With the cabin framing started, it was finally beginning to look like a cabin. We had the first wall framed, when it went up mom thought Sharon and I could not have done it without help. Well, let’s see.

Laying out the wall was easy enough. We just replicated what we did for the front wall. The back wall does have a couple of intersecting walls for the bedroom and closet, but that was no issue. Following the instructions in the Ultimate Guide to House Framing we had no issues with the layout.

Raising Cabin Framing by Hand

All the while we were laying out the second wall and nailing it together, my mind was twirling. That first wall was very heavy and it took four of us to lift it. Now this second wall was going to be just as heavy, but Sharon and I were going to have to lift it on our own.

I thought about some sort of pulley system attached to the truck, but what could we hook it on. There are no nearby trees and certainly nothing tall enough.

Then I thought, what about the jack for the truck? Unfortunately the jack only lifted the wall about 18 inches off the deck. We used scrap wood to hold it there while we figure out how to get it the other nine feet!

What about the tie down straps? Screwing a piece of wood to the deck as a stopper I then attached a tie down strap to the end on a ten foot 2×6 and to the pop of the wall. Ratcheting the strap we managed to lift it to about five feet. Unfortunately that was as much as the tie downs could do and we were running out of scraps to hold it there.

We decided that being five feet up, the angle should make it easier to just lift it a little and add more blocking under it. This way we could do it a little at a time. Great ideas… Not!

Sharon and I both grabbed onto the wall and pushed. As soon as we started to push all the blocking that was in place fell.

Now we were holding a wall with no blocking. It was too heavy for me to hold alone so Sharon had to hold it also and we had no-one else to replace the blocking. As we were both standing under it we couldn’t put it down and it was becoming very quickly apparent that we couldn’t hold it there for much longer.

With an almighty push we gave it all we had and managed to get the wall all the rest of the way up. This was not the smartest thing we have ever done and are absolutely sure we need to find a better way.

Still that’s the second wall up and the cabin is really starting to take shape.