damaged by sun, rain, wind and time. However, these same boards when flipped over, look very well, as the damage is only superficial. Such boards can therefore be recycled for interior use, with their good sides showing, and their clones made from their exact dimensions can form exterior walls.


The reason I want to be so meticulous is shown by this combination of boards:



The board leaning on the tailgate of my pickup above is one of the interior posts. It is slotted, and a notch carved in the horizontal beam that went above a doorway. Such things would have allowed a building to be constructed with few - or in case of the log portion - no nails at all.



The boards are numbed in pencil according to a pre-arranged shceme. The log section of the house is I and the board section is II. The center breezeway (only a roof section) is III. Each vertical wall is given a letter, F, B, L, R or M for front, back, left, right and middle. Thus, the back wall of the board section of the house is IIB, and its individual boards are sketched and labled, IIB1, IIB2, IIB3, etc. If a board splits when taken down, both halves are marked as IIB1a and IIB1b.

Each board is taken down, numbered, its nails are removed, and it is placed on my truck for transport to the barn and storage.





Some pieces are taken down in units. This is IIBD, the back door on building II. Almost indistinguishable as a door without its hinges.

Removal of back side:


The removal of the back side of building II began even before the roof was off. The boards were nailed on, and there was also a strip of tin buried in the ground at the bottom which held them in. This was probably designed to prevent animals from digging underneath the house.

IIB - the back wall of building II is removed except for the frame, which is kept for structural purposes.

The next part is the wall between II and the breezeway, III. This is IIL, as viewed from the front of the house:

Mostly down:

In the picture above, you're looking at IIL from the breezeway. The II section's front roof overhang was enclosed at some point, forming a small third room, in addition to the main rooms in buildings I and II. This I refer to as IIB, for bathroom, which is what I plan to use it for ultimately. The door to IIB, which you see hanging at an angle, is held on by improvised hinges - straps from what appears to have been a belt or tack leather.


The room known as IIB led to some interesting finds, including this board above. The wood strips covering up the lettering were used to cover up the gaps between the boards, prevent wind and insects from getting in, and keeping the boards from warping unevenly. This indicated that this wall - an interior one - was once an exterior one. This confirms that IIB was an enclosure later added, not a room from the beginning.

The writing on the board says: "Use Moore and Co's No. I Shingles." It is an advertisement which may have been on a packing crate, the side of a wagon or some other place. This is obviously referring to No. 1 (a quality designation still used) roofing shingles, and it is quite likely that the shingles I had removed a few weeks before were from this company. Moore and Co. could have been a local company in Medina County, or San Antonio. Alternatively, there is still a Moore and Co. in existence that primarily sells paint.

Most intriguingly, it could have been a company out of East Texas:

http://libweb.sfasu.edu/proser/etrc/collections/forest/lutchermoore/

If I can verify that this wood comes from that company, I can date the age of the board building II as post 1877.

The wood on this wall is cypress and the entire interior wall is made of it. This wall was held up with square nails, although it appears the other walls of building II were replaced, as the boards there were nailed down with round nails. However, the structural supports had clinched square nails on them, indicating that boards had been replaced. It is likely that the boards exposed to the weather were replaced, but this one interior wall was original.

Next we move on to the South or right wall. This is an exterior wall making up the edge of the entire building:

Once the roof was removed - see Part II - this wall could come down:

My photographic record is limited here as I had left my camera in Austin that weekend. But I got a few more pictures with my cell phone. Here is II with all of the walls but the cypress-built interior wall IIM removed.

Here's another angle.

Building II is now completely down. My brother and I removed this wall and after I returned to Austin after Christmas, my brother pulled up the floor boards. This is the status of the house on Jan. 1, 2009.

Part IV - Removal of the Roof

December, 2008

The next goal in my project is removal of the roof section over the last remaining part of the structure - the log cabin. Again with help from Brother Ray, I pulled off the last few shingles and began taking off the cedar planks beneath them.

The planks were cut at a very rough mill, likely a water-powered one in the area. Circular saw blade marks are visible all over the boards. They are made of cyprus, the same as the logs of the house, and though there is lots of visible damage from boring insects, most of the boards are in good shape.

A few boards already off of the top of the house.

More boards removed





Now removing boards from the front of the cabin.

The boards had to be removed carefully to avoid collapse. After all, I'm sitting on it for most of this process. I removed the top boards from the back side, down to the middle boards, then came back to the front side. In leaving some boards on the back, I provided extra support on the rafter frames, which would only be more precarious as each board was removed.

Finally, I removed all of the boards. The process was slowed by my efforts to remove as many nails as possible from the boards. In the process of taking off the shingles, many small nails were left exposed. In addition to tearing up my jeans, these nails were a nuissance that needed to be removed ultimately before the boards are re-used.

