Chương 38: Starting my Cabin

Day 24 Mai 3rd (Saturday) I did quite a bit more reading before I finally fell asleep around 2 a. m., but I couldn't get that first bit of information out of my head. That the excerpt was included in the almanac seemed odd. I had been told that the empire controlled the information put into it, and that didn't seem like the kind of thing they'd want people thinking about. The author's name, Roger the Unwise, sounded ominous.

I couldn't find any other information about him in the almanac, but maybe one of these days I could look him up if I ever found a library. Oh well, I needed to shake off my feeling of unease and get ready to build a cabin! Today was the day we were going to get started stacking logs. I really wished I had a front loader on my tractor, that would take all the effort out of things for sure! But alas, I didn't. That meant that good 'ol muscle power would have to do.

Luckily, I was a lot stronger than I had been before I was portaled over. That huge power boost from the Bhealtaine Blessing would be a massive help. When I hit the property line, my favorite murder bunnies greeted me. Spot bounded up to me and dropped what looked like a weasel or stoat, something long and thin anyway, at my feet and looked up at me as if hoping for praise. Aside from a crushed throat, its pelt was in perfect condition. Not to be outdone, Buck dropped a small fox at my feet.

It was in a similar condition to the weasel. The look in their eyes said, "Look at me! I did a great job, now give me pets!" Of course, I obliged. They were super affectionate murder bunnies who were doing a truly superb job on the homestead. I didn't care if they had an official designation as Herd Leader, or whatever the equivalent title would be for a non-herd animal. They kept the other animals sorted out and kept the farm free from pests.

We hadn't lost a single bird to a predator yet, which was pretty darned impressive. After some good pets, I picked up the rabbits' latest victims and brought them to Colin once I reached the cabin. He just shook his head with a big grin on his face and quickly skinned them while I helped Emily finish up with the morning chores. Once that was done, and the rabbits were feasting on the grisly remains of their latest prey, sans pelts, Colin and I got ready to go to work.

Over the last couple of weeks, Colin and I had gathered and set stones around the outside edge of my cabin for the logs to sit on and stay off the ground. While I only planned on living in this cabin until the end of this planting season, I planned on digging out a basement and using the building as a potato cellar for the winter. Laying wood directly on the ground would cause the bottom log to rot over the next couple of years. The stone would help prevent that.

I had placed the stones for my cabin closer to the eastern edge of our property, where we would make a true barnyard/equipment storage area in case I could ever have my tractor out in the open. Whatever we ended up doing, I should be able to have a bigger house built that would replace Emily and Colin's cabin, so I couldn't crowd that space. We had also already notched out all the logs. With our amazing saw blades, that hadn't taken too much effort. The almanac had suggested a V-notch in the logs.

That was the quickest and easiest way to notch the logs so they'd fit tightly and stay in place, but since we had already needed to cut square logs because of the enormous size of the trees we were using, we made dovetail cuts that let the logs really join together tightly. It took us some extra time, but we had saved a lot of time thanks to the amazing saws and chisels we had access to. The dovetails entailed basically cutting the ends into a trapezoid shape with opposite angles on every other log.

That was where our pre-cutting and preparing of the logs was important. Once they were set together at the ends, there would be a one-inch gap in most places between the layers of logs where we would put chinking, and then daub in place to fill the gaps. We were fully capable of making precise enough cuts that there was no need for chinking or daub, but the almanac said that could lead to moisture getting in between the logs and causing rot, just like if the logs were laid on bare ground.

Aside from the lack of modern equipment to put the cabin together, the work had been so much easier than in the same time period on Earth. My magical saw blade cut through the wood like butter, and it didn't dull. My UI measured things for me and projected a line in my vision to keep straight cuts each time. I didn't do a ton of woodworking or home improvement projects back home, but when I did, it was always chaotic.

I'd get ready to measure, realize I'd lost my tape measure and my pencil, and then I'd have to go search for where they were before I repeated the process several more times. By the end of the project, I'd have six pencils and three tape measures strewn between my saw and whatever project I was trying to complete. It would take me a couple of hours just to cut a few shelves. With the UI keeping track of things, I never had to stop to find anything.

I could see the line where the saw was supposed to cut as if it had been put there by a laser. Since everything was pre-cut, and we'd laid the logs out in the order we would need them, it was pretty easy to get a significant portion of the cabin put together quickly. We had allotted three days to get the cabin built before we would begin planting corn, but by noon I was confident the structure could be built in only two days.

It would likely take longer to get all the chinking done, but I was confident I'd be sleeping in it by Monday at the latest. Or, as I should call it, Dydd Llun. I was still struggling with the days of the week. With a seven-day weekly cycle, I wasn't forced to change up my mental process for the days. If it had been a ten-day week, I think I would have adapted more easily. With the precise cuts, all our logs fit together just as we planned.

