Minimum Viable Cabin

The roof is being installed! Look at all that glorious winter sunlight on that south-facing beauty. Obviously I'm hinting at solar panels, but first let's talk about roofs. There are a lot of options, but the conversation usually boils down to: asphalt or metal, and what color? Pros and cons of asphalt versus metal can be found on all the roofers websites, and they're all pretty much true so I'm not going to repeat them here. I chose metal because of several benefits: Environmental friendliness: metal roofing is 100% recyclable, and is made from very high recycled content. Not only that, it lasts 2 or 3 times as long as an asphalt roof so the waste of production is reduced. Asphalt roofing goes to a landfill - very little of it can be recycled. Even if parts of the metal roof need to be replaced, the old stuff will get recycled. Money : We've discussed my innate cheapness before, such as when I wanted to manage construction myself , or live in a camper instead of...

The Minimum Viable Cabin is looking good. Not viable technically (certificate of occupancy usually requires you to have y'know... plumbing, heat, roofing... But the shell is done. This is the lovely Bensonwood/Unity crew who were here all week putting it together (missing only Andrew, who got things started before handing off to Rob). Professionals with an eye to detail and obvious pride in what they build, these guys are just fun to work with.

  I have a special rock I stand behind to take photos, so you can have a progressive idea of how the house is going up. 

Please listen to this while you read this entry... So, after I arrived, the guys started arriving with trucks fulla flat-pack stuff (roof, floor, walls, all the good stuff you need to build a house). Christmastime for Dani! The packages started to be unloaded by Greg, using the lull (big ole hopped up forklift). And everything was going fine until... The walls. The big 24' walls. And there were trees in the way. They wiggled around for twenty minutes just trying to get past the trees. There was this one particular beech tree. This lil guy. And beeches are slow growers - this one is probably 30 years old! So when they asked for a chainsaw, I said - aww, come on, I bet you can get past it. Can you just try one more time to see if you can get around it? And being the good sports they are, the guys said sure, we'll give it one more try. AND THEN... Here - let me just zoom out on that photo.... Yes, the lull is in a ditch. Sunk its front tire 4' into a mud pit that appeared out ...

6 am. Not even joking, not messing with you. That is the time I woke up. I wanted to get to the site in time to meet the crew. I walked there in my extremely reflective Proviz jacket (it's cool as hell, makes you basically  glow  in the dark. And my version is reversible! So I have a wicked bright yellow jacket for when construction starts. But I got here waaaay before those guys and got to walk around in the snow for an hour, trying to picture what the cabin will look like.

  Finally, after TEN THOUSAND YEARS (a couple months) the foundation is being poured. These are forms and atop those go frost walls and atop that goes the cement floor.

You'd think they'd teach this in schools, but I guess they're busy with all the reading and geometry. Well let me read you the hypote-news then: you should hire a general contractor before you start picking out china patterns with your excavator and septic designer and god knows who else. Unless you're going to be your own GC, and in that case, you probably shouldn't. Be your own GC, that is. (Faithful readers may remember that time  Dick talked me down from my innate cheapness .) Why hire the GC first? Well it may be obvious to you. Maybe even so obvious you wouldn't post this on your blog - and to you I offer my sincere congratulations on your maturity - but it's because of relationships. Your GC is local to the area. They'll know everyone and their reputations, and they'll know how to put together a good team who works well together. Well, I didn't do that - because I needed to assess buildability before I closed on the land for this cabin, I...

  BeachHousesMuizenbergBeach by Stefan Schäfer, Lich   This is a post in a series of discussions of pre-fabricated and modular home builders I've considered. I'll cover the general experience researching and talking with builders, and the highlights of their offering in the "minimum cabin" space. Vermod Homes from Wilder, Vermont is next on the list.  The Design Unlike some of the other homes reviewed, Vermod doesn't have cute names for their designs. The options are described in utilitarian terms like "Single Box," "Double Box." Maybe a Double Quarter-Box with Cheese. I guess nobody would give me a job naming homes. Similar to other modular builders, the dimensions are long and narrow due to the width restrictions for shipping modules on trucks. The designs here are incremental, so it's essentially a 14'x40' box that can be combined with one or more other boxes to create the desired footprint. First Impressions & Website Conti...

