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[bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

>From the new edition of Mother Earth News, I copied and pasted this article 
>the way (VA) Rob told me, for dial-ups.  There is a photo of the cabin at 
>the link -- it is a nice looking cabin.  If someone needed a guest cabin on 
>their land for extra space, the price sure seems right.

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Build this Cozy Cabin
By Steve Maxwell

Rays of early-morning sunlight gently peek through the windows, easing you 
awake. Looking down from the sleeping loft, you see everything you need: a 
pine table; a box piled with hardwood, split and ready for the woodstove; and 
a compact kitchen in the corner. This is the cabin dream.

In this article, I’ll show you how to build a 14-by-20-foot cabin featuring a 
sleeping loft over the porch for about $4,000. Who can resist it?

My own cabin adventure began in 1986, when I built one as an inexpensive 
place to stay while constructing my house — that’s when I began learning what 
makes cabin design and construction successful. (I’ve always had a debt-free 
approach to developing my property.) The four years I lived in this cabin 
were a good time in my life — perhaps one of the best. I fondly recall the 
simplicity of waking each morning with the sole purpose of building my own 
house, working well into the evening.

What follows is a cabin plan with the hands-on know-how I wish I had 20 years 
ago. It won’t replace the need for basic carpentry skills, but it will alert 
you to the main challenges of framing a cabin and how to clear the most 
important hurdles. And even if you never build a cabin of your own, these 
basic instructions will be useful anytime you need to build a garage, shed or 
other outbuilding. (For more on the author’s cabin experience, see “Our Life 
in a One-room Cabin,” below.)

I believe in building for the long haul. When it comes to cabins (and 
everything else for that matter), this means working to the same standards of 
durability and beauty that you’d apply to a full-size house, even though the 
style, size and soul of a good cabin are entirely different. I’m sold on 
durability because it takes such small amounts of extra care, materials and 
money to yield a huge increase in longevity. Although a cabin certainly can 
be framed less stoutly than the design I’ll show you here, I’m convinced the 
wisest use of resources often means going beyond what’s merely good enough.

A Firm Foundation

Every well-built structure begins with the foundation. In regions where frost 
isn’t an issue, site-poured, 6-by-16-by-16-inch shallow-depth concrete pads 
work just fine. If this is similar to the approach used on new houses in your 
area, then it’s OK for use under your cabin.

Cold climates are a different matter, and one of the best cabin foundations 
you can choose is established easily with minimal tools and time. Concrete 
piers extending below the frost line, poured within round cardboard tubes, 
are a time-proven approach to lightweight construction that offers a couple 
of advantages. Besides raising the structure off the ground and isolating it 
from the annual freeze/thaw movements of the soil, concrete piers provide 
good support around the perimeter of your cabin, without the need for 
full-scale forming and pouring.

In this cabin design, you need one pier at each corner of the cabin, one in 
the middle of each long side, three piers spaced evenly on the front of the 
porch and one in the middle of the rear wall. In light soil, it’s reasonable 
to dig the 10 holes you need for 8- to 12-inch-diameter pier forms using a 
long-handled shovel. Otherwise, call in a neighbor or contractor with a 
tractor-mounted auger. You can use 8-inch concrete piers, but the larger size 
is more forgiving if you don’t get the alignment just right.

The best way to mark your foundation outline is with 12-inch spikes pushed 
into the earth and connected with nylon string. (See “Choose a Rock-solid 
Start,” below, for layout tips.) Regardless of the foundation design you 
choose, the main construction challenge is the same: leveling the top of the 
foundation pads or piers. A laser level is easy to use and even allows a 
person working alone to level a foundation successfully. You don’t need to 
buy a laser level for this project, but it’s definitely worth borrowing if 
one is available from a friend or neighbor.

