Good news story. . .

Boy with special needs gets custom log cabin in his backyard

A 6-year-old boy who uses a wheelchair was surprised with a custom-made log cabin in his backyard that is inspired by a cabin he fell in love with at a camp for kids with serious illnesses.

Evan Vaudry, of Cumberland, Rhode Island, was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) at 18 months old. The genetic disease affects the control of muscle movement, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Evan, who will attend first grade in the fall, is not able to stand and has only recently, thanks to a newly approved medication, been able to sit for long periods unattended, according to his father Stephen Vaudry.

Vaudry and his wife, Lynne, took their son last year to Dream Day, a summer camp on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, for kids with serious illnesses. Of all the activities at the camp, Evan loved the log cabin the family stayed in.

“We stayed in a little cabin that was really rustic and he loved it and thought it was so fun,” Vaudry said. “He mentioned, ‘Yeah I’d like to have a cabin at home.’”

Last Sunday, Evan got his wish when he got to go inside a log cabin that was driven straight to his backyard from a company in Ohio. The cabin surprise was coordinated by Make-A-Wish Massachusetts and Rhode Island, a nonprofit organization that grants wishes to children diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.

The cabin features two entrances, a wheelchair ramp, a chalkboard, rocking chairs, its own mailbox and door knocker, and, most importantly, completely open space for Evan to maneuver his wheelchair.

“Evan’s parents told us that the first thing he wanted to do the morning after his cabin reveal party was sit by the window and look at the cabin,” Charlotte Beattie, CEO of Make-A-Wish Massachusetts and Rhode Island, said in a statement to ABC News. “Stories like that motivate all of us at Make-A-Wish Massachusetts and Rhode Island to reach our goal of fulfilling the wish of every eligible child.”

Vaudry and Evan will be the cabin's first overnight guests this weekend when the father and son plan to "sleep out" in their new digs.

“It’s on the back of our property near trees so it’s like his own cabin in the woods,” Vaudry said. "When I came home from work yesterday he was out in the cabin and didn’t want to leave."

Play dates are also already on the schedule for the cabin, which features a sign out front that reads “Evan’s Cabin Est. 2017.”

"Every day Evan wants to go in the cabin," Vaudry said. "He can’t spend enough time in there.”

source

• By KATIE KINDELAN
 

Jul 19, 2017, 1:35 PM ET

Hopefully another one saved. . . .

By JIM WEIKER, The Columbus Dispatch

DUBLIN, Ohio (AP) — Home renovations can yield surprises.

But few are as big as the one that Kevin Kemp and Jennifer Alexander discovered.

The couple was planning to raze a home that they bought recently on Riverside Drive in Dublin, to build a new house on the property, when Kemp and a friend, Larry Daniels, decided to remove some paneling for reuse.

"We pulled off one of the pieces of paneling and I said, 'Larry, that's a log,'" Kemp recalled. "We pulled off another and I said, 'My god, this is a log cabin.'"

Behind the knotty-pine paneling and drywall were walnut and beech logs, some more than 16 inches wide and 30 feet long. More deconstruction revealed the prize: a perfectly preserved two-story log cabin, probably built between 1820 and 1840.

Experts say it's one of the largest and best-preserved log cabins discovered in central Ohio.

The remarkable find prompted Kemp and Alexander to halt their planned demolition and contact the city of Dublin.

"I think history is really important," said Kemp, a chiropractor who now lives in Gahanna. "This doesn't belong to us. It belongs to the city."

Dublin saw an opportunity to preserve a piece of its past.

"I was just amazed when I walked in and saw the cabin," Assistant City Manager Michelle Crandall said. "I knew when I walked in we had to find a way to salvage it."

The city hired the Columbus company Structural Erectors to dismantle the cabin, at a cost of about $27,000, with the hope of rebuilding it elsewhere.

