Folklore and Footprint

I've been thinking about how the cabin we are building is right next door to the cabin that my grandpa built in 1960. RIGHT next door.  The lots are only 50 feet wide on the lake so your neighbors are close...good for us on the southern border (my parents).  Jury is out on the other side (but please note, that's where the drunk, couch-befouling stranger originated).

Anyway, there are lots of family legends about the construction of Grandpa's cabin more than 50 years ago like:

• The land was a swamp when they bought it.  Grandma spent a summer with her sons (my Dad being one of them) clearing out the small trees and brush with a machete while my Grandpa worked in a GM shop.  She proudly recalls she was never more physically fit than she was at the end of that summer.  Following the clearing, trucks and trucks and trucks of fill dirt were brought in to make the ground higher than the water table. 
• The "plans" for Grandpa's cabin came from a great uncle's visit to a Boy Scout camp where he drew a building he saw there by hand.  I imagine a few nights over cups of coffee as my Grandpa and a few great uncles (the young men of that generation in the 60s) stayed up sketching things out, dreaming, arguing, and planning, and then promptly getting started based on what they had drawn themselves with pen and ruler.  
• The water used to mix the concrete to pour the slab foundation by hand came from a hole they dug in the ground. 
• While Grandpa was at work and kids at school in the middle a week, the half-built cabin was hit by a tornado.  Finding it leaning and twisted, grandpa winched and jacked it back to center the best he could and propped it up from the inside with plywood and continued building.  For at least 40 years the center support wall was very obviously crooked, at least until my Dad bought the place, moved in, and fixed it. 
• The exterior was wrapped in burlap instead of siding for several years.  Apparently, another great uncle worked for a carpet dealership where delivered carpets came in big rolls covered with a water resistant burlap that got thrown away.  My grandpa asked for the burlap to be saved for the cabin -- as weather proofing and insulation. From what I understand, the names of the carpet companies were printed in huge letters all over the house.  Thinking about that story makes me happy that wanting to do things 2nd hand and "green" runs in the family (though certainly "frugal" would have been used instead of the term "green" back then).
• Grandpa's cabin had an outhouse until at least the late 70s...and the outhouse had 2 seats in it (no reports of 2 people actually using it at the same time)

These old stories, always continually reworked into various lakeside conversations, have never meant more to me than now - as we think and plan for our own build.  Here is a picture of Grandpa's cabin in 1962:

To my family reading this, my apologies...sort of...if I got any of the stories wrong.  However,  I do think there is some value and interest in what I think the story is...a sort of 50-year-long game of "telephone".

Thinking about my Grandpa's build makes me more sure that we can do it too.  We have actual blue prints, and plan to have professionals do the foundation.   We have time... my Grandpa built his cabin when he was working full time all year with young kids.  We have young kids, but my husband has summers off and both our fathers are retired (and are basically our building "ringers"), so there is likely to be more hands around for longer than back then. We have the Internet to use for research and advice.  The surrounding infrastructure is better than it was back then .... Grandpa had to haul his materials from far away towns with no interstate and on at least 20 miles of dirt road....including spring wash outs that made the byways completely impassable.

So, I will take a moment and say thanks to my Grandpa for showing me that it can be done, in less desirable conditions with the same amount of tenacity and will, spurred on by similar visions of kids and grand kids enjoying the fruits of our labor.  Thinking about all of this makes me remember him, in the twilight of his years, his calm smile looking back at me and my cousins being drug around the lake on skis or tubes or home-made surfboards for as long as we had gas in the boat.  I never thought of it before, but I think he might have been thinking about all the work and dreaming and planning -- of taking a swamp and turning it into his definition of paradise -- resulting in moments of joy and indelible memories with his grand kids.

Progress
Early this past week, my husband and I spent a few hours talking about the "footprint" of our place.  The key questions is ... "do we have to take down the massive trees in order to build?"  The cottonwood trees, as I have said, are huge.  The main trunks are the size of a dining room table, and branches 3 and 4 sections up are the size of large trees themselves.

Not only will they be very expensive to have them removed (no way could we do that ourselves), they are so impressive and majestic, it just seems a shame to do it.  When on the lake, the silhouettes of these trees against twilight skies guide us home because they are the tallest of any around them.  They have been used recently as perches for bald eagles, who drop half-eaten fish at their bases (one almost hit my husband once and he thought for a second that he was in a fish fight). On the other hand, the trees have been the source anxiety for my hearing-sensitive-music-teacher-husband who often claims "the trees are screaming at me!".  Yes, the trees are so huge and sprawling that the blowing leaves can be deafening on the many windy lake days. 

BUT, good news is (for all but my husband's hearing), we think we can build and save the trees.  Our late-night planning included a full scale drawing of the property (1/4 inch = 1 foot) with the location of the trees in mind.   While we still  have to find out exactly how far off the property line we need to be and the specifics about where the septic has to go in relation to everything, based on what we know and what we can reasonably estimate, here is our "footprint" plan (the visual is greatly aided by our kid's craft paper and markers):

The footprint plan...Circles are the trees

The garage is optional in the short term and the subject of hot debate, but the prevailing wisdom is we should spend our time and limited funds on things that will result in a finished house and a new mortgage as quickly as possible.  A spacious garage is definitely a must for the future, so we are trying to plan for it now by making space on the lot and modifying the floor plan.

The goal for this week is to talk to someone at the township about building codes and get the ball rolling on quotes for the foundation.

Thanks for reading.
Sarah