Historic Log Workshop...

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this past August was the International Preservation Trades Symposium here in Leadville. As this semester draws to a close, and I am gearing up for my summer of restoring wooden cabins, I am fondly reminded of an excellent workshop we had at the IPTS this past summer.

There are several old ranches in these parts of the mountains, and lots of neglected and deteriorating buildings. In the log workshop during the symposium, we had the opportunity to work on an old log building from a nearby ranch. We actually disassembled this small living structure and moved it to another location where we reassembled it. Please note, this is almost NEVER allowed in the preservation world. It is considered very bad practice to ever move a historical building from its original site. You would be altering its history after all. Typically the only exceptions are if the building is in some kind of danger of abolition, from modern development or from an unsafe environment. In this circumstance, we used it solely as a learning experience, and have no intentions of documenting this building for preservation purposes.

With that in mind, we chose a small log building that was likely the home of workers on this ranch. We first removed the floor boards, and the roof. Then we labeled each log and removed each one, very gingerly, one by one. (Imagine a lincoln log home that you built as a kid).

All of the parts of the home were loaded onto a big truck and moved to the Hayden Ranch (our schools outdoor laboratory). Here we started with the labeled logs, and put them back together, one by one.




This was great work. Some of the wood had rotted, mostly from being in the soft earth, so we treated it with some epoxy. Supposedly this will keep the wood from further rotting for quite some time. Then as we put the puzzle back together, it was amazing how it fell into place. There were some challenges however, like fitting the doors back in properly. It's amazing how the wood shifted and changed so much! We eventually figured it out though, with a little muscle. Unfortunately we did not have scaffolding to complete the roof, but rest assured that we'll be tackling that in a class very soon.
This session was very informative, and great learning opportunity. One of the highlights of the day, was to see our friend from the cemetery the day before. I can't remember exactly the story he told us about this very cabin, but if I'm not mistaken, I believe he said he was born there, in this very cabin that we just moved across town. Talk about a coincidence! He was more than happy to help us out with reconstructing the cabin. It was a joy to have him there. It really helped put some meaning into the wood we were touching, a face to the place so to speak.