A Sustainable Deck

They had a good reason for naming our nearby town Cedarville. Before roads were built to the area in the 1920s, Cedarville was a lumbering and fishing village. The local white cedars are largely second growth trees but some are quite tall and their smell is great.

We had a large cedar growing in front of our deck, but it was aging and starting to lean. We figured that the tree was growing diseased, and it was blocking more of our view from the deck down to Lake Huron. We decided that the best thing we could do was to take the tree down. So we asked our neighbors Dave and Kevin St. Onge, who live year-round in the area and who own a sawmill, to cut down the cedar tree in the upcoming winter.

We had also been thinking for some time about building a small platform deck at the waterfront. Kevin suggested recycling some of the wood into a deck near the waterfront. They cut the tree in the winter and sledged the trunk to the mainland behind a snowmobile.

They cut the trunk into boards as well as a thick section for a bench top. After kiln drying, Kevin assembled the deck and bench the following spring. So even though we have lost a beautiful tree, we gained a great deck and bench by the waterfront.

Calm in the Midst of Chaos

The North Woods are a great place for a good night's sleep: cool, breezy, and very quiet. The challenge during the summer months, however, are the short nights: it is not unusual to be able to walk outside after 11pm without stumbling over something, and the sunrise start around 5am. So while the nights are quiet and comfortable, they end too soon.

Just before sunrise, we were awakened by a cacophony of ravens. We had seen more ravens during this particular summer because one of our neighbors was running a deer feeding station back on the island. But this particular morning reminded me of the classic Hitchcock movie, "The Birds." The ravens were everywhere and each one of them was calling out frantically as they swooped and dove across the sky.

We pulled open the shades to look around and, at first, did not notice the object of their attention. But soon we tracked their motion and found the source of their anxiety: a large Great Horned Owl that had decided to stop hunting for young ravens and rest atop a dead tree trunk at the back of our property.

What a bird! We had heard the owl a couple of nights before as it hunted for its very annoying youngster, which continued to screech for food while its parent flapped around looking for a nice vole or bird or snake. But now, the owl was simply resting atop the tree trunk, seemingly unfazed by he dozens of ravens swooping around him. The only movement was an occasional flick of its head when a raven flew too close. I thought I heard the owl say softly, "You know that I could reach out, grab you, and devour you if I wished. But right now I am not hungry, and you don't impress me enough to bother with you."

Eventually the owl decided to fly back onto the top of the island, flexed its wings, and gracefully and casually flew from his perch, ignoring the pestering ravens, who eventually tired of the whole business and flew back to their own nests.

We both learned something from that owl: be confident in your own abilities, know that mere noise is not going to distract you from your goals, and keep calm in the face of attacks. It worked for the owl, and we are trying to make this lesson work for us.

Drying Clothes

I designed our cottage with hook ups for a stackable washer and electric dryer, which we installed in 2000. We use a Kenmore with a front-loading washer which has been very reliable. But there are times when we want to hang clothes or towels outside.

There is a significant Amish settlement around Clare, Michigan, which is on our way to the cottage. We found a great wooden drying rack at an Amish hardware store:

But if we left it mounted outside it would mildew. So I built a frame from some spare planks and finished it with Cabot varnish (wonderful stuff, by the way). We simply mount the rack and leave it outside when the weather permits:

Fresh Air

Even though our cottage has all of the basic kitchen appliances (refrigerator, electric stove, microwave, and coffee maker), we have moved away from cooking for every meal. We have found a great assortment of quick-and-easy menu items that either can stay in the cottage while we're away or can be easily carried across on the boat and hauled up the hill. But more on menus in another post.

Since we still do some cooking, we needed a simple solution for some of the pungent by-products of cooking: onion peels. egg shells, hot dog wrappers ... you get the idea. We used to bury some of the compostable items, but we're not on the island that often and didn't want to attract the local wildlife (there is an occasional bear sighting on the island). We also didn't want to store trash outside the cottage for the same reason.

One of the great things about a cottage is that we have time to think ... large thoughts or small, it doesn't matter! There are a surprising number of times when we have an "aha! moment" and come up with a simple yet effective way to do things. In one of our brainstorming sessions, we hit on a simple solution for smelly food waste that works just fine for us. We bought a two-gallon wide-mouth jug, put some Borax in the bottom, and lined it with a small wastebasket size garbage bag. Simply add your potentially smelly waste, lock up the top, and bingo!

 

We end up taking a bag into town with us every few days ... we don't do much cooking but there are always larger jugs to buy from the local hardware store or online. Put one of these together and you will never have friends show up and tell you what you had for dinner the night before!

Staying Dry

When we built our cottage, we wanted to "keep things dry" to avoid creating a musty environment over time. Even though we have waterfront property on Lake Huron, our cottage still smells brand-new after 19 years. Here are a few of the things we have done to keep it that way:

When we built the cottage, we decided to use a pier foundation rather than a cinder block foundation with a crawlspace. Since we are on a hill and the ground is relatively soft, we did not want the weight of a cinder block foundation shifting over time as gravity does its inevitable thing. But we also wanted to raise the house off the ground to ensure airflow beneath the house. We have used wooden and resin trellis panels around the foundation to keep larger animals from hiding out under the house in the winter.

We then laid down heavy-duty tarpaulins beneath the structure and weighted them down with rocks. This has kept moisture from creeping up out of the ground and into the structure.

Since the outside of the house was going to be clad with cedar panels, we decided to use the same cedar panels on the inside of the house. This strengthened the wall structure and avoided the tendency of drywall to crack and to absorb moisture and household smells over time. The inside of the house still smells like cedar when you enter. The walls are 6 inches deep so are well insulated to provide more moisture protection.

The floor was another challenge! Since the house is on piers, it has great air flow but also opens up the underside of the house to small critters. We used a couple of different configurations of fiberglass insulation with a vapor barrier beneath the floor structure. In all cases, the animals loved tearing the insulation down and using it for nesting material. In a couple of cases we had squirrels and even a mink nest under the house. So this summer we contracted with a local resident to pull out all the fiberglass insulation and install 2-inch rigid foam panels between the floor joists, with slow-expanding form used to seal the gaps. This provides a more reliable vapor barrier as well as R10 insulation value beneath the floor. This is adequate as we usually use our cottage between May and October.

We are hoping that the animals don't think there is a nice warm place to live above the rigid foam and try to burrow through it. If for some reason they do, we have a double-layer of sub-flooring atop the joists.

All of these features have helped us maintain a dry and clean-smelling cottage for these 19 seasons.