Structural Erectors plans to start pulling the logs apart with a crane Thursday. Joe Orr, a company vice president, said the logs will be tagged as they are removed and stored in a city barn until the cabin can be reconstructed.

No site has been selected, but Tom Holton, president of the Dublin Historical Society, would like to see the cabin rebuilt in Coffman Park on Emerald Parkway.

Holton described the cabin as a "once-in-a-lifetime" find.

"It was startling and was just kind of wonderment to see history just peeled away, to see history revealed right before your eyes," he said.

Holton has found no evidence of the cabin's origin, but he estimates it was built between 1820 and 1840.

The property originally was part of the 500 acres that Congress granted to Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a Polish colonel who served with the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

The earliest record of a building on the site is on an 1856 map that shows a home belonging to A. Maties, said Columbus historian Doreen Uhas Sauer, who agreed that the cabin is likely older than that.

Several cabins from the early 19th century can be found in central Ohio, but most have been moved and rebuilt. Kemp and Alexander's is rare because it's on the original site and was preserved "in a time capsule," said Uhas Sauer.

"These are remnants of American history that seemingly have disappeared or, like this house, remain silent and buried under siding and permastone," she said. "When they suddenly reappear like this house, how wonderful — like a little Brigadoon."

In addition to being perfectly preserved, the 25-by-30-foot cabin is much larger than most others in the area, including those rebuilt at Indian Run Falls Park and Red Trabue Nature Preserve in Dublin.

"The significance here is the completeness of the cabin and the size and condition," Holton said. "It will be one of the largest ones that has been discovered and recovered in the area."

The cabin's discovery has set back Kemp and Alexander's plan to eventually build their dream home on the site. But they say that's OK.

"We love adventures," said Alexander, who works in the human-resources department at American Electric Power. "This might delay us a few months, but it's cool."

source

Log cabin picture of the day - The Duke and Duchess in the Yukon. . .

The Duke and Duchess in Whitehorse.














And they even got in a canoe.

And they are holding the paddles correctly!

I am sure this is going to be pretty good, if for no other reason than it will have a log cabin in it!

Thursday night 8PM central time. NBC

You don't hear of this in the news often! Although. . . it did happen to a buddy of mine once.

Historic log cabin stolen from Wildwood found; suspect charged

WENTZVILLE • Carl Essen and his relatives were elated to hear this year that the city of Wildwood was taking steps to preserve a historic log cabin built by their ancestors in the 1870s.

But before the city could finalize plans to relocate the cabin, it vanished.

“I was blown away,” Essen said of the cabin-napping.

Last weekend, word started spreading that someone had disassembled and stolen the cabin. It happened sometime between Nov. 24 and 29, police said.

Essen feared that once it got out that police were looking for the cabin-napper, the thief might try to discard the wood.

Happily for Essen, the cabin was recovered in pieces outside an apartment house in Wentzville, and a man who lives there was charged Friday with stealing them.

Gregory T. Cole, 54, was named in St. Louis County Circuit Court on one count of stealing over $25,000, and held in lieu of $40,000 bail.

An anonymous tipster told St. Louis County police that the timbers were behind the apartment building in the 600 block of Scotti Court in Wentzville. That’s where Cole lives. Authorities put the value of the loot at $50,000.

Police said Cole admitted the unusual theft, saying he had grown up near the cabin and was familiar with it. He said his mother still lived in that area. He said he had planned to sell the pieces.

It appears that Cole is the same man who was charged with felony burglary and misdemeanor harassment after being found sleeping in an unoccupied bedroom in the home of strangers in Wentzville on Oct. 4.

In that case, a man in his underwear and a shirt was found about 7:20 a.m., sleeping in a 5-year-old girl’s empty bedroom in a home on Brian Court. The child found him after spending the night in another room.

Sgt. Brian Schellman said it appeared that all the parts of the log cabin were recovered. He said a rented box truck was used to haul the 50 logs, each measuring 10 inches by 6 inches by 20 feet.

