19 ms·

We quit our jobs to build a cabin

462 points by anarbadalov 6y ago

site-packages1 6y ago
Outside Online is a consistent source of high quality, long form articles. I always enjoy reading them when someone posts.
carabiner 6y ago
It ended up costing ~$50k (not counting labor) and took a year to build, and they sold it for $115k. The cabin looks phenomenal. I wonder how a tinyhome would compare in cost and features?
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Late, over budget, and surrounded by other half-done projects made me think that it could be a builders' equivalent of Microserfs.
- eternalban 6y ago
  Your Q reminded me of Frank Lloyd Wright's Pope-Leighey House. The client, Pope, had challenged the famous architect, who to date had built mansions for the super wealthy, to design an affordable house for the everyday American: "Dear Mr. Wright, There are certain things a man wants during life, and of life. Material things and things of the spirit. The writer has one fervent wish that includes both. It is a house created by you." Wright delivered. It's a beautiful and simple design, initially estimated to cost $5,000 but ended up costing $7,000 (1941) dollars. https://franklloydwright.org/site/pope-leighey-house/ https://franklloydwright.org/site/pope-leighey-house/
  - crooked-v 6y ago
    That works out to about $123,000 after inflation, for anyone else wondering.
    - eternalban 6y ago
      Thanks, was wondering about that. (I think one should factor in the war effort and impact, if any, on construction material cost.)
  - brandonscott 6y ago
    Usonia! 99% Invisible did an excellent episode about this: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/usonia-1/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/usonia-1/
- nekochanwork 6y ago
  I built a tiny house on wheels. My house totaled about $55K, due to my preference for premium materials and contracting out work that I did not feel comfortable doing myself (e.g. wiring a 50amp power box). My house was built to be on grid and could be parked in any trailer park. I could connect to city power, water, natural gas, and sewage. Off-grid homes are more expensive due to the need to install solar panels, drill wells, bury a giant propane tank, and purchase land. $50K is honestly one of the cheapest builds I've seen for an off-grid cabin. Their house looks amazing.
  - petargyurov 6y ago
    > I could connect to city power, water, natural gas, and sewage How?
    - crooked-v 6y ago
      Through hookups built into the side of the tiny house.
    - nekochanwork 6y ago
      I planned to park my house in a trailer park, and purposefully built my house to have the same kind of hookups as an RV or manufactured home. For power, I installed a 50amp RV-style power inlet to my house. I ran a 50-amp cable from from the power pole to my house. For water, I was able to connect a standard drinking-water hose from the water line to the inlet into my house. For natural gas, I ran copper flex tubing from the gas meter to the gas inlet in my house. I ensured that all of my gas appliances had the correct orifices. For sewer, I drained all of my water fixtures (two sinks, shower, and toilet) through the floor, connected them to a common drain line, and through a sewer hookup below the house.
      - dencodev 6y ago
        I thought a lot of trailer parks wouldn't allow something that wasn't built by a certified builder?
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  $65k "profit" not including labor wouldn't seem so bad if they could have worked on it full time and gotten it done in 4-6 months, right? You could certainly live on $60k/yr (split proceeds from selling two of these), once you put in the initial capital to get off the ground. I guess on the pro side, you would assume they'd get better at it as they went along; on the con side, maybe they got lucky with the selling price for this one and it's not a repeatable business process.
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  I don't really get the tiny home fixation some people have. If it's a move towards minimalism, fine, but I don't think it's a practical cost cutting measure if we're talking about rural properties. The reason I say this most of the costs in rural homes have little to do with house size. My septic, well, electricity, tractor + attachments, mower, etc. and the piles of tools I need are all fixed costs that have little to nothing to do with my house size. Likewise my municipal taxes are based on assessment value which in large part is lot size and location. And many municipalities and townships have rather tight restrictions on what can be built and where, and many of the ad-hoc tiny homes may not meet them. Living in the country looks simpler to people in the city than it is. It is often very very expensive no matter how low the actual land value cost is.
  - R0b0t1 6y ago
    There's a lot of "tiny houses" that technically don't qualify as an accommodation in various ways, like not having a foundation. What you're currently seeing is the evolution of the movement to be more photogenic. The OG tiny homes were a (successful) attempt at running around laws about home construction in previously extremely rural areas that now have zealous code enforcement. If it's not technically a house you save a load of money not just in taxes but also permit, inspection, utility, and insurance costs. As a bonus sometimes you can move your living space. There are often plots of land for sale that will fit just under an RV and may or may not have utilities running to them. The kind of person to buy a lot like that, maybe $1000 total, was the person originally looking at building a tiny house.
  - spanhandler 6y ago
    Best I can tell, tiny homes are mostly just very expensive, more-instragrammable Mobile homes, kit-prefabs (A-frames, say), or RVs (depending on how they're built) for people whose class-self-image would be threatened by living in a Mobile home, RV, or prefab. It's not about cost-cutting.
    - dencodev 6y ago
      There's a lot of sanity saving aspects of living in a tiny house versus a travel trailer. However a lot of people would in fact be better served living in a fifth wheel trailer, both in terms of space, cost, time investment, and ability to transport/park it places.
- look_lookatme 6y ago
  The did a seller finance. I suspect the 115k includes "interest" so to speak and that an actual cash buyer would have been lower, maybe closer to their all in cost than the final sales "price".
Animats 6y ago
Those guys don't have a building problem. They have a drinking problem.
- vidanay 6y ago
  Yeah, building a cabin isn't a fundamentally complicated project. Think. Measure. Measure. Cut. Nail. Repeat.
  - spaetzleesser 6y ago
    I think you missed "Know" or "Have experience" as one of the steps... Building can be pretty unintuitive if you haven't done it before.
    - sutterbomb 6y ago
      No no it's all very easy, as is brain surgery: Think. Cut. Repeat. Nothing to it. Fine motor skills are irrelevant. Eyesight and depth perception play no role. Knowledge of the field can be learned immediately, in fact all you need to know is right in my three step directions!
  - jniedrauer 6y ago
    I've seen the rage they describe first hand. It renders you unable to think clearly. Also, making a mistake is a lot easier to manage when your own finances aren't on the line.
    - heavenlyblue 6y ago
      It’s quite clear to me they never held a job where their fuck ups actually imply their own responsibility for their actions.
  - thehappypm 6y ago
    Software isn’t fundamentally complicated. Think. Type. Repeat.
wolco 6y ago
They got the property for 3,000 and sold for 115,000 (with cabin) Where can you buy so low for so much land?
- ghaff 6y ago
  Probably tons of places in the rural West. Note this was only a 1/4 acre and off-grid.
  - julienchastang 6y ago
    The rural American Midwest can also be quite inexpensive. Of course, you have to put up with harsh winters, hot and humid summers, poor secondary education, living 3 hours away from the nearest natural grocer (though maybe you can raise your own chickens and grow organic food) and conservative politics. I do find the bucolic landscapes and slower pace of life appealing at some level, however.
    - krn 6y ago
      > and conservative politics A European here. Does such a thing as a liberal rural state exist in the US? Could Colorado be considered as such? Edit: I forgot about Vermont, which looks and sounds[1] a lot like Northern Europe to me. But can rural lifestyle and liberal politics be combined with warmer climate in the US? Maybe rural California? Edit 2: After reading all the responses, it seems that I should be looking for liberal rural counties rather than states. [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=nKcUOUYzDXA https://youtube.com/watch?v=nKcUOUYzDXA
      - ghaff 6y ago
        Rural Colorado (e.g. not Denver/Boulder) is fairly conservative. Vermont almost certainly comes closest. (Where Bernie Sanders is from.)
      - julienchastang 6y ago
        Maybe Vermont? Speaking for Colorado since I live here, apart from the urban "Front Range", Colorado is incredibly rural. One county to the west of Boulder (where I live) is Grand county (the size of the American state of Delaware) with a population of 15,000 people. Apart from the ski towns, rural Colorado is definitely on the conservative side of the spectrum, politically.
kyleblarson 6y ago
I purchased land in the North Cascades area (Methow Valley, about 3 hours Northeast of Index where these guys built) in 2007 with the intention of building a weekend home myself. I prepped the property myself and ran the main power. It was a junk show and I quickly learned that the best approach was to continue writing software and pay pros to do the job. That was one of the best decisions I have ever made. My wife and I moved into the home full time in 2011 and have lived in the valley ever since.
- TimSchumann 6y ago
  > It was a junk show and I quickly learned that the best approach was to continue writing software and pay pros to do the job. I feel personally attacked. Really though, I wonder how many things are on my 'Someday Maybe' list, that really I should just make more money to accomplish and/or find a youtube subscription that satisfies the urge to tinker on a particular topic.
  - bwb 6y ago
    I think you are being funny :), but just wanted to chime in and say I think what he is saying is that he didn't enjoy it, so he would rather do something he likes and pay someone to do what he does not :).
    - kyleblarson 6y ago
      That's definitely true, but I also realized that the quality of construction would never be close to the level it could be if I used a contractor. I'm a stickler for quality so it would have driven me crazy. I did somewhat enjoy the electrical work and have done some more of that on our house. If I can partially retire any time soon I'd love to apprentice with a master electrician and do some work on my own. There has been a huge building boom in our valley the last couple of years and most of the contractors and trades are booked out to 2022 for big jobs.
      - mtnGoat 6y ago
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dtrain2017 6y ago
It sounds like the purpose is the process. Of course you can pay people, but that is less satisfying. It's cool he is becoming a woodworker now.
Havoc 6y ago
I think they misjudged the timescale and the complexity added by slope. Good outcome though so clearly wasn't too badly misjudged. Youtube channel Wild Wonderful Offgrid [1] built a much bigger absolutely gorgous house...but on flat terrain and over two years. The other thing I've noticed is that many successful projects have pretty permanent "temporary" accomodation on site that take the pressure off needing to complete it asap. [1] https://www.youtube.com/c/WildWonderfulOffGrid/videos?view=0&sort=da&flow=grid https://www.youtube.com/c/WildWonderfulOffGrid/videos?view=0...
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  That's a good point. Buy an old RV for a year, place in it onsite, and live in it as necessary until the structure is inhabitable, and then sell the RV, hopefully at not too big a loss. It can be a towed RV even, whatever those are called.
  - amwelles 6y ago