BeachHousesMuizenbergBeach by Stefan Schäfer, Lich   This is a post in a series of discussions of pre-fabricated and modular home builders I've considered. I'll cover the general experience researching and talking with builders, and the highlights of their offering in the "minimum cabin" space. We're now looking at BrightBuilt Home , out of Portland, Maine, who do business in the East and Mid-Atlantic. The Design Once again going for the most affordable and diminutive of the options, the " Sidekick " is 560 square feet at its smallest (although they're working on a mini version for those truly devoted to tiny houses). The dimensions are long and narrow, consistent with many modular designs in this category, due to the requirements of shipping modular homes on trucks. This design was originally created as an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) but is increasingly being used as a standalone home. The layout looks cozy and functional, and I like that there...

  BeachHousesMuizenbergBeach by Stefan Schäfer, Lich   This is the first in a series of discussions of pre-fabricated and modular home builders I've considered. I'll cover the general experience researching and talking with builders, and the highlights of their offering in the "minimum cabin" space. First up is New Hampshire-based  Unity Homes , a spinoff of Bensonwood homes which was briefly mentioned in the rant   post  about custom homes. The Design The " Nano ," which is their smallest, most inexpensive, and quickest-to-build design. With dimensions of 20x24, this is very small cabin. It looks like an upscale Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) but has an airy interior and wider footprint than most small modulars. This is because Unity prefab is "panelized" rather than modular. Slightly more construction occurs on-site because the panels are being put together rather than a module being placed. First Impressions & Website Based on my interactions...

One reason I chose to document this cabin-building process is that I didn't know where to start when I first envisioned the project. I wanted to leave a trail of breadcrumbs (and unvarnished missteps and goofy plan-changes) to make it a little easier next time I or someone else did this. Hey Future-Me: leave stock tips in the comments eh? Another reason was to keep myself honest. I believe in reasonable, documented, and repeatable processes, and wanted to hold myself to that approach to this project. Easy enough to go in and start making decisions without a plan or budget - nobody would ever know. But as I've said before and will say again free cross-stitch pattern, this is now technically a crafts blog. You can either let the ignorance line-item sit there, hidden and waiting to bite you in the ass with huge extra costs, or you can acknowledge your ignorance and work to minimize it. One of the ways to reduce the size of the cost of your ignorance is due diligence - which just m...

Raise your hand if you've drawn architectural renderings of your dream house on graph paper before. Or maybe mapped out your entire room including your beanbag chair with scale included. My people. If you're building your own cabin (cottage, house, mansion, space-station...) it's because you have a vision in your head and weren't able to exactly match it out in reality. For me, this was because the right combination of cost, water access, and dwelling didn't exist at the time I was looking for it. Ideally, I'd work with an architect to shape my graph-paper daydreams into the fully executable drawings and have deep and meaningful discussions about the size of my walk-in closets and listen to them rant for hours about collectivism vs  individualism . Here's some unvarnished truth: fully custom homes are for the rich. *This isn't a knock on your amazing hand-built camp or that van you turned into a very cool tiny house. I'm talking about a structure tha...

House vector created by studiogstock -  www.freepik.com My great-uncle Doug tells a story about the family home where he and my grandfather and their many siblings lived, somewhere in the backwoods of New England back in the 1930s. It fell down a hill during a hard rain when there was a mudslide. They put it back up and continued as before. I viewed this episode as entirely aspirational until I considered the implications of such an approach to home-building for indoor plumbing and winter survival. And now, with greater knowledge about pollution, climate change, and fire safety, my desire for this cabin to become the flowering of my family tree's famously corner-cutting craftsmanship has further dwindled. That is to say, I'm looking for a builder who values the craft and can produce something that not only won't fall down a hill in the rain, but will use sustainable practices, reduce waste, and produce a simple cabin that is easy to heat and cool and supplies its own energy...

