Restoration Road (2021–…): Season 1, Episode 10 - Ohio Log Cabin - full transcript
An 1870 log cabin is reconstructed into a bedroom suite in Dublin, GA.
The Ohio River,
life blood of the Midwest.
Used for commerce, fishing,
travel, and survival.
Tucked in along the banks
of this majestic river
lies the secluded hamlet
of Sardis, Ohio.
Population 600,
Sardis seems to be a town
with a deep connection
to its past,
which began decades
before the Civil War.
I'm in Sardis
to meet Barney Grueser,
a master builder
with a special interest
in historic log cabins.
Barney's been rescuing
and restoring
these iconic
American structures
since 1976.
And he's invited me out here
into this remote region
of the Ohio River Valley,
way beyond
cell phone coverage,
to share with me
his latest discovery.
Barney,
this is something right here.
I'm Clint Harp
and I'm traveling America
to shed a light
on some incredible
restorations
and transformations,
get hands-on
with some of the builders
bringing these amazing places
back to life,
and make sure
these new stories live on
for years to come.
Ooh. Isn't she a beauty?
This is Restoration Road.
You don't see
these every day.
Yeah,
it's a pretty cool cabin.
I gotta be honest,
I have not seen
many of these
in my lifetime, ever.
Oh, yeah?
Well, it's kind of
your typical Ohio cabin
with the larger oak logs
and a half-dovetail
corner notches.
That is amazing.
How in the world
did you find this?
I've been driving
by these cabins,
and they've got
siding on them,
maybe two or three layers.
But look in the window
and see a real wide
window jam.
It's kind of creepy, Barney.
I'll be honest with you.
You're driving
to people's houses and...
You don't like looking
in people's windows.
But, you know,
if it's got a wide jam,
you're pretty sure that
that's a log cabin there.
It's easy then to drive by
somebody's house out
here in Ohio
and not realize
that it's a log cabin.
Oh, yeah. People start
taking some siding off,
and, oh, my gosh,
we've owned this property
for a hundred years,
and we didn't know
- it was a log cabin.
- I mean,
that'd be like,
finding gold
- all of a sudden, you know?
- Well, yeah,
to some people,
it would be.
- Well, to us, you know.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- So what's the story?
- Well, we don't have
a lot of documented history
on this structure,
so we have to go by
just what I've learned
by taking these down
for, you know, 40 some years.
- Wow.
- And I think it's...
It was built
around the 1870s.
Okay.
And then they modernized it
in the early 1900s.
1915 was the earliest
newspaper we found
underneath the wallpaper,
and we think
that's when they made
this cabin a two-story.
You can see
it was a story and a half,
and at some point
in its life,
they added to the walls
to make it a full two-story.
Is that because of the studs
up there?
Well, what is it... what is
it that's giving that away?
Story and a half means
you got a full story
on the bottom.
You've got half of a story
of logs on the second floor.
- Oh, okay. So you...
- So the rafters
would've pitched off
of those logs,
up to a level ceiling
that would've been
tall enough
for a grownup to stand in.
All right.
I'm looking at this, going,
"Oh, did somebody
take some logs down?"
You're saying
that's where it stopped?
Correct.
They did a nice job
with their half-dovetails
here.
You know,
they're fairly steep,
and that also kind of dates
the structure.
The earliest
half-dovetail notch
documented in Ohio
was 1819.
Wow, okay.
I'm noticing some
variances here,
I mean, here,
it's kind of flush,
here, it's sticking out.
- Is this normal?
- Usually they'll cut
these off afterwards,
you know,
if they've left them long,
they'll cut 'em off.
The more experienced
cornerman
would've been on the front.
The people learning
you know.
They would've put me
on the back side.
Hey Clint,
you go back there.
They were
bringing up the back.
Okay.
I'm looking
at some massive logs
that's 14 inches.
- That's big.
- It is.
And what's really unique
is the tightness
- of the chink joints.
- Okay.
The chink joints
being right here?
Yup.
The gap in between the logs,
you know,
where they put the chinking
or the dobbing, you know,
to fill that crack
and keep the air
and the bugs out.
So it takes
a lot of talent
to get them
almost touching here
and still be tight
at your corner notch.
Okay.
This is our chinking.
Yeah.
And you can see the binder.
- They'd use straw or grass.
- Okay.
Some of it may be original,
but every year, they'd have
to do maintenance to this.
More fortunate
that this cabin
was covered up with siding
after it was only exposed
to the elements for about 40,
50 years at the most.
If it hadn't been covered up
and they'd left it
exposed till now,
it wouldn't be worth saving.
I see the siding up here.
It was all over the structure
at one time.
You could see it's an old
Dutch lap style.