    They are called travel trailers. If you buy used, you’ll have much better luck getting a similar price out of it. Only caveat is that they aren’t made to be lived in full time in most cases, so they’ll have more issues than a regular house might.
  - spanhandler 6y ago
    A tried and true pattern I've seen is "build the barn, live in the barn, build the house". And then sometimes the house is also sheet-metal-clad and looks pretty barn-like—it's just better sealed and insulated and has a few more windows :-)
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      Even building the barn takes awhile! I built a 8x12' shed working mostly on weekends 7 years ago and that alone took a couple months. Good thing it was in my backyard and I thus already had a house to live in. Also, I suspect that if you're building a smaller cabin-type house in the woods, you don't also want a barn. Maaaybe a shed. My dream house would have some interior unfinished space that opens to the outside for use as a shed/workshop. Basically think of a large unfinished mudroom with storage for tools, a lawnmower, shelving, a workbench, and maybe some larger stationary power tools like a band saw and drill press.
drewrv 6y ago
This reminds me of a similar article I once read: "I opened a charming neighborhood coffee shop. Then it destroyed my life." https://slate.com/human-interest/2005/12/my-coffeehouse-nightmare.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2005/12/my-coffeehouse-nigh...
- duxup 6y ago
  Those stories always get me. Anyone who has worked in food service in any way knows that it's brutal. Liking a thing, coffee, coffee shops, or anything ... very much does not mean you'd like making it / running something making that thing. Personally I like video games ... I code web boring apps... for reasons.
  - RoyTyrell 6y ago
    Those stories seem to be about half of the restaurants on Gordon Ramsey's show. I know there's a lot of embellishment and added drama on the American version, but the crux of half the restaurants are "we thought it would be a good investment" or "we always dreamed of owning a restaurant" and almost none of them have experience.
    - avery42 6y ago
      Also worth noting that most of the restaurants on the show closed [0]: > More than 60% of restaurants featured on the show "Kitchen Nightmares" are now closed, according to Grub Street New York, which did the math. Approximately 30% of those kitchens closed within one year of their episode's air date. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/many-restaurants-on-kitchen-nightmares-have-closed-2014-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/many-restaurants-on-kitchen-...
      - duxup 6y ago
        Yeah if the fundamentals as far as experience and such are bad to start .... you've got little chance to survive in the world of food service where the difference between success / fail is already razor thin.
gautamcgoel 6y ago
Reading this, I am reminded of an observation made by the Unabomber in his infamous manifesto. He pointed out that the industrialized, corporate life was making us miserable and depressed. What people really want and need to be happy is to struggle with real problems they care about, and then overcome them through hard work. That is the only way to satisfaction and happiness. He was a smart guy, it's too bad he went apeshit and killed a bunch of people.
- sb057 6y ago
  >He was a smart guy, it's too bad he went apeshit and killed a bunch of people. He killed three people, one of which was arguably unintentional. Further, he has continued writing[1] and appears perfectly lucid, even into his 70's. You may disagrees with his ends and means (I do), but I find it curious that out of the hundreds of political revolutionaries who used terror and murder over the centuries, Kaczynski is viewed especially through the framing of insanity. [1] https://fitchmadison.com/product/anti-tech-revolution-2020/ https://fitchmadison.com/product/anti-tech-revolution-2020/
  - bserge 6y ago
    He achieved nothing and also hasn't killed enough people. That's pretty much the difference. He's not a revolutionary, just a murderer.
    - Dirlewanger 6y ago
      So as long as you achieved something, your trail of blood can be as long as you like?
      - atq2119 6y ago
        In the eyes of history, that does tend to be the case, unfortunately. Think of all the former or current colonial and imperial powers, and their leaders. They have lots of blood on their hands, but most of them are viewed far less critically than they should be. It would be good to change that, but it's an uphill slope, not least because you need to tackle current and recent world leaders as well.
julianeon 6y ago
Seems like they should have documented the process much earlier. It could have gone viral, with people following the developments, plus pictures, week by week. I could easily see that cabin, in a bidding war, going for $150,000. Then sell an ebook documenting How to Build Your Own Cabin for $100, to bring in an extra $50,000.
- 0xffff2 6y ago
  I think for that kind of thing to work, they would have had to actually know what they're doing.
look_lookatme 6y ago
It does not surprise me that these guys are writers. This reads very much like a project intended to produce a content product as much as a cabin. It's romantic and they have plenty of meticulously framed videos and photos. Maybe they did some youtube videos with dramatic moments -- maybe even the moment they open the piece with -- anger, violence, frustration boiling over. But now they are taking woodworking courses. I'm sure we'll see plenty of content about their experience. YouTube has upped its recommendations for this kind of stuff in the last few months. Everything is van life, off-grid, travel, tiny home building, etc. It's really curious and I'm not sure what to think about it. Everything is about being a creator and getting an audience for your YouTube, Substack, Patreon, etc. I'm pretty conflicted over this.
- mdavidn 6y ago
  YouTube's recommendations may be more a reflection of your watch history than a shift in content or a change in the algorithm. I have not seen any van life, off-grid, or tiny home videos on YouTube.
  - look_lookatme 6y ago
    This is probably true.
    - newyankee 6y ago
      yes, but now it is finding much better content especially those from up and coming channels relevant to you
    - Chirael 6y ago
      See "Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles'" https://www.engadget.com/mozilla-youtube-bubble-200045382.html https://www.engadget.com/mozilla-youtube-bubble-200045382.ht... (and many others, I'm sure)
    - redisman 6y ago
      Just open an incognito and count the van-life videos. Zero. It's all popular lowest-common denominator videos until you start clicking and teaching Youtube about your preferences. My work and home gmail accounts get completely different videos because of how I use them. At work it's all background music and albums and at home it's more fun stuff.
hinkley 6y ago
I usually just roll my eyes at stuff like this, despite being dangerously close to the stereotype (however, most of my family is working class, so I actually worked with my hands before becoming a developer), but this line made me angry: > Sometimes, during those months of toil, our anger burned so intensely that we thought the boards we threw into the woods might never land. To paraphrase Gandalf, next time throw yourself into the woods and save us all a deal of trouble. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but Wherever you go, there you are. Few people get the Eat, Pray, Love ending. Usually you come back finding that you shouldn’t have had to leave in the first place. If you feel like chucking it in, live an austere life and save up first. That lowers your cost of living, and focuses you. If you can’t take that, then you won’t handle the next phase. If you can handle that, you may find you don’t even need to go. Evaluate before following through on the rest of your plan out of some sense of completionism.
- rexpop 6y ago
  Read past the break, asshole.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dang 6y ago
    Yikes, please don't do this here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. A more positive form a comment like this could take is to explain what relevant information the article included past the break. Then we'd all learn something, or at least those of us who didn't read the whole article would.
    - rexpop 6y ago
      Pay me, and I'll work for you.
- djsumdog 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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m0zg 6y ago
The resulting cabin actually looks pretty great. I think if they didn't sell it, their appreciation of it would grow over time. It's great to build something "real" and permanent, and not just write transient bullshit for a newspaper all day.
Magodo 6y ago
Jazz or jugaad as the Indians call it :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad Also http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...
Johnny555 6y ago
When we had nothing but the floor, we were still sketching and debating ridiculous design ideas over our morning coffee—curved, pagoda-style rooflines; walls that folded down into decks; a spiral staircase wrapping around a tree trunk to the loft—as if we were made of money and time. I wonder if they told the buyer that the cabin was built by 2 underfunded inexperienced guys with no plans? They aren't out of the woods financially yet... if that cabin collapses or burns up in an electrical fire, they may find themselves on the wrong end of a liability lawsuit.
- freetime2 6y ago
  Yup and as a buyer I would be very hesitant to spend $100K on a home that wasn’t built by a licensed and insured builder... much less a home built by two complete amateurs.
- 0xffff2 6y ago
  Yeah, seriously. I'm a bit shocked that it's even legal for them to sell this cabin. Surely permits should have been required somewhere along the way?
  - hbosch 6y ago
    I think the permitting process is a bit different for places like this. Depends on what kind of power you're using: solar or utility? You have a sewer, or a well, or do you collect your own water and compost waste? People build and modify structures all the time with and without permits. If the bureaucrats had their way you'd need a permit to change a lightbulb. Also, is it a residence? This could easily be considered a "storage shed" as much as it could be considered a "house", much like RVs are insured differently than jobsite pickup trucks. Furthermore, it's more or less on the buyer to make the call about a structure's safety and value. Even buying a regular house, in a regular neighborhood, you can go ahead and buy it even if the inspector says it's going to burn down within a year. The bank might not loan you the money, but you can buy it as long as you can afford it. Houses get bought and sold every day that don't meet electrical, plumbing or general safety codes.
turtlebits 6y ago
Interesting, as I am currently doing a similar thing, but kept my day job. However, I didn't want to go all in, so I bought a small/cheap 0.33 acre parcel 25 minutes from work/home. Had Tuff shed build a 14x16 "workshop" on it. Put in solar, and now spending ~1/2 days a few times a week there. Currently finishing up building a 4x8 storage shed. Planning to build a 400 sf off-grid home/shelter next. I initially started clearing the land myself, but quickly learned that digging/levelling is not something I want to do and paid ~1200 to have it cleared and graded. I also do not want to do cement work so will have a pad poured.
- jamestimmins 6y ago
  This seems like the ideal approach. Build the parts you want to build, and pay for the Work that’s tedious, complex, dangerous, or otherwise outside your skill set/goals.
alibarber 6y ago
You can tell these folk work as writers, truly excellent read!
gorgoiler 6y ago
I’m currently building a dining table. I am building up experience building a workbench. I just discovered the legs do not stand vertical, after I just spent the whole day planing and milling the top to be flat. But I made it myself, and that counts for a lot.
dleslie 6y ago
