The 2001 Wall-Boarding Project

Every year we try to do another project out at the cabin. In the winter of 2000/2001 we decided it was time to insulate the cabin walls. Huddling around the wood stove is OK if you don't have anything else to do, but it is kind of restrictive. So it seemed time to seriously consider getting insulation onto the bare walls.

And that leads to considerations of what to put over the insulation.

After thinking about various paneling options, we decided on 6" wide white-pine boards as the wall covering we wanted. Then we found a way to trim the boards at 45-degrees and decided that we could put the wallboards up on a diagonal. These photos show the wood strips, some 8', some 10', some 12' long, all stored throughout the cabin ... outside the back door, on the front porch, and inside, respectively.



Note that you can see some insulation in place on one wall and some of the wall boards already in place on the end wall in this "inside" shot.



It took over 2 weeks of full time on-site work to get the insulation installed, the wood strips cut and everything nailed properly in place.


This is the big wall in the open main room area.

And this looks into the kitchen end under the loft.


You can see that we had a cut off saw available. We also used an air compressor to drive a brad nailing gun. Over 3000 nails were used. The job couldn't have been done without those tools. But it did require the running of the little generator under the cabin almost continuously every day during construction.


Joyce managed to spend a few days helping. She enjoyed the automated nailing, but her biggest contribution was to apply a polyacrylic finish to the light colored wall boards.


Well, lets scan around and see how this all came out:


Here we have the stove end of the cabin in the big open area:

And over here is the door to the tool room/bathroom area:



(You can see this little room was finished with horizontal strips)




Looking at the front wall (river side):

And here we finish our tour with the kitchen area



The cabin walls are now insulated! We think the wintertime wood heat will now make the whole cabin more comfortable. We still have quite a bit of door and window moldings to put up. So the saw remains set up ready for more 45-degree cuts. We anticipate a little more time out there this summer to finish that particular inside job.


And who knows. Next year I might glance upward at the exposed rafters and the uninsulated roof boards!

.... to be continued .....


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