- See the corner's detail?
- Yeah.
I mean this place
must've really looked nice
- at some point.
- Sure. Look at that.
You mentioned sort of
a front porch or something.
Not a very old porch.
Clint, it looks like to me
that it's probably
only 20-years-old
or something, you know.
These treated boards,
galvanized nails.
You know, they even used
joist hangers,
so it's kind of
a junky-looking porch,
but, you know,
it served its purpose,
so this will be one
of the first things
we take off of here.
It's an amazing structure,
Barney.
- Yeah.
- Let's go inside.
Okay.
- All right.
- Yeah.
- Ain't this cool?
- This is a log cabin.
This must've been
more of the main living area
over here
because the fireplace
used to be here.
Someone's already
- taken this out.
- Oh, you can see the...
That wasn't
an original window?
No. But you can kind of see
the shadow line here, Clint?
- Okay. Right.
- So that's where
the, you know,
some of the stone
would've covered these logs.
Would this have been
the only fireplace
- in the entire log cabin?
- Yes.
Typically,
they only had one.
How would you get the heat
over there?
You just open it.
And I'm sure they stayed
in this room a lot.
- Yeah. This was this life.
- Yeah. It was rugged.
- Yeah.
- Kind of like the walls.
Yeah. You can see
there's another shadow
line here.
This is where the staircase
used to be.
Oh. My goodness. Yeah. Wow.
And that's typical,
you know,
to have one of these
sidewinder stairs.
So a little landing
right here,
and then it just kind of
comes up.
- That is great.
- Yeah. Real quickly.
Was it real common back
in the 1800s
to, like, wallpaper
your floor?
Well, they wallpaper
these walls a bunch.
We found a newspaper
that's dated 1915,
1916, 1917.
Were they insulating,
were they decorating?
I think
it was to keep the air out,
but they also then put
wallpaper on it.
We've got so many other rooms
got some pretty
cool stuff on it
you could see.
Oh, let's go see it.
Let's go see it, for sure.
This is, like,
the original room, you know,
one that we haven't done
anything to.
Four layers of wallpaper,
painted ceiling.
There's so much wallpaper
on here that's...
- It almost feels padded.
- Yeah.
And you can kind of see
this newspaper
has something about
a battle at sea,
- about a ship being sunk.
- Interesting.
World War I era.
Ain't that cool?
That is really cool. Wow.
Let's go upstairs.
Okay, Clint.
This is up here
at the second story.
Which was a quarter story.
- Correct.
- At one point, right?
Half story.
And again, you can see how,
you know,
with the stairs here,
this would've just been
a story and a half,
you would've been hit
on your head on the rafters.
When it was just
a half story,
were there just beds up here
and you basically just,
- kind of, like, lofty?
- Right. But your pitch rafters
would've pitched off
of this top plate up.
And then your ceiling height
was probably close to this.
Okay. What about
all these joists here?
We'll reclaim these joists
because they are original,
even though this floor
is not original.
You can see
where they used to cut nails
to hold the original
flooring down.
- Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
- And they make great tables,
- they make great doors.
- Yeah. I mean, this is...
That's my jam, Barney.
That's my stuff.
I mean, I love it all.
Beautiful wood, though.
Really, really beautiful.
Here's some of these
old cut nails, Clint.
- Oh, right. Okay.
- See these?
And you can kind of see
the crown head on 'em those
would've been hand-made
as opposed to the wire nails.
- Sure.
- You know,
they didn't start
making wire nails till 1890,
so these were in use
till then.
These are cool.
Very cool.
Hey, looky here.
Nice little snakeskin there.
We found some
pretty long skins up here,
you know, six,
seven feet long.
Oh, great.
So, what is this gonna
become, you know?
It sort of changed
throughout the years.
What are you changing it
into now?
This is gonna be
an addition
on an existing home
down in Georgia.
- I'm from Georgia.
- Oh, you are?
I am, yeah.
I was born in Atlanta.
- Oh, okay.
- Oh, man, that's my place,
- I'll have to show you around.
- Okay, good.
It'll be an addition
on an existing structure.
I think he's gonna leave it
open all the way up.
So it's just gonna be
a giant room
- with giant vaulted ceilings?
- Yes.
Wow.
The thinking back then
was totally opposite
the way it is today.
You look like
you lived in a barn,
you look like
you didn't have any money.
Whereas now,
I wanna look like
I live in a log cabin.
That's cool you know,
that's a good thing.
Well, let's start
taking the roof off.
- All right. Good deal.
- I'm ready.
I'm too cold standing around,
talking.
- Yeah.
- Sounds good right here.
Whoa.
Hope nobody's down there.
There you go.