When setting concrete pier forms in the ground, dig the holes large enough to 
allow room for side-to-side adjustment. The outside edges of the pier forms 
should extend a bit beyond the outer dimensions of your building. As 
inexpensive insurance against frost jacking of foundation piers (when the 
piers are pulled toward the surface by seasonal freezing, even though they 
extend below the frost line), wrap the outside of each pier tube with black 
polyethylene plastic before setting them into the holes and packing soil 
around them. While the concrete is wet, vertically embed five-eighths-inch 
L-shaped threaded metal rod anchors, extending at least 7 inches above the 
concrete, short end down. Later on, these will hold down the base of the 
floor frame.

Building the Floor Frame

There are many ways to frame a cabin floor, but I favor the timber-rim 
approach for a couple of reasons. “Timber rim” refers to a load-bearing frame 
of timbers that defines the perimeter of the floor area. It’s better than a 
continuous foundation wall because it eliminates the need for lots of block 
work or a poured foundation, and it offers great stability. For this project, 
it provides continuous support for a building that’s held up at only 10 
points around its perimeter. Another plus is that timber-rim construction is 
durable and simple for first-time cabin builders.

Start by gathering rot-resistant 6-by-6 timbers for the outer rim. Timbers 
for the ends of the cabin and porch should be long enough to do the job in 
one piece. If you need to splice two timbers together for the 20-foot cabin 
sides, that’s fine. Just locate the splices directly on top of your concrete 
pads or piers. (It is possible to get away with thinner pieces of wood here, 
but that would require adding more piers — an option that’s probably less 
attractive than dealing with thicker timbers.) Be sure to make half-lap 
corner joints to connect the rim timbers.

Measure, mark and drill 1-inch-diameter holes in your 6-by-6s for the 
five-eighths-inch threaded rod anchors you embedded in your concrete piers, 
then settle the timbers in place over the rods.

Before bolting down the timbers, double-check that the top surfaces of the 
6-by-6s are level to within one-eighth inch of each other. Pouring concrete 
is coarse work, and it’s possible the foundation piers aren’t exactly the 
same height now that they’ve hardened. Now’s the time to identify and correct 
any such errors. Install shims underneath the uneven timbers to make them 
level; bolt them down tightly under 2-inch washers; then check one last time 
with a level. You now have a sturdy timber rim on which to begin building the 
cabin. As long as the bottom of the timber rim is at least several inches 
above the soil, natural ventilation should keep this structure strong for 
many decades.

The timber rim you just installed supports floor joists and headers (the 
frame around the joists) that in turn form the cabin and porch floor. By 
running joists across the 14-foot width of the building, you’ll have the 
stiffest possible floor for a given width of joist, minimizing squeaks and 
ensuring long-term durability. As a rule of thumb, 2-by-10s spaced on 16-inch 
centers across the span of this cabin will give you a good floor. But because 
the type of wood affects the total allowable span — building codes may vary 
where you live — double-check floor joist sizes with your local authority. 
You might consider using 2-by-10 joists across the porch and 2-by-12s for the 
main floor (but if you do, remember to use a 12-inch-wide header for the main 
floor, or your joists will be taller than the floor frame). Using 2-by-12s 
raises the cabin floor slightly, creating a lip at the door that helps repel 
water and snow.

Regardless of the floor framing wood you choose, use five 3 1/2-inch nails on 
each joint connecting the floor joists to the headers. Make sure the edges of 
your floor frame are perfectly straight and use a string as a reference to 
ensure that this happens as it should. Use 3 1/2-inch hot-dipped, galvanized 
nails driven at an angle to connect the floor frame to the timber rim. You 
also can use galvanized connector plates.

Now’s the time to apply a floor surface to your joists, and that means you 
have a decision to make: If you want flooring that’s easy to build, 
inexpensive and requires no maintenance for a cabin that won’t see much cold 
weather, then three-fourths-inch softwood planks are the way to go. Even left 
completely unfinished, these form a fine, rustic floor that’s easy to sweep 
clean. Over time, bare wood like this also takes on a burnished beauty that’s 
as pleasant to look at as it is to live with.