My family owns multiple cabins, mostly built by family members with the occasional framing and finishing work by friends of the family and/or a local contractor. The one my father owns was framed and roofed by contractors, but the closing, finishing, deck and float construction, and 30 years of repairs and renovations were done by himself and us kids. It sits on a steep hill, so putting a 60x20ft deck on 15ft stilts was no little effort for him with only the help of a bunch of actual children. The major caveat: prior to my generation, the entire family was involved at some level in construction; from owning and operating to general labour. It's _not_ a simple task, and the level of skill and intelligence required is something I think is often misunderstood or wholly overlooked by my peers in the tech industry. There's a kind of snobbish belief expressed by _some_ that because they can grok a complex software system they should be able to build a house; but that's a bit like believing that because you are able to write you should be able to easily be a sculptor. There may be shared core concepts, like the story being told and the ideas being conveyed, but the skills and knowledge involved and shared are few.
- nicbou 6y ago
  The same can be said about fixing vehicles. I am humbled by the body of knowledge needed, especially when things go wrong.
  - Obi_Juan_Kenobi 6y ago
    If you really want to be humbled, go watch an automatic transmission rebuild on YT. It's like they're casting spells with their hands.
- throwaway5752 6y ago
  This is one of the best and most insightful comments I've seen anywhere. As someone who has crossed a few domains with overlap in my life (so some limited knowledge of how ignorant I am in all of them) this would be a top candidate for most valuable life lessons, intellectual humility.
- carabiner 6y ago
  I built a desk and was amazed at how quickly a simple piece of wood on metal legs became. What kind of wood? There are a billion types. Ended up with baltic birch from a specialty lumberyard. What size? A little bigger than old desk; not too hard. Ok, which piece of wood do I get at the lumberyard? It comes in standard sizes. Oh, I'd have to buy two huge sheets, so I would have a ton left over. Let me adjust the dimensions again so that I'll only need one sheet. They can cut it there, but it's a rough cut with tear out on the edges. I need to recut it at home with a circular saw. Now which circ saw do I buy? What blade do I need to make it a fine cut? How do I do this in a studio apartment? Then sanding the wood and finishing it (I can't have too much VOC because I have cats and myself in a small apartment), each of those stages requiring research and many small steps, with other tools to buy (orbital sander, multiple pads, dust mask etc.). It took way longer than expected, the tools cost a lot, but I ended up saving maybe a few hundred bucks from buying a similar desk considering only the cost of materials.
soneca 6y ago
I enjoyed a lot the reading, but the title is misleading. Not everything went wrong, they even list things they feared could go wrong and didn't. By the end of, it went mostly right (except for spending more time and money than expected). Not a bad story, on the contrary, but I was interested in reading about the learnings of pursuing a dream and things going actually wrong. What you do next? Try again? Try another thing? Go back to your old life with renewed insight? Gain in wisdom?
- tomlagier 6y ago
  My wife and I did this. We quit our jobs to travel for a year, got 6 weeks in before it was clear COVID wasn't going anywhere and we needed to return. We came back and decided that since we had a nice travel fund and no jobs we should use that buffer to explore career choices and places to live that we hadn't previously. She is now attempting to become a full-time food photographer, I'm still in software but working as a freelance contractor with a lot more free time and better commute. So far we've broken roughly even on the experience, with a significant boost in quality of life. http://tomandmary.travel/ http://tomandmary.travel/
  - soneca 6y ago
    Oh shit.. Covid is making a lot of dreams go wrong indeed. Adapting to the circumstances while keep the core of changing your life seems a smart way to deal with it. There is nothing in the link you posted, btw. Not sure if a typo or you just didn't publish the site yet
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
I knew a real estate agent who specialized in cabins and mountain properties. He had a constant inventory of what he called "Divorce Cabins". They were half-finished DIY cabin builds or renovations that turned out to be way more stress and work than the couples expected. This tended to lead to divorce, which lead to a forced sale of the property. Experienced contractors would pick them up at a discount, finish the work with their crews, and sell them off. These things are doable if you have infinite time and money to spend on renting the right equipment and hiring help for jobs that require experience and/or multiple people. However, it's virtually impossible for someone to do on weekends alone.
- sushshshsh 6y ago
  And yet there are people who have built cabins in Alaska with nothing but some metal and a lot of ingenuity and muscle. I think that if you have to build a cabin that conforms to certain building guidelines, bank standards, codes, mainstream retail expectations.... then for sure you are going to encounter expenses and risk. But I really hate this notion of "just pay someone to do it correctly", because this proposition also has a ton of risk and expense associated with it as well. Not every contractor who takes a job is Bob the Builder. For me, if I was serious about building a home for myself so that it's customized to my taste and an extremely good value, I would throw all of the rules out of the window and build it exactly like the real cabins out there in Alaska and Siberia whose style has been perfected over hundreds of years.
  - ChrisLomont 6y ago
    >But I really hate this notion of "just pay someone to do it correctly", because this proposition also has a ton of risk and expense associated with it as well. For almost any task you'd consider hiring a professional, there is less risk and less cost, which is why professional exist. They are the best option for a wide range of cost/risk tradeoffs. >Not every contractor who takes a job is Bob the Builder But the majority are a lot better than the average person thinking they can build. Experience is a useful thing, in software dev and in building.
Kosirich 6y ago
I have a friend who did something similar to this but in his case he did it in his spare time (he works remote/flexible so spare can be during the day), mostly taking inspiration from guys like this that document the process and mistakes that they make or happen along the way. He was fortunate to have a plot of land in the middle of the woods large enough to allow him to build what the law here defines as "support house" that can be maximum 26 m2 (most people abuse it). Another benefit he had is that his uncle owns a lumber mill just 2 km away and he could get wood beams and planks very cheaply and conveniently. For insulation he used mud and straw he got for nothing from nearby farms. After painting the facade you really couldn't tell.
nwallin 6y ago
> The first thing he did was host a long-weekend work party to fix it up. I flew up from my home in Oakland, California. With a group of friends, we tore out exposed nails, cladded interior walls, built a deck and an outhouse, and hung shingles. At night, covered in sawdust and grime, we drank too much and huddled around a propane stove to keep warm, eventually falling asleep and breathing in noxious fumes all night until we staggered awake in the morning. >>>It was awful—and one of the best weekends I’d had in recent memory.<<< There's a word for this: Type II Fun. Type I Fun is when you're having fun and you know you're having fun while you're doing it. Type II Fun is when you're absolutely fucking miserable the whole time, but afterwards you and any of your friends that were with you say it was the best time ever. Lots of outdoor activities that are supposed to be Type I Fun end up being Type II Fun. Lots of activities that aren't supposed to be fun at all end up being Type II Fun. (basic training is a common example) I've heard Dwarf Fortress is Type II Fun, but I could never get into it. This whole process of building the cabin sounds like a class example of Type II Fun to me.
- cynicalreason 6y ago
  Amen ... I've started building a shed (10x10) 1.5 months ago with 0 woodworking experience. It's the most fun I've had in a decade .. my joints are swollen, I've got bruises and scrapes on my hands and feet, skin on my hand is actually rough. I work from home nine-to-five, software. I can't wait to finish work to actually go outside and work on the shed. I've actually considered quitting my job and doing this full time .. but it won't pay nearly enough as I'm making in software and my financial commitments won't let me.
- stef25 6y ago
  600Km / day on a motorbike through Africa is definitely Type II fun. Love the expression!
- nostoc 6y ago
  Type II fun is just fine, as long as it doesn't veer into type III fun.
  - 6y ago
jborichevskiy 6y ago
This article answered a lot of questions I didn't realize I had. Yeah, I probably had a romanticized view of doing this as well, but it doesn't seem insurmountable -- perhaps doing it closer to a primary residence and working part time during the process. For anyone who wants to read more, I recommend checking out Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Interesting read!
foxyv 6y ago
Always do a job on paper before you jump into it like this. Draw out each step. Make bills of materials. Watch videos of people doing each of the steps. Determine costs and estimate times for each step. Make a list of tools required. Build a small scale model of your project. In this time you will make thousands of decisions that will grind you away if you try to rush it. This all should take you from 6 months to a year plus for a big project. Especially if you have little to no experience with it. This is why kits are so popular. Someone else has already run into all the problems and done all the suffering and troubleshooting for you. At the same time, there are other people building the kits that you can ask for help.
coding123 6y ago
My wife and I were just joking the other day, actually we were probably not joking, but we both wished we had gone into construction. Someone with a general contractors license is super valuable these days. I feel like the entire world is about to embark on a transition that we can't define yet.
- turtlebits 6y ago
  You can start anytime. However, manual labor isn’t a joke.
d_burfoot 6y ago
There should be a consulting service for people who want to Do Something Different. Like a guy who listens to your plan, and tells you how realistic it is, and all the pain and frustration you're going to encounter. Maybe he also puts you in touch with other people who've done similar things.
- dencodev 6y ago
  My plan is to live until I'm 80. It's going to involve a lot of pain and frustration.
- blhack 6y ago
  I think they're supposed to be called grandparents.
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
A common theme among stories like this: they pledge to take breaks and keep from burnout. Then they launch into it and immediately forget to take breaks. Then they get frustrated, overtired and make more mistakes. The breaks have to be scheduled like anything else, or they won't happen.
jaeming 6y ago