Two sisters who own a 250-acre tract where the cabin sat off Highway 109, just south of Eatherton Road in Wildwood, had planned to donate the building to the city.

The cabin has “high historic value,” according to a contractor consulted by the city about moving it. When it disappeared, only the foundation and roof were left behind.

Though the city was seeking bids to have the cabin disassembled and relocated, the “free” disassembly could end up costing the city more.

Greg Barth, acting chairman of the Wildwood Historic Preservation Commission, said each timber had to be marked in order when taken down so a contractor could easily reassemble the cabin. Now, he said, it’s going to be a little bit more “labor intensive.”

As odd as the cabin’s disappearance was, a similar cabin-napping happened earlier this year near Spokane, Wash. That home was later found less than 10 miles from its original location.Valerie Schremp Hahn • 314-340-8246 @valeriehahn on Twitter vhahn@post-dispatch.com

Source

Here's a blog with a barn that may appear on 'Barnwood Builders'

blog

Next time you 'tweet'. . . .

Twitter office space

Sad, but no more. . . a very sad ending to ones lifes work.

As I mentioned in this previous post, I was concerned about the future of a couple of the cabins.
I now know.

They are no more.
We were driving by their location yesterday and noticed bulldozers on the site.

I turned around and went back and noticed this one was gone, as is, I believe, the little church I built. I will confirm how much was taken down later this week.

Sure, I'm sad that some of my hard work was destroyed, especially the church, and I don't have all the details yet, so I am assuming a little bit here. I would imagine they were taken down, after allowing them to fall into disrepair, to make the site more appealing for sale. But that could have been done by allowing interested people to remove the cabins.

Sad for my loss of course, but even more sad because a man's, John Frank, life's work is so easily gone. I would rather see something like this destroyed by fire, quickly, than go through the slow death they did by decay.
I don't know how much effort ever went into saving the buildings or finding them new homes. I can only guess.

I hope the same fate does not fall on the main house.
I am glad I got by for some last photos a couple months ago..

In the news.

Slave Cabin

Gray and White - Ft. Zumwalt reconstruction in snow

Also on the property is the old Heald House.

Also from Oct 2012

 I have not updated the reconstruction of the Old O'Fallon Mo Fort Zumwalt in a while.

This first photo is of the fort in the late 19th century and this is how it looked at it's most complete.

 This photo is from 1937 when the fort was being taken down after being mapped and researched.

The old stone fireplace was all they left and it stood for many years. But it finally came down also.

 Here is how it stands now, looking at the same side as the 1937 photo. That would be the east-south-east.

 A little closer.

 With the center and west sections being worked on.

 Rebuilt fireplace serving the center section and the west section.

 Floor joinery.

 A table lap joining the two sections.
It is really hard to join two cabins together that are not built at the same time, and this would not be a preferred method.
They are doing it this way to replicate the original.

There is probably a good reason the original builders built it like this.
One reason would be shortage of man power, so short logs were used to make it easier for just a couple people and a horse to do the work.

 North side of center and west section.
The walls are not as high on this side, so we can see the floor joins a little better.

 Same but longer view.

 Really nice ax work on the floors joining near the fireplace where a full log could not span the width  of the floor. They would probably use a dove-tail joint at the connections to keep the logs from pulling out.

 A closer look.

 Near the chimney the logs also could not run the complete span of the walls, so a tongue in groove join would have to do.

Once above the opening of the fireplace, logs could start spanning the room again.
Notice the shelf built into the fireplace to help support that first log.
You can also see the tongue running up to the first complete log. It would be notched into the bottom of that log.

South side wall.

 The groove on the south wall, up close.
Note the tongue on the first log.

 The pile is getting smaller.

From the east.

Saved!

Story here.

How they are sometimes hidden.

From a site that sells old log buildings.

But has you can see on the site, sometimes you have to know what you are looking for to find hidden gems.

HIDDEN UNDERNEATH.