A Cabin Anyone Could Build | Start To Furnished | Alaska Off-Grid

when I was 17 years old I saw the alone in the wilderness documentary and decided I too wanted to move to Alaska and try to build a cabin the only problem was that I was no dick pernicky I was just a kid living in the suburbs with absolutely no building experience but I didn't let that hold me down I moved to Alaska and 10 years later I had my land and I had fumbled through my first cabin but now it's time to build a new cabin and this video is dedicated to all the dreamers out there who want to do the same thing I hope this video inspires you but enough talk let's build the cabin this would be a small cabin a 10x 12 with a 4ft porch it'll serve as a bunk house when visitors come out to stay and a nice place to record music too for the newcomers to my Channel I want to let you know that all the music in my videos is completely original and written by me and Forest Wilson the guy who's helping me out right now in fact all the music is recorded here at the cabin and some of these tracks were even recorded in the bunk house that we're building right [Music] now I decided to use peer blocks instead of Sona tubes no need to drill into the ground when it's such a small cabin and the adjustable brackets on the top of the pier blocks make it easy to level things out after you've got the foundation in [Music] [Music] [Music] m the beams are 4X 8X 16 and pressure treated leaving about a 5-t span between Pier blocks the way the camera is set up here sure makes this beam look unlevel but I always trust my level rather than my eye [Music] okay [Music] next up was the floor joist for this I use 2x6 and again pressure treated technically you don't need pressure treated lumber for floor joist but I figured with all the extra moisture coming up off the ground this would be well worth the investment [Music] [Music] one's got the [Music] zooms I'm sure some of you will notice that the edge of the wall is actually overhang the end of the beams this is called Canal lever and a little bit of canal lever is allowed as long as it doesn't exceed the width of the joist that you have spanning it so this is a 5.5 in joist so I had 5.5 in of overhang on the [Music] beams [Music] [Music] lots of people have pretty strong opinions about insulating your floor and I decided that I'd go with closed foam board and I did it for two reasons rodents and moisture over time the moisture that comes up off the ground will start to ruin your fiberglass then squirrels and other Little Critters will get in there and rip the fiberglass out and make a nest out of it I suppose there's ways to keep that from happening but for me it's just easier to use styrofoam and call it a [Music] day [Music] after the insulation was in I put a layer of reflecti bubble wrap over the top of everything this can help keep thermal bridging down which is the cold air moving through the studs and into your floor it also helps add an air barrier and just a little bit more [Applause] [Music] [Music] insulation [Music] [Music] for in 2 days time the foundation and the subfloor was complete now it's time to move on to the [Music] [Music] walls [Music] [Music] [Music] for the walls I'm using 2x4 studs at 16 in on Center [Music] oh [Applause] my cabin is completely off grid which to me means that you live off of any sort of utilities grid including electricity so I run my cabin with a small 2,000 watt generator that generator then runs into an ecoflow power station that stores the energy and then I can use it without having to run the [Applause] generator [Applause] [Music] I don't know how other people do it but I always make sure to have my doors and windows bought before I start framing that way I know exactly how big to make my rough openings a lot of materials are nice to just buy new and not have to worry about it but windows and doors are one thing I will always get used just because they're so much cheaper than buying them [Music] new [Music] [Music] now [Music] [Music] people always ask me if I use plans or some kind of blueprint to build the cabin and the answer is no I just kind of think about exactly what I wanted to look like and then went and learned all the basics of framing it spent a lot lot of time with a calculator and a pencil trying to figure out exactly how to put this thing [Music] together [Music] [Music] nice going on look at this I've been pretty fortunate to have a couple of friends come and help me out for a lot of the these steps but the sheathing is one that you really need an extra set of hands to help you hold the plywood up while you tack it in could you do it by yourself well sure you could but it definitely helps to have an extra set of hands good [Music] yep to me sheathing is one of the funnest parts for a couple of reasons one you start to really get a feel for what the cabin's going to look and feel like once it gets built the other thing about it is that it really firms up the walls and starts to give a nice rigidity to the whole structure [Music] I wanted this cabin to have Ved ceilings it makes the inside much bigger and it just feels cabines in order to do that you have to use a ridge beam if you don't have something structural for the roof rafs to hang off of it's going to cause the walls to bow out over time especially when there's a heavy snow load on the top this beam is a 4x1 at 16t length I spent a lot of time worrying about how I was going to get it up there especially doing most of this by myself but lucky for me the guys happen to be here the day that needed to go up this is my first time actually framing on a roof on my main cabin I just bought trusses and put them up there so this was definitely a big challenge for me I did a ton of research and talk to a lot of different people about the way that they do it but the more people I talk to the more I realized that there was just a hundred different ways to get this done I ended up actually calculating it all out based on how high my ridge beam was how far the span was to the walls and what angle I was going to be cutting it at after a lot of consideration I decided that I'd go with a 512 roof pitch it's not so steep that you can't walk around on without a rope but it is steep enough to shed snow especially with a sheet metal top however there have been winners that have seen even 1212 roof pitches still holding the snow load up here we get a lot of snow so far this year we've already had 10 ft fall at the cabin so I'm glad that I ended up going with 2x8s for the roof Rafters that also adds extra space for insulation [Music] [Music] [Music] this is one of my favorite shots that I've ever captured you see Norman hop up into the cabin expecting it to help him with the rain and just looking so confused as to why he was still getting wet I would try to put him inside the main cabin but he refused he would always want to be right by my [Music] [Music] side [Music] a [Music] oh [Music] I wanted this cabin to look as rustic