I used to have dreams like this. I attempted to chase these ideas every few years. I quit a very good job once and moved halfway around the world in an attempt to fulfill one of these dreams. At some point I got married and eventually had kids after which these kinds of romanticized ad-hoc adventures became impractical. Sometimes I wish I'd been more focused when I was young. I feel like I probably wasted a lot of time pursuing ideas that had a high risk of not being sustainable for the long-term. I find myself giving younger people advice that I would have balked at at their age. They don't listen to me of course, just like I didn't listen to more experienced adults when I was in their place. No one wants to be told, "Don't follow your dreams. Weigh the risks and the potential return on investment first". I guess part of being young is taking those risks and learning from your failures. And sometimes, chasing an impractical dream pays off. Sometimes they pay off big. But now days when I get the wanderlust or some feeling of discontentment and find myself wondering, "there must be more to life than this?", I just try changing something small in my routine, like, "you know what? I think I'm going to start taking walks during lunch every day.", or, "I think I'll study this new language for an hour every night after the kids go to bed.", or, "I think I'll build a garden enclosure in the backyard". I often find that by changing something small in my routine, I can break out of the monotony and feel some sense of accomplishment I hadn't noticed was missing. But even then, there is still some voice in the back of my mind that says, "someday, when the kids are old enough and out of the house, I think I'll take one last big risk and embark on some kind of unlikely adventure."
- ep103 6y ago
  I found this poetically beautiful, for some reason : )
  - emmanueloga_ 6y ago
    The you will like Italo Calvino: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/499400-when-a-man-rides-a-long-time-through-wild-regions https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/499400-when-a-man-rides-a-l...
- logicslave12 6y ago
  So your dreams didn’t pan out, but for others it has. There’s always value in shooting for more in life. You only live once
D13Fd 6y ago
Why didn't they just add a well so they didn't have to do seller financing? I also feel like this story isn't complete until they do the follow-up about whether the seller financing worked out. That's a big risk.
- 0xffff2 6y ago
  The word "permit" is suspiciously absent from this story, and adding a well would most certainly have required permits. Probably a lot of things they did required permits, but if the narrative is accurate it doesn't seem like the permits were actually acquired.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Rural areas tend to require less permits in general. I did a significant remodel and the only permit was electrical.
    - 0xffff2 6y ago
      Are you speaking specifically about Washington state? I don't know the details up there, but I can tell you from experience that this isn't at all true in Oregon (both personally for my own property and from occasionally helping my dad, who is a GC). First, remodels aren't nearly the same as new construction. Second, in either case it is true in Oregon is that rural counties are less likely to notice or care if you don't pull required permits, particularly for remodels or "repairs" (even if the repair is the Theseus-like replacement of a completely unsalvagable structure). That doesn't mean the permits are any less required though and I would be very leary of pulling those kinds of tricks on a property that I turned around and sold. This is all doubly true since they sold it owner financed, which means the buyer missed out on the bank doing some due diligence for them. Hopefully the buyer did their own due diligence and knows exactly what they bought.
      - bluGill 6y ago
        Iowa each area is different.
newintellectual 6y ago
Measure twice, cut once.
sleepybrett 6y ago
My parents put together a little half a-frame cabin in the 1970s down on the slopes of ranier near greenwater. I was just a baby and don't know what the initial imputes was. I still assume it was because my dad and my aunt on my mother's side both loved to ski and it is within about 30m of the crystal mountain resort. I think the initial foundation, framing, roofing and siding was done by contractors. The cabin community it's in has water and power and septic was installed. But every year until I was about 13 we'd spend weeks up there doing finishing work. All the plumbing and electrical was done by the family or friends. All the interior finishing as well. About 15 years back we ripped out the original wood burning stove for a pellet stove when my dad and I both got sick of harvesting trees left behind by the logging crews. And then about 5 years ago we ripped that out and replaced it with propane. It's getting to the point where I'm considering buying it from them and moving up there full time. There are some issues with getting fast enough internet without paying a small fortune, but every year it's a little cheaper, a little easier. I was just up there last week, and while I love Seattle I think I moved a step closer to the move while working out on the front porch and looking up to find a small herd of elk chewing on some of the underbrush just a few feet away.
Natalie1Quinn 6y ago
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rdiddly 6y ago
Definitely appeals to my sense of adventure and independence, but these days I can't help it: my fantasies run more toward writing the companion piece: "We Saved Our Money And Bought This Totally Sweet Cabin From These Dudes"
deleted 6y ago
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agumonkey 6y ago
PSA: There are uneven feet ladders for sale.
m3kw9 6y ago
This has all the analogies of some rando trying to write a professional piece of software.
justicezyx 6y ago
I have been enjoying replacing the exterior trim boards of the patio door to our 2nd floor patio, during my spare time while WFH. And get a very strong sense of concrete accomplishment in a decade almost. The biggest learning is that the process is vastly more complicated then whatever I could imagine. Different materials of materials Priming & painting (on lumber boards, and repair some surrounding areas) Tools Measurements and design Woodworking to hide small blemishes The amount of labor is staggering as well. To name just one idea, carrying lumber and a bag of tools between the 2nd floor and the garage workshop has been a constant tiring experience. And a lot of learning, each time when I progressed a bit, new study is required on dozens of youtube videos, and search on HomeDepot/Lowes/Amazon to get an idea on the materils/tools needed.
whack 6y ago
As someone who earns good money working at a big corp, this article resonates deeply. From a financial perspective, these guys slaved away for almost a year, earning what was probably minimum wage. From a quality perspective, what they produced doesn't even look impressive, when compared to any other dime-a-dozen cabin. And yet, there's something deeply fulfilling about building something real. With your own two hands. So much of modern corporate life feels so anonymous. Like you're playing a tiny tiny part in a project so huge, that your part seems almost inconsequential. And even worse, the things you have to do, like sitting through meetings and preparing reports, feels like a total waste of time and talent. In reality, those "bullshit" tasks that you have to wade through, are essential to keeping the project on track. And the "tiny tiny part" you've built, even as a small fraction, is still highly impactful when multiplied by the massive value-add of the project as a whole. Our corporate jobs at FANG-type companies are just as real and impressive as the cabin these guys built. But it just doesn't feel that way. And that makes it soul-draining, even though I know it shouldn't. I've been trying for years to keep my spirits up, and have yet to succeed.
ab3rC1te 6y ago
Instead of spending all that hard earned money, you could have just chopped down some trees and build a real log cabin like the ones in The Last Alaskan's show. Or better yet just live in a tent. Real men live in tents. Better yet the Legend of Mc Dodge, that guy knows how to live.
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 6y ago
TFW you're a fake man soyboy with a bed :(
donovanr 6y ago
This rings _so_ true. While I was in grad school I got bored sitting behind a computer all day, and my wife and I decided to build a tiny house on a trailer as a way of venting our pent-up DIY urges. We'd just build it in our spare time. LOL. We started in the late summer of 2013, with a trailer and no plans and a stack of construction books from the library. Cut to spring 2016, having spent every single weekend and most evenings since (in zero degree winters and brutal Pittsburgh summers) sweating and swearing, really pushing the "divorce cabin" line, and having legitimate discussions late at night about the benefits of burning it all to the ground, where my wife, eight month pregnant, is trying to finish the trim work before I submit my dissertation and we tow it across the country. The way the article captures the "not knowing what we were getting into" / tiny things that delay you to death / stressed out / losing friends / doing absolutely nothing else with your life / so over budget it hurts / final elation at success is absolutely perfect. We only made it across the finish line because living in Pittsburgh on a grad student stipend is actually, well, livable, and I could do that while my wife worked pretty much full time on our housing boondoggle. The main learning experience coming out of it was that you should absolutely pay how ever many thousands of dollars it costs for a good set of plans from someone who's done this before. Learning smaller tasks like framing and roofing etc is easy. Stitching it all together into a plan that you're arguing about because neither of you have any idea what you're doing, all while you're wasting precious daylight is _hard_. We would have finished at least a year sooner if we just had plans to follow. All that said, building a place to live in was super rewarding (as others have said) type II fun. We still have it, it's beautiful, and I have not yet burned it down.
exabrial 6y ago
There is an air of elitism in SV generally and sometimes on HN (I attribute this to lack of education rather than purely bad intentions). Coming from a background of unskilled blue collar work (commercial roofing, assembling buses, carpentry apprentice) this was slightly satisfying read in a sadistic way. Much like playing piano or other instrument, manual labor is a skill; watching a senior craftsman perform at a level 10x-25x of what you could do is awe inspiring.
ThinkBeat 6y ago
Many of the first projects I developed was crap. I went to university learned a lot kept making code. Got a lot better. If I knew two guys with 0 training or experience had built a house the wanted to sell. I would stay far away. It is sort of like a pre alpha house and selling it. Who knows that sort of problems will come out over time. They made no mention of permits. Inspectors etc. if you build a cabin in the woods are you freed from all those things? If the story was I quit my job constructing houses that I had done for 20 year and went to school or apprenticed for a coupe of years to learn how to do it To build a small ERP system in C. So I could sell it for good money. If you have never written any code and have no experience with it. Chances are that your system is really gong to suck. So is your next one. If you screw up a house. People can die. There are thousands Of bugs and even real proper bugs to deal with. I plan to take 6 months off work to do some heart surgery. Never taken any advan ced biology or medical classe but everyone has a heart and usually But not always in the same place. If I write out all details of the surgery . Or let’s say I get a proper heart surgeon to write down in detail every step. I memorize it in a week. Off to buy some tools. What could go wrong?
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
I'm very curious to hear from the HN crowd: how many of you are seriously contemplating something like this (not the "quitting the job" part; just the "we need a cabin in the woods" part). With Covid-19 and everything, I feel that many folks in cities (I live in San Francisco), especially if financially able to, have been increasingly interested in buying land and/or homes or cabins in the vicinity, either as a permanent move, or as a backup.
blakbelt78 6y ago
It's definitely challenging if you don't have any prior experience. My dream was always to have an office shed in my backyward until I decided to build one earlier this year before the pandemic. It turned out pretty good and it took me around three months to build it. Its hard work for sure but I couldn't be happier. I wrote a blog post about it. https://eduardosasso.co/blog/how-i-built-a-wfh-shed/ https://eduardosasso.co/blog/how-i-built-a-wfh-shed/

