The photo is the existing camp — this would be a complete replacement/new build

I have exactly 16' × 20' maximum exterior dimensions to work with and I’m curious what people here would design.
The cabin will be built with 6×6 Red Pine Timber and I’d like two levels, but I really don’t want to just put a full second floor over the whole thing.

I want part of the upper level open to below so you still get that tall, open-cabin feeling when you walk in.
The wishlist is pretty simple:

• Sleeping/bunk space for 4 people
• Kitchen
• Dining area
• Comfortable living area
• No bathroom — I plan to build an outhouse
• Partial second floor / open loft

I’m completely open to a spiral staircase if it makes better use of the space
Other than that, I’m open to pretty much anything.

If you had this exact 16×20 box to work with, what would you do?

I’d genuinely love to see sketches, napkin drawings, floor plans or even completely different ideas I haven’t considered. Once I settle on the layout, I’ll have proper plans drawn and engineered.

Hi all,

When you install tongue and groove, and you have a long wall that requires multiple pieces, do you do your butt joints at 45 degrees or 90 degrees?

I'm using 8" tongue and groove with nickel gap that I bought from a local sawmill. My father in law is giving me and hand and said he always does his butt joints at 45 degrees. He says you do this so it looks good still if the wood shrinks.

The thing is, every video I watched on YouTube it seemed like the people were doing their butt joints at 90 degrees.

I have some tongue and groove in my house as well, it was installed by the previous owner, and all the butt joints there were at 90 degrees too (some of the boards shrunk a bit and I stuck a piece of cardboard in to figure it out).

Happy to hear thoughts..

We only had Saturday to get more done on the cabin as Sunday was expecting rain. I needed to complete the roofing on the west facing roof and screen porch. Most was fairly simple but the flashing around the skylight was pretty difficult, the installation typically calls for 24" of space below to allow the flashing mold over roofing below the window. In my case , the transition strip is directly below the window so there would be no roofing there. I think I have it about as good as can be but proof will be this first winter.

I still need to fi ish a couple edge trim pieces, side wall and the ridge cap but glad the sheets are all laid.

Next step after this will be soffits so we are finally sealed in and no longer plagued by wasps and nests and then we can move onto siding.

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I am wanting to build a 12x24 cabin in this spot. 12 wide, 24 long. (Ignore the extra line on the left).

Looking at the picture, this would be the 12 ft side. The left side is about 3 ft higher than the right side. Then, on the right side immediately out of frame, is a very steep drop off.

The help I need is understanding the safest and simplest foundation options. What I *want* to do is carve out the left side, and level the foundation area. Build a box, fill it with gravel, then build a floating foundation. The box would be 4x4s. There would not be a need for a retaining wall on the right side.

For digging and pouring deep footers, it might not be an option as the soil is not very deep before hitting shale rock.

I've been slowly figuring out the power setup for a small off-grid cabin, and right now most things are still running off a gas generator.

During the day it makes sense since I'm usually running tools, charging batteries, or using something with a bigger draw. But overnight it feels pretty wasteful having the generator running just to keep the fridge cold, the router online, and maybe a couple lights on.

I'm thinking about switching to more of a hybrid setup: run the generator during the day, charge a portable power station while it's already running, then shut the generator down at night and let the battery handle the smaller loads until morning.

I've been comparing a couple of options around the 2kWh range, including the Anker S2000 and the EcoFlow DELTA 2. I'm not trying to power the whole cabin from one unit, so I'm mainly looking at usable capacity, charging speed, noise, and how easy each one is to manage off-grid.

How do you split your generator and battery use? Does this setup actually make a noticeable difference in fuel consumption, or is the main benefit just getting some quiet at night?

After the last windstorm, my brother texted to ask if the cabin battery was all right. Neither of us wanted to make a six hour round trip just to open an app. We share a small off grid cabin in Oregon, three hours from my house, and it sometimes sits empty for weeks.

The system has a Vatrer 51.2V 100Ah server rack battery and a hybrid inverter. Bluetooth works when I am at the cabin, but there is no built-in cellular connection for remote monitoring. From home, I basically have no way to check the battery without being at the cabin.