Or do you want a better floor to keep out drafts and bugs, while retaining 
simplicity? Then consider shiplapped floorboards. They’re one step up from 
square-edged planks, offering all the same advantages as plain boards, while 
also preventing board-to-board gaps. The best floor option is five-eighths- 
or three-fourths-inch plywood, though this makes sense only when you’re 
planning to apply a finished floor material over the top. Plywood keeps 
drafts out and adds an element of rigidity that dimensional lumber can’t 
match, but it also looks unattractive, especially in a cabin.

Wall Framing

With your rough floor in place, you can now build the walls. Stud-frame 
construction is still the most popular approach for residential projects, and 
it makes sense for cabins, too. Although you can save money by framing with 
2-by-4s, I recommend 2-by-6s instead, even if you won’t be insulating. The 
extra 2 inches of frame depth is stronger, looks better and offers greater 
storage opportunities for small items sitting on shelves between the studs.

The illustration in the Image Gallery shows how stud-frame walls have three 
main parts: the plates (horizontal members that form the top and bottom of 
the walls); studs (vertical frame members); and lintels (horizontal members 
that span doors and windows).

Start by cutting one top and one bottom plate for the rear wall — the one 
opposite the door. Make these plates out of one 2-by-6 each, then temporarily 
screw them together so all sides are flush. Joining them together ensures 
accuracy of the marks you make to show stud location. Make these plates 13 
feet, 1 inch long. This way the completed front and back walls will measure 
14 feet wide when flanked by the two long walls that will go up on each side 
of them.

With the pair of plates on edge, use a carpenter’s square to draw lines 
across the edges of the plates at the same spot. Each pencil line shows where 
one side of each stud should be located. An “X” marks the side of the line 
where the stud needs to sit. Studs measuring 92 1/2 inches long should be 
spaced 16 inches apart from center point to center point, with extra studs 
where door and window openings will go later. Before you frame openings for 
windows and doors, you need to know the sizes of the openings required for 
them. Make window openings 1 inch wider and 1 inch taller than the overall 
size of your window (1 inch wider and a half inch taller for a prehung door, 
when you get that far).

Remove the screws that temporarily held the top and bottom plates together, 
separate these pieces about 8 feet apart (with the bottom plate near its 
final place on the wall), and then position your wall studs between them. 
Begin by nailing the plates to the ends of the full-length studs, then cut 
and add shorter studs to form the window opening. Use three 3 1/2-inch nails 
per joint. If you’re planning to build insulation into your floor, add a 
second bottom plate to the wall to raise it up. Now gather some eager 
volunteers and get ready to heave the wall upright and into position.

This is an exciting moment, but you’ll need a few tools to succeed. In 
addition to a framing hammer and some 31/2-inch nails, an 8- to 10-pound 
sledgehammer is helpful for jostling the wall into final position, and you’ll 
need a 24- to 48-inch level to check and align its orientation. Raise the 
frame with a couple of helpers, then push, pull and pound it into alignment 
with the edge of the floor frame. Use your level to help align the wall so 
it’s perfectly vertical (plumb), and then drive two nails into each space 
between the studs on the bottom plate, extending down into the floor boards 
and header.

Your wall is up and secure now, but it’s not yet strong. Brace it with some 
long pieces of lumber extending to the ground (you’ll take them off later, so 
use the good stuff), then repeat the wall framing process for the two 
neighboring side walls.

When you’ve framed the last wall (the one with the door) and raised it, check 
and adjust all walls so they’re straight and plumb. This may take some time, 
but don’t continue until you’ve correctly finished this detail. Use taut 
strings (as you did when assembling the floor frame) to make sure the top 
edges of the walls are truly straight. When you’re satisfied, get ready to 
cut and apply another layer of 2-by-6s over the existing top plate. You’ll 
need to arrange these parts so they overlap the joints between wall segments 
(see “Post Top Detail,” at the bottom left corner of the illustration), but 
there’s another detail you need to address first.

The illustration in the Image Gallery shows you how two 6-by-6s or log posts 
should be installed extending from the top corners of the side walls to 
provide support for the porch roof. Begin by fastening two 6-by-6 vertical 
posts to the front corners, then rest three horizontal 6-by-6s on top, 
extending to the porch posts temporarily supported by props of lumber. When 
all this is in place, tie everything together with a second 2-by-6 top plate.