462 points by anarbadalov 6y ago

Outside Online is a consistent source of high quality, long form articles. I always enjoy reading them when someone posts.

carabiner 6y ago

It ended up costing ~$50k (not counting labor) and took a year to build, and they sold it for $115k. The cabin looks phenomenal. I wonder how a tinyhome would compare in cost and features?

082349872349872 6y ago
Late, over budget, and surrounded by other half-done projects made me think that it could be a builders' equivalent of Microserfs.
eternalban 6y ago
Your Q reminded me of Frank Lloyd Wright's Pope-Leighey House. The client, Pope, had challenged the famous architect, who to date had built mansions for the super wealthy, to design an affordable house for the everyday American: "Dear Mr. Wright, There are certain things a man wants during life, and of life. Material things and things of the spirit. The writer has one fervent wish that includes both. It is a house created by you." Wright delivered. It's a beautiful and simple design, initially estimated to cost $5,000 but ended up costing $7,000 (1941) dollars. https://franklloydwright.org/site/pope-leighey-house/ https://franklloydwright.org/site/pope-leighey-house/
- crooked-v 6y ago
  That works out to about $123,000 after inflation, for anyone else wondering.
  - eternalban 6y ago
    Thanks, was wondering about that. (I think one should factor in the war effort and impact, if any, on construction material cost.)
- brandonscott 6y ago
  Usonia! 99% Invisible did an excellent episode about this: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/usonia-1/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/usonia-1/
nekochanwork 6y ago
I built a tiny house on wheels. My house totaled about $55K, due to my preference for premium materials and contracting out work that I did not feel comfortable doing myself (e.g. wiring a 50amp power box). My house was built to be on grid and could be parked in any trailer park. I could connect to city power, water, natural gas, and sewage. Off-grid homes are more expensive due to the need to install solar panels, drill wells, bury a giant propane tank, and purchase land. $50K is honestly one of the cheapest builds I've seen for an off-grid cabin. Their house looks amazing.
- petargyurov 6y ago
  > I could connect to city power, water, natural gas, and sewage How?
  - crooked-v 6y ago
    Through hookups built into the side of the tiny house.
  - nekochanwork 6y ago
    I planned to park my house in a trailer park, and purposefully built my house to have the same kind of hookups as an RV or manufactured home. For power, I installed a 50amp RV-style power inlet to my house. I ran a 50-amp cable from from the power pole to my house. For water, I was able to connect a standard drinking-water hose from the water line to the inlet into my house. For natural gas, I ran copper flex tubing from the gas meter to the gas inlet in my house. I ensured that all of my gas appliances had the correct orifices. For sewer, I drained all of my water fixtures (two sinks, shower, and toilet) through the floor, connected them to a common drain line, and through a sewer hookup below the house.
    - dencodev 6y ago
      I thought a lot of trailer parks wouldn't allow something that wasn't built by a certified builder?
jdminhbg 6y ago
$65k "profit" not including labor wouldn't seem so bad if they could have worked on it full time and gotten it done in 4-6 months, right? You could certainly live on $60k/yr (split proceeds from selling two of these), once you put in the initial capital to get off the ground. I guess on the pro side, you would assume they'd get better at it as they went along; on the con side, maybe they got lucky with the selling price for this one and it's not a repeatable business process.
cmrdporcupine 6y ago
I don't really get the tiny home fixation some people have. If it's a move towards minimalism, fine, but I don't think it's a practical cost cutting measure if we're talking about rural properties. The reason I say this most of the costs in rural homes have little to do with house size. My septic, well, electricity, tractor + attachments, mower, etc. and the piles of tools I need are all fixed costs that have little to nothing to do with my house size. Likewise my municipal taxes are based on assessment value which in large part is lot size and location. And many municipalities and townships have rather tight restrictions on what can be built and where, and many of the ad-hoc tiny homes may not meet them. Living in the country looks simpler to people in the city than it is. It is often very very expensive no matter how low the actual land value cost is.
- R0b0t1 6y ago
  There's a lot of "tiny houses" that technically don't qualify as an accommodation in various ways, like not having a foundation. What you're currently seeing is the evolution of the movement to be more photogenic. The OG tiny homes were a (successful) attempt at running around laws about home construction in previously extremely rural areas that now have zealous code enforcement. If it's not technically a house you save a load of money not just in taxes but also permit, inspection, utility, and insurance costs. As a bonus sometimes you can move your living space. There are often plots of land for sale that will fit just under an RV and may or may not have utilities running to them. The kind of person to buy a lot like that, maybe $1000 total, was the person originally looking at building a tiny house.
- spanhandler 6y ago
  Best I can tell, tiny homes are mostly just very expensive, more-instragrammable Mobile homes, kit-prefabs (A-frames, say), or RVs (depending on how they're built) for people whose class-self-image would be threatened by living in a Mobile home, RV, or prefab. It's not about cost-cutting.
  - dencodev 6y ago
    There's a lot of sanity saving aspects of living in a tiny house versus a travel trailer. However a lot of people would in fact be better served living in a fifth wheel trailer, both in terms of space, cost, time investment, and ability to transport/park it places.
look_lookatme 6y ago
The did a seller finance. I suspect the 115k includes "interest" so to speak and that an actual cash buyer would have been lower, maybe closer to their all in cost than the final sales "price".

Animats 6y ago

Those guys don't have a building problem. They have a drinking problem.

vidanay 6y ago
Yeah, building a cabin isn't a fundamentally complicated project. Think. Measure. Measure. Cut. Nail. Repeat.
- spaetzleesser 6y ago
  I think you missed "Know" or "Have experience" as one of the steps... Building can be pretty unintuitive if you haven't done it before.
  - sutterbomb 6y ago
    No no it's all very easy, as is brain surgery: Think. Cut. Repeat. Nothing to it. Fine motor skills are irrelevant. Eyesight and depth perception play no role. Knowledge of the field can be learned immediately, in fact all you need to know is right in my three step directions!
- jniedrauer 6y ago
  I've seen the rage they describe first hand. It renders you unable to think clearly. Also, making a mistake is a lot easier to manage when your own finances aren't on the line.
  - heavenlyblue 6y ago
    It’s quite clear to me they never held a job where their fuck ups actually imply their own responsibility for their actions.
- thehappypm 6y ago
  Software isn’t fundamentally complicated. Think. Type. Repeat.

wolco 6y ago

They got the property for 3,000 and sold for 115,000 (with cabin) Where can you buy so low for so much land?

ghaff 6y ago
Probably tons of places in the rural West. Note this was only a 1/4 acre and off-grid.
- julienchastang 6y ago
  The rural American Midwest can also be quite inexpensive. Of course, you have to put up with harsh winters, hot and humid summers, poor secondary education, living 3 hours away from the nearest natural grocer (though maybe you can raise your own chickens and grow organic food) and conservative politics. I do find the bucolic landscapes and slower pace of life appealing at some level, however.
  - krn 6y ago
    > and conservative politics A European here. Does such a thing as a liberal rural state exist in the US? Could Colorado be considered as such? Edit: I forgot about Vermont, which looks and sounds[1] a lot like Northern Europe to me. But can rural lifestyle and liberal politics be combined with warmer climate in the US? Maybe rural California? Edit 2: After reading all the responses, it seems that I should be looking for liberal rural counties rather than states. [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=nKcUOUYzDXA https://youtube.com/watch?v=nKcUOUYzDXA
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Rural Colorado (e.g. not Denver/Boulder) is fairly conservative. Vermont almost certainly comes closest. (Where Bernie Sanders is from.)
    - julienchastang 6y ago
      Maybe Vermont? Speaking for Colorado since I live here, apart from the urban "Front Range", Colorado is incredibly rural. One county to the west of Boulder (where I live) is Grand county (the size of the American state of Delaware) with a population of 15,000 people. Apart from the ski towns, rural Colorado is definitely on the conservative side of the spectrum, politically.

kyleblarson 6y ago

I purchased land in the North Cascades area (Methow Valley, about 3 hours Northeast of Index where these guys built) in 2007 with the intention of building a weekend home myself. I prepped the property myself and ran the main power. It was a junk show and I quickly learned that the best approach was to continue writing software and pay pros to do the job. That was one of the best decisions I have ever made. My wife and I moved into the home full time in 2011 and have lived in the valley ever since.

TimSchumann 6y ago
> It was a junk show and I quickly learned that the best approach was to continue writing software and pay pros to do the job. I feel personally attacked. Really though, I wonder how many things are on my 'Someday Maybe' list, that really I should just make more money to accomplish and/or find a youtube subscription that satisfies the urge to tinker on a particular topic.
- bwb 6y ago
  I think you are being funny :), but just wanted to chime in and say I think what he is saying is that he didn't enjoy it, so he would rather do something he likes and pay someone to do what he does not :).
  - kyleblarson 6y ago
    That's definitely true, but I also realized that the quality of construction would never be close to the level it could be if I used a contractor. I'm a stickler for quality so it would have driven me crazy. I did somewhat enjoy the electrical work and have done some more of that on our house. If I can partially retire any time soon I'd love to apprentice with a master electrician and do some work on my own. There has been a huge building boom in our valley the last couple of years and most of the contractors and trades are booked out to 2022 for big jobs.
    - mtnGoat 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dtrain2017 6y ago

It sounds like the purpose is the process. Of course you can pay people, but that is less satisfying. It's cool he is becoming a woodworker now.

Havoc 6y ago

I think they misjudged the timescale and the complexity added by slope. Good outcome though so clearly wasn't too badly misjudged. Youtube channel Wild Wonderful Offgrid [1] built a much bigger absolutely gorgous house...but on flat terrain and over two years. The other thing I've noticed is that many successful projects have pretty permanent "temporary" accomodation on site that take the pressure off needing to complete it asap. [1] https://www.youtube.com/c/WildWonderfulOffGrid/videos?view=0&sort=da&flow=grid https://www.youtube.com/c/WildWonderfulOffGrid/videos?view=0...