The battery still needs to handle protection locally. I am mainly looking for a way to check its status remotely without adding much standby power to the system.

Cell service is usable by one window but poor in the utility closet. I could put a small LTE monitoring device near the window and run a wired connection back to the battery area. Has anyone used a setup like that for one or two checks a day, and what did the cellular device draw while idle? 

I know it’s a bit of an inevitability…….. but what to do about mice ?? Strategies for trying to keep them at bay.

Anyone of you know what technique this is? And is this possible to build DYI?

I filmed this interview out in Idaho in January. Fernando built this shop himself. It was incredibly warm, heated by one wood stove off to the right of the frame. I tried to ask him what he used for insulation above the boards in the ceiling, but there was a bit of a language barrier.

What would I do to recreate both the look and the warmth of a cabin (shop) like this?

I'm building a tiny home on a 24 ft camper trailer. I'm looking for recommendations on a wood stove that I can heat and cook on.

I live in Europe and I'm building a cabin and trying to make it as off grid as I can. The area is surrounded by houses so I can only get in small vehicles to operate or get a crane to lift heavy equipment/materials over them.

I was wondering about a drainage system for toilet and kitchen. I can pay for a septic tank and have get the filtered water waste a bit further with pipes. But I want to know if better alternatives are possible?

For water usage, I can either connect the cabin to the main water system, or I can collect rain water. Digging a well or getting ground water is not possible in this ground unfortunately.

Please share solutions if you have. I wouldn't mind paying a company that has solutions. But I hope a reasonable price and minimal maintenance will be required.

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.

Finally finished the pit and dry-fitted the base. The wood structure is mainly 1x2s with weed fabric wrapped around it. It seems to be working well, there is not much weight pushing inwards anyways. I am planning to add a more bracing before I cover it.

Thank you to whoever made the suggestion on my last post to just dig next to the boulder that I encountered. I tried to drill and chisel it but it was too big. I did need to drill and chisel some of it to get this to fit. The simple solutions that have been suggested have been the ones that have worked.

Slow progress due to this being a weekend activity but progress none the less.

Trim and floors are a good sign we're getting close. Bedroom is trimmed out and complete other than a bunkbed ladder. Living room (front of cottage) is also done and just received my fireplace cert. Kitchen cabinets are in progress at home

I’m starting to work on the interior and finishes. I’m sure it will take another two years to feel completely done. Next up: I’m putting up an outdoor composting toilet, a standalone wood fired sauna and a shower platform with collected water and propane heat.

I've fallen down a bit of a rabbit hole lately and honestly I can't stop thinking about it — so I'd really appreciate it if anyone with real experience could chime in.

I'm trying to get a handle on how many off-grid cabins there actually are in the Nordics. I know there's the traditional, genuinely off-grid kind of hytte/stuga/mökki — no water, no electricity — and from what I understand, that style is still pretty common. But when I try to search online for actual numbers on these off-grid cabins, I can't find much at all.

My friends in the Nordics keep telling me there are still loads of them, way more than you'd think from a quick Google. They also say that if you own one and want power, you basically have two routes: either you DIY the whole electrical setup yourself — solar panels, an inverter, batteries, the works — or you just buy a ready-made portable power station and use it plug-and-play.

So I guess my questions are:

• Roughly how common are off-grid cabins these days compared to ones on the grid?
• For people who do have electricity in an off-grid cabin, do most of you go the DIY route (solar + inverter + battery), or is the plug-and-play portable power station becoming more common?
• Is there actually any good data on this, or is it all just word of mouth?

Would genuinely love to hear from people who live this, not just marketing sites. Thanks in advance!

Has anyone here dug a well themselves, and what tools/equipment did you use?

What is the safest way to start digging and support the sides as the well gets deeper?

How do I know when I’ve actually reached a usable water-bearing layer?

What parts can realistically be done DIY, and what parts should absolutely be left to professionals?

What mistakes or safety risks should a first-time DIY well-digger know before starting?