More detail on the 4 year build of my off grid cabin
I shared the pretty pictures yesterday from my four-year build of an off grid cabin in Vermont. Now I’m sharing some of the less pretty pictures, the in process parts of the project, and the some of things i did once and have to redo.
Some of you asked kindly for build details and more pictures, so here are lots of pics and some more details.
We put the frame up in summer 2022 and let it overwinter in 2022-23 so it took on a grey weathered look. I wish we could say we were intentional about it. But we were just too busy to do much more than raise the frame that year, as we were simultaneously opening a business. So it waited a year for pine shiplap cladding and then that took much more time than I hoped. A couple of the shots show differences in cladding color. Darker areas were treated with Lifetime, a dry mix you put in water and spray or roll onto bare wood. It accelerates the weathered look. I ran out of steam trying to cover the whole building last November and haven’t gotten back to it this year.
The windows and doors are 100 years old, reclaimed from a western Mass school and a Boston area craftsman house, respectively. We love the wavy glass look. And we like that they give a weathered and older look to our new build. We did a terrible job with reglazing and will have to go back over that.
I puzzled over how to make the windows work, finally settling on a method using no hardware at all. They are heavy mahogany and they sit on a pre-primed clear yellow pine (I think it’s yellow pine). The sill is pitched at 4 degrees. I would do 6 degrees if I could do it again. Windows were trimmed on all four sides with a track saw and the bottoms were pitched to match the sill. Voila, they just sit upright in their frames and we can pull them in for ventilation. The wooden stops on the inside are temporary while we have a friend forge us some steel knobs that can be turned to let them lean in a little further than they do now.
The interior floor is a 2x5 pine tongue and groove. The interior walls are Japanese cedar tongue and groove. Floor and walls are insulated with rockwool in the frame’s cavities. There’s critter proofing underneath and housewrap on the exterior. The ceiling sits on the outside of the frame’s rafters because we wanted to see them from inside the cabin. Above that we insulated with 4 inches of staggered 2” foam board. 2x6s run from eaves to ridge, creating ventilation for the cold roof. The roof is Everlock over high temp ice and water shield over Advantech. Everlock is pretty easy DIY standing seam. Eave and ridge vents are protected with stainless steel mesh.
The building is anchored to nine 5’ piers. It’s a one room building. We designed it to be breathable (no vapor barrier!) and to not be too complicated with rooms and dividers and multiple functions. We love the inside cedar smell and want to hang on to that. So water, cooking, pooping and lots of other things will happen in outbuildings. A wood fired sauna, shower deck and outhouse with composting toilet will be put up this fall about 20 steps from the door.
Sometime in the next ten years we will start a full house build about 400 feet closer to the road, but still tucked away in the center of a 30 acre lot. That will have a foundation, a well, septic and lots of solar (we have great solar gain here).
Most of you are super encouraging and good natured. Thank you! This is the first building project I’ve ever done. I was a city boy but decided to take a risk and move to Vt, build this cabin and open a business. The great thing is that we live only 5 miles from this cabin, so I get to escape up here quite a bit.
But every time I post about this exciting and epic project, there’s always one or two guys (yes, always guys) who have to find something to criticize. What the f’in hell is that about? If you’re one of those guys, chill.
