
We quit our jobs to build a cabin - anarbadalov
https://www.outsideonline.com/2415766/friends-diy-cabin-build-washington
======
kyleblarson
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
> 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.

~~~
MikeTheGreat
> find a youtube subscription that satisfies the urge to tinker on a
> particular topic.

I think my life got measurably better when I pivoted from "I want to do this
myself" towards "It's just as satisfying to watch someone else do this".

Downhill extreme mountain biking is really cool. And fun to watch. And
expensive. And requires much more physical fitness than I've got. And
dangerous (esp. given my physical fitness :). )

~~~
sillysaurusx
_I think my life got measurably better when I pivoted from "I want to do this
myself" towards "It's just as satisfying to watch someone else do this"._

So true! Works for a lot of things. It's why I stopped playing dota.

~~~
screye
Stopping dota was the single most important decision of my life. It is an
incredible game, that consumes an incredible amount of mind-space even when
you're not playing it.

Dota - the worst 'awesome thing' that can happen to your life.

~~~
grogenaut
Maybe the reason I was able to get to 775 MMR was because it occupied 0 of my
mind-space when I wasn't playing it :)

------
look_lookatme
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
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
This is probably true.

~~~
Chirael
See "Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles'"
[https://www.engadget.com/mozilla-youtube-
bubble-200045382.ht...](https://www.engadget.com/mozilla-youtube-
bubble-200045382.html) (and many others, I'm sure)

------
dleslie
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.

~~~
vitaflo
Agreed. My father is a carpenter and I helped him build our family cabin when
I was a pre-teen. We did mostly all of the building except putting up the
trusses and finishing the roof. My dad was smart enough to farm out that work.

Now I write software and I work with a lot of people who dream of going off in
the woods and building a cabin, as though it's the same as building software.
I have to remind them that "there is no undo". "Measure twice, cut once" is a
phrase for a reason. You can't refactor your cabin half way through building.
Surprisingly many of them never even considered these things, let alone the
tricks or techniques needed to do a good job.

I think a lot of white collar workers see what blue collar workers do as
perhaps difficult physically, but not mentally. But that couldn't be further
from the truth. And this is especially true when you're trying to piece
together an entire cabin by yourself.

~~~
dleslie
> My dad was smart enough to farm out that work.

What I find curious is that this viewpoint, while widely shared in trades, is
not a universally shared value in tech. Many in our industry will prefer to
write something themselves, or rewrite an existing project, rather than farm
that work out to an expert or adapt to what they already have.

Particularly in my segment, video games: it's all well and good to write a
game engine for fun, but _so many_ indie studios spend enormous amounts of
their time, effort and cash on developing new engines afresh.

I can only imagine what the housing industry would be like if sub-contracting
weren't as popular as it is.

> I think a lot of white collar workers see what blue collar workers do as
> perhaps difficult physically, but not mentally.

Aye, this is what I was alluding to as snobbish.

~~~
bluGill
It is hard to look at something and realize that even though you can you
shouldn't. I'm a programmer, I can write the engine. Several years later I
have an engine. We have many new languages all the time for similar reasons,
someone thinks they can write one (generally better) and forgets about all the
effort it really takes and maybe they should do something else.

~~~
saltcured
On the flipside, a lot of software rework can be closer to the decision of
whether to brush your own teeth, flush your own toilet, or make your own fried
egg. It takes wisdom, experience, and a presumption about many other
unspecified factors to determine whether these are really better to outsource
or solve in-house...

------
nwallin
> 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.

~~~
matdehaast
Ultra running is definitely Type II fun. It’s not that enjoyable at the time
but somehow in that suffering you find pleasure afterwards

~~~
sliken
The worse it feels, the better if feels when you stop.

------
PragmaticPulp
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
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.

~~~
janee
> And yet there are people who have built cabins in Alaska with nothing but
> some metal and a lot of ingenuity and muscle.

You're forgetting time. Not sure if you've seen "Dick Proenneke in Alone in
the Wilderness"
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG3fUIoXQ5A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG3fUIoXQ5A)).

It's a great watch, and a good example of what I think you're referring to
overall...that said it looked like an extremely hard way to build and from
personal experience helping my sister build their holiday home, also not an
approach I would recommend to anyone that doesn't have a very strong
conviction and/or passion to see a self build through.

~~~
kthxbye123
It's extremely hard. Proenneke was a talented craftsman who had spent his
whole life working as a mechanic and carpenter. He wasn't an office-bound DIY
enthusiast.

------
gautamcgoel
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
>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
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
So as long as you achieved something, your trail of blood can be as long as
you like?

~~~
atq2119
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.

------
jaeming
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
I found this poetically beautiful, for some reason : )

~~~
emmanueloga_
The you will like Italo Calvino:

[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/499400-when-a-man-rides-
a-l...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/499400-when-a-man-rides-a-long-time-
through-wild-regions)

------
drewrv
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-
nigh...](https://slate.com/human-interest/2005/12/my-coffeehouse-
nightmare.html)

~~~
duxup
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
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
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-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/many-restaurants-on-kitchen-
nightmares-have-closed-2014-6)

~~~
duxup
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.

------
hinkley
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.

