Entry One

I'm posting here on a social network site tho am through with internet socializing. It hasnt ever worked out. But i need a blog site to tell this on going story on houseblogs.net swo here 't is.

This is the story of 2 old log cabins bought cheap in 2004--- a total impulse purchase. I AM FINALLY LIVING IN THE SMALLER ONE. That's a long story.

Tthe little houses where part of the Minnehaha arts colony here that existed thru the 1930's to the early fifies. It was held together buy the vision and work of a lady named Evelyn Haynes- about whom i know little except i found a box of her canceled checks in the attic of the bigger cabin and i know she pretty much held the colony together. It didn't really survive her passing, but is amazingly intact: i believe there still stand about 24 of the original one room colony cabins on his mountain.

I am in one of them now- its a 13' square room of southern yellow pine logs built with no bath or real kitchen and only a loft for a bed room. The other cabin (which i think was a least a summer home for Ms. Haynes is a 1750 Kentucky style one and a half story structure built of chestnut and moved here from the neighboring mountain Bear Waller when the colony was realLy swinging in the mid to late 1930's.

So this is a story of creation, recreation, restoration and research. Like any home building story its a story of hopes and dreams- both realized and revised.....and a story of shameless greed and thievery as well. I hope at the least it will serve as a resource for others in this area shopping for contractors or tackling the work themselves. As my legal disclaimer: the names of of people and products i'll name freely speak solely to my personal experiences here and my living in he midst of their work. When i tell you about the guy who truly left no corner uncut here- its just what I see in my house- i don know about the rest of his jobs. I'll close this first entry with plug for the National Parks Services fine series of Preservation Briefs:

Preservation Brief Number 26: The Preservation and Repair of Historic Log Buildings
http://www.nps.gov/history/HPS/TPS/briefs/brief26.htm