What you should have at this stage is the four walls of the cabin raised, 
with an additional 4-foot frame extension from the cabin’s front wall, which 
will support the porch roof. The roof fits over the cabin walls and porch in 
exactly the same way. Here’s a tip: In general, you can use 12-inch spikes to 
hold together large framing posts, such as the 6-by-6s described above, but 
you have to drive them into pilot holes. Although spikes aren’t strong enough 
to resist shear loads, they do an excellent job holding one part in place 
over another.

For siding, I recommend wall planks because they look so much better from the 
inside of your cabin. If you are looking for inexpensive siding, or you plan 
on insulating the wall’s interior and adding interior siding (covering the 
2-by-6s from the inside), you can use plywood or oriented-strand board (OSB) 
wall siding panels.

Roof Framing

There are many ways to frame a roof, but when you want to create usable loft 
space, you need to address a few design issues. The first is roof pitch. For 
both aesthetics and efficiency, the 12:12 pitch is best. This means that for 
every 12 inches of horizontal run, the roof rises 12 inches. In other words, 
the slope is 45 degrees from horizontal, with a 90 degree angle formed at the 
peak.

The parts of your cabin that form the slope of your roof are called rafters, 
and cutting them accurately will be the most challenging part of building 
your cabin. That said, if you tackle the job with care — checking for 
accuracy early on — you’ll succeed.

The first step is to take another look at the illustration in the Image 
Gallery. Fig. 1 shows a side view of the rafters you need to build. You’ll 
need 34 in all. This includes 30 that span the cabin itself, and two more 
pairs that extend to create the overhangs at the porch and the rear wall. You 
could use 2-by-6 rafters, but if you plan to insulate, you’re better off 
using 2-by-8s spaced on 16-inch centers. Although it costs a bit more, the 
extra wood actually makes it easier to create the required notches and angles 
because there’s more wood with which to work. As with the floor joists, check 
with local building authorities on exactly what size of wood is required 
where you live.

Start by marking rafter locations where they will sit on the top of the side 
walls, ideally atop wall studs. Use the same “line-and-X” marking scheme you 
used to lay out the top and bottom wall plates.

Next, measure the width of your building across the top of the side walls. It 
should be 14 feet. Chances are good that your cabin width across the front 
and back walls will match this measurement, but maybe not across the middle. 
No problem. Take one or two spare planks, rest them across the top of the 
building and spike one end of each in place. Get some help wrestling the 
walls inward or outward (whichever is needed to get a 14-foot building 
width), then spike the second end of your brace planks down. These will come 
off later, when the rafters and cross ties are added, so don’t pound the 
nails all the way home. Also, make sure these temporary braces are well away 
from the rafter locations you marked earlier. You don’t want them to get in 
the way of the rafters.

Follow the pattern on the illustration in the Image Gallery (Fig. 1) and cut 
out a pair of rafters. Although they should fit just right on your cabin, it 
always pays to double-check your cuts with a tape measure. Tack a piece of 
11/2-inch-thick scrap wood to the top end of one rafter (to simulate the 
ridge board that will be part of the completed roof), then get some help 
temporarily hoisting the rafters up and leaning them against each other. What 
you’re looking for is a gap-free fit where the rafter meets the top of the 
walls, and where they come together at the peak. While you’re working, test 
the location of the rafter pairs at various places across the building. If 
they fit in one place and not another, that’s a sign the width of your cabin 
isn’t consistent after all.

When you’re satisfied with your pair of test rafters (and have adjusted their 
size if necessary), make the entire batch of 34 rafters. Of these, you must 
add a special feature to 12 of them.

The illustration shows how you should cut 1 1/2-by-3 1/2-inch notches along 
the top edge of these 12 special rafters to accept 2-by-4 braces. These 
support the outer pair of rafters on each end of the cabin, the ones that 
create the overhang. The best way to cut these notches accurately and quickly 
is by temporarily clamping two sets of six rafters together, marking each set 
as a group, then cutting the notches with multiple passes from a hand-held 
circular saw. It’s easy to knock out the slivers of remaining wood with a 
hammer and chisel.

