Joe's Cabin

The Story of Joe’s Cabin
I’d always wanted to own a log house that I had built myself. At one time I had a list of 15 old log houses. I wanted to buy one, disassemble it and move it to my property and reassemble it. One house on my list was built by Cherokee Indians. A freed slave married an Indian girl and her tribe helped them build the log cabin. I couldn’t get the $1,500.00 to buy this cabin, but a friend of mine bought it and his daughter lives in it now. One log building that I tried to buy was built by my Grandma Whitmire’s daddy (my great grandpa). It was a hewed-out log barn but the owners wouldn’t sell it to me. I let all these log cabins go because I either couldn’t afford them, someone else had bought them, or they were torn down or burnt before I could contact the owners.

For a while I just kinda put this dream on a back burner, then one day Ralph Perry called me to unload a load of logs for a cabin he was building. This started a friendship with him and I’ve asked him a lot of questions about cabins he has built through the years. He told me how he would go to a sawmill, pick out logs, and saw them to 6” wide to build a cabin. Well, I got good logs off some of my land clearing jobs so I started saving these logs. I figured it would take about 50 of these logs to build a cabin.

I was going to hew out my logs by using a chain saw and ax. I thought if great-grandpa could hew out logs with a broad ax that I could do it with a chain saw. I had a jig built that bolted to the saw bar that would allow you to saw a log to 6 inches wide. Then I would take an ax to hew and shape the log. Well, I did eleven logs this way. It took me a long time and I thought I was going to die from all this hard work!! I figured these old timers were tougher than me so I gave up on this idea but I put the eleven logs that I’d hewed into my cabin walls.

I found a guy, Mickey Swingler, who had a portable sawmill so I hired him to bring it to my land to saw the logs. We were able to saw logs 6” wide with this sawmill. I also got some nice 1” boards, 20” wide which I used in the floor and the roof. We started sawing the first logs August 21, 2004. I stacked them and let them dry about 8 months before starting the cabin. It took over 2 years to get the cabin ‘in the dry’ so the logs were pretty cured and looking aged by then.

I decided to build a full basement under the cabin so that I would have a workshop. I built the basement 20’x24’. I started notching the logs saddle-cut style, and putting them in place by using a pry bar, my back, and my arms. By the time I had the logs waist-high my strength for manual labor was almost gone. Besides being tired, my bobcat wouldn’t reach over the basement to place logs on the cabin floor. I was doing all this alone and I was getting discouraged and ready to quit. But, again I ran into my friend, Ralph Perry, that I mentioned earlier and told him my problems. One day Ralph and his son, Scotty, showed up at my property with a boom truck and a home-made lift that he had built himself. They stacked 25 logs on the cabin floor with the boom truck. Several days later I notched the logs and put them onto the lift, winched to the height needed and rolled the log into place with a winch-down motion to set each log.

I was praising the Lord. This helped so much laborwise that it was as if I had two people helping. There were times before I had this lift that I would work all day and maybe only have two or three logs in place. The lift made work easier though it was still the hardest work I have ever done in my life! I was starting to make a showing -- it was looking like a cabin. I would lay in bed at night with back, arm, and leg cramps so bad I would almost cry but everything I was doing made it look more and more like a log cabin.

When I needed more logs sawed I hired Red Davis. He brought a band saw and we sawed 25 more 6” wide logs to finish the cabin. The walls slowly made it to 8ft – 9ft – 10ft – I wanted to go two logs higher but the lift was starting to sway so much that I was afraid it would fall and I would get hurt since I was still working alone, so I stopped two logs lower than I wanted. I had one log left when the walls were complete so I made two benches out of it.

Finally, on October 29, 2005 I had cut poles for the roof and my brother, Donnie, helped me set the poles and put boards on the roof. I was so excited! I really did think at night, while cramping, that it would kill me before I saw the roof complete.

Then time to start chinking: I put ¼“ rabbit wire on the outside between the logs to hold the insulation on the inside. Since cement shrinks when dry it would have fallen out without the rabbit wire. I hired Waymon Gillespie to install the insulation. Cementing was a very slow process so I hired Benjamin Moses (Carol’s nephew) and Bobby Cox to help. Later, I hired Tim Anderson and his crew of masons to do most of the chinking. Tim’s uncle Gary Dale Anderson and crew laid the block for the basement.

After the cabin was almost complete I decided to try to build some furniture so my helper, Tommy James, and I built a log bed to put in the loft bedroom of the cabin.

On April 1, 2006 I decided to have an Appreciation Fish Fry Dinner for friends and family to dedicate the cabin to the Lord. The Rev. Richard Burgess lead the dedication service, Bobby Trotter and Roger Breazeale came and cooked the fish and over 100 people came. Robert Perry, Ralph’s brother, brought his “1935 Dodge Brothers Truck”. We had 3 or 4 bluegrass groups to sing and everyone seemed to have a great time! Every Friday night for the last 2½ years there has been a jamming at my cabin. People from everywhere bring guitars, banjoes, fiddles, etc. and we jam and have a great time!

As of now, almost 3 years after our first dinner, I’m building a kitchen onto the cabin. I have the 8’ log walls finished and the poles cut for the roof. Tommy James is helping me with this project. I am also putting rock on the outside of the basement and the underpinning under the new kitchen.

Doug Cassell sawed some logs for the kitchen and I bought a band saw sawmill and I’ve sawed some of the logs myself. The Lord has really blessed. I never knew, how many friends and family would come by the cabin and how much enjoyment we would have meeting here.

---Joe