It took a family and friends to build the memories, and it took the same to rebuild. Schematics drawn by my uncle Pat, who built his house across the pond over the span of fifteen years by hand, outlined the blueprints. We kept the structure on the original footing locations, although the size of the new build would be increased by 30% of the original cabin size, which was the maximum allowed by the code enforcement agency.
My uncle Josh is a framer in Michigan and brought my cousin Zach, who recently took up the profession from being a head chef at a barbecue joint in the Colorado mountains. They drove their camper out here for the two week sprint. My cousin Trevor is a beast who just graduated from Michigan State with a Finance / Accounting degree and flew out for the adventure as well. My brother, Adam, is a tech recruiter and pilot who also would be put in the category with Trevor and I as the laborers.
The first few days SUCKED as we loaded up the barge with materials and pushed it with the pontoon boat. It took three days of muscle to float it all across the half mile or so to the island. Rain or shine, it had to be done.
As we placed each piece of wood down from the barge, we knew it would have to be picked up again eventually, then cut, and finally nailed or screwed into place. Once the majority of the lumber was over and when the pros (Josh and Zach) arrived, we got to work building. Using the house foundation cement cylinders, the footings of the house were carefully attached with fittings and casings to the concrete.
Pressure treated 2x12 boards were laid across the base as inch-thick plywood AdvanTech boards were cut and nailed into place.
Board by board, we lugged it over to its resting spot, aligned the tooth to the groove of the connecting board, slapped some wood glue down on the beams below to ensure no creaky floor boards, then secured it with some metal.
To make things more complicated, all the 2x4 wall studs were sent to us as 92 and 1/4 inches, so we had to cut all of them (probably ~500) to 81 inches. In order to do this, we used a circular skillsaw and fine measurements with a tape measure and a square, which is confusing because it’s actually the shape of a triangle. Marking a right angle, a pencil mark indicated the desired cut path. The pencils would often be lost under the lumber and the faint pencil marks on the wood when cutting would also disappear under the sawdust. As the days went on, the lines got darker and vision to the blade meeting the line started to feel more clear.
Working smarter not harder, we developed a method to cut twenty or so at a time by lining them all up, marking, then one long and steady cut across all the planks. There was no way we were going to exchange all of them for the right size, so we made do with what we had delivered to us.
During this time, Zach had a killer playlist of country and yacht rock to keep us energized. We’d usually start at 7am and would work until around 7pm. Lunch breaks were filled with recaps, banter, and swapping themed stories about random life experiences. The one rule we had was no drinking or smoking pot until the power tools were down and the site was tidied up at night.
The walls went together like an IKEA furniture set. Josh marked each stud out, 16 inches between each stud, and where there were walls and windows of varying heights, he’d yell out a cut list of wood sizes and measurements for Trevor, Adam, or myself to cut. I would just write them down on the piece of wood and those lists will be on some of the interior studs for the rest of their life. Once the cuts were made, we knew exactly where to put them because of the marking method Josh implemented. The letter “K” represented a king, which was the 81” wall stud, and a “J” was for a window height or door frame cut.
With no heavy machinery, the walls were all lifted by us, with braces attached vertically to the outer floor to ensure the wall wouldn’t slide off the other side. The walls were leveled and marked by a chalk line to ensure everything was aligned.
A similar method was used for the interior walls, but there was no need for the ZIP boards on the interior. By the time the first floor was finished, I felt like I had finally gotten a grasp of the saw and nail gun. There was an afternoon I missed my shots with the nail gun and spent the afternoon pulling nails. This was like hazing on a construction site and ever since then, I made sure to think twice about where I’m putting a nail in.
My girlfriend Jordan and my mom were super helpful not only preparing meals for us but also taping the exterior walls and shooting foam into the seams between the windows and walls. It was nice to tape when the walls weren’t up yet, but there were some instances where Trevor and I had to scale around 30 feet up a ladder to finish the tape job.
Not only were these long hours, but the days were 95 degrees with unescapable heat in the afternoon hours. We all got quite a nice burn tan going.
When it came time for the trusses for the roof, our hands were callused but the morale was high! We floated the trusses in from the other side of the pond because they were too wide to be taken down the dirt road to the landing, so we used the public dock. It took about an hour for the float to arrive back at the island and the entire time we were fighting off black flies and spiders. We kept count of the insect kills and probably averaged 20 each.
Once the trusses were over, we tied a rope to the arch as two people hoisted from the top floor, over the second story walls, and onto the ceiling. The only injury I sustained was a sprained ankle jumping to throw the rope up through the roof from the ground below. To get over the corner, we had two people with 2x4s prying them up to get an angle for the pullers. This was a sketchy part of the job. Then once they were all up, one by one they were set into position and fastened with a support on both sides.
Walking across a four inch board was a task for the experienced, and everyone but me had the balance. I would be the fetcher of dropped screws and board carrier during the truss mounting phase. The second awful task was lifting two 20 foot beams that would span to the roof through both the top and bottom deck. That required a 2x4 plank to be used as an x and y-axis holder as two other guys lifted it vertically. Josh used a 22 caliber nail gun to secure those into the foundation. The first lift could’ve ended real badly after a failed attempt without the axis holders came timbering downwards.
By the time the roof was complete, my uncle and cousin’s job here was done. Two weeks of hard MANual labor and lots of laughs, as we would exchange “Buildin’ a House” to each other to break the exhaust and catch a chuckle out of each other.
Thanks for tuning into part three of the Maine Island Cabin Rebuild! For videos and behind the scenes footage, check out @maine_island_cabin_rebuild on Instagram!