Total length of the cabin’s ridge is 22 feet (20 feet across the building and 
porch plus 1 foot of overhang at each end). This means the ridge board 
probably will have to be made in two lengths of 2-by-10s. Prepare these now, 
arranging the joint between them so it lands in one of the spaces between 
rafter pairs. Next, lay the ridge boards end-to-end on top of one wall plate 
and then transfer rafter locations onto these boards.

When it comes time to raise the rafters and ridge boards, do one half of the 
cabin at a time. Raise one pair of rafters at the end of the cabin and 
another pair in the middle, near the place where the ridge board will end. 
Fill in the spaces along the wall with more rafters, angling screws so they 
penetrate the ridge board and sink into the ends of the rafters, then repeat 
the process for the second half of the roof. Add the 2-by-4 rafter supports, 
then the four rafters that form the front and back eaves.

Concerned about the two-part ridge board? You shouldn’t worry. The roof 
sheathing that comes next will join these two halves together quite solidly. 
I strongly recommend using solid-wood planks that are three-fourths inch 
thick, not the more expedient option of plywood or OSB, unless you are 
building in a hurry. The underside of the roof plays a large visual role in 
this cabin, and sheet woods never enhance the natural backwoods aesthetic. 
Just remember to lap the roof planks across the area where the two ridge 
boards meet.

You’re now well on your way to finishing your cabin. Add the ceiling joists 
that tie the cabin together at the top and form the floor of the sleeping 
loft. Shingle the roof, install doors and windows, and then apply your 
exterior wall treatment.

Once your cozy, affordable little cabin has become part of your life, you’ll 
realize something that many folks never understand: Small really is beautiful!


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Cost Estimates For Your Cabin

The following includes the frame, rough floors and shingled roof, but not 
windows, doors and exterior siding. All costs are rounded up to account for 
miscellaneous expenses.

Total cost: under $4,000

Floor assembly: $900
• two 20’ 6 x 6 rot-resistant beams (timber rim, length sides)
• two 14’ 6 x 6 rot-resistant beams (timber rim, width sides)
• 27 14’ 2 x 10 boards (blocking, joists and headers)
• nine 5/8” plywood tongue-and-groove subfloor panels

Walls and porch frame: $1,000
• 50 8’ 2 x 6 studs (walls)
• 15 14’ 2 x 6 boards (wall plates)
• five 8’ 6 x 6 rot-resistant wooden posts (porch)
• one 14’ 6 x 6 rot-resistant beam (porch)
• 21 7/16” oriented-strand board wall siding panels (wall planks)
• six 14’ 2 x 6 fascia boards (exterior wall trim)

Roof: $1,500
• 34 12’ 2 x 8 boards (rafters)
• two 12’ 2 x 10 boards (ridge board)
• 17 14’ 2 x 6 boards (cross ties)
• four 8’ 2 x 4 studs (rafter support)
• two 20’ 2 x 8 boards (blocking)
• 17 3/4” spruce plywood panels (roof planks)
• wooden shakes for 550 square feet of roof surface; roof liner, gutter apron

Hardware: $350
• six 12” spikes (foundation markers)
• 10 10” Sonotubes (pier forms)
• 10 5/8” threaded rod anchors (foundation)
• eight 1/2” x 6” carriage bolts (header anchors)
• 10 pounds of 3 1/2” ardox (spiral-shanked) nails (wall studs, floor joists)
• 10 pounds of 2 1/2” ardox nails (subfloor, roof planks)
• eight 1/2” x 8” lag bolts (post tops)
• 15 pounds of 1” roofing nails


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Choose a Rock-solid Start

Right from the beginning, you’ll be faced with the challenge of creating an 
outline for your cabin that has truly square corners. To deliver accuracy, a 
carpenter’s square just won’t do it — you’ll need to use geometry.