Medic!
There we go.
Piece of cake, right?
Really,
that's a lot of lighting.
Yeah.
life blood of the Midwest.
Used for commerce, fishing,
travel, and survival.
Tucked in along the banks
of this majestic river
lies the secluded hamlet
of Sardis, Ohio.
Population 600,
Sardis seems to be a town
with a deep connection
to its past,
which began decades
before the Civil War.
I'm in Sardis
to meet Barney Grueser,
a master builder
with a special interest
in historic log cabins.
Barney's been rescuing
and restoring
these iconic
American structures
since 1976.
And he's invited me out here
into this remote region
of the Ohio River Valley,
way beyond
cell phone coverage,
to share with me
his latest discovery.
Barney,
this is something right here.
I'm Clint Harp
and I'm traveling America
to shed a light
on some incredible
restorations
and transformations,
get hands-on
with some of the builders
bringing these amazing places
back to life,
and make sure
these new stories live on
for years to come.
Ooh. Isn't she a beauty?
This is Restoration Road.
You don't see
these every day.
Yeah,
it's a pretty cool cabin.
I gotta be honest,
I have not seen
many of these
in my lifetime, ever.
Oh, yeah?
Well, it's kind of
your typical Ohio cabin
with the larger oak logs
and a half-dovetail
corner notches.
That is amazing.
How in the world
did you find this?
I've been driving
by these cabins,
and they've got
siding on them,
maybe two or three layers.
But look in the window
and see a real wide
window jam.
It's kind of creepy, Barney.
I'll be honest with you.
You're driving
to people's houses and...
You don't like looking
in people's windows.
But, you know,
if it's got a wide jam,
you're pretty sure that
that's a log cabin there.
It's easy then to drive by
somebody's house out
here in Ohio
and not realize
that it's a log cabin.
Oh, yeah. People start
taking some siding off,
and, oh, my gosh,
we've owned this property
for a hundred years,
and we didn't know
- it was a log cabin.
- I mean,
that'd be like,
finding gold
- all of a sudden, you know?
- Well, yeah,
to some people,
it would be.
- Well, to us, you know.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- So what's the story?
- Well, we don't have
a lot of documented history
on this structure,
so we have to go by
just what I've learned
by taking these down
for, you know, 40 some years.
- Wow.
- And I think it's...
It was built
around the 1870s.
Okay.
And then they modernized it
in the early 1900s.
1915 was the earliest
newspaper we found
underneath the wallpaper,
and we think
that's when they made
this cabin a two-story.
You can see
it was a story and a half,
and at some point
in its life,
they added to the walls
to make it a full two-story.
Is that because of the studs
up there?
Well, what is it... what is
it that's giving that away?
Story and a half means
you got a full story
on the bottom.
You've got half of a story
of logs on the second floor.
- Oh, okay. So you...
- So the rafters
would've pitched off
of those logs,
up to a level ceiling
that would've been
tall enough
for a grownup to stand in.
All right.
I'm looking at this, going,
"Oh, did somebody
take some logs down?"
You're saying
that's where it stopped?
Correct.
They did a nice job
with their half-dovetails
here.
You know,
they're fairly steep,
and that also kind of dates
the structure.
The earliest
half-dovetail notch
documented in Ohio
was 1819.
Wow, okay.
I'm noticing some
variances here,
I mean, here,
it's kind of flush,
here, it's sticking out.
- Is this normal?
- Usually they'll cut
these off afterwards,
you know,
if they've left them long,
they'll cut 'em off.
The more experienced
cornerman
would've been on the front.
The people learning
you know.
They would've put me
on the back side.
Hey Clint,
you go back there.
They were
bringing up the back.
Okay.
I'm looking
at some massive logs
that's 14 inches.
- That's big.
- It is.
And what's really unique
is the tightness
- of the chink joints.
- Okay.
The chink joints
being right here?
Yup.
The gap in between the logs,
you know,
where they put the chinking
or the dobbing, you know,
to fill that crack
and keep the air
and the bugs out.
So it takes
a lot of talent
to get them
almost touching here
and still be tight
at your corner notch.
Okay.
This is our chinking.
Yeah.
And you can see the binder.
- They'd use straw or grass.
- Okay.
Some of it may be original,
but every year, they'd have
to do maintenance to this.
More fortunate
that this cabin
was covered up with siding
after it was only exposed
to the elements for about 40,
50 years at the most.
If it hadn't been covered up
and they'd left it
exposed till now,
it wouldn't be worth saving.
I see the siding up here.
It was all over the structure
at one time.
You could see it's an old
Dutch lap style.
- See the corner's detail?
- Yeah.
I mean this place
must've really looked nice
- at some point.
