Greetings:  I have been a lurker for approximately two years.  I bought a set of 20x30  1-1/2 story plans a while later.  I appreciated reading other's build comments and tried to absorb as much as possible of their experience before I stuck a shovel in the ground.  Ours is a remote Alaska location, primarily for use five to six months of the year, but I wanted to build so as to be able to use it year round if we decide to retire outside the lower 48. 
       We take lots of groceries and supplies in with us. A comment by a previous builder which I took to heart pertained to the amount of storage available.  They wished they had more storage space. Plus we wanted a slightly larger great room to accommodate extended family for visits. Therefore I opted to lengthen the cabin design ten feet over the original plans.  In retrospect 40 feet is a very long wall, thought it seems to be working out ok. With the extra ten feet we lengthened the great room by four feet and added six feet of pantry and mud/utility room in the middle of the cabin, with a second entry off the mud room. My wife also liked the bumpout she saw on one of the previous builds.  She was so into the project I agreed to do one for her.  Retrospect would say a bumpout is a LOT of work for only an addition of about 18 square feet. But it does give the interior a nice custom character.   
       I have done remodels and a few small construction projects, but do not consider myself proficient. I am more a slow do-in-yourselfer. The plans were easy to understand and the input from reading the build experience of others was very insightful. I basically worked alone for five months except for the help of my wife while clearing trees, and the assistance of two friends who came up from California for a week to get framing started. Working alone is slow and tedious. One cannot call down a length and have it handed up. Pushing a 50 pound sheet of plywood fifteen feet up a ladder at my age isn't my cup of tea. I would advise anyone to get the assistance of friends for as much of a build project as possible. With two people I suspect a build will go three to four times faster. I did succeed in getting the structure dried-in before we headed south late September. I am anxious to return next spring and see how the shell survived the winter.
Here are a few pictures.


The two of us cleared a 270 foot long driveway, then a 100+ foot clearing for the cabin and a future garage/shop.  We did a stump count of 92 trees of size after we were finished. Then we had an excavator come in and pull the stumps and pile the slash for burning.


Our build area is a glacial outwash and experiences isostatic rebound. After talking to people who have lived and built there and had foundation problems I abandoned the idea of post and pier foundation, and instead followed the advise of the person with the most concrete experience and built a perimeter foundation according to his specifications.  This meant an 18" wide 8" deep footing with two rows of rebar, then an 8" wide stem wall with vertical rebar every 30" and two horizontal rows (similar to the concrete stem wall foundation on the plans).  I was fortunate to find rebar up there left over from a government project which I was able to procure inexpensively. And the fellow who provided the input on how to do a foundation for the locality loaned me his forms that used snap ties.


During the planning stages in California a friend with a lumber yard invited me to rummage through his connex container of mis-ordered windows and doors.  He gave me eleven new windows, some of which were large fixed glass picture windows. The gabled end with those large windows will be the focal point of the great room. 


I wrapped the whole structure in OSB and housewrap and installed exterior windows and doors before we left. 

Sorry but my pictures didn't post.  I'll try to figure out what I'm doing wrong.  In the meantime here is a link to our blog about the summer.  By clicking "newer post" at the bottom of each post it will take you through the sequence.
http://buggistablog.blogspot.com/2010/05/progress-report.html

Real good looking project.  I'd love to see the floorplan if you have it.

You mention that the soil is glacial out wash and experiences isostatic rebound.  Is glacial out wash like glacial till?  What is isostatic rebound?

Thanks for the compliment.  I don't have a scanner so don't have a way to get the floorplan into my computer. The floor plan is basically the Country Plans 20x30 1.5 story floor plan suggestion with a 6x6 pantry inserted on one side of a short hall and a 6x10 utility room on the other.  The bath and bedroom are at the end of the hall. Hope that helps.

I'm no expert but here is how outwash was explained to me. The area where we built was under ice about 250 years ago. The theory is that when the glacier extended it acted like a bulldozer pushing pulverized sand and gravel ahead of it. Then the glacier changed course and eventually retreated (it's 30+ miles away now). An outwash area is level for SE Alaska, and the sand is loose in consistency.  I think of it in terms of the biblical story of the man who built his house on sand versus rock. We put a lot of rebar in the foundation.

Isostatic rebound:  With the tremendous weight of a glacier on the land the soil compacted.  Now that the weight is off the soil is slowly decompressing.  I have heard different rise rates for our area ranging from one inch a year to 1-5/8 inch per year. In other words we are increasing by about a foot in elevation every ten years or so.  Fortunately it rises fairly evenly.

Here are some of the photo's red crossed above

Thanks for the 411 on the terms.  Sounds like it's totally different than what my land has, where the glacier is still around all its "damage" is still young.

thats going to be a awesome view from the interior over looking the stream!

UK4x4:  Thanks much (!) for posting the photos.  Can you tell me what I was doing wrong?   That may simplify things for me in the future.
I also changed my link in the third post and added a few other photos to that blog location.  I'm working on adding a few interior shots there as well.