CydeWeys 6y ago
That's a good point. Buy an old RV for a year, place in it onsite, and live in it as necessary until the structure is inhabitable, and then sell the RV, hopefully at not too big a loss. It can be a towed RV even, whatever those are called.
- amwelles 6y ago
  They are called travel trailers. If you buy used, you’ll have much better luck getting a similar price out of it. Only caveat is that they aren’t made to be lived in full time in most cases, so they’ll have more issues than a regular house might.
- spanhandler 6y ago
  A tried and true pattern I've seen is "build the barn, live in the barn, build the house". And then sometimes the house is also sheet-metal-clad and looks pretty barn-like—it's just better sealed and insulated and has a few more windows :-)
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    Even building the barn takes awhile! I built a 8x12' shed working mostly on weekends 7 years ago and that alone took a couple months. Good thing it was in my backyard and I thus already had a house to live in. Also, I suspect that if you're building a smaller cabin-type house in the woods, you don't also want a barn. Maaaybe a shed. My dream house would have some interior unfinished space that opens to the outside for use as a shed/workshop. Basically think of a large unfinished mudroom with storage for tools, a lawnmower, shelving, a workbench, and maybe some larger stationary power tools like a band saw and drill press.

drewrv 6y ago

This reminds me of a similar article I once read: "I opened a charming neighborhood coffee shop. Then it destroyed my life." https://slate.com/human-interest/2005/12/my-coffeehouse-nightmare.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2005/12/my-coffeehouse-nigh...

duxup 6y ago
Those stories always get me. Anyone who has worked in food service in any way knows that it's brutal. Liking a thing, coffee, coffee shops, or anything ... very much does not mean you'd like making it / running something making that thing. Personally I like video games ... I code web boring apps... for reasons.
- RoyTyrell 6y ago
  Those stories seem to be about half of the restaurants on Gordon Ramsey's show. I know there's a lot of embellishment and added drama on the American version, but the crux of half the restaurants are "we thought it would be a good investment" or "we always dreamed of owning a restaurant" and almost none of them have experience.
  - avery42 6y ago
    Also worth noting that most of the restaurants on the show closed [0]: > More than 60% of restaurants featured on the show "Kitchen Nightmares" are now closed, according to Grub Street New York, which did the math. Approximately 30% of those kitchens closed within one year of their episode's air date. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/many-restaurants-on-kitchen-nightmares-have-closed-2014-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/many-restaurants-on-kitchen-...
    - duxup 6y ago
      Yeah if the fundamentals as far as experience and such are bad to start .... you've got little chance to survive in the world of food service where the difference between success / fail is already razor thin.

gautamcgoel 6y ago

Reading this, I am reminded of an observation made by the Unabomber in his infamous manifesto. He pointed out that the industrialized, corporate life was making us miserable and depressed. What people really want and need to be happy is to struggle with real problems they care about, and then overcome them through hard work. That is the only way to satisfaction and happiness. He was a smart guy, it's too bad he went apeshit and killed a bunch of people.

sb057 6y ago
>He was a smart guy, it's too bad he went apeshit and killed a bunch of people. He killed three people, one of which was arguably unintentional. Further, he has continued writing[1] and appears perfectly lucid, even into his 70's. You may disagrees with his ends and means (I do), but I find it curious that out of the hundreds of political revolutionaries who used terror and murder over the centuries, Kaczynski is viewed especially through the framing of insanity. [1] https://fitchmadison.com/product/anti-tech-revolution-2020/ https://fitchmadison.com/product/anti-tech-revolution-2020/
- bserge 6y ago
  He achieved nothing and also hasn't killed enough people. That's pretty much the difference. He's not a revolutionary, just a murderer.
  - Dirlewanger 6y ago
    So as long as you achieved something, your trail of blood can be as long as you like?
    - atq2119 6y ago
      In the eyes of history, that does tend to be the case, unfortunately. Think of all the former or current colonial and imperial powers, and their leaders. They have lots of blood on their hands, but most of them are viewed far less critically than they should be. It would be good to change that, but it's an uphill slope, not least because you need to tackle current and recent world leaders as well.

julianeon 6y ago

Seems like they should have documented the process much earlier. It could have gone viral, with people following the developments, plus pictures, week by week. I could easily see that cabin, in a bidding war, going for $150,000. Then sell an ebook documenting How to Build Your Own Cabin for $100, to bring in an extra $50,000.

0xffff2 6y ago
I think for that kind of thing to work, they would have had to actually know what they're doing.

look_lookatme 6y ago

It does not surprise me that these guys are writers. This reads very much like a project intended to produce a content product as much as a cabin. It's romantic and they have plenty of meticulously framed videos and photos. Maybe they did some youtube videos with dramatic moments -- maybe even the moment they open the piece with -- anger, violence, frustration boiling over. But now they are taking woodworking courses. I'm sure we'll see plenty of content about their experience. YouTube has upped its recommendations for this kind of stuff in the last few months. Everything is van life, off-grid, travel, tiny home building, etc. It's really curious and I'm not sure what to think about it. Everything is about being a creator and getting an audience for your YouTube, Substack, Patreon, etc. I'm pretty conflicted over this.

mdavidn 6y ago
YouTube's recommendations may be more a reflection of your watch history than a shift in content or a change in the algorithm. I have not seen any van life, off-grid, or tiny home videos on YouTube.
- look_lookatme 6y ago
  This is probably true.
  - newyankee 6y ago
    yes, but now it is finding much better content especially those from up and coming channels relevant to you
  - Chirael 6y ago
    See "Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles'" https://www.engadget.com/mozilla-youtube-bubble-200045382.html https://www.engadget.com/mozilla-youtube-bubble-200045382.ht... (and many others, I'm sure)
  - redisman 6y ago
    Just open an incognito and count the van-life videos. Zero. It's all popular lowest-common denominator videos until you start clicking and teaching Youtube about your preferences. My work and home gmail accounts get completely different videos because of how I use them. At work it's all background music and albums and at home it's more fun stuff.

hinkley 6y ago

I usually just roll my eyes at stuff like this, despite being dangerously close to the stereotype (however, most of my family is working class, so I actually worked with my hands before becoming a developer), but this line made me angry: > Sometimes, during those months of toil, our anger burned so intensely that we thought the boards we threw into the woods might never land. To paraphrase Gandalf, next time throw yourself into the woods and save us all a deal of trouble. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but Wherever you go, there you are. Few people get the Eat, Pray, Love ending. Usually you come back finding that you shouldn’t have had to leave in the first place. If you feel like chucking it in, live an austere life and save up first. That lowers your cost of living, and focuses you. If you can’t take that, then you won’t handle the next phase. If you can handle that, you may find you don’t even need to go. Evaluate before following through on the rest of your plan out of some sense of completionism.

rexpop 6y ago
Read past the break, asshole.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 6y ago
  Yikes, please don't do this here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. A more positive form a comment like this could take is to explain what relevant information the article included past the break. Then we'd all learn something, or at least those of us who didn't read the whole article would.
  - rexpop 6y ago
    Pay me, and I'll work for you.
djsumdog 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

m0zg 6y ago

The resulting cabin actually looks pretty great. I think if they didn't sell it, their appreciation of it would grow over time. It's great to build something "real" and permanent, and not just write transient bullshit for a newspaper all day.

Magodo 6y ago

Jazz or jugaad as the Indians call it :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad Also http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-...

Johnny555 6y ago

When we had nothing but the floor, we were still sketching and debating ridiculous design ideas over our morning coffee—curved, pagoda-style rooflines; walls that folded down into decks; a spiral staircase wrapping around a tree trunk to the loft—as if we were made of money and time. I wonder if they told the buyer that the cabin was built by 2 underfunded inexperienced guys with no plans? They aren't out of the woods financially yet... if that cabin collapses or burns up in an electrical fire, they may find themselves on the wrong end of a liability lawsuit.

freetime2 6y ago
Yup and as a buyer I would be very hesitant to spend $100K on a home that wasn’t built by a licensed and insured builder... much less a home built by two complete amateurs.
0xffff2 6y ago
Yeah, seriously. I'm a bit shocked that it's even legal for them to sell this cabin. Surely permits should have been required somewhere along the way?
- hbosch 6y ago
  I think the permitting process is a bit different for places like this. Depends on what kind of power you're using: solar or utility? You have a sewer, or a well, or do you collect your own water and compost waste? People build and modify structures all the time with and without permits. If the bureaucrats had their way you'd need a permit to change a lightbulb. Also, is it a residence? This could easily be considered a "storage shed" as much as it could be considered a "house", much like RVs are insured differently than jobsite pickup trucks. Furthermore, it's more or less on the buyer to make the call about a structure's safety and value. Even buying a regular house, in a regular neighborhood, you can go ahead and buy it even if the inspector says it's going to burn down within a year. The bank might not loan you the money, but you can buy it as long as you can afford it. Houses get bought and sold every day that don't meet electrical, plumbing or general safety codes.

turtlebits 6y ago

Interesting, as I am currently doing a similar thing, but kept my day job. However, I didn't want to go all in, so I bought a small/cheap 0.33 acre parcel 25 minutes from work/home. Had Tuff shed build a 14x16 "workshop" on it. Put in solar, and now spending ~1/2 days a few times a week there. Currently finishing up building a 4x8 storage shed. Planning to build a 400 sf off-grid home/shelter next. I initially started clearing the land myself, but quickly learned that digging/levelling is not something I want to do and paid ~1200 to have it cleared and graded. I also do not want to do cement work so will have a pad poured.

jamestimmins 6y ago
This seems like the ideal approach. Build the parts you want to build, and pay for the Work that’s tedious, complex, dangerous, or otherwise outside your skill set/goals.

