You remember the cabin framing looked like this. Thats more or less an eight foot wall, with maybe 1 foot 8 inches below the deck of the hull. The height was chosen more or less arbitrarily, based I think on having 8 foot two-by stock to work with for the framing.
At this point Im thinking all the great and rare 1x12 redwood we pulled from the decommissioned chicken coop was not going to be enough wood, and was gong to be too brittle, too bug eaten or rotten, and too heavy. So I was pricing new redwood, though this was not my ideal.
When I got down to thinking about (and pricing) the redwood siding, I realized Id made a small but critical blunder. About 2-1/2 inches of blunder.
Had I made the walls a tiny tiny bit shorter, I could have used 6 foot long boards for the siding. This made a huge difference in the pricing since 1x12 or 1x10 redwood is already expensive, but longer lengths are even more so. With 6 foot lengths, I could easily cut 12 lumber in half, but the next common step up is 16 lengths, which were much more spendy and wasteful.
Well, the cabin already looked ridiculously tall, and I wasnt yet committed to the height, so I decided to do something crazy...
I cut the walls down 2-1/2 inches. I clamped my carpenters square to each stud to serve as a guide for my skillsaw and cut a few inches off of each stud.
Considering that everything was glued and screwed (or nailed), it wasnt easy. I had to remove the little stud nubs and glue and nail the top plate to the new tops of the studs.
It only took most of a morning to fix the height of the cabin. Now the walls measure exactly six foot from the deck to the top of the walls.
As a consolation for my troubles (and perhaps reward for conscientiously correcting my mistake), I had a beautiful visitor that day.
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