Preparation for Building a Log Cabin

Getting a building permit was a crucial step in building a log cabin.
Dated May 19, 1997, this building permit for the cabin made it legal.

These are my articles on the preparation to building a log cabin from scratch. It’s the first step in this series on how to build a log cabin.

Everything from finding a place to build the log cabin, getting the permits, preparing the building site and peeling and hauling the logs is listed on this page.

There are also links to building the cabin and what I did for water, food, heat and keeping clean. I’ll take the best of what’s in the six journals I wrote while I lived there and share it with you!

Finding a place to build your log cabin. The first step in building a log cabin was finding a place to put it! I didn’t have land or the money to buy land. So, I asked a few people and I finally found someone who said that his family would let me build my cabin on their land. Here’s the story along with some pictures.

Building a log cabin articles

Building a log cabin by hand. These are my articles on how I actually built the cabin. It includes everything from the tools I used to laying the first set of logs in to putting on the roof. It only took me 5 months to build my cabin, and here’s how I did it.

baskets i made while building the cabin. cabin basket of hazelnut, spruce bark baskets.
laying up the logs

heating, uses of the wood stove, cooking, oven, cast iron pans vs. revere pans

lighting: Coleman, solar power, now I’d use LuciLights

Food storage: canning, broken fridge, corned venison, spring-house, hanging venison in winter

water: spring, roof runoff, system for getting water into cabin and interior water system

hot water system in stovepipe

keeping clean: outdoor shower, indoor shower, snow, sponge bath, creek

baking in woodstove

raccoon fat cookies

toboggan/sled for hauling stuff back to the cabin

poop and pee, tomato plants

Resources on Building a Log Cabin

A book I highly recommend is Thomas J. Elpel’s book Living Homes. I used the first edition of his book when I built my cabin.