Sunday, September 21, 2008

This is Starting to Look Like a Cabin


With the windows installed and the the Typar wrap on, our piles of wood seemed to finally transform into something resembling a cabin.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

hi my name is ken from wi and i was just wondering were u got ur plans. i am also wanting to build an A Frame.

Joel said...

Your a-frame is looking good. I am also curious where you got your plans.

Thanks,
-Joel

A-Frame Guy said...

Thanks, we've been finished for about a year now, but never updated the blog - we love it! Our road had 4 feet of snow on it last winter and there wasn't even one snowflake on the roof!

We designed it pretty much ourselves,with some input from the local building inspector... he insisted on 2x10" Douglas Fir, which is a lot heavier than we had planned. It was a good suggestion and we were able to make an upstairs loft because of it.

Some of the most important things we learned:

1. An equilateral triangle gives max strength, with the best interior headroom/useable floor ratio.
2. Lay out a template on the ground and build all of your "A's" at one time... they need to all be EXACT of they won't line up right when you stand them up.
3. Have several strong guys to help you stand-up the "A's" they are extremely heavy and the leverage effect works against you.
4. Use a lot of bracing - ours took 70mph winds one weekend and we were really glad we did.
5. This project will take longer and cost more than you expect!

I hope this is helpful, one of our major frustrations was the lack of information out there. Shoot me another email if you have any other questions.

- Garry

jetstream said...

Hey, google brought me to your blog. We're considering building an A-frame on a Georgian Bay island...

You've done a lot of work and I don't want to steal your plans- but could you tell me how long your cabin is, floor-to-ceiling height and sq footage?

Also, I'd love to see some updated photos!
thanks,
dougcochrane@rogers.com

kawon said...

Hello
My name is Luke and I'm Polish.
I want to build a house of this type.
Can you send me some information about the implementation of such a technique Afram?
I was looking for a project and I found!
is amazing congratulations
greetings from Poland
lkawon@poczta.fm

WDB said...

Very nice work! Enjoyed reading your blog. I can relate to your building problems because my 5 brothers and I built our own off grid cabin. It's more conventional than your beautiful A Frame but we had fun doing it. You have to have a sense of humour to survive a project this big.
yours truly,
from Canada