~~~
djsumdog
I took two long journeys in my life, one for 11 months and another for 5:

[https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/perspective/minimalism/](https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/perspective/minimalism/)

[https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/perspective/a-tale-
of-t...](https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/perspective/a-tale-of-two-
journeys/)

I lived out of two bags the first time and a car the second. I learned a lot
about myself and the world. I had a good amount saved up, but I've met people
who've done similar trips and haven't. I got the idea from a guy I met in a
hostel who saved up $10k in a year from his job waiting tables, and traveled
for a year off of it. My best friend lived in Germany for years off of <500
euro a month teaching English.

It's not an easy life for sure. Eventually that server went back to work at
his restaurant, my friend teaching English returned to Ohio and I got a job in
software engineering. I still wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

~~~
stef25
Did that for a while in my early 20s. Spent a few months in Asia with just a
35L backpack of clothes on my back and the odd book. This was before wifi and
smartphones. Happiest time of my life.

~~~
boring_twenties
I did something similar after wifi and smartphones, and I don't think either
made it any worse.

~~~
czzr
I hope that true, but how would you know?

------
Havoc
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...](https://www.youtube.com/c/WildWonderfulOffGrid/videos?view=0&sort=da&flow=grid)

~~~
CydeWeys
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.

~~~
spanhandler
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
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.

------
carabiner
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?

~~~
cmrdporcupine
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.

~~~
spanhandler
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
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.

------
soneca
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
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
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

------
foxyv
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.

------
sleepybrett
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.

------
dtrain2017
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.

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

~~~
vidanay
Yeah, building a cabin isn't a fundamentally complicated project. Think.
Measure. Measure. Cut. Nail. Repeat.

~~~
stef25
Kinda like building a web app. Think, estimate, write, compile, deploy,
repeat.

On a serious note, there's so many similarities between building a house and a
web app.

Without a proper plan and a blueprint, preferably by an architect and not the
contractor - forget about it. Client never knows what they want. Small changes
(KILL ME NOW) can take huge amount of time and impact things that don't seem
connected, which the client never understands. The last 10% is rarely
completed or done badly. It always takes much longer than expected. Everyone's
excited in the beginning and considers euthanasia toward the end.

It's hilarious really.

~~~
Dirlewanger
The similarities to web applications are not many. If you fuck up, you can
erase the lines of code and replace it with the new ones. If you fuck up the
foundation of your house, you've now potentially wasted many man-hours and
whatever resources you used on it, and will probably need to spend just as
many to fix it.

~~~
stef25
If the "core" of your software needs to be rewritten half way through the
project then that's a disaster and you've also wasted many man-hours on it.

Maybe my crap's not loosely coupled enough.

------
JoeAltmaier
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.

------
turtlebits
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
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.

------
Johnny555
_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.

~~~
0xffff2
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
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.

~~~
Johnny555
As long as it's all disclosed, then it's probably fine. It's not only on the
buyer to figure it out -- the buyer doesn't need to tear off the drywall to
see if the house was taped together with duct tape instead of using nails.
(but he might end up doing that if he has reason to doubt the construction
quality). If the seller built the house himself without any professional
guidance or inspection, he needs to disclose it.

I don't know about unincorporated areas, but around here if you put power and
water in a shed, it's no longer just a shed and you need permits. And I think
that if it's meant for human habitation even without power or water, you need
the permits (though you may not get the permit without lighting and
water/sewer)

------
site-packages1
Outside Online is a consistent source of high quality, long form articles. I
always enjoy reading them when someone posts.

------
donovanr
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.

------
wolco
They got the property for 3,000 and sold for 115,000 (with cabin)

Where can you buy so low for so much land?

~~~
throwaway0a5e
You can easily get cheap empty land in the American West so long as it's
farther from the nearest city than your average Javascript crapping baboon is
willing to drive with his family in the car for a weekend getaway and the
parcel is too small for any commercial use.

The east coast is similar but all the numbers are smaller and the baboons shit
under-performing pharmaceuticals and financial products instead of Javascript
and SaaS.

Once you make that land livable you will be stampeded by a horde of
Californians (assuming west coast) or New Yorkers (assuming east coast)
looking to throw their monopoly money at you so that they may acquire your
property and exit the rat race.

I'm only slightly exaggerating here.

~~~
throw51319
Rofl. Yeah it actually makes complete sense.

If you're willing to dig in and make stuff happen, so that your
skills/chutzpah combo is like 2-3 standard devs outside the norm... you can
get a crazy good deal.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
>so that your skills/chutzpah combo is like 2-3 standard devs outside the
norm... you can get a crazy good deal.

This is true in so many different applications.

------
whack
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.

------
ThinkBeat
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?

------
Magodo
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-...](http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-
amount-of-detail)

------
justicezyx
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.

------
Kosirich
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.

------
blakbelt78
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/)

------
m3kw9
This has all the analogies of some rando trying to write a professional piece
of software.

------
simonebrunozzi
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.

------
D13Fd
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
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
Rural areas tend to require less permits in general. I did a significant
remodel and the only permit was electrical.

~~~
0xffff2
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
Iowa each area is different.

------
exabrial
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.

------
jborichevskiy
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!

------
d_burfoot
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
My plan is to live until I'm 80.

It's going to involve a lot of pain and frustration.

------
coding123
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
You can start anytime. However, manual labor isn’t a joke.

------
julianeon
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
I think for that kind of thing to work, they would have had to actually know
what they're doing.

------
m0zg
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.

------
gorgoiler
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.

------
rdiddly
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"

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

------
agumonkey
PSA: There are uneven feet ladders for sale.

