Building a Log Cabin

Lt_Red

Lt_Red

Lt_Red

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IMAGES FINALLY FIXED - 2014 - please can a mod move this to home and garden - TA.

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January this year the missus turns around to me and tells me she is pregnant. There are a thousand and one pressing issues at this time, and one of them is "how the hell are we going to accommodate working from home and a child when we live in a tiny 2 bed". Luckily we have a large garden so we started looking into extensions. There was no way in the world we could afford it.

So we began to look for alternatives and we stumbled across the idea of a log cabin. Things went from there. Planning permission was first - usually you don't need it for cabins of less than a certain size, unless, as in our case, it would be within 2.5m of a boundary. We applied, drew drawings, bought maps of the Ordinance survey website (they wont accept googlemaps - bah) and waited.

In the mean time we speced the cabin. I sold my car and we used the funds to pay for it. We had it custom built from Keops Interlock to fit the space we had. 3m x 7m. 56mm logs and insulated floors and roof would keep it both cool in the summer and warm in the winter. The price was reasonable. Planning was approved and the build began...

First I had to sort the foundations. We are on sloping ground so that was easier said than done. I decided to do it myself - how hard can it be? I hired a mini digger and began. I used complex apparatus to set it out, 2 gaffa taped bits of 2"x2" and a 60 year old spirit level.



And after a weekend it was done. 160 quid for the digger for a weekend cant be bad, even if it was a bit banana shaped...



I decided that brickwork and copious concrete mixing was not my thing so hired in a local builder from Rated People dot com who slapped up the foundation surround...



Filled it in...



And concreted it - Bish...



Bash...



Bosh...

 
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I ran power, water, a drain and a lan cable out to the base and started relaying the patio...



Sorted



Keops sent the parts and the build team on the same day. It took them 7 hours to put it up...











 
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It was done by 1630...



I installed some rainwater buts to harvest the gutters for watering the garden...



Then had to get to the painting. The bloomin thing needs 2 coats of wood preserver in and out (about 20 litres) and 1 coat primer and two top coats externally, so I bought a sprayer to save some time... Safety First...



Preservative on...



I fixed the internal plumbing, waste and consumer unit...



And got out the sprayer to begin the external coats...

 
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Sure I'll grab some inside pics tomoz when its light and the paint has dried! There was about 6 tonnes of hardcore and 4 cubes of concrete in there. It was mixed on site.
 
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Yes my mistake it was about 3.8 cubes I think. They mixed it all in a mixer and barrowed it in. Took the builders 2 days in total over the bank holiday weekend! They were priced well too and the quality was great - square and level, despite my dodgy excavations.

It will be a utility room for our white goods and an office for me and missus (and a bolt hole). Will also have a sofa bed for the parents to sleep when they come over (you can see where I am going here ;) )

It hasn't annoyed my neighbours, I made sure they were well aware of the plans from day 1.
 
Tefal said:
how much did it cost?
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I'll let you know when its finished :o Its not over yet... I think its going to come in at about 10k, which is what I got for my car, but saying that I did not account for how much the damned paint costs etc etc.... Anyway its at most a 3rd of the price of a similar sized extension.
 
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Yep, its Kingspan insulated roof and floor, and 56mm slow grown Scandinavian pine walls. Should not need wall insulation, the thermal coefficient of the pine is top notch. We'll see in December ;)
 
Hey all, thanks for the comments, I'll try and answer some of your questions and comments.

First I tried to take some internal photos but it does not really come out well on my camera phone as its a bit dark due to the window masking and there is no sense of scale as its empty so you'll have to wait for that.

Mark A; the base colour is a clear basecoat, the final coat will be slightly pigmented - it needs to have a slight pigment to protect the cabin from UV. I cant leave it like this as it not waterproof yet. The final colour will be slightly darker, however I am not doing that today as its gonna rain tonight.

1pudding1; its impossible to give it an exact thermal rating as it varies from log to log. What I can say is this is north scandinavian pine slow grown in cold conditions so the grains are very narrow. This is important as it improves thermal efficiency drastically, some of the cheaper logs you may see in some cabins in garden centres are not made out of such good quality wood.

Nightglow; We looked at an attic conversion but we have a weird roof and there's not enough headroom up there.

cainer; yes I laid it on builders sand mixed 7:1 with cement for the reason that I had 3/4 of a tonne left over from the building materials and we intend to block pave it next year when we have the money saved, so its only sort of temporary.