alibarber 6y ago

You can tell these folk work as writers, truly excellent read!

gorgoiler 6y ago

I’m currently building a dining table. I am building up experience building a workbench. I just discovered the legs do not stand vertical, after I just spent the whole day planing and milling the top to be flat. But I made it myself, and that counts for a lot.

dleslie 6y ago

My family owns multiple cabins, mostly built by family members with the occasional framing and finishing work by friends of the family and/or a local contractor. The one my father owns was framed and roofed by contractors, but the closing, finishing, deck and float construction, and 30 years of repairs and renovations were done by himself and us kids. It sits on a steep hill, so putting a 60x20ft deck on 15ft stilts was no little effort for him with only the help of a bunch of actual children. The major caveat: prior to my generation, the entire family was involved at some level in construction; from owning and operating to general labour. It's _not_ a simple task, and the level of skill and intelligence required is something I think is often misunderstood or wholly overlooked by my peers in the tech industry. There's a kind of snobbish belief expressed by _some_ that because they can grok a complex software system they should be able to build a house; but that's a bit like believing that because you are able to write you should be able to easily be a sculptor. There may be shared core concepts, like the story being told and the ideas being conveyed, but the skills and knowledge involved and shared are few.

nicbou 6y ago
The same can be said about fixing vehicles. I am humbled by the body of knowledge needed, especially when things go wrong.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 6y ago
  If you really want to be humbled, go watch an automatic transmission rebuild on YT. It's like they're casting spells with their hands.
throwaway5752 6y ago
This is one of the best and most insightful comments I've seen anywhere. As someone who has crossed a few domains with overlap in my life (so some limited knowledge of how ignorant I am in all of them) this would be a top candidate for most valuable life lessons, intellectual humility.
carabiner 6y ago
I built a desk and was amazed at how quickly a simple piece of wood on metal legs became. What kind of wood? There are a billion types. Ended up with baltic birch from a specialty lumberyard. What size? A little bigger than old desk; not too hard. Ok, which piece of wood do I get at the lumberyard? It comes in standard sizes. Oh, I'd have to buy two huge sheets, so I would have a ton left over. Let me adjust the dimensions again so that I'll only need one sheet. They can cut it there, but it's a rough cut with tear out on the edges. I need to recut it at home with a circular saw. Now which circ saw do I buy? What blade do I need to make it a fine cut? How do I do this in a studio apartment? Then sanding the wood and finishing it (I can't have too much VOC because I have cats and myself in a small apartment), each of those stages requiring research and many small steps, with other tools to buy (orbital sander, multiple pads, dust mask etc.). It took way longer than expected, the tools cost a lot, but I ended up saving maybe a few hundred bucks from buying a similar desk considering only the cost of materials.

soneca 6y ago

I enjoyed a lot the reading, but the title is misleading. Not everything went wrong, they even list things they feared could go wrong and didn't. By the end of, it went mostly right (except for spending more time and money than expected). Not a bad story, on the contrary, but I was interested in reading about the learnings of pursuing a dream and things going actually wrong. What you do next? Try again? Try another thing? Go back to your old life with renewed insight? Gain in wisdom?

tomlagier 6y ago
My wife and I did this. We quit our jobs to travel for a year, got 6 weeks in before it was clear COVID wasn't going anywhere and we needed to return. We came back and decided that since we had a nice travel fund and no jobs we should use that buffer to explore career choices and places to live that we hadn't previously. She is now attempting to become a full-time food photographer, I'm still in software but working as a freelance contractor with a lot more free time and better commute. So far we've broken roughly even on the experience, with a significant boost in quality of life. http://tomandmary.travel/ http://tomandmary.travel/
- soneca 6y ago
  Oh shit.. Covid is making a lot of dreams go wrong indeed. Adapting to the circumstances while keep the core of changing your life seems a smart way to deal with it. There is nothing in the link you posted, btw. Not sure if a typo or you just didn't publish the site yet

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

I knew a real estate agent who specialized in cabins and mountain properties. He had a constant inventory of what he called "Divorce Cabins". They were half-finished DIY cabin builds or renovations that turned out to be way more stress and work than the couples expected. This tended to lead to divorce, which lead to a forced sale of the property. Experienced contractors would pick them up at a discount, finish the work with their crews, and sell them off. These things are doable if you have infinite time and money to spend on renting the right equipment and hiring help for jobs that require experience and/or multiple people. However, it's virtually impossible for someone to do on weekends alone.

sushshshsh 6y ago
And yet there are people who have built cabins in Alaska with nothing but some metal and a lot of ingenuity and muscle. I think that if you have to build a cabin that conforms to certain building guidelines, bank standards, codes, mainstream retail expectations.... then for sure you are going to encounter expenses and risk. But I really hate this notion of "just pay someone to do it correctly", because this proposition also has a ton of risk and expense associated with it as well. Not every contractor who takes a job is Bob the Builder. For me, if I was serious about building a home for myself so that it's customized to my taste and an extremely good value, I would throw all of the rules out of the window and build it exactly like the real cabins out there in Alaska and Siberia whose style has been perfected over hundreds of years.
- ChrisLomont 6y ago
  >But I really hate this notion of "just pay someone to do it correctly", because this proposition also has a ton of risk and expense associated with it as well. For almost any task you'd consider hiring a professional, there is less risk and less cost, which is why professional exist. They are the best option for a wide range of cost/risk tradeoffs. >Not every contractor who takes a job is Bob the Builder But the majority are a lot better than the average person thinking they can build. Experience is a useful thing, in software dev and in building.

Kosirich 6y ago

I have a friend who did something similar to this but in his case he did it in his spare time (he works remote/flexible so spare can be during the day), mostly taking inspiration from guys like this that document the process and mistakes that they make or happen along the way. He was fortunate to have a plot of land in the middle of the woods large enough to allow him to build what the law here defines as "support house" that can be maximum 26 m2 (most people abuse it). Another benefit he had is that his uncle owns a lumber mill just 2 km away and he could get wood beams and planks very cheaply and conveniently. For insulation he used mud and straw he got for nothing from nearby farms. After painting the facade you really couldn't tell.

nwallin 6y ago

> The first thing he did was host a long-weekend work party to fix it up. I flew up from my home in Oakland, California. With a group of friends, we tore out exposed nails, cladded interior walls, built a deck and an outhouse, and hung shingles. At night, covered in sawdust and grime, we drank too much and huddled around a propane stove to keep warm, eventually falling asleep and breathing in noxious fumes all night until we staggered awake in the morning. >>>It was awful—and one of the best weekends I’d had in recent memory.<<< There's a word for this: Type II Fun. Type I Fun is when you're having fun and you know you're having fun while you're doing it. Type II Fun is when you're absolutely fucking miserable the whole time, but afterwards you and any of your friends that were with you say it was the best time ever. Lots of outdoor activities that are supposed to be Type I Fun end up being Type II Fun. Lots of activities that aren't supposed to be fun at all end up being Type II Fun. (basic training is a common example) I've heard Dwarf Fortress is Type II Fun, but I could never get into it. This whole process of building the cabin sounds like a class example of Type II Fun to me.

cynicalreason 6y ago
Amen ... I've started building a shed (10x10) 1.5 months ago with 0 woodworking experience. It's the most fun I've had in a decade .. my joints are swollen, I've got bruises and scrapes on my hands and feet, skin on my hand is actually rough. I work from home nine-to-five, software. I can't wait to finish work to actually go outside and work on the shed. I've actually considered quitting my job and doing this full time .. but it won't pay nearly enough as I'm making in software and my financial commitments won't let me.
stef25 6y ago
600Km / day on a motorbike through Africa is definitely Type II fun. Love the expression!
nostoc 6y ago
Type II fun is just fine, as long as it doesn't veer into type III fun.
- 6y ago

jborichevskiy 6y ago

This article answered a lot of questions I didn't realize I had. Yeah, I probably had a romanticized view of doing this as well, but it doesn't seem insurmountable -- perhaps doing it closer to a primary residence and working part time during the process. For anyone who wants to read more, I recommend checking out Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Interesting read!

foxyv 6y ago

Always do a job on paper before you jump into it like this. Draw out each step. Make bills of materials. Watch videos of people doing each of the steps. Determine costs and estimate times for each step. Make a list of tools required. Build a small scale model of your project. In this time you will make thousands of decisions that will grind you away if you try to rush it. This all should take you from 6 months to a year plus for a big project. Especially if you have little to no experience with it. This is why kits are so popular. Someone else has already run into all the problems and done all the suffering and troubleshooting for you. At the same time, there are other people building the kits that you can ask for help.

coding123 6y ago

My wife and I were just joking the other day, actually we were probably not joking, but we both wished we had gone into construction. Someone with a general contractors license is super valuable these days. I feel like the entire world is about to embark on a transition that we can't define yet.

turtlebits 6y ago
You can start anytime. However, manual labor isn’t a joke.

d_burfoot 6y ago

There should be a consulting service for people who want to Do Something Different. Like a guy who listens to your plan, and tells you how realistic it is, and all the pain and frustration you're going to encounter. Maybe he also puts you in touch with other people who've done similar things.

dencodev 6y ago
My plan is to live until I'm 80. It's going to involve a lot of pain and frustration.
blhack 6y ago
I think they're supposed to be called grandparents.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

A common theme among stories like this: they pledge to take breaks and keep from burnout. Then they launch into it and immediately forget to take breaks. Then they get frustrated, overtired and make more mistakes. The breaks have to be scheduled like anything else, or they won't happen.