No problemo

we all like photos arround here !


go to your blog, right clic properties on the photo you want
copy the link, right the way down to .jpg
second row of post reply icons second one in from the left ( icon is a landscape photo)clickit
post the link between the the two middle square brackets of the code that displays

OK,  That did the trick. Thanks again for the help. I'm not the most computer literate guy.
Posting all this at once instead of gradually through the build was not my intention. I tried to register from AK but must have done something wrong because it didn't recognize me. Or perhaps our not-so-great internet up there caused the failure. So I bailed. We returned to Cal in October, and I recently tried again and got registered.
 

Instead of bringing the closest floor joist all the way across per the plans I am going to make the loft railing the rafter tie.  I opted for a more traditional stairs rather than a ships ladder.  We both have onset of old age problems and I wanted a less steep climb. On the other side of the issue we lose some floor space. That's the pantry behind the first wall, with bathroom behind that.


One of the custom windows I was given.  This elongated octagon window will be at the stair landing.


The windowed door is to the mud/utility room. That room will be for mechanical, water heater, water softener, laundry, jackets, boots, etc., with bedroom behind. The hallway is only 36" wide. At first I wanted slightly wider, but eventually realized I was thinking like a Californian. Up there most buildings are smaller in every way. Many twelve month residents thought I was building too many square feet and way too much openness with the cathedral ceiling and open loft. It is a lot of cubic feet to heat in winter, but we plan to insulate well. I suspect I'll have more to say about that two years from now.  Opposite the utility room is a pantry (not pictured). The plans suggest a stack washer/dryer between bedroom and bath. We opted for a slightly wider bedroom closet and will have a linen cabinet at the end of the hall instead of washer/dryer.  


Paulette's bumpout. She really wanted this place where she could sit and read or do cross-stitch. I may or may not put the second octo window in the side of the bumpout. I framed for it but it just seems a little bit of a tight fit. I'm not sure it will look balanced from outside.

Looks great.  But I have several questions.  Did you leave access to your crawl space?  Did you back fill?  I can't tell from the pictures you have posted.

 

You're really coming along!  Looks great & the views are fantastic!   

Chuck, Sassy, et al: Thanks. This has been a dream for too long and I figured even with the down economy if we didn't do it now we perhaps would never be able to. Most days I would get up, walk to the river before I started, and have to pinch myself to make sure it was all real.
   
I'm happy to answer any questions and humbly open to comments/suggestions about any aspect. There is no planning department, permit process, or inspection up where we built. You just clear trees and go for it. Where I had to adapt from the plans I tried to build according to national code or better but had to often adjust along the way for things I didn't foresee. One of the Alaskans who built up there a few years ago put it this way....  You build until you make your first mistake. Then you keep repairing mistakes until the building is done. At times I felt that was pretty accurate. It's been a great learning experience and I'm sure it isn't over.

We have crawlspace access through a hatch built into the utility room floor.   No back fill yet.  It is planned.  The slope will carry runoff away from the foundation. I still need to erect scaffolding and box the eaves first. I just ran out of time.

MelFol

I completely understand about building in Alaska.  I am not building in Southeast, but do have a cabin project going in Southcentral Alaska.  http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=1499.0. No building permits where I am building either.  

Up here I would have been worried about no backfill as the temps have been subzero for extended periods of time already this year.  I would guess you have the snow but not the extended cold temps in southeast from my experience traveling down there.

Chuck: Wow, we are almost neighbors as distances go up there. I checked out your link pix quickly. Looks great. I'll look at posts more closely later. We are among the glacial fjord archipelago, about 25 miles in from open ocean. Temperate climate. The area does get into the low teens a few times each winter.  There was some snow a few days ago according to the airport cam, but it's pretty much gone. The high according to weatherforyou is suppose to be 36-40˚ most of the week.  Hard for my relatives in the midwest to believe.

Our soil is all sand.  I dug a small temporary crib for our septic for the trailer and water perks away twenty gallons in a matter of minutes. If we had more clay I probably would have had to backfill before we left.  I'm basically trusting the input of those who have lived up there for years.  I'll post a moisture question for you on your build later.

Yep not to far apart.  LOL 

The weather here is killing me to warm for this time of year.  We had 3 weeks at my house that ranged from -15 to 5 F, then the chinook winds started last friday and the temps went into the 40s.  Melted alot of the snow, which stinks for us snowmachiners.  Hope we get more snow soon.

So exactly what village are you near? 

Gustavus.  Not an island but access only by air or water. About 400 full time residents spread through the forest. The area is surrounded by Glacier Bay National Park, except on the water side. Wilderness with some civilization amenities.

I know where that is.  I think one of the Forest Service staff I work with from time to time lives there. Do you happen to know Cal Casipit?

The name isn't familiar.  I have a friend who is a ranger in the NP.  I'll try to remember to ask her when I see her in the spring.