Shelter from the Storm

So, before everything fell apart, we bought this bit of land out in the hills of southeastern Ohio, near some friends' properties, intending to build a little something and retire here, someday. Thirty-four acres of mixed hardwoods, hills and rocks, deer, bunnies and ferns. We had power run out to it, and a meter up, but it wasn't connected to anything. No well, no sewer, no gas...no paved road, just a dirt 'driveway' shared by four or five property owners.
That year we spent many weekends here, establishing a campsite and beginning construction by clearing trees, cutting and peeling trees for posts, digging the holes for the posts. We leveled a spot for a little dome tent, set it up and stocked it with tools, then covered it with a triple heavy tarp. That little tent survived all kinds of weather, sheltered those tools for several years. Its partner sheltered US for seven months, five of them in the campsite. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
So, eventually, it happened. Neither of us had a job and the money was gone. So we started selling stuff. Sold two cars for way less than they were worth, traded down for better gas mileage with the third. Sold, threw out or gave away/donated 2/3 of 24 years' accumulation of 'stuff'. Funny thing is, I miss very little of it. Some of it was very painful, especially things like books. We begged storage space from friends with basements and eventually, after the house was repossessed, moved into one of those basements in exchange for scraping, reglazing and painting the sunroom on their Underground Railroad house, built in 1841!! A lot of old paint on there. Pretty sure we hit whitewash.

It's at this point that the van broke down (brake line disintegration, total replacement needed) and we were pretty much stuck in that basement for six months waiting for the local industrial arts high school to fix it cheap.
Finally, we're out here 'for good and all'. April 1st of 2009 we moved out, set up our campsite, and settled in, then almost immediately moved into our neighbor's hunting lodge with its woodburning stove...April that year was COLD. We were making sporadic money doing dog sitting jobs back in Columbus, and visiting the food pantries while we were there and gathering donations of building materials from friends, then we'd come back out here and apply them.
The structure we currently live in, originally conceptualized as a storage shed, is about 12' by 20', give or take a foot either way. Eight vertical poles (four to the north 6' tall, four to the south 10') support 20 foot headers. Many, many, many peeled poplar saplings gave their short little lives to my need for rafters. Roof sheathing is mostly recycled plywood, some waferboard, mostly leftover tarpaper and roofing tar and some new, some leftover shingles and roll roofing, some new. The end result looks a little like the gentle waves on the ocean, but it hasn't leaked a drop in two years (knock wood). The floor we first leveled with gravel out of the wash behind the house, then put down pallets we salvaged from an electrical supply company, fitted to the space and 'filled in' and connected together...then covered them all with 3/4" waferboard (OSB), which we bought new,along with the screws that we drove by hand. Blisters.
The walls were built up gradually. One of our neighbors gifted us with a small woodburning stove, so our plans included venting for that. We started with poles on the diagonal between the upright poles on the north, east and west walls. We did not support the south wall this way because it was to be mostly windows and door. Then a 'chair rail' series of poles was attached all around the inside of those three walls. The keyhole for the stovepipe and the window in the north wall were then framed out by notching (using chisels and mallet)the upright poles and the diagonals to accept 2x4's (recycled)and the window (recycled) and the stovepipe keyhole (new). The same framing was done for the window in the East wall. Then we started covering those three walls. The inside of the north wall and the lower section of east and west walls are covered with a heavy, vellum colored vinyl wall covering that we nailed to that 'chair rail' pole and the uprights. The east and west walls above that vinyl are tarp, as is the entire outer layer. We left an area in the floor near the center of the space without any pallet or OSB, and filled that space with red bricks, for a hearth for the stove. Once all the elements were installed, we used GreatStuff to seal things up, especially where inner vinyl met floor.
OH, I forgot, we got some used accoustical ceiling tile (the kind used in a suspended ceiling system) and nailed them to the rafters, giving us an airspace of insulation above, and almost had enough to finish the job. The rest is covered with a piece of old carpet.
The south wall went on last. We moved in pretty much as soon as the pallet floor was down and the roof was on, but we still slept in the tent, just under that lovely hard roof! We had a huge tarp over the south wall that we'd put up on tent stakes when we were home, drop down when we left or for rainy weather. I would laugh and say I always wanted to have a diorama, but I meant a miniature, not one I lived in! But eventually the windows went in and the door went on, the stovepipe was installed,and the 'house' was officially Done.