- Sure. Look at that.
You mentioned sort of
a front porch or something.
Not a very old porch.
Clint, it looks like to me
that it's probably
only 20-years-old
or something, you know.
These treated boards,
galvanized nails.
You know, they even used
joist hangers,
so it's kind of
a junky-looking porch,
but, you know,
it served its purpose,
so this will be one
of the first things
we take off of here.
It's an amazing structure,
Barney.
- Yeah.
- Let's go inside.
Okay.
- All right.
- Yeah.
- Ain't this cool?
- This is a log cabin.
This must've been
more of the main living area
over here
because the fireplace
used to be here.
Someone's already
- taken this out.
- Oh, you can see the...
That wasn't
an original window?
No. But you can kind of see
the shadow line here, Clint?
- Okay. Right.
- So that's where
the, you know,
some of the stone
would've covered these logs.
Would this have been
the only fireplace
- in the entire log cabin?
- Yes.
Typically,
they only had one.
How would you get the heat
over there?
You just open it.
And I'm sure they stayed
in this room a lot.
- Yeah. This was this life.
- Yeah. It was rugged.
- Yeah.
- Kind of like the walls.
Yeah. You can see
there's another shadow
line here.
This is where the staircase
used to be.
Oh. My goodness. Yeah. Wow.
And that's typical,
you know,
to have one of these
sidewinder stairs.
So a little landing
right here,
and then it just kind of
comes up.
- That is great.
- Yeah. Real quickly.
Was it real common back
in the 1800s
to, like, wallpaper
your floor?
Well, they wallpaper
these walls a bunch.
We found a newspaper
that's dated 1915,
1916, 1917.
Were they insulating,
were they decorating?
I think
it was to keep the air out,
but they also then put
wallpaper on it.
We've got so many other rooms
got some pretty
cool stuff on it
you could see.
Oh, let's go see it.
Let's go see it, for sure.
This is, like,
the original room, you know,
one that we haven't done
anything to.
Four layers of wallpaper,
painted ceiling.
There's so much wallpaper
on here that's...
- It almost feels padded.
- Yeah.
And you can kind of see
this newspaper
has something about
a battle at sea,
- about a ship being sunk.
- Interesting.
World War I era.
Ain't that cool?
That is really cool. Wow.
Let's go upstairs.
Okay, Clint.
This is up here
at the second story.
Which was a quarter story.
- Correct.
- At one point, right?
Half story.
And again, you can see how,
you know,
with the stairs here,
this would've just been
a story and a half,
you would've been hit
on your head on the rafters.
When it was just
a half story,
were there just beds up here
and you basically just,
- kind of, like, lofty?
- Right. But your pitch rafters
would've pitched off
of this top plate up.
And then your ceiling height
was probably close to this.
Okay. What about
all these joists here?
We'll reclaim these joists
because they are original,
even though this floor
is not original.
You can see
where they used to cut nails
to hold the original
flooring down.
- Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
- And they make great tables,
- they make great doors.
- Yeah. I mean, this is...
That's my jam, Barney.
That's my stuff.
I mean, I love it all.
Beautiful wood, though.
Really, really beautiful.
Here's some of these
old cut nails, Clint.
- Oh, right. Okay.
- See these?
And you can kind of see
the crown head on 'em those
would've been hand-made
as opposed to the wire nails.
- Sure.
- You know,
they didn't start
making wire nails till 1890,
so these were in use
till then.
These are cool.
Very cool.
Hey, looky here.
Nice little snakeskin there.
We found some
pretty long skins up here,
you know, six,
seven feet long.
Oh, great.
So, what is this gonna
become, you know?
It sort of changed
throughout the years.
What are you changing it
into now?
This is gonna be
an addition
on an existing home
down in Georgia.
- I'm from Georgia.
- Oh, you are?
I am, yeah.
I was born in Atlanta.
- Oh, okay.
- Oh, man, that's my place,
- I'll have to show you around.
- Okay, good.
It'll be an addition
on an existing structure.
I think he's gonna leave it
open all the way up.
So it's just gonna be
a giant room
- with giant vaulted ceilings?
- Yes.
Wow.
The thinking back then
was totally opposite
the way it is today.
You look like
you lived in a barn,
you look like
you didn't have any money.
Whereas now,
I wanna look like
I live in a log cabin.
That's cool you know,
that's a good thing.
Well, let's start
taking the roof off.
- All right. Good deal.
- I'm ready.
I'm too cold standing around,
talking.
- Yeah.
- Sounds good right here.
Whoa.
Hope nobody's down there.
There you go.
Medic!
There we go.
Piece of cake, right?
Really,
that's a lot of lighting.
Yeah.