Reclaimed Cabin in the Adirondacks

A reclaimed cabin is a dream retreat built with lumber from an old blacksmith shop.

Story & photos by Ricky Zwirz Born and raised in New York City, I had always dreamed of one day owning a cabin on a nice private piece of land. About eight years ago, I found the perfect parcel in upstate New York. My 50 acres is a great combination of wetlands, trout streams, pine trees and rock ledges. The most important aspect of building a cabin on this beautiful land was to use recycled materials, so the cabin would look like it had always been there. I knew exactly where to start. About 45 years ago, my older sister and her husband moved to Adirondack State Park and purchased an old farm with a once operational blacksmith shop from the early 1880s on it. Over the years, the shop had been used for storage, but I saw the beauty in its hand-carved wooden beams and cedar siding. I hired a contractor to disassemble the structure and transport the materials to my property about 30 minutes east. As I worked with my contractor to design my dream cabin, I realized he had the same vision I did. With a very rough set of blue prints and a large stack of 200-year-old lumber, the cabin began to come to life. I drove up from the city every weekend to work on my cabin with the contractor and several of my friends. As we constructed the cabin with that big pile of beautifully hand-carved beams, we began to add small touches, such as a sleeping loft, front and back porches and even a small outhouse. It’s been five years since the main cabin has been completed, and I couldn’t be happier. For 64 years, I have collected Native American artifacts, and decorating the cabin with them was the finishing touch on the retreat of my dreams. Every morning that I wake up there, I sip my coffee on the front porch and watch the vast array of wildlife that comes to visit. One afternoon brought a memorable siting: an animal that I thought was my neighbor’s horse. I was about to approach it, so I could return it, but then realized the visitor was actually a moose! [gallery link="file" columns="4" ids="64281,64282,64283,64285"]