Ray prying off the last remaining roof boards.

The removal of the lateral roof boards left only the rafters in place. The 2x4 boards you see in the picture above are the roof rafters and also the awning boards, which lay atop the roof rafters and stick out to cover the awning where the old wagon was stored.

These were very easy to remove. The awning boards came off first and then the rafter boards were left. Generally, these were cut to fit onto the square top log, and held on each side with a single, very large square nail, which I refered to as a "Jesus Nail."

The rafter boards removed, with the large "Jesus Nails"

As each board was pried loose on one side by me and on the other side by my brother Ray, the rafters just leaned over until they flopped down into the structure and swung like a pendulum. We then let them fall or eased them off the building and took them apart on the ground. The removal of the rafters, after the lengthy, three-hour process to remove the roof boards, was only about 30 minutes.

The house free of its roof.

One of the very last shingles removed - which would have been among the very first to be put up - was this one, which features a branded imprint from the manufacturer.

Part V - Wagon and Cart

January, 2009

When I first discovered the old house, I found, to my surprise, an old wooden wagon parked underneath its awning. Shielded from the rain, it was in rather amazing condition. With wooden sides and iron wheels, it likely dates to the late 1800s.



The wife of the landowner said that the old woman from whom they bought the place told of picking corn and throwing it into the wagon, which was pulled by horses down the rows as they harvested. Indeed, it was never designed for human riding - it has no seat, for instance - but it could clearly be adapted if the case arose. Generally, however, the team of horses was probably led by a man walking beside them.

The wagon was not part of the original deal for the house, but over the months as I worked on the house, I progressively bargained with the landowner. You could tell he didn't want to part with it easily, but on the other hand, he didn't have the time or interest to take care of it. With the house that had been shielding it gone, the wagon looked doomed to sit in the field, exposed to the weather.

Finally, he let me buy the wagon.

There was also a small cart at the site. It looks like a standard wagon frame that was retroactively mounted to what was probably an old Model T axle. I tossed in a bit extra on my wagon offer and got the cart too.

The wagon, loaded up on the trailer, ready to haul off to its new home (our barn, for now, where it will be safely out of the weather). The wagon actually rolls surprisingly well. There's a bit of a sensation of metal grinding on metal, but two people can push it fairly easily. To get it onto the trailer, we backed up to a small rise, then rolled the wagon to the edge. Two people, myself and the wagon's former owner, were able to lift the wagon just enough to get the back wheels onto the trailer. Then we rolled it forward and got the front wheels up.

The small cart, still sitting next to the last section of the house. The cart, unlike the wagon, had no wheels. It had an axle and a housing for some wheels, but unlike the 1800s wagon wheels, the early 20th Century axle on this cart had bearings, and they were frozen completely. Even if we had had some wheels, it would not have rolled. So we tied a chain around it and lifted it with the tractor.

The wagon being loaded onto the trailer. We placed it on the back right behind the wagon.

What am I going to do with these relics? Good question. I'm not entirely sure, but the ideas I've kicked around for the wagon would be a hay ride for the kids, perhaps. Or something like that. It was designed to be pulled by two horses, and I may have horses some day, but right now, I think a good four-wheeler could pull it. If it's empty, I bet I could tow it with our lawn mower. Although the tractor above belonged to the landowner, we have one almost identical to it. Perhaps I can use it.

The cart is a different story, since it won't roll. I may remove the old retrofit axle and turn it into a table or something. Another idea was to use it as a bed frame in the new house. It would probably fit a twin mattress very well.

I'll figure that one out later.

Part VI - Disassembling The Log Portion

February, 2009

With the board section of the cabin done and the wagon removed, we then moved on to the original log cabin itself. This was a one-room structure that probably sufficed for the settlers for the first winter or so before they likely built the adjacent stone house. Here it is as we start to remove the roof boards:


With the roof gone, the exposed rafters are revealed. We removed these, and like all the parts of the house, they were catalogued and placed in the back of my truck for storage to the barn on the farm. Here is Ray working on taking out the very large square nails that held them in:

Now, a roofless cabin:

Now we come to the fun part: Removing the logs. Sounds simple, right? Actually, it was. We brought in a tractor with a bucket (conveniently, we have one of these on the disassembly site and the reassembly site). We then drove the tractor up and two men would lift the log into the bucket. The tractor would then back up, pivot, and drop the log onto a waiting flat-bed trailer.

