Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We quit our jobs to build a cabin

outsideonline.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 402 posts

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#241

Post by war1025 »

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.

> There are lots of pros out there who don't know what they are doing.

Often these pros are also the ones that are easiest to find because the ones that know what they are doing are in high enough demand that they go mainly off word of mouth and friend-of-a-friend type business.

We bought a house three years ago that was built in 2006. The number of things I've found that were done just blatantly wrong has soured my opinion of general contract labor quite considerably.

I hired someone to fix some water damage by a door about three months after we moved in. The next spring when it rained we had a literal waterfall coming in from the top of the door frame.

Never again.

I've since torn that entire wall down to the studs, cleaned everything up, put it back together correctly, and rebuilt the attached deck.

I don't know how much that would have cost to get fixed by a professional (supposing I could have found one that actually knew what they were doing), but I'm guessing it was easily $10-$20k of work if labor was factored in.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#242

Post by ConsiderCrying »

look_lookatme wrote: post #63

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…

Seems so as well but I have to admit, it's an awful lot of effort just to gain a source of content. Realistically, it's more likely that these are just creative people who followed the trend (which they freely note in the piece) and decided to go off-grid in a way.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#243

Post by blhack »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #124
look_lookatme wrote: post #63

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…

Well my youtube recommendations have certainly gone that way too, but I think it is a reflection of my growing hatred for IT as an industry and my desire to leave it behind forever.

You should go work in a different industry as a part-time job before you give up your job in IT.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#244

Post by Kluny »

look_lookatme wrote: post #63

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 don't know that they're doing this to create content - it seems more like they're creating content out of what they're doing in an effort to fund what they want to do anyway, and maybe get some social status as well, since they're draining their bank accounts anyway.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#245

Post by bialpio »

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…

The problem I have with "professionals" in Seattle area is that you pay a lot, and then you have to either have them come back every day to fix all the little things, or just give up and fix them yourself. It is emotionally draining that it's so costly and yet still done in a half-assed way. I may have been unlucky with the contractors, but on the other hand, it's not in their incentive to spend more time on something if they can get away with doing the job less meticulously...

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#246

Post by jandrese »

dkn775 wrote: post #234
wolco wrote: post #6

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

West Virginia has tons of cheap lots, some small ones can be had for less than 10 grand.

Plenty of land for cheap if you don't mind the neighboring houses smelling strongly of cat urine and occasionally getting into gunfights.

Or if you're willing to live somewhere with no access to fresh water, which is what these guys did.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#247

Post by jandrese »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #19
wolco wrote: post #6

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

The land is a quarter acre, which isn't that much (that's 1,000 square metres), off-grid, in the middle of nowhere in Washington State. I've Googled this and here (England, sure completely different country, but also quite crowded) 'poor livestock land' (which I think their land would qualify as) is worth on average £5,000 an acre, which is about $1,625 for a quarter acre. In Scotland it goes down to £2,000 per acre.…

He did at least have access to electricity. No fresh water is a dealbreaker for a lot of people though.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#248

Post by fock »

mikeyouse wrote: post #111
sb057 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 vie…

He tried to bring down an airplane with 78 souls on board and his maimed many people in over a dozen bombings -- that goes way beyond 'unintentional'. Dude was a psychopath. Just because his shitty paranoia about marxists and feminists would fit right in on OANN or whatever doesn't mean he's "lucid" or that those thoughts have any merit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_444

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation when reading the thing about people not related to their work anymore, I heard Marx.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#249

Post by pseudobry »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #81
MikeTheGreat wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

Have you watched https://www.youtube.com/c/Rizpol ?

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#250

Post by blhack »

d_burfoot wrote: post #149

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.

I think they're supposed to be called grandparents.
Post reply on HN