Minimum Viable Cabin

  BeachHousesMuizenbergBeach by Stefan Schäfer, Lich   This is a post in a series of discussions of pre-fabricated and modular home builders I've considered. I'll cover the general experience researching and talking with builders, and the highlights of their offering in the "minimum cabin" space. Vermod Homes from Wilder, Vermont is next on the list.  The Design Unlike some of the other homes reviewed, Vermod doesn't have cute names for their designs. The options are described in utilitarian terms like "Single Box," "Double Box." Maybe a Double Quarter-Box with Cheese. I guess nobody would give me a job naming homes. Similar to other modular builders, the dimensions are long and narrow due to the width restrictions for shipping modules on trucks. The designs here are incremental, so it's essentially a 14'x40' box that can be combined with one or more other boxes to create the desired footprint. First Impressions & Website Conti

BeachHousesMuizenbergBeach by Stefan Schäfer, Lich   This is a post in a series of discussions of pre-fabricated and modular home builders I've considered. I'll cover the general experience researching and talking with builders, and the highlights of their offering in the "minimum cabin" space. We're now looking at BrightBuilt Home , out of Portland, Maine, who do business in the East and Mid-Atlantic. The Design Once again going for the most affordable and diminutive of the options, the " Sidekick " is 560 square feet at its smallest (although they're working on a mini version for those truly devoted to tiny houses). The dimensions are long and narrow, consistent with many modular designs in this category, due to the requirements of shipping modular homes on trucks. This design was originally created as an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) but is increasingly being used as a standalone home. The layout looks cozy and functional, and I like that there

  BeachHousesMuizenbergBeach by Stefan Schäfer, Lich   This is the first in a series of discussions of pre-fabricated and modular home builders I've considered. I'll cover the general experience researching and talking with builders, and the highlights of their offering in the "minimum cabin" space. First up is New Hampshire-based  Unity Homes , a spinoff of Bensonwood homes which was briefly mentioned in the rant   post  about custom homes. The Design The " Nano ," which is their smallest, most inexpensive, and quickest-to-build design. With dimensions of 20x24, this is very small cabin. It looks like an upscale Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) but has an airy interior and wider footprint than most small modulars. This is because Unity prefab is "panelized" rather than modular. Slightly more construction occurs on-site because the panels are being put together rather than a module being placed. First Impressions & Website Based on my interactions

One reason I chose to document this cabin-building process is that I didn't know where to start when I first envisioned the project. I wanted to leave a trail of breadcrumbs (and unvarnished missteps and goofy plan-changes) to make it a little easier next time I or someone else did this. Hey Future-Me: leave stock tips in the comments eh? Another reason was to keep myself honest. I believe in reasonable, documented, and repeatable processes, and wanted to hold myself to that approach to this project. Easy enough to go in and start making decisions without a plan or budget - nobody would ever know. But as I've said before and will say again free cross-stitch pattern, this is now technically a crafts blog. You can either let the ignorance line-item sit there, hidden and waiting to bite you in the ass with huge extra costs, or you can acknowledge your ignorance and work to minimize it. One of the ways to reduce the size of the cost of your ignorance is due diligence - which just m

Raise your hand if you've drawn architectural renderings of your dream house on graph paper before. Or maybe mapped out your entire room including your beanbag chair with scale included. My people. If you're building your own cabin (cottage, house, mansion, space-station...) it's because you have a vision in your head and weren't able to exactly match it out in reality. For me, this was because the right combination of cost, water access, and dwelling didn't exist at the time I was looking for it. Ideally, I'd work with an architect to shape my graph-paper daydreams into the fully executable drawings and have deep and meaningful discussions about the size of my walk-in closets and listen to them rant for hours about collectivism vs  individualism . Here's some unvarnished truth: fully custom homes are for the rich. *This isn't a knock on your amazing hand-built camp or that van you turned into a very cool tiny house. I'm talking about a structure tha

House vector created by studiogstock -  www.freepik.com My great-uncle Doug tells a story about the family home where he and my grandfather and their many siblings lived, somewhere in the backwoods of New England back in the 1930s. It fell down a hill during a hard rain when there was a mudslide. They put it back up and continued as before. I viewed this episode as entirely aspirational until I considered the implications of such an approach to home-building for indoor plumbing and winter survival. And now, with greater knowledge about pollution, climate change, and fire safety, my desire for this cabin to become the flowering of my family tree's famously corner-cutting craftsmanship has further dwindled. That is to say, I'm looking for a builder who values the craft and can produce something that not only won't fall down a hill in the rain, but will use sustainable practices, reduce waste, and produce a simple cabin that is easy to heat and cool and supplies its own energy

  Closing day is upon us! If you haven't bought property before, here's how it goes. Your timelines may vary depending on how much of a pain in the ass you, your realtor, the sellers, their realtor, the title company, and lender are at various stages in the process. Make an offer Get offer accepted (a day or two?) Buyer's due diligence (30 days or so) - I covered what was involved in this in the Contingencies post Sign all the documents (day 35) Wire all the money to the title company (day 36) "Closing" where the sellers sign all the paperwork. Notary may be required (day 38) Get the deed and associated paperwork so you can hoard it in a safe (fire safe) place (day 40) I had to chase people around a bit to get updates. Don't be afraid to send the occasional - hiya, are we still on track for closing by X? Anything you need from me? Are the HOA documents in? Has the title been validated? Nobody is going to be as invested as you are in making sure this happens co

People vector created by pch.vector - www.freepik.com The professional appraisal has arrived! It's significantly different than mine, but not outside the High-Low-Base bounds I arrived at during my DIY Appraisal exercise . A refresher on my figures: And where did the official appraisal come in? $60,000. Interestingly, the big ding on the appraisal was the fact the property is on a busy road. The appraiser noted specifically that this was the biggest factor in reducing the value. Not even something I even considered in my DIY appraisal exercise! It was, though, something I noticed when walking the property. In the front 1/3 of the property, I could hear traffic noise. It's not awful, but it's something I want to address in the Lot Plan. It seems like the solution would be a combination of building in the back half of the lot, preserving trees in the front, and creating noise barriers through landscaping or other means would solve this problem. My lesson taken from this is: a

There are a lot of way of determining the value of something. For property I'm specifically purchasing, I'm looking at a few different ways: whatever someone will pay for it, potential returns on it as an investment, the price people have paid in the past, opportunity cost - what could I do with this money that would bring more joy, professional appraisal While I'm waiting for the results of my professional appraisal , which should be available in a few days, I'm going to dig into some of the past property prices in the area to try to assemble a sum-of-parts appraisal of the property value. To keep myself honest, I'll publish this post now, 2 days before I get back my appraisal. It'll be fun to see how far off I am from the official value of the property. "A qualified appraiser creates a report based on a visual inspection, using recent sales of similar properties, current market trends, and aspects of the home (e.g., amenities, floor plan, square footage)