The very top logs had wooden pegs (hand-cut), which were run through holes that went all the way through the log below, and into the third log from the top.:

We then moved from front to back, side to side, removing logs as we went. As each of the logs arrived in the trailer, I received them, rolled them into position, and marked off their number in my "log" book. :)

This actually was taking very little time at all. Total disassembly (working against a deadline imposed by the landowner) was only about 3 hours. As we worked, the cabin became smaller and smaller:

And the piles on the two flatbed trailers we had assembled grew bigger and bigger:

Loading a log onto the trailer:

One of the last logs left:

Finally, it was done, and after five months of work (on and off), the cabin was now gone. The land on which it had stood for 160 years was now empty. History had been, it seems, erased from this place. And yet, if all goes according to plan, it will return in a new form. Reborn in a new place.

Part VII - Bringing the logs to the site

February, 2009

After disassembling the cabin, we got our caravan of two trailers and three pickups and headed out to the farm, eight miles away. We unloaded the logs right next to the site where the cabin is to be constructed.

The site of the cabin above. You can almost make out the orange marker flags I've got set down. The piled up dirt is roughly in the position where the log portion of the cabin will be placed. The two sand pits are for horseshoes, which will be displaced.

This is looking to the East, and the cabin will face to the North. A discriminating eye will notice that the cabin, when rebuilt, will be flip-flopped. The log section (Sec. 1) will be on the right, as you look at the cabin, and the board section (Sec. 2) will be on the left. This is a reverse of the way it was originally built. This is done for a number of reasons, primarily aesthetics. What this means is that certain liberties must be taken with the final floorplan. Essentially the left and right walls will be swapped out, so that the door remains to the inside of the cabin's dog run.




My logs, arranged in several piles at the construction site.

These are the "short logs." These were arranged around doors and windows, and are only notched on one side. In the middle, at the door or window, they simply hang in the air. The builders made hand-carved wooden pins, which were inserted into hand-cut holes on top and bottom of each log, to allow them to be joined to the logs around them and not move.

Above is a typical notch. These were done, of course, with axe and adz.

This is one of the hand-cut holes, likely bored out with some sort of hand drill. The pegs fit in them very snugly. All were in excellent shape, except one, which broke when removed.

Here is an example of a peg. This one is actually within a notch. This was done on the two top logs of the entire structure, as you can see on the previous post.

The original cabin was built on top of a series of large stones, some weighing about 200 lbs. This was a substitute for a foundation. I moved all of the original stones to my rebuild site Trust me, lifting a stone that big onto your truck by yourself is not fun. The smaller ones - 100-160 lbs. I could lift. The bigger ones, I had to improvise. I built several steps out of the lighter stones, and walked the heavy stones up that. Then I just picked up the lighter stones. And by lighter, I mean, I could still lift them, even though it was immensely painful.

These stones, however, were not moved to the rebuild site just for decoration, for the new foundation will incorporate them into it, allowing them to keep their important connection to the cabin. But more on that next time.

The view from my soon-to-be front porch, complete with our family home, oak trees and swimming pool:

Part VIII - Pouring the Footer

March, 2009

Because the cabin is built in two sections – one with very heavy cypress logs and the other with much lighter frame construction – I’m treating the foundations of the two separately.

The frame section will be something simple – likely pier and beam – and the log section will be concrete. This is particularly important in getting the logs off the ground to prevent rotting. In the old cabin, the logs were sitting on top of large stones that were likely dragged up from the creek. But these soon sank into the dirt and the very bottom log on the back side was thus lowered to the ground, allowing it to rot away to almost nothing.

This is what produced the decided lean in the cabin seen here:


So the decision was made to pour a foundation. Because 100 percent of the weight will be on the outside wall, it was not necessary to pour a solid square foundation. Instead, I decided, upon the consultation with senior foreman Ray, to pour a footer instead.

Above is the prepared footer site, ready for the concrete. Notice the stones. These are the original foundation stones on which the cabin was sitting. I transported them at great expense of sweat (I put them on the truck by myself) to the new site, and tossed them into the shallow trench I dug for my footer.

We then built the frame to exact dimensions and added rebar, which in some cases is actual rebar, and in others is various scrap iron we found around the farm. Note the very long iron pipes. This gives a little extra stability across the length of each side. We only had three pipes available, so I pulled out the old metal detector, located an old water line (which we long since replaced with PVC), and dug up an intact and very strong old metal pipe, which it turns out was just the perfect length.

We do have a concrete mixer on the farm, but it’s an old one that is operated by a long belt attached to a 1940s John Deer Tractor. We no longer have the tractor (I should have chained myself to it when dad decided to sell it), nor do we have a belt, so it’s next to useless now.

However, we do have a bucket on the new John Deer Tractor, and in fact, that worked even better. We mixed the concrete in the bucket, and then delivered it precisely where we needed it to go. Some sloshed over our forms, but most of it made it in.

This gives us our footer, which will support the weight of the cabin and which will also raise its height enough off the ground to allow for a deck to be built in the breezeway and on the front, where the “porch” of sorts used to have a dirt floor.

This is the footer mostly complete: