Tiny rustic cabin8/14/2023 ![]() Giles added a back porch to take advantage of the lake view and the spectacular sunsets. The front porch in Giles’ cabin is only 6 feet wide, authentic to cabins at the time when pioneers were frugal with space and timber. With an economy of interior space, outdoor living gained importance, and in the summer, a shaded porch in the path of a breeze was a comfortable place to work and rest. “ Porches create extra living space.” Every cabin built in the 1800s had at least a porch out front. “The smaller the house, the more important the porches are,” he says. But he paid attention to the height of the cabin, the pitch of the roof, the construction materials, and of course, the porches. People were smaller generations ago, so a cabin from that period would have smaller doors, and heating was primitive, resulting in the need for smaller windows. He wanted the cabin to look as if it had been on the site for 150 years, though it could not be an exact replica. They gathered in the middle, in the main level that encompassed a small kitchen and dining area and the family living space and fireplace with an interior chimney. Giles and his wife, Toni, had the top floor, and the children slept in the lower level. Giles built another bedroom-and-bath suite there. And because he built the cabin on a steep slope, the topography allowed for a walkout basement with windows on three sides. Giles added a bedroom-and-bath suite in an enclosed loft above the main living area. There, in 1985, he constructed his three-story, 1,200-square-foot log cabin on an 18x24 footprint. To site the starter home that he would build immediately, he scouted out a site on the cusp of where the land dropped off in a steep descent to the lake. He saved the prime building spot for the dream house he wanted to build someday. In the early 1980s, he came across 80 acres of land overlooking Douglas Lake near Dandridge, Tenn., at a price he could afford. Giles grew up in Pennsylvania, and after four years at Purdue University on the plains of Indiana, he hankered to return to gentle tree-covered mountains. Let’s back this story up to the beginning. See also A Cozy Mountain Cabin in Montana ![]() In fact, he and his oldest son both write songs, and Giles said many of his songs originate from the memories they have of life in the cabin on the lake. Giles looks back fondly at the good times the family shared in the cabin. “The kids weren’t intent on sleeping in a bed every night.”īecause of the small kitchen, the family ate many meals out on the porch, something they relished but might not have done if they’d lived in a larger house. “I don’t know whether living in a log house makes you feel outdoorsy or whether people who enjoy the outdoors are drawn to cabin living,” Giles says. A small house creates more motivation for everyone in the family to pursue outdoor activities, Giles found. Sometimes they spent the night out on the lake in the boat. The Giles children grew up on the water and learned to boat at an early age. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the cabin sits on 80 acres beside Douglas Lake in Tennessee. I wanted to say, ‘Yes, I can build a livable cabin that is this small.’ ”Īnd for 15 years, the Giles family made it work, even as the family grew to include the first four of their five children. “It was an exercise in trying to build small and live small,” says Giles, owner of Hearthstone Homes. Why would someone who builds cabins for a living want to shoehorn his own large family into a log cabin with only an 18x24 footprint? In Randy Giles case, chalk it up to stubbornness. Oates Photos by Roger Wade, courtesy Hearthstone Homes Styling by Debra Grahl.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |