Cabin Fever

Do you get it sometimes? Cabin fever? I don't mean the claustrophobic feeling hermits and hunters and pioneers get after being "holed up" in a cabin all winter. I’m using the term as its own antithesis—the longing to be “trapped” in an old trapper’s cabin with nothing but the simplest necessities and a cracklin’ fire behind a fieldstone hearth. Not necessarily alone…but temporarily away from all the dailiness of life.
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A few weeks back when I was writing about “painting by numbers,” a fellow blogger (whom I know only through kind comments) shared this original painting she entitled “Early Snow.” It reminds me of my “House in Winters Hold.” That’s what I mean by cabin fever…the need for a cabin get-away. Imagine somehow spending a long weekend in a cabin like that far from all that waits beyond the drifting snow.

Unfortunately, I do not own a cabin… nor better yet have a family cabin shared by those who value its meaning. So… about five winters ago I got that “must-do-something-ambitiously-creative” feeling and decided to build a log cabin in my unfinished basement.

[I had done something similar before. In Iowa, I knew of an old round barn that had collapsed of its own weight. The owner's children had graduated from my school, and he let me have the weathered barn doors, shake shingles, and planks to “finish” my basement. It was a perfect low maintenance, rustic, backdrop for my collection of old farm tools, saws, etc. That “basement barn” is still in that house on Berkshire to this day. Iowa is a good place for such décor, but Michigan calls for something a little more “northwoods.”]

I had been mulling over this cabin idea for two years. My biggest challenge was choice of “medium” for the logs. I knew I did not want to invest actual money in real logs or even “half-cut log siding.” That stuff is pricy. I considered 12' carpet tubes, but I was concerned about the fire hazard of cardboard, and they were too “perfect” when stacked. Logs for a cabin have to be stackable, but they can't be perfect.

Then one fall day I was looking out my office window as scores of 8 foot long blue “noodles” were being hauled to the dumpster. Years before, the school had acquired the McDonalds “Playland” from the old Muskegon Mall before it was torn down, but it came with no assembly instructions, and all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn’t put the playland together again, so… the pile of huge plastic parts sat sadly out of sight beyond the school yard. High winds were constantly blowing the foam “pipe padding” toward the new playground where the kids at recess would lovingly use them to clash and swing and chase and otherwise beat each other. This was harmless fun, but it looked a bit more Medieval than suited some parents, so it was decided to pitch them (the tubes not the parents).

As I walked to my car, I saw the blue tubes in and beside the dumpster and wondered—"Could these be my logs?" By this time they were pretty well roughed up with rips and holes and chunks of missing foam—every imperfection was perfect! I loaded the blue tubes into the back of my van (it took three trips). I stored them under the covered trampoline until I had time to stir the still-bubbling idea.

Inside our emptied double garage, I cut the foam tubes lengthwise and one at a time forced them onto a long 4” piece of black drain tile. This opened the tubes up and made them larger “logs.” I then opened the garage door for ventilation and took my hand-held propane torch and melted “wood grain” and other imperfections into the surface of the fire-proof foam. This was a free-flow-anything-goes process that gave the “shrinking-melting” surface of the tubes a harder log-like finish. Anyplace I wanted a knothole, I just left the blue flame of the torch for about two seconds. Each log took about two minutes to “melt,” AND as a double bonus, the heat made the foam tubes stay open as bigger C-shaped hollow logs.
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Once I had a pile of blue “logs,” I suspended ¼ inch 4x8 OSB board from the 2x8 plate between the basement’s cement block wall and the floor joists above. On the OSB board I put a lower lip and an upper shelf. In between I affixed sawn 1” bands of the black drain pipe about two feet apart for each log to “snap on” in stacking sequence. It worked like a patented design (which I’ve actually considered). When I was done with the attachment stage, the wall was still a dark sort of “Smurf” blue. Unlike some home improvement projects, this one involved lightweight work and I rarely needed to call for help, but whenever my wife and girls came downstairs, they just looked at the increasingly “committed” walls and said, “I hope you know where this is going because it still looks pretty blue to us.”

I then took that “expanding foam-in-a-can” stuff and injected it behind the logs where they snapped-on to the black drain tile clips. That stuff was perfect for this task; it wraps around everything and then solidifies. It sometimes expanded through the cracks in the logs—not a problem. I just ran a thin bead of it along all the cracks as “chinking” then wiped it down. (I also used stucco as chinking.)The two metal support posts in the center of the basement were also sheathed in foam logs to look like tree-posts with bark. (The bark was also made from “canned foam.” I just spread it all over them and as it puffed up, I pressed it down, and it took on a bark-like texture.) After all this, the long log wall still looked blue.
(There are pictures of these stages, but I don't know where they are.)

The tricky part of painting the logs was no concern. I was not relying on my one-shot “paint by number” experience from 1967, but rather on years of “set design” for the countless school plays I had directed in a former life. I had done some similar painting for the seven dwarves house. The painting was actually the fun part. Gradually the blue foam became convincing logs—right down to the last knot hole. Most people who see them for the first time have to touch them to know they're the same foam tubes their kids played on before the mall was torn down. The two support posts have also been sheathed in foam logs to look like tree-posts with bark.

My basement cabin was a two-winter project. I did one half of the basement one winter and the other half the next. The end with the window and snow shoes is actually a sliding door, behind which is the treadmill and other exercise equipment. (We slide the door open and swivel the TV toward it.) There’s also a ping-pong table, fold-away bed, and lots of other stuff stored back there behind a curtain. Beside the foosball table is another larger storage room that serves as an attic. Not pictured here is the enclosed laundry room. The white walls and lower portions of the logs walls are stucco. Because the tubes were free, I have less than $300 in the entire project (not counting the furniture, etc.). You know the Gaston song from Beauty and the Beast? I'd sometimes belt out,"I use antlers in all of my decorating..." as I worked down there.
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The ceiling is not finished but covered in black, non-flammable landscaping cloth to make it “disappear.” Accent lights and hidden “rope light” around the perimeter shelf (full of antiques, old toys, and “cabiny things.”) give the room a warm sense of “someplace else.” The basement looks nothing like the rest of the house—it’s a surprise to first-time guests. The kids love to hang out down there. I sometimes "go to the cabin" to take a nap or watch a ball game. My niece, Aimee, who came for the weekend, is sleeping down there in the antique Jenny Lind feather bed right now. My girls are afraid of "real dead things" so they got me the faux bear rug last summer. It looks like it came out of a cartoon, but if it were real...they'd never step downstairs.
© Copyright 2007, TK, Patterns of Ink