A Cozy Cabin You Can Build in Your Spare Time!

A lot of people dream of building a cabin, but sometimes time itself is that barrier you can't get around. That's why this one's built portable in my driveway in my spare time. Then it'll get hauled to site. So let's get started. To haul these portable cabins they need to be able to slide on and off of a trailer. So you need to start by cutting an angle on each end of each 4x6 runner. This allows the cabin to slide on the trailer without catching the lip and off of it without digging into the dirt. Now you can see this one's sitting at a different height than that one. They're not level. I'm definitely going to have to block these up. Get these boards nice and level and then splice them together. The reason I chose to build a portable cabin is that I had my eye on a piece of property that was going to come up for sale and I figured why not get a jump on it. Have a cabin ready to go. That's one of the real benefits of going portable. You can build it in your yard or driveway in your spare time and you don't have to block out weeks at a time on your calendar to be on site building. As soon as it's finished call up a shed hauler. They'll haul it out and set it up for you. Really quite convenient. I would guarantee this is probably going to be the hardest part of the build leveling this up. Once it's leveled up it's just going to be like building anything else. Actually pretty close. Another way that's even more convenient is you can just buy the cabin shell pre-built. They'll haul it out and set it up. Then you just need to finish it from there. I don't have resources for everywhere but if you're in Michigan I do have a very good friend that specializes in this. He's even been working with building departments to make sure his meet code. His name's John Turner. The business is called Between the Lines Storage Solutions and I'll leave the info in the description. That way nobody asks me if I'm for hire because I don't want to go into business doing this. Line this up nice. This is the first one of these I've built from scratch so I'm not skimping on nails. I'm going to make sure this thing is good and strong. All right that is a nice solid rail. Now I try to keep my videos pretty positive and I don't I don't like to complain but one thought that I just can't shake is the ridiculous price of housing. The people I feel the worst for is the younger generation. Honestly I couldn't imagine being 20 years old right now wanting to own a home. It would probably feel just about hopeless. That's part of why I made this one. I think a portable cabin could be a decent option for a starter home. You could buy it and finish it out or you could just build the whole thing. Either way you gain a lot of skills that could help out later in life. Then live in it for a few years, save your money like crazy and buy yourself a home. Or you could build a home on the same piece of property and because it's a portable cabin if you take good care of it you could turn around and sell it once you've got that home. Probably get most of your money back maybe more if the housing price continues to rise and then put that money on your home. I'm not saying it is the answer but it's definitely an option. Looks like there's a mouse in my boat trailer. These guys have been after this for a while. If you do decide to build your own make sure you contact a shed hauler and find out what dimensions they can haul. Height matters a lot because of bridges, underpasses, stuff like that and the width also matters a lot so make sure you do that before you build one. And if you're curious how they actually set these up at your property I've got a video showing that whole process on the channel. It's nice and solid you might think oh two by fours that's not strong enough for a floor choice. Well when you're only spanning two and a half feet it's pretty solid. So anyways from here down it's going to be sheeted for living space. This is going to be a little deck and there's going to be a little bathroom over here. See my tarp's still in good shape. This wall is going to be 24 feet long. I'm going to do two sections. First section is going to be 15 foot 6 and then the other section will be 8 foot 6. Since I know all my window sizes I'm just going to make all the headers that way I don't have to stop what I'm doing, switch over to header building and then go back. At this point in the build it's more of a wrestling ring than anything. These guys love it. And like always I'll be working around Charlie. Don't want to disturb him. He's a good boy. I'm just building it on top of the other one. Once it's built I'll stand the short one up then I'll stand the tall one up then I'll build the end wall. But for right now I want to be able to keep it tarped when I'm not working on it. It's kind of crazy to look back. I think this was shot in July and it's now just about Thanksgiving and I'm still not done with this thing. Most of my projects I normally knock out in a month or two but with the heat I just didn't feel like staying on this non-stop. Finally see the light at the end of the tunnel though so should be done really soon. I'm finally ready to stand my walls. Because I'm doing this all by myself I kind of want to have something that I can just tap the wall this way and it'll hit and stop. That way I don't have to try to tap it and look for where the wall's sitting. So I'm going to put a block down here. Just a little bit at a time. Since how this thing's standing nice I don't need to go crazy. Don't need to rush. You can see my stop idea worked really well. Brought it right out flush to the end. So now