1800s log cabin built for around $10,185

hi there my name is jerry tyson and over the last two years i've built this log cabin that you see behind me for less than ten thousand dollars and i want to show you how i did it so one of the biggest things you have to understand is that when i don't work i don't make money so if i'm not making any money i also can't be spending money i've had to reduce my outgoing money to the point that if i don't go to work tomorrow it doesn't matter it's the only way that i could build this and take the time to do it no car payments no credit cards um no house payment i do i'm gonna be upfront with you i am not an off-grid guy i have electric and i even have gas here at the house my outgoing expenses to live here is roughly 150 to 200 a month for my 200 is stretching it for my gas bill my electric bill so so it doesn't take much when you live simple food um i eat here a little bit but my 85 year old mother lives local and i have a sister who is widowed and a brother who my mom lives with and we all share meals every night so it's kind of a pitch it in type of deal what that is the key to doing something like this because if you want to try yourself and see what you're made out of pick on a project like this all by yourself because it is not you're going to find out what your work ethics are like because it is daylight to after dark full go all the time i even got to the place where i had to nap midday so that i could get enough i got two days in one while i was building this thing so and then the other part of this is i am not located out in the middle of the wilderness somewhere i'm actually in a community i'll walk you out back real quick and show you my little community because i sit up on a hill and i can see it down below [Applause] okay so behind me is the little village that i live in it's lisbon ohio and i am part of this community and when i say part of this community like i donate my time to the community i try to help people in the community and they do the same for me in this little community in september we have what's called the johnny appleseed festival and it's celebrating the life of johnny appleseed and it's a way for community to come together and you know get junk food and and listen to music and and i am the face of that festival people don't come to see me though they come for johnny appleseed kids just just they come from all over to get their picture taken with johnny appleseed and it's just great being a part of a community and simplifying my life has allowed me to do that more so although the cabin is great i'll tell you what those two days of that festival is the best days of my year just for people to flock in and i understand they're not coming to see me coming to see johnny appleseed but yet he's he's he's larger than life i went to a a play down at the school for the kids and because they were singing a song about johnny appleseed and one of the parents got a hold of me and said that her daughter said to her i can't believe someone as famous as johnny appleseed took the time to come watch us perform and i'll tell you what that hits me right here because we have an obligation to the children we have an obligation to other people to to be there for them and and that's kind of what this whole living simpler means to me you know by simplifying life you know so many people and that has got cold real quick so many people live their life strapped paycheck to paycheck that's where the root of all anger comes from you know when you can't make enough money to make ends meet and you struggle and i just think that if people would learn to live within their means and that might be building a ten thousand dollar log cabin and just being happy with what it is okay so we can start here logs i bought an old log cabin um that was built in the 1800s for the widow and her children of a man that died in war of 1812. the log cabin was in awful shape and was about ready to be tore down and cut into flooring when i come along and was able to get the logs and save it i paid a thousand dollars for the logs so thousand dollars for the logs all of the barn siding sells really expensive in antique shops i got lucky went on facebook one day facebook marketplace and i bought all of the the barn siding including everything that you're gonna see up on the rafters i bought all that barn siding for 200 that also includes the barn door that's on the inside that was built out of that same siding it also includes the barn tracking it was laying there the guy gave it to me too the ladder that goes up into the loft all of the center hand-hewn rungs were with that i built the two side rails all of the other wood that's here like the soffit and fascia that is flooring from the old log cabin the fascia on this side is fresh oak that i milled myself and then and then i put a spray on it to make it look old the same with the siding on this side that's all red oak that that i milled and then sprayed the vinegar and steel wool solution on it to change the color so that it looks oxidized so no money in that other than i did buy a mill in my pricing that i'm doing i'm not putting the price of that mill in there because that thing can easily be used for six months and sold and i bought mine right before covet i could turn around and sell that thing tomorrow and it would be gone for more than i paid for it so so we're not gonna we're not gonna quote that part that part of it in there windows these windows um i paid 35 for all of them at an antique shop probably the most expensive part of this entire project was the foundation it's got a full eight foot plus high basement 12 inch concrete blocks filled solid with concrete foundation for the fireplace of course forgot that in one of the videos that was a mistake foundation for the fireplace concrete floor that was my most expensive part now remember when i'm giving you these prices i was the labor every bit of it i didn't pay anybody there were times i had kids come help me a little bit and friends come over and help a little bit a day or so here and there but for the most