Chapter 11

The Scout

A former marine sergeant built this cozy lakeside cottage on weekends and vacations during five years following a well-planned time schedule.

By Woodrow Jarvis

At back of cabin is well house for water supply pump, also pressure tank and gas storage tanks for store.

Stone fireplace has four vents: lower set draws in cold air from floor; upper set expells heated air.

WHEN MARINE Sgt. Bernard E. Jarvis came home from the wars he had his mind made up on one thing: He was going to build himself a cabin in the Michigan north woods where things were peaceful and quiet.

The general design was worked out on some distant Pacific island, and Jarvis built his place on a piece of ancestral property on the south shore of Black Lake, near Onaway, Mich.

The cabin was designed to fit a narrow lot only 33 ft. wide. Overall dimensions of the building are 24x30 ft. Much of the space was devoted to a large living room and kitchen, with a dining area featuring coiner picture windows overlooking the lake. There are two bedrooms, a bath, and an outside well house for the water supply pump and pressure tank.

Interior finish is random width Ponde-rosa pine paneling with paneled ceilings and hardwood floors. Exterior finish is pre-stained maroon shingles, which elimi­nates painting upkeep. (Another attractive exterior finish would be the log stripping shown in the cutaway drawing.) Total cost of materials ran about $3,000.

Jarvis warned his wife Eileen that con­struction of the cabin would take five years. He called it his five-year plan. Al­though he had no previous building ex­perience, he did all the work himself with the help of his wife and friends during weekends and vacations, commuting 150 miles from his home at Bay City, Mich. Each year he would start work early in May and stop after the deer hunting sea­son in late November.

One of his first purchases was a two-wheel trailer with an eight-foot wooden box. With this he hauled a good deal of materials—form lumber, cement, windows, tools, rocks, and the thousand and one other items needed in construction.

Massive fireplace masonry, picture windows, dominate front wall of cabin facing lake.

There is another gem of a round rug, Circular, for your guest room. For the well-groomed bathroom choose Mosaic or Checkers; for the fireside Crisscross or Stripes. Whether you choose to make a rug of yarn or rags, by following these easy-to-follow directions, you will soon be in a splendid rug-ged shape.

At the end of the second construction year building was shielded with 15-lb. felt for winter protection.	The fireplace facing was built with seven tons of mine-run Onaway stone costing just $7.00 per ton.

Construction was planned to fit into five stages, with each stage taking about one season's work. In the first year he poured the concrete foundation and built the fireplace to the eave line. He decided to build the fireplace before framing in because that was the method best suited to the overall plan. Into the stonework on each side he em­bedded two-by-fours to be tied into the building framework later. A brace across the top of the two-by-fours provided a nailing base for cross-sticks which out­lined the dimensions of the masonry. Frequent checks were made by dropping a plumb line from the cross-sticks to insure that the corners remained straight as the masonry rose.

The second year required the hardest work. In that year he put the sub-floor in place, framed in and sheathed the building, finished the roof, completed the fireplace, and installed the windows. Covered with building paper, the structure then was tight to withstand the severe Michigan winter.

In the third year he installed the wiring, laid the finished floor, installed the panel­ing on the ceiling, and put on the outside finish. During this year he also managed to get in considerably more fishing than in the previous summer.

Corner picture windows pro­vide an unexcelled view of the lake from the dining area.

Four-way   roof  took   85   2x6 ft.   jack   rafters.   Each needed compound miter cut of 45 and 21 degrees.	Kitchen has nine-foot plastic-covered surface with stainless   steel   trim   plus   pine-paneled   cabinets.

In the fourth year he installed the water supply and plumbing system, building a well house for the pump and pressure tank and constructing five ft. deep. 5x8-ft. ce­ment block septic tank.

In the fifth year Jarvis built kitchen cup­boards and completed the inside finish. He used Ponderosa pine paneling for the cupboards, working the wood with a table saw and jointer.

"When I didn't know how to do something. I would ask," he recalled. "People got awful tired of hearing me ask, but that's the way I learned to do it."
Jarvis found plenty of people to ask in his own office. He works as a right-of-way buyer in the Saginaw district of the Michi­gan State Highway Department. Virtually any problem he encountered could be and was answered by the various highway en­gineers with whom he came in contact daily.

And there you have it—the story of one guy's five-year plan, some of the problems he encountered and how he solved them.

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