A carpenter's humorous story of building a cabin on Lake Superior with his family-"part how-to, part memoir and part love story" (Minneapolis Star-Tribune).When carpenter Spike Carlsen and his wife set out, with their recently blended family of five kids, to build a cabin on the north shore of Lake Superior, they quickly realize that painting, parenting, and putting up drywall all come with both frustrations and unexpected rewards.Blending practical information with lively personal memoir, Cabin Lessons tells the wryly funny, heartwarming story of their eventful journey-from buying an unforgiving plot of land on an eroding cliff to finally enjoying the lakeside hideaway of their dreams."Spike Carlsen's book . . . chronicles the family's route from a scenic dream (with a modest budget) to designing and building, to filling the space with family, to a (rejected) blank-check purchase offer from a slickster driving an Italian-made car. And it's all told in the voice of someone you want to see sitting on the other side of the campfire, sharing a blanket with his wife, dispensing charming tales and life lessons." -Duluth News Tribune (Minnesota)

Introduction Chapter 1: Wanted: Difficult Piece of Land If you can't find a perfect piece of land, buy an imperfect piece and make it perfect. Chapter 2: Designing Small You can't buy happiness by the square foot. Chapter 3: The Rules When you build, build with hands, head, and heart. Chapter 4: Paperwork & Earthworks Mensch tracht, Gott lacht. (Man plans, God laughs.) Chapter 5: A Solid Foundation When you dig a hole, be smarter than the shovel. Chapter 6: Kat--Wife, Lifesaver, Carpenter When you marry, you marry the whole person -- not just the parts above the waterline. You get both the silk sails and the barnacles. Chapter 7: Cabin Bones Destiny can thrown down a pretty sparse trail of popcorn for you to follow. Chapter 8: The Drive If all the difficulties were known at the outset of a long journey, most of us would never start out at all. Chapter 9: Buying Cabin Parts Keep an open mind -- you never know what might crawl in. Chapter 10: Skin of the Cabin & Middle-Age Blahs Beauty is only plywood deep. Chapter 11: A Superior Lake (Some Superior Towns) When you get caught with your pants down, run like hell. Chapter 12: Wood, Wire, Pipe, & Drywall The quandary with life is you're halfway through before you realize it's a do-it-yourself project. Chapter 13: Family Matters Life is a fluid, not a solid. It changes. Be ready for it. Chapter 14: Finishing Touches When it's ninety percent finished, it's finished. Chapter 15: Troubles in Paradise Mistakes are the dues you pay for living a full life. Chapter 16: Settling In, Grooving Out There's more to life than increasing its speed. Afterword For Further Reading