I can go around and nail this sucker off. It always feels great to see the walls go up but it's also a committing point of the build. Once those walls start going up tarping the building becomes very difficult. So at this point it's time to stay on the project and get that roof on. So my wall is pretty close but it's out just a little bit. Another trick that you can do to adjust. So now it's pushed too far out. Wedge a board in a little bit. That puts a belly out and this board shortens it. Pulls the wall in slightly. I will say it's pretty hard to eyeball with the camera but from what I can see this wall looks really quite straight. Trace this board. I use my square to get the edge of the wall. That is a nice fit. Put a right pattern on it so I don't forget. I'll make every single one of them off of this. That way they'll all be the same. I just love watching the rafters go up. It's the point in the build when you can really start to see it take shape. It's also the point when you can start picturing what you can use that space for. How you're going to lay it out. Where the cupboards are going to go. This one's actually going to have a bathroom so it gives me a better idea of how the bathroom can be laid out. It's just a great part of the build. To get these wall studs cut at the right height and angle I figured a quick easy way would be to stand it up and screw it in place. Snap a chalk line and then cut them off right where they stand. It actually worked quite well. I really lucked out one day. I ran into my cousin Jonathan at the store and he was able to come help me for a couple days which couldn't have been timed any better. I'd had dry sunny weather for probably a week or so and then there was rain in the forecast and that rain is just a dreaded feeling when you don't have a roof on a building. That's why it's so nice to build as much as you can before you stand anything up. Then you can keep everything tarped but once it's stood up it is really hard to keep water out of the building. So I haven't actually bought the post that comes up here or the beam that's going to go across and support these rafters on this end. So I'm going to temporary up a 2x4 system with a 2x6 across so that I can get this roof on before it rains again. A 2x4 by itself isn't very strong or sturdy but if you nail them together like a T it makes for a really nice sturdy post. Right on. That seems pretty solid. It does. Yeah that should work. You might be wondering what's up with that silver OSB. Well I bought all my lumber from my buddy John that has the portable building business. He also sells discounted lumber. He actually pretty much has a lumber yard. So this is something he had on hand and it's called solar shield. Apparently they use it down south a lot because it helps keep the heat out. A little later on he told me that the silver side goes to the inside but it was a little too late at that point so oh well. Well my cousin had to get back to his normal job and I was back on my own. But that's all right. I really appreciate the help I was able to get and it helped me get a lot further than I would have otherwise. Great. Pretty dang close. So did I beat the rain? Pretty close. Just a few sprinkles. Nothing major. Now it's time to lay out some walls and build the partitions. I'm finally going to see what the inside of this cabin will look like. It's going to have a small bedroom. That's going to be about eight by eight and there's going to be a closet on the one end. Then there will be a little area that houses a nice large power station. That's going to have a couple of solar panels hooked to it and that's what's going to power this cabin. The bathroom wall is already built and the rest is going to be open living space with a small kitchen. It looks like the left side's got to come up a little bit. I'm going to nail this right side. I had the Amish saw me up some posts and beams for the porch. I do like the look of rough sawn but for this one I decided to plane them nice and smooth. It's a little less chance of getting slivers on your way in the door and I think it'll look good. These electric hand planers do a really nice job of beveling corners down. It takes that sharp edge of the corner and makes it a 45. Kind of a nice little touch. The saw is not going to fit on the other side. I got to move my cut. I'll get the saws off. I'll get the saws off. My posts are cut to exactly the right height so I need to jack the rafters up a little bit to fit this structure in. This is definitely one of those moments where I think what in the world am I doing? Because at this point I have no idea how I'm going to set this up by myself but these are 10 inch log screws so I sunk it about that far so about two and a half inches of screw into the post so it should be pretty sturdy. Okay now comes the fun part. Trying not to kill myself with this thing. Too bad so far. Ladder's right in the way. Get out of the way ladder. All right oh no these clamps have to move because they're on the wrong side. They got to be on the inside otherwise they're hitting my wall. Okay pump on that jack. Now if I can let this jack down yeah it's holding it in place now. So I'm going to start on tongue and groove pine today. I get all my lumber from my buddy John at Between the Lines Storage Solutions. He sells it at a major discount but here's the way it works. To get the discount basically you just take off the pile you don't pick through it. You're going to get some cracked spots and boards and that's fine because for the most part you can use those if you're smart about it and get your measurements all written down so that you know what