Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Aldeer General Forum Irishguy's Cabin Build...

Did a little logging this weekend. The little Yanmar was a trooper and punched way above her weight class once I remembered to use the pedal that locks the rear differential and loaded the bucket with some 16" cuts to give her some more weight up front. This hill is a lot steeper than it appears in the picture. She drug some nice sized timber up the hill.



Sunday it was time to split some of the haul up so I went old school. The splitting maul I have is an old one but it's a good one. Much faster and more satisfying than my crappy electric 5 ton unit.



Of course if you are going to go all lumberjack you need to eat...

Dinner Friday night... Organic, grass fed, bison smash burgers on butter brioch buns...



Served with home canned, fermented pickles...



Saturday night it was drinks, cigars and dinner with about 6 other couples. We are blessed to have such good friends, all of whom know how to cook... Nice spread for a Saturday night get together.



Mrs. Irish made us a nice breakfast for Sunday morning to fuel some more wood splitting. Fried eggs, bacon, cheese, green onions, tomatoes and cilantro served over a bed of cheese grits.



Built our first fire on the new fire pit area Sunday night. I took a pic from the top deck when I went up to get a cigar, before coming back down to grab a glass of Chattanooga 1816 on the rocks.

The view from your cabin is GREAT

Looks great Irish! And this thread is indeed the best one ever on AlDeer... even surpassing 575 dozen arra’s!

Beautiful place!

Thanks guys. I would say, "Yes, but you have no idea just how much work it was..." But I guess you've followed the build thread so you kind of know. Like I've said before, If I'd known how much work it was going to be before I started, I might have never started. I've kind of gotten in this habit up there now, that I usually always have a project and/or a things to do list that I try to accomplish every weekend. Mrs. Irish has to tell me to chill out and just relax sometimes, but for me working on things up there is kind of my therapy, and I just love being outdoors in the mountains, even it it is working on something.

I have really enjoyed this thread Irish. You are a blessed man.

Thanks. I know I've said this before, but I know that a lot of folks who love the outdoors dream of a cabin in the woods. One of the main reasons for posting this was to let other people know that it is a dream that is in reach for just about everyone with a reasonable set of skills, a good work ethic and some time and a little money. If a guy like me can do it anyone can.

Irish your posts on your cabin are awesome. Keep on reporting.

I'm from the beautiful Highlands of Northeast Bama so I'm used to those views , but I don't think I've ever seen food views that beautiful!

Thanks and thanks.

Up at the cabin for about 2 weeks and so far I've been really enjoying it. Looks like a long, rainy, winter's day today. A good day to hang out by the fire and catch up on some reading.

It looks like my feeder I put up last weekend already has some visitors. If I needed a little more venison, I guess I could harvest a nice young doe, but it would be like taking candy from a baby. I mainly put this up so Mrs. Irish could look out the kitchen door and see deer in her yard.



I was at one of our plants helping them out with some engineering and noticed that they were pulling up all their split rail fencing and replacing all of it. I asked them what they were going to do with all the old stuff, and they said, "Just throw it away." So I asked if they mind if I repurposed it. "Sure. Better for you to have it than us just toss it." So I made 2 trips on Friday. Repurposing stuff kind of fits in the the whole theme of this place because we have so much used stuff that we have scrounged in the build.

I'm going to make an old fashioned zig zag split rail fence out of these. There are posts, and I will probably go back and get them too, but most have rotted out on the bottom. What I don't use for fencing I will burn in the outdoor fire pit, so none of it will go to waste. These are about $10 each at Lowes, and I think I have about 120 of them so it was a pretty nice score for the cabin.





I spent the rest of the time splitting up some of the red oak I harvested from down the mountain. A lot of work, but good, satisfying work.

I'll close out this post with a little panoramic shot of the sunrise from the upper deck on the shortest day of the year...

Beautiful pic, I love sitting in a tree stand where I can see the sun rising over the hills to the East at daylight. How lucky we are to live in the "Highlands".

Funny thing. The viewing direction pretty much saved us from buying land much farther away in North Georgia. I found several properties in the North Georgia mountains and they were all facing east. Well... Early on Mrs. Irish wanted a "Sunset View" or nothing and all the properties we found that we could afford and liked all had an eastern view of the sunrise. I tried and tried to convince her that a sunrise view is what you wanted, because in the summer time you didn't want the setting sun shining all afternoon into your cabin.

I guess it was fate, because we didn't buy any of those properties, and when we found this piece we met some really nice neighbors and it was such a great deal that she dropped the sunset view "requirement" and even though she was not fond of the dirt park service road. So we ended up with this property and have zero regrets. Now she really loves this view and the sunrises every day and has even questioned her own early thought process about the sunset view.

In the mountains a sunrise view is the way to go. Maybe a sunset view at the beach? I don't know, I'm not a beach person, but some drinks on the beach and watching the sunset, ain't too bad.

Just something special about watching the world wake up across the hills .

Myself like many others on here have really enjoyed this thread. After our yearly week long vacation in November at our time share cabin in East Tennessee plus this thread the mountains are calling me. I always thought that I would retire on the Gulf coast but we are seriously reconsidering that. Glad y’all are enjoying something you put so much work and planning on a dream. It looks great!

That's living right there! Thanks for posting.

Flatlander, I warned you about the strong pull the mountains have on a feller.

Thanks. And you are absolutely right. I have always loved the beach as a kid, but I also remember trips to the mountains with my folks. Now that I'm older I like the solitude of the mountains more and more and hardly care for trips to the beach anymore.

A cabin needs Adirondack chairs, so instead of just buying some, I researched came up with my own set of templates and built a prototype to see how it set. Now my buddy Skip and I are going to build 6 total. 2 for he and his wife Bettina and 4 for Mrs. Irish and my fire pit area.

Our friend Bettina testing out the prototype...



Some more pics of it by the future fire pit...

It hasn't been all fun and games. There was red oak firewood that needed to be split and stacked. Fortunately I have a wife that ain't afraid to be the help mate that God intended... I split and she stacked. About a chord of red oak all in all...







Of course after all that hard work you need a little corn squeezins for the rheumatiz...