The overall width of the cabin is 168 inches, and the overall length 
(including porch) is 240 inches. According to the Pythagorean Theorem 
(Remember high school geometry class?), the diagonal line connecting these 
two is:
Length of diagonal = length of one side squared + length of the other side 
squared (then take the square root of this sum). It works out to be 293 
inches for the length of the diagonal side of the Pythagorean triangle when 
the corner is square.

Start by laying out one side of your building, with a spike at both corners, 
and another spike at the porch corner — that’s three spikes in a row, 
connected by a string. Next, grab two large tape measures and a couple of 
people to help hold the tape ends on the spike heads: You’re about to mark 
the other side of the building so the corners are perfectly square.

Hook one tape measure to each corner spike (you’ll need some help holding 
them there), and then extend both tapes so the 168-inch mark on one tape 
intersects the 293-inch mark on the other. The spot at which this happens is 
the place where one corner of the remaining cabin side should be located. 
Sink a 12-inch spike there. Repeat the process for the other side, then 
double-check that the opposite sides are the same length.

If you’re building on bedrock, lay out your cabin footprint and mark the 
corner points with a stout felt-tip marker, then rent a hammer drill. Boring 
holes in the rock is the best way to establish key anchor points for the 
strings to define the walls of your structure. Bore oversized holes, then tie 
a mason’s line to half-inch-wide, 6-inch-long bolts and slip them in place. 
Bolt size isn’t critical because they just drop into oversized holes bored 
into the rock.


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Exterior Options

The exterior wall treatment you choose for your cabin matters a great deal 
because it sets the tone for how the place looks and how much maintenance 
you’ll be saddled with over the years. The exterior of your cabin can be made 
of wooden shingles, boards and battens (see illustration), wooden panels or 
other materials. Research the pros and cons of each material before choosing 
one for your cabin, and choose a material that won’t burden you with much 
maintenance.

Cedar shingles are a terrific option because they look great in a rural 
setting, last many decades and are lightweight. They always live up to their 
reputation on roofs, and on walls, cedar shingles will satisfy those people 
who insist on wood siding. Hand-split cedar shingles taken from your building 
site are ideal if you’re lucky enough to have them, but commercially sawed 
cedar shingles also work well.

Are you planning to install stone or brick yourself? Buy all the time you 
need to get the job done by installing windlock asphalt shingles (see 
illustration) on walls. These interlock physically, allowing you to install 
them vertically without the usual flapping you’d get if you tried the same 
thing with regular shingles. They look pretty good on their own, even if you 
never get around to the masonry.

For a low-cost approach to exterior siding, use either board and battens or 
4-by-8 wooden panels. These two options are easy to put up, and they look 
good for awhile. But in time they can look shabby unless you’re diligent 
about refinishing.


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Our Life in a One-room Cabin

In 1985, my wife, Mary, and I purchased 91 1/2 acres on Manitoulin Island in 
Ontario, and a year later, we built a one-room, 200-square-foot cabin. We 
were homesteading beginners, and the job took us four 60-hour workweeks and 
$550 to build what we now affectionately call “The Shed.” Neither Mary nor I 
had ever built a structure before The Shed, so it’s smaller and built less 
stoutly than the cabin design here.

For the floor frame and roof rafters, I hewed logs from our forest; for most 
of the rest of the project, I bought the least expensive locally sawed lumber 
I could find. I built The Shed with just a few tools: a broad axe, chain saw, 
claw hammer and a carpenter’s handsaw, square and level.

For four years, every spring through fall, we lived in The Shed as we built 
our 2,500-square-foot, three-story Victorian-style stone home (see photo). By 
living in that little cabin, we saved thousands of dollars and boosted our 
productivity by eliminating daily travel to the work site. We shared that 
space with mice, newborn livestock, our golden retriever, King, and even a 
sick calf that had been abandoned by its mother.

Each winter until our hand-built home was ready, Mary and I grudgingly left 
The Shed and traveled back to the city to overwinter and earn money. But 
doing so enabled us to live in that tiny rustic cabin for the rest of the 
year, which was a crucial steppingstone to the rural life we now enjoy.

