In the beginning... Some related info

We decided to write these "extra" pages hoping the information will be useful to someone potentially interested in building a project of this magnitude and hopefully help avoid some of the mistakes we made.

 The plans arrived from "Stevenson Projects" quite quickly (about three weeks)  at the end of July 2001. We studied the plans for about a week and viewed the videos several times. The drawings are quite good and self explanatory, and can be purchased individually from the video tapes. The videos are a must if you are a novice in this method of building. They are 3 hours long and cover the complete instructions for the construction of the "Weekender" which is almost identical to the "Vacationer", but on a smaller scale. The information in the videos has proved invaluable to us and we highly recommend them.   

There is a list of materials enclosed with the plans. Unfortunately we did not find it helpful because it does not specify which materials would be used for any individual subassemblies of the project. Needless to say we spent a lot of time trying do decipher what materials are needed first.

Since we only have a double car garage (18'x20'), space is limited strictly to the materials that are necessary for the current work. Besides, lumber will warp while sitting unused in the garage for months at a time anyway.

We started with the keel lumber. Since the lumber dimensions called for in the plans was unavailable to us locally, we decided to buy shorter ones and "butt join" it as needed. The plans call for 18' and 19' 1"x12" clear fir, which not only is it impossible to get here, but it would make the project very hard for anyone to afford. We decided to buy #2 pine in 14' lengths. We also decided to join two lengths in parallel since it was more manageable to use it this way.  

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