Original subtitles

When I opened the door to the cabin,

the first thing I noticed is the smell.

It just smells like the forest.

It's really kind of earthy and fragrant,

and I don't know if it will always be there,

but it has a faint smell of campfire from the fires

we always have in the fireplace, and the wool blankets,

and just the wood.

Just the smell feels like, oh, we're at the cabin, you know?

It's just, take a deep breath.

Our cabin is located about an hour north of where we live

in Portland, and it's in Southwest

Washington on Green Mountain.

It's a wonderful area of the country.

It's cool here a lot of the year,

and it's just kind of a nice place for a black cabin.

My grandparents had log cabins, and then my parents both

had a log cabin as I was growing up,

and it was actually on the same location where they grew up.

His family cabin was such a big part of their family

culture and identity.

And so immediately when we got married 23 years ago,

we just had that as a dream.

The cabin, we went back and forth on it for so many years,

because it's a big investment, and sometimes you

don't know where you're gonna be with your family and your work.

And so we kind of stalled on it for a while,

and it was back-burnered.

And then, our kids starter to get older,

and we were thinking, yeah, this window, maybe,

has passed for us to invest in this.

And then I got unexpectedly pregnant with our third son.

That was a big surprise, and that kind of shifted everything

and put the cabin dream back on the table,

because we were like, wow, we're gonna be parenting for longer

than we thought.

That's what made us feel, like, hey,

maybe we should build a log cabin.

There was a lot

of uncertainty at that time.

I was 38, and the idea of going back to parenting a small child

was a big deal for us.

And having the cabin just kind of

felt like, this is gonna be OK.

Like, it's gonna be a beautiful experience for our family.

And it just made it easier to head through that

and the unknown, because that dream felt familiar,

and it was connected to something old

that we had had in our relationship.

Log cabins are just so iconic, and there's

something so nostalgic about the actual logs chinked together.

And since Mike grew up with that, we kind of always

just pictured, oh, if we have a cabin, it's gonna be log.

As far as the design, we had always

talked about just something symmetrical, and almost like

what a child would draw.

You know, when we talked about our log cabin,

it was like door in the middle, windows on the sides,

chimney in the middle, the end.

We just thought, yeah, we need to be

brave and paint these walls.

There's a pattern in design where

you kind of wanna move from dark to light or light to dark.

And so when you walk through the door, everything's bright.

The ceilings soar, and the light comes in,

and it just feels really beautiful.

The first thing you see is the fireplace.

And it's a Rumford firebox, so it's

a different design than normal.

It's built to have radiant heat off of the walls.

The fireplace is the heart of the cabin,

and to see it right when you enter is just--

it's actually kind of an emotional experience,

like, to have those flames.

They're different every time.

They're so alive.

The boys all sleep upstairs in the loft.

They have bunks.

It's open.

We kind of designed it that way on purpose.

We wanted to have this sort of open, communal feeling.

So up from the loft,

we have a little tiny space up there that could be either

a sleeping loft, or we have a small leather

couch up there for them, too.

And it's just kind of the child cave idea.

It's like their own little secret space.

And the kids love that.

The main floor of the cabin is like a circuit.

You can just-- you can go around the whole loop.

It's all connected.

But the spaces also feel distinct.

And then, we just have one bedroom on the main level

that Michael and I share.

One of the limitations of building a smaller log cabin

is, obviously, space.

And so we had to really think carefully about how

to make the traffic flow.

And in the kitchen, we have kind of a corridor where you walk,

and that's also where you'd have barstools.

So we are kind of looking for an option,

like, how can we have seating here that isn't clanking around

and isn't being pushed out into the way?

And then, we came across those old cafeteria stools

in an antique shop.

And so we ordered those, and we had those installed.

And then they just sit there and get their waffles,

and then they can tuck them right back in.

They're not in the way when we're trying to walk

through that hall space.

Voila!

Thanks!

Oh, do you need a little bit more?

So when we decided to build the cabin,

we knew it was gonna be small, and we knew we'd want family

and friends to come here.

So we were like contemplating, like, how would we

have friends and family here?

So we decided to do a detached garage

and then do a little apartment above.

real quick, and I've gotta get another [inaudible]...

We try to make our time at the cabin different from our time

at home.

I think most parents can identify with there's

a real attraction to screens.

We struggle to balance that at home,

and I think the cabin kind of makes

that more automatic for us.

It kind of does the parenting for us.

Walking is a big part of our family culture,

and we have a viewpoint that we love to take the boys to.

That's been a really exciting surprise

of having time and space to just kind of be and then

let things come up with them.

And it's-- yeah, it's really special.

We're both really rooted people.

We like to just sink our roots in and stay.

We don't do very well just jumping from house

to house and place to place.

We just want to invest in each other.

We want to invest in our kids.

We want to invest in our home.

Uh-oh!

You got any more?

Yeah.

So that was also

why the cabin fit into our, kind of, family makeup

and our relationship makeup, because it

just feels solid and rooted.

Our kids have really grown to love the cabin,

and they already think about-- we'll hear them once

in a while say things about, like, yeah,

and maybe later, I can bring my family here.

And you know, so they're kind of envisioning, you know,

having these special times in the future.

It will be a family heirloom.