“Starting out simply and debt-free in The Shed was very important for us,” 
Mary recalls, “but let’s just say that Steve liked it more than I did.”

Whenever I tell people our story, they usually shake their heads and wonder 
how we succeeded. But the truth is the cabin life was the lap of luxury for 
me at the time, because deep down inside, I’ve always been a country person 
who had the misfortune of growing up in a big city.

Getting Organized

The biggest blessing of cabin life is its simplicity. But you don’t get that 
benefit just because you’re living in a tiny space. In fact, a cabin this 
size will drive you crazy if you’re not ultraorganized. We installed hooks, 
nails, pegs and shelves, and slept on folding cots — all of which allowed us 
to live in the space comfortably. What’s more, these space-saving devices 
doubled during the workday as room for tools and hardware, and space for 
workshop tasks.

If you stay organized, the cabin lifestyle is wonderful for personal 
productivity. With no distractions from entertainment, we happily worked 12 
hours a day, six days a week on our home, quarrying stone by hand and using 
it to build the 350 ton basement. In one season of cabin living, we built the 
three-story frame of our home almost entirely by ourselves.

The Accommodations

Our kitchen appliances in The Shed consisted of a two-burner hot plate and a 
deep crockpot. We made toast in an old-fashioned flip-down toaster and kept 
perishables in a 1951 Frigidaire that we acquired after hooking up to the 
electricity grid. For access to water, we drilled a well and pumped water 
into a pressurized tank in a corner of The Shed. We took baths every Saturday 
night in a steel-panned wheelbarrow, filled with water that we heated a 
gallon at a time in the crockpot. We washed our work clothes with a scrub 
board in the same wheelbarrow, and then dried the laundry on ropes tied 
across the inside of The Shed.

Life was simple and good, but also strenuous and Spartan — especially for 
Mary, who grew up in South America in an area where camping and outdoor 
living were not a part of common culture. But to us, the benefits of cabin 
life were, and still are, obvious. The cabin made it possible to cut costs, 
live efficiently and work nonstop. More than ever, I now see that the ability 
to focus exclusively on your dream home for three seasons a year while not 
leaving the property to earn money is a tremendous luxury indeed.

20/20 Hindsight

I look back on my days in The Shed with fondness, but I admit I couldn’t live 
there now. Mary and I have four children, and raising them with any degree of 
sanity requires more than 200 square feet of space. If I were 20 years 
younger and starting an adventure in the country again, I’d still begin by 
building a cabin. The Shed served me just fine, but I would design it a 
little differently, starting with the size.

I’d make the cabin bigger, easier to heat and slightly more comfortable. I 
randomly chose The Shed’s 10-by-20-foot dimensions based on no building 
experience whatsoever. Now I know that making the cabin just 5 feet wider 
would have greatly improved the amount of useful space. Also, I would spend 
more money to add insulation, running hot water and a small sink with a 
drain. By doing so, I could have extended my home-building season longer into 
the spring and fall. Furthermore, I would build the base on a deep foundation.

These days, The Shed is looking old and sits a little wonky as its base moves 
a little more with each year’s frost. But I don’t suppose our children would 
ever let us tear it down. For them, The Shed is a place of legend and a 
tangible connection to the stories we tell them about how their family came 
to set down roots on the land they’ll inherit.

You Can Build One, Too!

If you feel drawn to the simple cabin lifestyle, I say go for it. Someday, I 
look forward to experiencing the cabin lifestyle again, even just as an 
occasional retreat. Something about the tiny size of a cabin puts me at ease. 
Some of my best cabin memories go back to cool fall evenings — tucked into my 
sleeping bag, I’m dog-tired as the warmth of our antique woodstove wafts 
across my face. This lifestyle gives me the kind of deep-down satisfaction 
and enjoyment that is only attainable when you mix hard work with a 
compelling dream and your own piece of land.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/2006-06-01/Build-this-Cozy-Cabin.aspx