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

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#171

Post by Fiahil » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

crdrost wrote: post #125

sevencolors wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it sounds like a nice romantic dream, but mother nature is cold and uncaring. Maybe the article overstated their woes, but it sounds like they were very under prepared. And winging the technical parts. Like software the easy part is the build. The harder part is research and planning. I have notions of retiring someday and run a wood shop. But I'm working on learning the basics and doing small projects.

Yeah, there's a lot there to learn, too. My plan to build a custom shelf unit for our kitchen went over-time and over-budget (in the small). Reason: once it was made it became apparent that it lacked strength against skewing deformations, which would not happen ‘laterally’ given where it was sitting but would happen ‘dorsoventrally.’ (Apologies for the anatomical language—it could wiggle side-to-side along its width…

I am amazed at the amount of knowledge you have acquired by doing it yourself! That's also my main motivation for building my own stuff (+ it's really fun when you take your time).

I built a small balcony garden off a few pine planks. Many mistakes were made along the way, some were corrected (how do you cut in straight lines with a jigsaw ? Use a maconnery ruler and a few clips), some were compensated by the overall overbuild. It took me a few months but I always expected it to take more time and money than buying it from Amazon. One nice thing is that it matches perfectly the width of the balcony! With this small success and many more, I will - maybe - have enough knowledge to build my own cabin in 40 years.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#172

Post by jaeming » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

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."

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#173

Post by ChrisLomont » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

sushshshsh wrote: post #146

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 propositi…

>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.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#174

Post by 0xffff2 » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

Johnny555 wrote: post #88

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 wood…

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?

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#175

Post by LeifCarrotson » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:22 PM UTC

TimSchumann wrote: post #18

kyleblarson wrote: post #11

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 a…

> 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.

Beware of falling into the trap of replacing everything on your "Someday maybe" list with Youtube subscriptions. Did that for a while, don't have much to show for 2017. Watching someone make/do cool stuff and put it on the Internet satisfies similar dopamine reward functions as actually doing it yourself, with a lot less effort. Except you didn't actually do it, you watched someone else do it. Same with actually making a "Someday maybe" list, writing down the goal feels like it's something you're accomplishing even though it's not actually started yet.

When you look back on your summer/year, what will you have accomplished? What skills will you have developed?

If you don't really value a process/skill, but just want the material result (i.e. a cabin), pay a pro for it. If you just have an itch that needs to be scratched, watch someone else do it on Youtube. If you want it to be a part of who you are, pruning your list by moving items to the former two strategies should leave you enough time to develop it yourself.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#176

Post by dan_quixote » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #40

kyleblarson wrote: post #11

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 a…

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)

I find that most contractors are incentivized to maximize throughput and thus do a just-good-enough job so that the average person doesn't notice. Once you learn some common skills like electrical, drywall, tile, etc, you will never stop finding defects in everyone's homes.

I've saved myself hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years by doing my own work, but now I can only see defects everywhere because that's what I've trained myself to look for.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#177

Post by Spooky23 » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:24 PM UTC

atourgates wrote: post #121

TimSchumann wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If you have the opportunity (and can find contractors willing to work with you), picking out parts of a project to DIY is a good way to build skills, and save $$s. We're building a shop. I've contracted most of the build out, but found that I could save $20,000+ by DIY'ing the radiant heat portion myself. Took about a days worth of planning and research, another to lay down the pipe before the floor was poured, and a…

It’s funny how when you’re young you it’s hard to learn about these types of things.

My wife went to school with a guy who didn’t like college. He took a summer job on a road crew, learned how to use an excavator and got hooked. Dropped out, saved up, and bought a used dump truck, which basically made him.

Started out hauling stuff and then got into water/sewer work and excavation.

He’s up to about 20 trucks a decade later, and pays the bills with the sewer work. He leveraged the assets he had (trucks, diggers) and won demolition contracts — they make money on demolition. Like $75-200k for an emergency demolition if they can get there in 90m.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#178

Post by avery42 » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:25 PM UTC

RoyTyrell wrote: post #66

duxup wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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-...

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#179

Post by mtnGoat » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:25 PM UTC

kyleblarson wrote: post #42

bwb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :).

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 ha…

You might not need to wait that long. I know union electricians in NCW making quite a bit more than most software engineers i know. Some are clearing 6 figures their second year.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#180

Post by D13Fd » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:25 PM UTC

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.