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We quit our jobs to build a cabin

outsideonline.com

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Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#391

Post by pkalinowski »

at_a_remove wrote: post #346
joyfullll wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you tell me a little more about this? I'm enjoying my current job as a coder, but I'm also feeling a hankering for something like what you describe. Feeling like I'm producing something a little more tangible would be nice.

I work performing a lot of GIS (geospatial information systems) work for emergency services. Sometimes, I produce maps. Sometimes, someone wants to know where they ought to locate a five million dollar building for maximum results. My computing interests lie in automating tasks previously performed by humans, ETL, and analysis. I was doing web stuff back in the 1990s and went through so very many CRUD apps, but this…

GIS is something I have limited experience with (I'm a hobbyist pilot), but find very interesting. How did you enter the industry?

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#392

Post by aidos »

mauvehaus wrote: post #347
wincy wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think I could build a house. First one might not be great, but like software or any skill iteration matters. The patience to spend years learning to build something and doing it badly several times is probably the factor that prevents people from just building a house for themselves. It takes years to grok a complex software system, this is not transferable to grokking a house. It takes similar years to grok a m…

You don’t build a house first. You muddle through building a chicken coop from crappy plans from the Internet. Then you build a run on the coop and figure out how slightly more orthodox framing is done. After a bear gets into your bird feeder, you build an enclosure for the outside trash cans and the chicken feed. It takes well under half the time and you cut the rafters right the first time. All the while, you marve…

Can confirm. I’m just about done on my combined chicken run and coop myself. I’ve learnt a tonne. First time I’ve built anything structural from scratch.

Last year we purchased a property that needed a lot of work to make it liveable. It took 2 months and all my energy but I got pretty good at everything from replacing rotten flooring to doing my own plumbing. It’s amazing how many tricks you need to learn to become efficient though. That and the tools. Without a good base set of tools you’re a bit trapped (and you’ll always wish you had more). One thing that surprised me was that anytime I had tradespeople there they had nothing to offer on other trades. The sparks (electricians) would say “oh I don’t know anything about plumbing” for example. I’d have thought you’d just pick it up along the way, but apparently not.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#393

Post by qes »

chepaslaaa wrote: post #169
carabiner wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I built a desk and was amazed at how quickly a simple piece of wood on metal legs became. What kind of wood? There are a billion types. Ended up with baltic birch from a specialty lumberyard. What size? A little bigger than old desk; not too hard. Ok, which piece of wood do I get at the lumberyard? It comes in standard sizes. Oh, I'd have to buy two huge sheets, so I would have a ton left over. Let me adjust the dime…

You probably had fun, learned something and will use the tools again.

After building 7 more tables they might actually ROI on the circ saw and orbital sander and consumable supplies. Then they just have to start working down the capital costs of the table saw, router, miter saw, and clamps.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#394

Post by dang »

rexpop wrote: post #108
hinkley wrote: post #67

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 yo…

Read past the break, asshole.

Yikes, please don't do this. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.

A more positive form a comment like this could take is to explain what relevant information the article included past the break. Then we'd all learn something, or at least those of us who didn't read the whole article would.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#395

Post by prawn »

hinkley wrote: post #388
prawn wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did that make you angry? Presumably it's private land and they have a vested interest in cleaning it up (especially before sale). Isn't it just talking about the highs and lows of a major challenge?

> Three weeks later, we found a quarter-acre of raw land near Pat’s tiny off-grid in the Cascades. It was a sloping meadow of ferns a short walk from the Skykomish River, festooned with mature Douglas fir, big leaf maple, and cedar. A quarter acre isn't big enough to throw for distance. But the fact that he describes the land as a fern meadow (sic) pretty much sinks it. He was tossing onto the neighbor's land. You co…

I think you have to account for the fact that this is a creative writer and they exaggerated from the headline onwards (everything went wrong, etc). There's every chance he threw one piece of wood. His description and photos show that what he could describe as "woods" are right beside the house.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#396

Post by morberg »

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…

Professional tools make construction a lot easier. I always rent tools and someone that knows how to use them.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#397

Post by 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.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#398

Post by yourapostasy »

Spooky23 wrote: post #177
atourgates wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds similar to Andrew Camarata's path [1]. His intersection with HN is he studied computer science, then decided he wanted to work outdoors instead (he grew up helping his dad and picked up a lot of fabrication and repair skills doing that, and he's really good at troubleshooting so he is probably no slouch at coding, either), so he started a property maintenance business.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/c/AndrewCamarata/about

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#399

Post by 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/

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#400

Post by lowdose »

thwarted wrote: post #361
luhn wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interpreting my comment as "don't encourage anyone" is an extremely uncharitable take. Support their endeavors, celebrate successes, be empathetic of failure. Don't tell them "no excuse for you not to able to do that."

"You could do it if you really tried" is not the same as "no excuse for you not to able to do that". It's a sad state of affairs if the exchange needs to be "please share your situation with me so I can know if it's appropriate to offer words of encouragement" before offering words of encouragement.

Thanks. I could only upvote you twice! It's so crazy to limit speech to not excluding any edge case. 95% are capable of doing anything they want and the other 5% will never want to be judged on physical constraints.

Lets take an example of the most brilliant people of our time while also extremely handicapt Steven Hawkins.

What would he care he was excluded in a statement like this?

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