A few thoughts… About a house’s history

By Sandy Compton
Reader Columnist

About 25 years ago, I decided to remodel the house in which I spent much of my youth. When I entered the eighth grade, we moved to a more conventional house in a nearby town, but “The Cabin” stayed in our lives as our ancestral home in the country. 

It is assembled of disparate parts, the first of which was a 12-by-14-foot log cabin built by my maternal grandfather with pole rafters, a hand-split shake roof, a window in each wall and a door. It had a loft with a window at each end, accessed by a ladder. It and a twin were built in the 1920s on a bench near where “our” creek runs into the river, next to the county road in hopes that tourists would rent them. The tourists, deterred by the Great Depression never showed. 

A highway replaced the county road in the 1930s, and the cabins were there, but tourists still didn’t come. World War II continued to keep them at bay. After that, tourists wanted more than the basics the cabins had to offer. 

They were stout and endured with minimal maintenance, and when Washington Water Power began to build a dam that would flood that bench and the lower half mile of the creek beside it, Grandpa prevailed upon WWP to move the cabins to higher ground. One of them was settled on the south side of the next new highway, necessitated (maybe) by the building of the dam, and that became the seed from which The Cabin grew. 

My parents were married the year before construction on the dam began. In response to my mother’s attachment to her childhood home and the arrival of my brother and me in relatively short order, they acquired the cabin south of the highway and a goodly chunk of land to go with it. 

With the help of my Grandpa, they put a log addition on the west end. Logs are round and they were in a hurry, so the addition was not very square, and still isn’t. The seam between new and old was roughly sealed with large spikes, and still is. They built narrow, steep stairs to the upper floor, built a chimney of mortared shale and got a wood stove. 

The Cabin did a good job of sheltering us for the next few years, during which another son was added to the family. We moved out of it several times in search of greener pastures, but returned to its refuge in deference to a mutual desire to be in the country instead of elsewhere. 

When the 1950s closed, my mom was pregnant with my sister, and my dad rather hurriedly added a frame addition to the south side of the original 1920s portion. Again, the seam between the old and new was sealed with 80-penny nails — and still is. The kitchen moved to the ground floor of the frame addition and the room above became a bedroom. 

Because it was made of lumber instead of logs, I expected things to be a bit more uniform, but a lot of the lumber came from a neighbor’s mill, which my uncle once described as producing the world’s longest wedges. As I began to remove the innards — my folks had added to the interior of the logs and rough cut “wedges” — I marveled at the creative use of shims, trim and furring strips to plumb and level floors, ceilings, counters, shelves, windows and door frames. I also found that more conventional materials — like the planed and kiln-dried Douglas fir rafters above the second log section and the single pane windows in the north wall — were salvage purchased from the disassembly of Farragut Naval Station in 1951. 

All of these odd pieces pieced together have not made the remodel easy. In fact, calling it a “remodel” is not accurate. It has been more of a rebuild. If I ever write a book about it, the title will be Every Cut Is A Custom Cut. 

Slowly, ever so slowly, it is proceeding toward finality. Ha-ha-ha-ha. Anyone who has a house knows it’s never over. About the time you drive the last screw, something on the other end of the house needs fixing, painting, recaulking, redoing. This newest edition has many upgrades — more lights; better insulation; a larger bathroom (the fourth section attached to the second log section, not by 80-penny nails but by eight-inch Torx screws); a new roof with new rafters (excepting the pole rafters over the original 1920s section); a lot more room upstairs; and a wider, not-so-steep staircase. 

The original section is nearly a century old, and the project is ongoing. It may get done one day. In the meantime, I’ll keep making custom cuts. And, the work of generations will still show in many places. As it should.