The Brooder - Keops Interlock www.logcabins.co.uk. It is custom made so not a model number. In fact we looked around the local cabin suppliers and it is much better quality than anything they could offer, plus they only offer standard sizes - here i got to spec the exact size, choose the rooms and the doors/windows etc and had it manufactured. Although the off the shelf cabin would have been cheaper, I would have had to put up with the prescribed size and by the time you add insulation options and double glazing etc the Keops custom made actually worked out marginally CHEAPER, plus they came and put it up for me.

Feek and Breeze, Difference between a log cabin and a shed. A shed is made froma frame with close boarded boards. This is an interlocked log system with double tounge and groove. The image below shows the interlock I also included a pound coin on the second image to give you scale of the log size.

[EDIT]THESE ONES ARE MISSING 2014[/EDIT]

yes a few of the tongues are slightly split on the ends, nothing to worry about so long as you work in the wood preserver and paint.
 
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$loth said:
That looks very nice, certainly a lot more visually pleasing than something made from PVC.
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True, but that said I was slightly taken aback by the wood treatments needed, and they are not cheap, plus I have to re-do the top coat every 5-7 years or so. Still it looks amazing and I haven't even finished painting it yet.

Treatments are;

2 coats of clear wood preservative (Cuprinol Wood Preserver Clear) in and out - About 25 litres at 39.99 per 5 litres
1 Coat of Base coat (Sadolin Ultra Base Coat) 7 litres at almost 60 quid per 5 litres
2 Coats of Waterproofer with pigment (Sadolin Ultra Highly Translucent Woodstain, Light Pine) - 15 litres at (Gulp) 90 sheets per 5 litres eeek!
 
G|mp said:
I've got to say the price of all the treatments has put me off!
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Heh I can understand that, I had not budgeted enough money or time to sort it out, but this is the first treatment to untreated timber - this is a one off and MUST be done properly the first time so I had to suck it up.

There's an inordinate amount of labour to get all that paint on also, I would hate to have to brush it on. As it is I am spraying then over brushing to work it in which has saved a lot of time and back/wrist ache.

Maintenance will be 5-6 litres of the top coat every 5-7 years, about 100 quid, and about 2 hours work with the sprayer.
 
Finished the first of the top coats. This Sadolin Ultra Top Coat is a nightmare, it really does not take very well. I can see why it needs two coats.

Here's a comp of the progress. Right to left, Bare wood, Preservative, base coat, top coat 1.

[this one is missing]

1 more coat to go!
 
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Today I have installed some door latches, finished the internal preservative coats and ordered some oak effect laminate flooring for the office space which I'll be installing over the weekend.

The utility area floor will be laid with another dpc to the top of the skirting board and tiled in anthracite 300x300mm tiles. Bloody hate tiling - meh.

Finally get a delivery of the final 5 litres of topcoat tomorrow, although by the looks of the weather reports I wont have a chance to put it on until mid July. 2 weeks of rain? Really Accuweather?

Oh well at least its waterproof now...
 
Shotgun_ned said:
Looks great :). What sort of security are you installing for it though? (And no, I'm not casing the place out for a future burglary...)
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Its all multi point locking doors in this, there'll be a few security lights and maybe an internal trigger point crossbow pointed at the door just to be sure. May need some advice from arekgreenman888 on this one though...

Can't prevent anyone breaking a window though, that's what insurance is for, and a large bat if I happen to be in at the time...
 
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The topcoat is out of stock. Meh. Have to wait 'till next week now. So instead I solved a pressing issue;

Turns out the build crew broke the Ethernet cable that I had carefully laid into the cabin concrete floor. So today I had to re-lay it. It goes from the router in the bedroom, up into the loft, out of the soffit board, along under the soffit, down the external wall, into a 34mm poly pipe, under the patio (yes I had to tear it up again and relay it), down the side of the cabin and into the office through the log wall. Took bloomin ages, but now have 40MB down and 5MB up in "the shed". Thank the maker for BT Infinity.
 
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This weekend I'ave mostly been tiling the utility room floor, and laying the laminate floor in the office. Looks pretty good.

Really struggling trying to find a sparky here - the first one is ignoring me, the second one was not interested, and the third cannot do anything for 2 weeks.

Also had a major issue with the rainwater harvesting, having drastically underestimated the amount of water the roof collects. Added another 2 no. 200 litre water buts - which filled up within a day - that's 800 litres I have out there now, and its almost full. So I installed an overflow pipe which I think at some point I will connect to a hose pipe with holes in it to water the garden under the cedar tree...
 
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True, if you check the log images on the page 2 you'll see that all the logs are cut from the centre of the tree and the grains are very close. This is proper wood :)
 
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