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To move an 82-year-old log cabin, a Portland-based firm is relying on extensive planning and meticulous notes.

Staffers at Arciform, which specializes in historic restoration, are relocating the Pioneer Mothers Memorial Cabin Museum out of a floodplain in the Champoeg State Heritage Area, in northern Marion County, to a site about a mile and a half away.

“We have a big drawing. Every part of the building is labeled,” Arciform founder Richard De Wolf said. “It’s very labor intensive.”

Work started this week on the $125,000 project for the Daughters of the American Revolution. The cabin will be disassembled from its present location along the Willamette River and moved in pieces to the grounds of the Robert Newell House and Museum, De Wolf said. Once the DAR has raised enough money, the firm plans to rebuild it on a more solid foundation, brace the logs together to make the structure more earthquake resistant, reconstruct the chimney, install radiant heating and add insulation to the roof, he said.

The DAR built the cabin in 1931 to honor female pioneers and house artifacts that came over the Oregon Trail in the 1800s, said Judy Van Atta, director of the Pioneer Mothers and Robert Newell House museums. Today, schoolchildren visit to learn about pioneer life, she said.

DAR members have long considered moving the cabin because of multiple floods, Van Atta said. Erosion of the riverbank also has significantly damaged the building, she said. The fireplace has sunk about 4 inches, and the back porch and kitchen are sinking into the river, she added.

“When Arciform takes it apart and puts it back together it will be like it was in 1931, only better because it will be earthquake proof,” she said.

De Wolf said Arciform has been planning the project for about three years. This week, workers removed most of the cabin’s interior components, including the cabinetry and interior walls, he said. The front porch has been disassembled, and the entire structure should be completely taken apart by early January, he said.

Materials from the cabin’s interior will be stored in a warehouse at Arciform’s headquarters in North Portland, De Wolf said. The logs will be removed one layer at a time and stored in a dozen piles near the new location. This will ease the reconstruction process, he said.

“We’ve been carefully planning all the piles,” he said. “We had a couple hours of talk to figure that out.”

Because the cabin will be moved and rebuilt, it must be brought up to current building code, De Wolf said. This includes placing it on a modern foundation and replacing a stone chimney with a concrete one, he said. Arciform plans to mask the concrete with stones from the original chimney, he said.

To add insulation, but preserve the view that visitors have as they look up into the sloped roof from the interior, it was sandwiched between two layers of roof shingles, De Wolf said.

Presently, the cabin’s fir logs are stacked without any mortar between them, so the structure would easily flex and sustain damage in an earthquake, De Wolf said. To combat this, Arciform plans to thread through every log steel rods that will span from the foundation to the roof line, he said.

Some of the logs are so damaged by water that they will need to be replaced, but Arciform is working hard to preserve as much of the original wood as possible, De Wolf said. This includes widening the chimney by between 6 and 12 inches to shave off rotted wood surrounding it, he said.

“If you think long enough and hard enough there’s always a way to preserve as much as you can,” De Wolf said. “Most people’s instinct is: There’s rot in that log. Throw it away.”

Van Atta said the DAR has applied for grants and is hoping to raise about $125,000 in donations so that the cabin can be re-erected in time for school groups to visit next spring. The new location in front of the Robert Newell House makes sense, she said.

“Logistically, this will be good for our school programs,” she said.

Van Atta said the cabin’s impact on children is one reason she’s passionate about seeing the building restored to its former glory.

“It touches the lives of so many people; they’ll bring their grandchildren back because they went there when they were little,” Van Atta said. “It’s a very important part of Oregon history.”