you need. You can make sure that you do the best you can with every board. A lot of times I'll take leftovers say it's got a crack down the middle and I'll rip it down and use part of it for trim. Now I did want to show the spray foam process but they had to put plastic over the windows and they actually had to plastic the doorway that way I didn't get over spray out onto the porch and onto that tongue groove I'd already put out there. So it's all done I didn't get to show anything but this stuff is really nice and I kind of expected it to smell funny but there's no smell whatsoever actually kind of smells good in here. So it does take a little bit of time but I got all my walls listed got all my measurement listed and close to the number I need listed. So I'll be able to go through I'll grab a board if I can get a long one out of it I'm using a long one if I can't get a full length board I'll just see what else I can make out of it I'll have all the numbers ready that way I can just roll right along. All right this board looks pretty good so far I'd say I'm going to be able to get a 15 footer out of it. Then I've got this nice little leftover piece it's 12 and 7 eighths so I can go over my list so I'll cut a 10 and 3 quarter chunk out of this set that down there for now 10 and 3 quarters that way I don't have to go back through all this stuff not much waste. I could just use short pieces all the way across but I figured if I put one long piece the bottom short pieces will be level with one another so I put one long piece across for openings cut the long piece out and then I can just carry on with short pieces let me find somewhere else to put that one. So right now I've got my bottom board on all the way around I'm not going to do the closet right now if I do run out of lumber I'd rather come back and do that later. I'm just going to stockpile boards where they go get it laid out where it goes and then nail it up. That's what I like to see there is no foam in this out my box. Now I know I didn't show the electrical in this video but that's because this video is a little bit long and I think the electrical deserves its own video so it's going to be next and that's going to cover the solar power all the wiring basically everything involved with the electrical system. I'm going to say that's the center of the box for 90 and a half this way is about four and a half. Instead of drilling half the hole in this one half the hole in this one I'm going to try to clamp both of these boards together that way I can drill the entire hole all at once. So this is my solution to make it a little easier to do by myself. I just screwed a piece of wood up at the right height it'll hold that end while I'm trying to work the rest of it. This corner is three and a half this way but then with the overlapping inch and a half you've got five inches here so I'm going to cut this down to three and a half and three and a half so it's square corner and doesn't look goofy. Now I'm going to shape it like a log somewhat. So this is what I'm aiming for this is the original corner clearly in two by fours and this is after a little bit of time with a hand planer it almost looks like a log at least it doesn't obviously look like two two by fours. These boards are guaranteed to shrink a little bit and then you might get some light spots in here showing through where it wasn't stained so I'm going to try to stain all the tongues just in case this shrinks a little bit. Well I've definitely got a lot of work left to do on this cabin. Right now you can see I still need to finish this off but before I can do that I've got to get that vent out and I need a cover that'll actually fit so that's kind of a holdup at the moment. Let me show you what else is done inside. I still have to side this side of the building on the outside to give you a quick little tour of what's done. What's done is basically most of the tongue and groove. So we've got the kitchen area over here there's gonna be some cabinets in that corner probably next to the wall countertop sink and over here I might build a little bar or something. This area I'd like to have open for a couch or something like that. I put the windows really high on this wall mainly because I want more wall space and more usable living space. So we've got this wall goes over here that outlet's for a fridge it's on its own circuit so hopefully a fridge there. And then we come over here this is the area where all the power stuff's gonna go. The bedroom mostly done I've got some trim a couple little pieces to do and then the closet I ran out of tongue and groove so that's where we're at. Well I know this is looking like it's almost finished but there is so much left to do. First I've got the electrical that's actually going to be a standalone video. I didn't want to put it in this because I felt like this was running too long so next video is going to be electrical that should be out in a week or so. After that I've got to finish up this ceiling here figure out that vent going out. I've got the entire bathroom to do I didn't touch that because I wasn't sure what I wanted to put on the walls and ceiling. After that I've still got the sink, shower, toilet, on-demand water heater, some plumbing, flooring to finish the bathroom. I've also got all the doors, all the trim, all the flooring, the kitchen, so kitchen cabinets, cupboards, countertops, sink, plumbing, and then a little bit of work in the closet and bedroom. So more than likely it's probably going to be a month or more before I finish this up and get you the final product. So until then, thanks again for watching and I'll be seeing you soon.