Mumford Log Home: Tribute to the Yard Stick

It may be surprising but one of the most useful tools during this project has been a yardstick. I do not mean to imply that it is a single yardstick throughout the project, but many, many yardsticks! We buy them by the armload. One time we were at Home Depot or Lowe’s and were going through the checkout line with around 30 yardsticks, the guy looked at us quizzically, “You have some sort of school project?” Our response, “No, we’re building a cabin.” Doesn’t everyone routinely purchase hundreds of yardsticks when they’re building a house?

One time we were stacking logs with the crane, and Kenyon or I needed to measure something so we pulled out a yardstick. The crane operator looked at us like we were crazy and said, “Do you need to borrow a tape measure?” We assured him that the yardstick worked far better.

We have gone through so many, the area around our cabin is a veritable graveyard of yardsticks. Some are mangled, some are broken purposefully, some are warped from a year in the elements, and still others are probably OK, but have been sitting out so long they are covered in dirt so their straight edge is questionable.

Here’s why they are so useful:
- Other than the concrete walls, there are no straight lines or edges on the house, so to measure you need something that will stay flat (we often use in conjunction with a level)
- We used them to measure the heights of the walls as we were building
- We used them to fish straps between the logs to hold the logs in place
- We use them to create templates for drilling, etc
- We used them to measure the rebar on the chop saw before cutting, to reduce the amount of steps
- We used them to measure the height needed for rebar (1 ½ logs)
- We used them to show the center line of the logs
- We use them to extend the length of the concrete wall out far enough to measure up for windows and doors
- Most recently, (and the moment I realized the tribute was necessary) Kenyon used them as a “shoe horn” to get the wood trim up under the metal trim pieces that were already in place

If only there was a big market for yard sticks, I would try to get a sponsor or a job as a spokesman. I must say that I highly recommend the Lowe’s yard sticks because they are slightly thicker and more sturdy than others. Alas, I don’t think Lowe’s is going to be throwing any money at me for advertising yard sticks, perhaps because they cost about 30 cents each.

Finding the centerline of the first log and the concrete wall