We quit our jobs to build a cabin • Hacker News Board

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#141

Post by foxyv » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

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.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#142

Post by cmrdporcupine » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

turtlebits wrote: post #107

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For me, it is being off-grid. No $300 bi-monthly water/sewer bills (that's base charge w/o using any water). $7k - 10k in property taxes yearly. Huge heating and cooling costs for large living spaces. I do not especially like tiny houses on wheels, but I think I could live comfortably in an 800sf small house on a rural piece of land.

I can you that the amortized cost of a septic system could easily work out to $300 bi-monthly over a decade or two. Managing your own sewer is not trivial or inexpensive.

For me, the tank plus installation was almost $10k CAD, and then the septic field itself would probably run between $30k and $50k CAD. So to be generous we could say $50k total for the full install. So that's about 8 years at $300 bimonthly just to pay it off. And you'll need to get it pumped every 3-4 years depending on tank size (a couple hundred bucks). And the field won't last forever, so in about 25-30 years probably looking at major repairs or even replacement of the field.

Then we get to the well... Also not inexpensive to install... But varies a lot depending on bedrock depth, etc. But probably $20k to install. And then you'll probably want water filtration... because do you trust your neighbour's septic systems? :-)

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#143

Post by coding123 » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

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.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#144

Post by stef25 » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

Dirlewanger wrote: post #122

stef25 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

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.

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.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#145

Post by thwarted » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

luhn wrote: post #128

lowdose wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You underestimate your bodies strength. There are people of 98 years that do a full triathlon, so there is no excuse for you not to able to do that. You can do anything when you put your 10k hours in, but not on the first try. If mountain biking is your dream buy a Trek with electric motor in it. They can give you extra lift till you accelerate to 75 km/hour with a dongle of $120. Instant pro biking experience withou…

You really shouldn't be saying "you could do it if you really tried" to people when you don't know their situation. Maybe they have a bad knee. Maybe they have a chronic illness. Maybe they don't have the money to spend. It's not a personal failing to be unable to do something, and it's toxic to take that attitude.

"Don't encourage anyone because they might not be able to do it" is the shittiest and most toxic attitude I've ever heard.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#146

Post by sushshshsh » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #119

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 wo…

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.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#147

Post by 0xffff2 » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

Skunkleton wrote: post #46

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the opposite. If you want something done right you have to do it yourself. I try to only pay for labor when it's low/medium skill labor paired with a capital investment I don't want to make (e.g. getting new tires on my car and an alignment) or when I'm paying for a member of a professional club for their reputation and club membership (e.g. a lawyer or realtor)

There are lots of pros out there who don't know what they are doing. That is true in all fields. Still, I'm certain that there is someone for hire that can outperform an amateur. Even if the final product is good in either case, there are other considerations like time investment (hours and calendar), and opportunity costs.

>Still, I'm certain that there is someone for hire that can outperform an amateur.

Differentiating and correctly selecting the true pro out of a lineup of estimates is a skill in and of itself. For most construction tasks, I'm better at the task itself than I am at finding someone who can do it better than I can.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#148

Post by tomlagier » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

soneca wrote: post #118

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 t…

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/

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#149

Post by d_burfoot » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

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.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#150

Post by jamestimmins » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

turtlebits wrote: post #90

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 starte…

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.