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As you can see in this photo, we had come far in the restoration of this fine little cabin. The logs are now chinked, the porch has been rebuilt, the chimney has been rescued, and we were ready for the roofing crew to come in and apply the copper.

I find this to be a very pleasing photo of the cabin… it is a sweet spot to stand and take in all of her beauty. If I were building her new, rather than restoring her, this is perspective I’d like to see as I approached home.

The cabin’s roof line… the way that the porch roof and the house roof are connected… is a rarity when compared with all the other cabins I have encountered over so many years. Typically, the two roofs are separate, making the porch roof more shallowly pitched.

We had the option of going with a wood shake roof here on this cabin, and when I look at this photo, I can see that that might have been a more visually appealing choice. That’s hard for me to admit to… I can’t say that is true of most cabins… I often find shake roofs are too “distracting” from a cabin’s other features.

But copper was our best option here. Of it’s many attributes, fire protection made it our choice for this cabin. When you own a cabin in the woods, fire is to be taken seriously.

I have seen a “fireproof rated” cedar shingle ignited using a single cigarette. So, one stray ember from the chimney onto a wood shake roof could have turned this cabin into a smoking pile of ash long before any fire truck could have reached her. If, and that’s a big IF, a firetruck could have reached her at all.

Originally posted 2015-03-04 16:25:21.