Furthering my investigation of whether the lot is buildable, the steadfast septic designers walked the property yesterday and didn't see any obvious wetlands or problems, HOWEVER, they do have a record of a test pit dug (30 years ago) which shows that the water table is 36". A test pit is a hole in the ground. Okay, it's more than that. It's a hole in the ground you throw money into!  Okay, it's more than that. It's a hole in the ground that your septic designer or engineer digs to examine the strata of rock and soil and water level. This is very important not only for knowing what your septic will look like, but also your foundation, and whether you're even allowed to  have  a septic system. Now, you try and google whether 36" deep water table is terrible, or just fine. I'll wait. You can't find an answer? Me either. Nobody knows - or at least they're not saying. Maybe it's just not polite to give an opini on ab out whether someone...

  photo credit: Eversource How high over the horses are you going to hang your electrical lines? ...is a question you may not have asked yourself today. Another on the list of "things where your ignorance is a hidden cost line item" is electric. Not just wiring your house - we're not there yet - but actually bringing the power from the street to your home. I called the local electric company to talk it over, choosing the "Contractors and Builders" line since that was the direction of my questions. The guy who picked up (no automated menu!) was friendly and knowledgable. There are two prices for running electric from the street to the cabin - one for overground and the other for underground. Underground is cheaper - a little over $15/foot - or half the price of over-ground!  You're right to be suspicious. It's cheaper because with underground you pay digging the trench, running the conduit, the string (strong fishing line you run along the conduit and the...

photo credit: Spreadsheet Stock photos by Vecteezy Q: What will it cost to build a cabin?  A: How long is a string? That's a pithy way of saying - it will cost as much as you make it cost. And to further expand on that, I know from running many other types of projects that if I go in ignorant of costs and options and make choices before I understand their impact, my ignorance will become a hidden line item in my budget. As much as I need a blueprint for the cabin, I need a blueprint for the costs and a plan for where the money will come from. My project needs a budget. There are some sample budgets out there, and they all look pretty overwhelming so I wanted to understand the steps first. I turned to my old PBS favorite, This Old House, and read  this Bob Vila article  outlining the timelines for major stages of construction. I am using this to create an outline for both my Project Plan and my Budget. My outline ends up being a lot longer than I originally imagined, and I...

I saved up over the last few years in a fund called optimistically, "House Fund." I knew I'd want a downpayment on a house at some point, and with real estate prices rising, it needed to be invested in the market to keep up with house prices and avoid losing value from inflation. It has gained about 25% in value over the time I have invested, but now that I'll need some of it for the Cabin project in the next year, it's time to cash out. My 1 & 80 rule: if you are within 1 year of the event (whether it's a home, wedding, car, or boob job) and you're 80% sure it's going to happen, you should get your cash in order. This means selling stocks (bonds and CDs are generally fine). I take a moderate view of when to sell stocks to fund a purchase. As the Motley Fool points out in this article , if you wait until closing day to sell, you risk the stocks declining in value and not being able to fund your home purchase. While Fool indicates that you should se...

 If you like it then you'd better put a ring on it. And by that I mean you better ring your appraiser right quick. Like right when you put in an offer. And call five of 'em because only one is gonna call you back (if you're in a hot market). This is for someone out there: Your tea is getting cold and you should call potential appraisers. Joanna called me back (angel music) and can fit us in sometime in the next 3 weeks. Which is great, because that clock is ticking on my 30-days contingency where (9 days ago now - I'm counting) I blithely wrote "pending appraisal at or above offer, to be determined within 30 days" blah blah blah. Well, past Minimum Viable Cabiness, you get what you get. In case you're keeping track, a Unicorn costs $450.