We'd still need the mud chinking to make things airtight, but it fit together way better than any of the old log cabins I'd seen at home with just that small one-inch gap. In the mountains to the north of the Treasure Valley, there were still some old log cabins around that were now sitting abandoned and derelict. You could easily see through both sides of them now that the chinking had worn away. Our logs sat together with only millimeters of deviation anywhere in the cuts.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. By noon we had the logs stacked up to my head height. Colin, who had also received his strength bonus despite not having a class yet, was only struggling a bit to lift the logs high enough by that point. They still weighed close to four hundred pounds after all. I was now much stronger and could almost deal with them by myself, but they were still long and unwieldy, so it was dicey to try alone and I didn't want to tear a muscle.

I didn't want him to get hurt by dropping a log so we stopped for a lunch of beans and cornbread, along with a salad made from kale, radishes, and some foraged plants like dandelion shoots, garlic mustard, and a vinegary dressing that Emily had whipped up. The dressing was growing on me, but it was harsher than I was used to. Even at home, I preferred ranch or something creamy to a vinaigrette.

While we were eating, I looked up how most people built these cabins if they didn't have the strength or skills needed to easily lift the logs over their heads. There were two methods that the almanac suggested. The first was to make a ramp of two other logs and then roll the logs up and into place. Our logs were square, so they wouldn't roll uphill easily. The second method involved using ropes and pulleys. We'd set up an A-frame and use the pulleys to pick the logs up and put them in place.

That would have been a great idea if we had thought about it beforehand. It was too expensive to order the rope and pulleys from the store and have them brought out to us, and it would waste a couple of days if we walked to town to pick them up ourselves. We decided on the ramp method, and despite our square logs, it worked well. I had Colin stand in the middle, between the two ramp logs, and hold it steady so it couldn't slide back down while I lifted both ends.

It wasn't perfect, but it allowed us to get all four walls put up by early evening. Thanks to the ease of cutting the timber to the perfect size when we were out at the hillside, I had decided to add a sloped roof to give me a little more headroom. It wasn't strictly necessary, but I decided it would help me feel less claustrophobic in the relatively small space. It required only an additional thirteen full-length logs, so it wasn't too much extra effort. The other logs were shorter as the peak came together.

A peaked roof also solved a time and resource issue we had run into while planning out the cabin. The biggest issue I had was that I didn't have the roofing lumber already pre-cut for my roof. For now, we would use a canvas tarp that Colin had bought in town while I was doing drill. The almanac had several suggestions for how to properly roof the cabin, but they all required either skills or pre-planning. The most straightforward was just cutting lumber to lie on top of the gable logs and nailing them in place.

Then I could either buy a tarpaper-like substance from the guild, which was super expensive, or make wooden shingles like the Craftsman class builders had used to build all the log cabins out here in the territories. That process was beyond me in a short time, though. Not that I had to have a skill to make wooden shingles, but without the skill it took up to eighteen months to properly cure them. The Craftsmen had building skills that took away the time needed to cure lumber.

Level 20 Craftsmen also had abilities that automatically created jambs after they cut all the logs for doors and windows. It was pretty cool. The almanac also showed me the process to make bark shingles out of tulip trees. I'd had no idea what a tulip tree was until I'd read about it in the almanac. It said the tulip tree was a member of the magnolia family, a tree I was aware of that on Earth grew in the American southeast.

Our location was at the far northern edge of the tree's range, but just a couple hundred miles to our south they were very common. They could grow to be more than a hundred and fifty feet tall, and they were ideal for building. Their trunks could grow to six feet in diameter, and branches often didn't start for a hundred feet on a mature tree. The cabin Emily and Colin lived in was most likely built from tulip trees.

Laborers would cut down tulip trees in the spring, and then they could cut and peel the bark off a tree in huge pieces. The bark would then be flattened and dried. A Craftsman with the right skill could then shape them perfectly and give them added structure and stability. After reading about that, I had looked into buying the shingles from the store, but they had already sold out for this year.

My canvas tarp would keep rain off of me for the summer and fall, and I shouldn't be sleeping in the log cabin by winter, so all of my reading on proper methods to cover my cabin were fun, but ultimately unneeded until winter when we'd store potatoes. Adding the gables was absolutely necessary to make sure the water ran off my canvas roof. If I had left it flat, a big rainstorm might have caused it to collapse in on me. At 6 p. m.

we called a halt to the day's building, and Colin and I washed up before we helped Emily do the chores, aided by our adorable murder bunnies. As I watched them herd the geese and ducks towards the house, where they'd bed down for the evening, I couldn't help but reflect that only a few weeks ago the rabbits had freaked me right out. Now, I loved them every bit as much as any dog I'd ever had. They were certainly way more useful than any dog I'd ever owned.

The first tier of the Craftsman class is split into three subclasses, just like almost all other classes. The basic class perks mostly allow for quicker preparation of materials, such as allowing cut timber to cure at a faster rate, or requiring fewer materials. The three subclasses are: Carpenter - These craftsmen focus on the structural part of buildings primarily built of wood. Joiner - These craftsmen focus on decorative touches, as well as floors, window and door frames, doors, and mantles.

Cabinet Maker - Cabinet makers create cabinets, but also furniture and other small, movable items. Any competent Craftsman can put together any component of a wooden building, from the framing to the cabinets, but they will specialize and receive skills and bonuses on one of those three different components of a house. Excerpt from The Empire's Guide to Classes by the Royal Research Academy. Multiple authors. This book is available on the Guild Trade Store.