jaeming 6y ago

I used to have dreams like this. I attempted to chase these ideas every few years. I quit a very good job once and moved halfway around the world in an attempt to fulfill one of these dreams. At some point I got married and eventually had kids after which these kinds of romanticized ad-hoc adventures became impractical. Sometimes I wish I'd been more focused when I was young. I feel like I probably wasted a lot of time pursuing ideas that had a high risk of not being sustainable for the long-term. I find myself giving younger people advice that I would have balked at at their age. They don't listen to me of course, just like I didn't listen to more experienced adults when I was in their place. No one wants to be told, "Don't follow your dreams. Weigh the risks and the potential return on investment first". I guess part of being young is taking those risks and learning from your failures. And sometimes, chasing an impractical dream pays off. Sometimes they pay off big. But now days when I get the wanderlust or some feeling of discontentment and find myself wondering, "there must be more to life than this?", I just try changing something small in my routine, like, "you know what? I think I'm going to start taking walks during lunch every day.", or, "I think I'll study this new language for an hour every night after the kids go to bed.", or, "I think I'll build a garden enclosure in the backyard". I often find that by changing something small in my routine, I can break out of the monotony and feel some sense of accomplishment I hadn't noticed was missing. But even then, there is still some voice in the back of my mind that says, "someday, when the kids are old enough and out of the house, I think I'll take one last big risk and embark on some kind of unlikely adventure."

ep103 6y ago
I found this poetically beautiful, for some reason : )
- emmanueloga_ 6y ago
  The you will like Italo Calvino: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/499400-when-a-man-rides-a-long-time-through-wild-regions https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/499400-when-a-man-rides-a-l...
logicslave12 6y ago
So your dreams didn’t pan out, but for others it has. There’s always value in shooting for more in life. You only live once

D13Fd 6y ago

Why didn't they just add a well so they didn't have to do seller financing? I also feel like this story isn't complete until they do the follow-up about whether the seller financing worked out. That's a big risk.

0xffff2 6y ago
The word "permit" is suspiciously absent from this story, and adding a well would most certainly have required permits. Probably a lot of things they did required permits, but if the narrative is accurate it doesn't seem like the permits were actually acquired.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Rural areas tend to require less permits in general. I did a significant remodel and the only permit was electrical.
  - 0xffff2 6y ago
    Are you speaking specifically about Washington state? I don't know the details up there, but I can tell you from experience that this isn't at all true in Oregon (both personally for my own property and from occasionally helping my dad, who is a GC). First, remodels aren't nearly the same as new construction. Second, in either case it is true in Oregon is that rural counties are less likely to notice or care if you don't pull required permits, particularly for remodels or "repairs" (even if the repair is the Theseus-like replacement of a completely unsalvagable structure). That doesn't mean the permits are any less required though and I would be very leary of pulling those kinds of tricks on a property that I turned around and sold. This is all doubly true since they sold it owner financed, which means the buyer missed out on the bank doing some due diligence for them. Hopefully the buyer did their own due diligence and knows exactly what they bought.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      Iowa each area is different.

newintellectual 6y ago

Measure twice, cut once.

sleepybrett 6y ago

My parents put together a little half a-frame cabin in the 1970s down on the slopes of ranier near greenwater. I was just a baby and don't know what the initial imputes was. I still assume it was because my dad and my aunt on my mother's side both loved to ski and it is within about 30m of the crystal mountain resort. I think the initial foundation, framing, roofing and siding was done by contractors. The cabin community it's in has water and power and septic was installed. But every year until I was about 13 we'd spend weeks up there doing finishing work. All the plumbing and electrical was done by the family or friends. All the interior finishing as well. About 15 years back we ripped out the original wood burning stove for a pellet stove when my dad and I both got sick of harvesting trees left behind by the logging crews. And then about 5 years ago we ripped that out and replaced it with propane. It's getting to the point where I'm considering buying it from them and moving up there full time. There are some issues with getting fast enough internet without paying a small fortune, but every year it's a little cheaper, a little easier. I was just up there last week, and while I love Seattle I think I moved a step closer to the move while working out on the front porch and looking up to find a small herd of elk chewing on some of the underbrush just a few feet away.

Natalie1Quinn 6y ago

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rdiddly 6y ago

Definitely appeals to my sense of adventure and independence, but these days I can't help it: my fantasies run more toward writing the companion piece: "We Saved Our Money And Bought This Totally Sweet Cabin From These Dudes"

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

agumonkey 6y ago

PSA: There are uneven feet ladders for sale.

m3kw9 6y ago

This has all the analogies of some rando trying to write a professional piece of software.

justicezyx 6y ago

I have been enjoying replacing the exterior trim boards of the patio door to our 2nd floor patio, during my spare time while WFH. And get a very strong sense of concrete accomplishment in a decade almost. The biggest learning is that the process is vastly more complicated then whatever I could imagine. Different materials of materials Priming & painting (on lumber boards, and repair some surrounding areas) Tools Measurements and design Woodworking to hide small blemishes The amount of labor is staggering as well. To name just one idea, carrying lumber and a bag of tools between the 2nd floor and the garage workshop has been a constant tiring experience. And a lot of learning, each time when I progressed a bit, new study is required on dozens of youtube videos, and search on HomeDepot/Lowes/Amazon to get an idea on the materils/tools needed.

whack 6y ago

As someone who earns good money working at a big corp, this article resonates deeply. From a financial perspective, these guys slaved away for almost a year, earning what was probably minimum wage. From a quality perspective, what they produced doesn't even look impressive, when compared to any other dime-a-dozen cabin. And yet, there's something deeply fulfilling about building something real. With your own two hands. So much of modern corporate life feels so anonymous. Like you're playing a tiny tiny part in a project so huge, that your part seems almost inconsequential. And even worse, the things you have to do, like sitting through meetings and preparing reports, feels like a total waste of time and talent. In reality, those "bullshit" tasks that you have to wade through, are essential to keeping the project on track. And the "tiny tiny part" you've built, even as a small fraction, is still highly impactful when multiplied by the massive value-add of the project as a whole. Our corporate jobs at FANG-type companies are just as real and impressive as the cabin these guys built. But it just doesn't feel that way. And that makes it soul-draining, even though I know it shouldn't. I've been trying for years to keep my spirits up, and have yet to succeed.

ab3rC1te 6y ago

Instead of spending all that hard earned money, you could have just chopped down some trees and build a real log cabin like the ones in The Last Alaskan's show. Or better yet just live in a tent. Real men live in tents. Better yet the Legend of Mc Dodge, that guy knows how to live.

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 6y ago

TFW you're a fake man soyboy with a bed :(

donovanr 6y ago

This rings _so_ true. While I was in grad school I got bored sitting behind a computer all day, and my wife and I decided to build a tiny house on a trailer as a way of venting our pent-up DIY urges. We'd just build it in our spare time. LOL. We started in the late summer of 2013, with a trailer and no plans and a stack of construction books from the library. Cut to spring 2016, having spent every single weekend and most evenings since (in zero degree winters and brutal Pittsburgh summers) sweating and swearing, really pushing the "divorce cabin" line, and having legitimate discussions late at night about the benefits of burning it all to the ground, where my wife, eight month pregnant, is trying to finish the trim work before I submit my dissertation and we tow it across the country. The way the article captures the "not knowing what we were getting into" / tiny things that delay you to death / stressed out / losing friends / doing absolutely nothing else with your life / so over budget it hurts / final elation at success is absolutely perfect. We only made it across the finish line because living in Pittsburgh on a grad student stipend is actually, well, livable, and I could do that while my wife worked pretty much full time on our housing boondoggle. The main learning experience coming out of it was that you should absolutely pay how ever many thousands of dollars it costs for a good set of plans from someone who's done this before. Learning smaller tasks like framing and roofing etc is easy. Stitching it all together into a plan that you're arguing about because neither of you have any idea what you're doing, all while you're wasting precious daylight is _hard_. We would have finished at least a year sooner if we just had plans to follow. All that said, building a place to live in was super rewarding (as others have said) type II fun. We still have it, it's beautiful, and I have not yet burned it down.

exabrial 6y ago

There is an air of elitism in SV generally and sometimes on HN (I attribute this to lack of education rather than purely bad intentions). Coming from a background of unskilled blue collar work (commercial roofing, assembling buses, carpentry apprentice) this was slightly satisfying read in a sadistic way. Much like playing piano or other instrument, manual labor is a skill; watching a senior craftsman perform at a level 10x-25x of what you could do is awe inspiring.

ThinkBeat 6y ago

Many of the first projects I developed was crap. I went to university learned a lot kept making code. Got a lot better. If I knew two guys with 0 training or experience had built a house the wanted to sell. I would stay far away. It is sort of like a pre alpha house and selling it. Who knows that sort of problems will come out over time. They made no mention of permits. Inspectors etc. if you build a cabin in the woods are you freed from all those things? If the story was I quit my job constructing houses that I had done for 20 year and went to school or apprenticed for a coupe of years to learn how to do it To build a small ERP system in C. So I could sell it for good money. If you have never written any code and have no experience with it. Chances are that your system is really gong to suck. So is your next one. If you screw up a house. People can die. There are thousands Of bugs and even real proper bugs to deal with. I plan to take 6 months off work to do some heart surgery. Never taken any advan ced biology or medical classe but everyone has a heart and usually But not always in the same place. If I write out all details of the surgery . Or let’s say I get a proper heart surgeon to write down in detail every step. I memorize it in a week. Off to buy some tools. What could go wrong?

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

I'm very curious to hear from the HN crowd: how many of you are seriously contemplating something like this (not the "quitting the job" part; just the "we need a cabin in the woods" part). With Covid-19 and everything, I feel that many folks in cities (I live in San Francisco), especially if financially able to, have been increasingly interested in buying land and/or homes or cabins in the vicinity, either as a permanent move, or as a backup.

blakbelt78 6y ago

It's definitely challenging if you don't have any prior experience. My dream was always to have an office shed in my backyward until I decided to build one earlier this year before the pandemic. It turned out pretty good and it took me around three months to build it. Its hard work for sure but I couldn't be happier. I wrote a blog post about it. https://eduardosasso.co/blog/how-i-built-a-wfh-shed/ https://eduardosasso.co/blog/how-i-built-a-wfh-shed/