Cabin Lessons: A Nail-by-Nail Tale: Building Our Dream Cottage from 2x4s, Blisters, and Love

by Spike Carlsen

Overview

When carpenter Spike Carlsen and his wife set out with their recently blended family of five kids to build a cabin on the north shore of Lake Superior, they quickly realized that painting, parenting, and putting up drywall all come with both frustrations and unexpected rewards. Part building guide and part memoir, Cabin Lessons tells the wryly funny, heartwarming story of their eventful journey — from buying an unforgiving plot of land on an eroding cliff to (finally) enjoying the lakeside hideaway of their dreams.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781612125671
Publisher:	Storey Publishing, LLC
Publication date:	04/21/2015
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	339,196
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Spike Carlsen built a tree house at the age of 8 and has been swinging a hammer ever since. He worked as a carpenter and contractor for 15 years, then as an editor with The Family Handyman — the world’s leading DIY magazine — for another 15. He’s the author of the award-winning A Splintered History of Wood, Woodworking FAQ, and The Backyard Homestead of Building Projects. He’s written for Men’s Health, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, American Woodworker, and other publications and has appeared on HGTV, Modern Marvels, and CBS’s The Early Show. He and his wife, Kat, divide their time between their home in Stillwater, Minnesota, and their cabin on Lake Superior.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Wanted: Difficult Piece of Land
If you can't find a perfect piece of land, buy an imperfect piece and make it perfect.

Chapter 2: Designing Small
You can't buy happiness by the square foot.

Chapter 3: The Rules
When you build, build with hands, head, and heart.

Chapter 4: Paperwork & Earthworks
Mensch tracht, Gott lacht. (Man plans, God laughs.)

Chapter 5: A Solid Foundation
When you dig a hole, be smarter than the shovel.

Chapter 6: Kat—Wife, Lifesaver, Carpenter
When you marry, you marry the whole person — not just the parts above the waterline. You get both the silk sails and the barnacles.

Chapter 7: Cabin Bones
Destiny can thrown down a pretty sparse trail of popcorn for you to follow.

Chapter 8: The Drive
If all the difficulties were known at the outset of a long journey, most of us would never start out at all.

Chapter 9: Buying Cabin Parts
Keep an open mind — you never know what might crawl in.

Chapter 10: Skin of the Cabin & Middle-Age Blahs
Beauty is only plywood deep.

Chapter 11: A Superior Lake (Some Superior Towns)
When you get caught with your pants down, run like hell.

Chapter 12: Wood, Wire, Pipe, & Drywall
The quandary with life is you're halfway through before you realize it's a do-it-yourself project.

Chapter 13: Family Matters
Life is a fluid, not a solid. It changes. Be ready for it.

Chapter 14: Finishing Touches
When it's ninety percent finished, it's finished.

Chapter 15: Troubles in Paradise
Mistakes are the dues you pay for living a full life.

Chapter 16: Settling In, Grooving Out
There's more to life than increasing its speed.

Afterword

For Further Reading

Editorial Reviews

When Spike Carlsen and his wife Kate decided to build a cabin for themselves and their five kids on Minnesota's Lake Superior coastline, they already had the tools: Spike was even then an accomplished veteran carpenter, woodworker, and homesteader. Thus, his account of their constructing the home of their dreams is both a heartwarming memoir of a learning experience and a practical do-it-yourself building guide. (P.S. Carlsen is the author of A Splintered History of Wood and The Backyard Homestead Book of Building Projects and the keeper of the Wonderful World of Wood! website.)

"An uplifting tale of hoisting studs, [this] two-year odyssey of cabin construction weaves carpentry skills, parenting, and love through a weft of humor."
— Dale Mulfinger, author and Cabinologist

"Carlsen chronicles the realities and and pitfalls as well as the joys and satisfactions of creating a human-scaled getaway. Complete with ample practical advice, Cabin Lessons is a must-read for anyone "knotty pining" for a place of their own."
— Sarah Stonich, author of Shelter and Vacationland

"The story is the perfect blend of inspiration and information. It also offers ... the biggest home-building lesson of all: sometimes it's not the end result, but the journey that brings a family closer together."
— Timber Home Living

“Cabin Lessons ... is part how-to, part memoir and part love story—love of Kat, love of Lake Superior, love of building.”
—The Minneapolis Star Tribune

“If you've ever dreamed of building your own cabin, you should read this book. Cabin Lessons recounts [Spike and Kat's] entertaining and instructive story of building together with plenty of lessons for a would-be cabin or house builder. It's also a meditation by a kind, modest and genuinely funny guy on building a marriage, a blended family and a life. You'll be grinning. Guaranteed”
—The Family Handyman

“Spike Carlsen's book ... chronicles the family's route from a scenic dream (with a modest budget) to designing and building, to filling the space with family, to a (rejected) blank-check purchase offer from a slickster driving an Italian-made car. And it's all told in the voice of someone you want to see sitting on the other side of the campfire, sharing a blanket with his wife, dispensing charming tales and life lessons in calm, even rolls.”
—The Duluth News Tribune

“This memoir shines because Spike is a likeable storyteller. He travels from the  purchase of an it'seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time impossible building site through the construction and occupation of a marvelous modest cabin. He weaves in bits of shore history, philosophical musing and warm family moments that make this a true keeper.”
—Lake Superior Magazine

“Carlsen's life history makes him qualified to build a cabin and write a book about the painstaking yet joyful experience. As a carpenter and accomplished woodworker, he ran his own construction and remodeling company. As a magazine editor and author, he has written about home remodeling and has four books about wood and woodworking, including the award-winning A Splintered History of Wood: Belt Sander Races, Blind Woodworkers and Baseball Bats.”
—Tori McCormick, Outdoor Editor, Minneapolis Star Tribune
 

From the Publisher