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We quit our jobs to build a cabin

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Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#381

Post by bluGill »

0xffff2 wrote: post #300
bluGill wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 d…

Iowa each area is different.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#382

Post by bluGill »

boring_twenties wrote: post #308
bluGill wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the opposite : towns are more expensive. Towns have libraries, and other nice things that might or might not be worth the cost.

How are those things paid for? Property and sales taxes, neither of which you save by not living in town?

Property taxes are generally lower in rural area.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#383

Post by blaser-waffle »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #362
dmoy wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Navy Seals talk about that being tired is just an emotion like feeling happy. BUD/S has like a 25% pass rate, of people who are even allowed to try. Not saying that a navy seal can't just decide to not be tired anymore, but for the rest of us mere mortals....

They also have access to unlimited amounts of pure prescription amphetamine. It helps. No critique. When you have to operate under circumstances like that and your life and your fellow soldiers lives are at stake it makes sense. Has inherent problems though. https://sofrep.com/news/navy-seals-get-addicted-drugs-doc-is...

> unlimited amounts of pure prescription amphetamine.

... in the field. Same with pilots -- they issue speed to dudes flying bombers long distances.

But they're not taking speed during selection and training. That's just you, and figuring out if you can hack it is the point.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#384

Post by R0b0t1 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #82
FrojoS wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in Germany, afaik, it is partly a building code thing. Afaik, it counts as a mobile home, so you don’t need permission to build it, even if you never intend to move it.

A lot of rural districts in North America explicitly forbid mobile homes _because_ they don't want people coming in and screwing up the land values and communities with shacks and trailers and temporary houses. I suspect most of their ordinances also apply to "tiny homes"

Do you have a good concrete example? I'm aware of no location in the US where tiny homes are forbidden or even RVs. Laws can't really dictate what you do with your land aside from public safety concerns.

I vaguely remember few cases where people tried to sic the authorities on a tiny home owner and ended up wasting a bunch of money.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#385

Post by R0b0t1 »

dencodev wrote: post #227
nekochanwork wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I planned to park my house in a trailer park, and purposefully built my house to have the same kind of hookups as an RV or manufactured home. For power, I installed a 50amp RV-style power inlet to my house. I ran a 50-amp cable from from the power pole to my house. For water, I was able to connect a standard drinking-water hose from the water line to the inlet into my house. For natural gas, I ran copper flex tubing…

I thought a lot of trailer parks wouldn't allow something that wasn't built by a certified builder?

How are they going to know? Are you one of those people that thinks people shouldn't be allowed to work on their own car?

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#386

Post by CydeWeys »

spanhandler wrote: post #74
CydeWeys wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 :-)

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.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#387

Post by aidos »

dan_quixote wrote: post #176
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)

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…

That’s definitely a killer. Staying at an Airbnb right now where all I can see is poor workmanship.

There are a million jobs I still need to get to, but at least I know that once they’re done I’ll be happy with the result. Having only just started down the home diy route, there’s a load to learn and I still make a lot of mistakes, but I’m improving, and it’s satisfying to know that next time I’ll get it right, faster and cheaper than before.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#388

Post by hinkley »

prawn wrote: post #359
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…

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 could be right about them cleaning up, but the overlap between "throws tantrums" and "good forest steward" is far from perfect. I bet there's still bits of wood out there, next to broken plants.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#389

Post by joyfullll »

at_a_remove wrote: post #350
mtyq wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great post, thanks for writing this up. I'm relatively new to the industry and have already been feeling annoyance/fatigue at the IT/agile "culture" (experienced at a failing startup and now at a large corporation) My fiancé and I are hoping to move out of the city before long, and I hope to find something as interesting and unique as what you're doing. Feeling inspired and hopeful that I can find a job that uses pro…

I got my startup failure story out of the way in 2000, so I am lucky there. But yes, Agile has some fatigue for some who are tired of the faddishness. Some people find it invigorating, and more power to them. My guess is that tons of these kinds of jobs are out there because the real world still exists and the people in it are often using computers, but perhaps not as "centrally" to their jobs. However, people like y…

Can I ask one more question: how did you make the move? And did you have a quantitative education? I know everyone's path is different, but I'm curious how you found your current role once you decided to get out of IT proper.

Re: We quit our jobs to build a cabin

#390

Post by at_a_remove »

joyfullll wrote: post #389
at_a_remove wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got my startup failure story out of the way in 2000, so I am lucky there. But yes, Agile has some fatigue for some who are tired of the faddishness. Some people find it invigorating, and more power to them. My guess is that tons of these kinds of jobs are out there because the real world still exists and the people in it are often using computers, but perhaps not as "centrally" to their jobs. However, people like y…

Can I ask one more question: how did you make the move? And did you have a quantitative education? I know everyone's path is different, but I'm curious how you found your current role once you decided to get out of IT proper.

My education, as such, was pretty hit or miss. I got a BSc in the hard sciences, but had enough electives open due to other circumstances that I went a little wild, did more comp sci and math than were strictly required, tried some science classes unrelated to my degree for giggles.

I was part of that big "brain drain" where someone says, "Hey, you are good with computers, right?" and off I went. I had figured out that the sciences would be long and without a lot of payoff, so I did not look back too hard.

I suppose I got a reputation as someone who gets a far-off look when an interesting problem is described and was asked to apply to my current job because of it, despite it being a different sector and problem set.

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