part i worked alone so no labor cost i probably had four thousand dollars in the basement in the material for the basement so that was my most expensive part of this entire project front door was the center support beam for the log cabin so i milled that zero money in that because that's all part of the thousand dollars that i paid for the original load cabin uh light fixtures roger sale um i think i paid 30 bucks for the light fixture so not really anything people waste more than that on soda popping door hinges if you can see them um 120 on ebay they're authentic hinges hand forged from the early days so important to have those big hinges potbelly stove i paid 500 for i am a chimney sweet all the piping and stuff was salvaged from another job that was taken out chimney as well so nothing in the chimney and there is there's triple wall chimney above that tin at the top all of my roof joists came from the neighbor's property same place i've been getting all the trees from i paid him five hundred dollars for any tree that i wanted off the property so total cost for all of the trees not just for one tree total cost for all of the trees he sold them to me for five hundred dollars and he felt guilty about it so we can all tell him he's fine it wasn't too much um so five hundred dollars in all those i'll take you up closer so you can see them um for all my floor joists and stuff i think i had twelve hundred dollars in in all of the floor joists i'm trying to think of anything else up here that might have cost me money i mean you can you can counter in some nails and some screws and and those things you know a couple hundred bucks max electric i do have electric i do have a tv tv i had electric i like i said i don't live off grid i live cheap give you a quick look at this side i'll show this better when i get ready to do the flooring and and all this stuff again i do live here um i live cheaply furniture was bought at a secondhand store my mother made the quilt for me out of um my old clothing from when i was younger so all my all my t-shirts all my shirts all my blue jeans that were wore out the blanket was made out of those let's go up to the loft ladder i made the stringers for it the steps are hand-hewned from an old barn ladder so let's go up there this is my next project by the way is finishing this loft i'm going to do that this week and it's going to be a sleeping loft for company okay now we're up in the the loft sorry about the wide-angle lens but it's kind of tight up here so i have to use the super wide lens in order to show you what we're doing okay so i'm about 18 feet wide and about 13 feet deep if you count all the way to the wall not with the fireplace this is the stone chimney from the fireplace originally i was going to put a little pot valley stove or something up here but honestly being up this close to the roof you don't need anything up here this is the hottest place to be so a little fire down there will keep this up here nice and toasty so what i need to get done now is i need to finish the two walls put a handrail up here and get some beds made for up here this will be a sleeping lock okay now for this side kitchen stove free it was sitting on a friend of mine's front porch more than 10 years ago and i said to her if you ever see another one like that i'd like to have one and she said just take that one you can have it so nothing for the stone fireplace those are the original stone those are the original stone from the original log cabin which was included in the thousand dollars i paid for the old log cabin i did however run out of stone so from just about the roof line up i had to get more stone but a local a local farmer also one of my customers has an old bank barn that he was taking down and he gave me the rest of the stone to finish the top of the chimney no money just come get them i have a couple other projects coming up and he said i can come get as many stones as i want for them so we'll have those for the future so the rest of those stones didn't cost me anything either a safe figure on what that fireplace cost me is probably four or 500 sand and mortar that's it that's all i that's all i paid for anything for that the foundation that's under it was included in the foundation for the fire for the basement so four or five hundred dollars for the the fireplace okay all of this cabinetry that i have built in zero pieces of the wood are salvaged from the old log cabin you can tell some of it's pretty rough it's all built new i just built it the smaller shelving is down at the local hardware store he just went out of business he had a bunch of crates that glass was shipped in in the 1800s they've been using these crates to store glass in to cut sheets of glass since the 1800s he gave me all those crates but i built all my shelving and stuff out of that this big chunk of slab is a piece of the oak tree that that i've milled so no cost in any of this so really other than that i guess the chinking mortar is about all there is and if i mean if you want to throw a high figure at that at a couple hundred bucks um that would be it electrical i think i already hit i think that's it so i'll put those figures together and make sure that that my math was right and if not i'll fix it but i believe yeah for less than 10 to 12 000 i built this entire old cabin so after taking a couple minutes to think about it two things i missed excavator cost me 1200 for a week to dig the hole and then i also forgot the metal for the the roofing that cost me about 800 i got lucky on that because i bought the metal to cover up my log pal a year in advance so i could keep the logs dry and the price of that metal really jumped in that period so after everything my grand total was ten thousand one hundred and eighty five dollars not too bad

Channel: the log cabin life style by Jerry Tyson

Views: 1,578,501

Keywords: Log cabin, Log cabin build, fireplace, stone fireplace, Johnny Appleseed, lisbon Ohio, Affordable, cheap, log home, DIY

Id: PW3yUapBB6Y

Length: 15min 17sec (917 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 15 2022