as possible so I decided to to drop a couple of dead spruce trees and use them as my porch [Music] posts now that the overhang supports were done I could finally put in the last couple of Rafters and be done with the roof framing after that it was onto the [Music] blocking [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] I know a lot of you are probably wondering where's your wife well she's been down in the Kenai Peninsula see we have another cabin down there that she's been doing projects on all summer as well but today I was lucky enough to have her come and help me finish up the roof [Music] [Music] a layer of tar paper on top of your roof deck and can go a long way in keeping the water out [Music] if you notice we're always wearing long sleeve shirts with our hoods up that's to keep the bugs away this summer had horrendous mosquitoes and they were just an Absolute Pest while we were trying to build so having the M Stang off of our neck and out of our ears was a big help [Music] I absolutely hate cutting sheet metal so I made sure to design my roof and overhang so that it was the right length just put an 8T piece up there and be [Music] done once we had all the panels done we put the ridge cap up and tacked it on it was a huge weight off my shoulders to have that roof finished having the cabin weathertight really buys you some time and you can relax and not worry about the water getting in and ruining your [Music] framing with the roof and all the framing done it was time to add a layer of tyvec this acts as like a big wind coat for your cabin as well as a way to keep the water off the walls [Music] [Music] y [Music] [Applause] [Music] I used a bead of silicone cocking around the Inside Edge of all my vinyl windows technically you're supposed to take the tyvec and cut it and fold it in so that none of the water could get behind the windows and then get behind the TYC but I have such big overhangs on my cabin I decided I wasn't going to worry about [Music] it [Music] framed it too short that's going to suck yeah I screwed up pretty good on this one I didn't take into account the subfloor width when I framed out the door a lot a lot of people have asked why didn't you just cut off the bottom of the door well the problem is is that the door is inside of What's called the jam which is the frame that holds the door and you can't just cut the bottom of that off not without taking the whole thing apart and then somehow rest stapling it back together that would have been a huge pain in the butt speaking of pains in the butt putting in this triple pain 4x4 window all by myself turned out to be the biggest pain in the butt in the entire cabin [Music] build unfortunately strength is kind of one of my weaknesses and getting this really really heavy window lifted up into its opening was just beyond my abilities so I had to get creative and find a new way to get the window [Music] in [Music] building cabins is all about problem solving and this was a problem I was happy to have solved [Music] [Music] yes all right [Music] [Applause] w [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] ah next up was wiring and I had my friend Mason fly up from Washington State and help me wire the cabin we're old high school buddies and After High School he became an electrician and has been working on big high-rise buildings for the last 15 years I wanted the new bunk house to be tied into the main cabin's electricity system that way I could power it all from a single source so we dug a 60ft trench and ran a piece of RX from the breaker box on my old cabin over to the new bunk house that way I can just switch the lights on and off from the little cabin inside my main one in addition to overhead lights I decided I want a couple of outlets in there so that people could charge their phones or have a coffee pop plugged in we also put in a couple of exterior outlets and ran some cable for a porch light and an overhead flood light one one [Music] oh [Music] with the cabin all wired up it was time to get started on the [Music] insulation make sure to put some kind of screening above your blocking so that you don't don't get Critters trying to crawl up into your roof the mesh I'm using here is pretty thin but it's made out of metal so hopefully it'll keep them [Music] out I used fiberglass installation R15 for the walls and R 21 for the ceiling even though my roof Rafters are 2x8 and could hold a little bit thicker insulation I decided to undersize it just a little bit that way I have some air flow up over top of the instulation without having to install baffles last week it got down to -40 out here at the cabin and this little bunk house stayed nice and warm if this was to be a more full-time cabin I probably would have gone with 2x6 walls and trusses that way I can get a lot more insulation in just like I did on my main cabin 2x6 walls and trusses with r21 in the walls and R38 in the ceiling all right I love wood heat I love cutting wood I love burning wood I love sitting by the fire I love hearing it crackle and I love the nice dry radient heat that a wood stove puts off but for this tiny little cabin I decided to go with a vented propane heater and I did it for a couple reasons the first one being that a propane heater has a much smaller footprint than a wood stove and in this tiny cabin every inch counts the other thing was that I didn't want to have to have guests worrying about running a wood stove and let's be honest not everyone is too good with a wood stove and the chance of burning this little place down is a lot lower if they just have a propane heater to flip on when they're there I found this little 10,000 BTU Empire heater for a pretty good price used and what's nice about it is that it doesn't require any electricity to run so that way if the power's out the heat stays on a lot of folks think that propane heaters put off too much moisture but that's only if they're not vented vented ones put off nice dry heat [Music] a lot of people joke around about tyvec being the official sighting of Alaska and there's a myth out there that says if the tyvec is still showing on your cabin you don't have to pay taxes on it because it's an unfinished structure well let me tell you that's not true the way that it actually works is that the taxes are based on the percentage of the structure that's complete so if you have 98% of the structure complete you're going to have to pay 98% of the taxes and that's about what the sighting amounts to is about 2% so there's no sense in having a really ugly building on your property to save 2% of your taxes not only that but TYC degrades in the Sun so if it sits out for a couple years your tyvec is pretty much ruined anyway and honestly I don't even want to get started on property taxes it kind of seems like robbery having to pay property taxes all the way out here in the middle of nowhere but unfortunately I don't make the rules but the state sure does enforce them I was able to score a lot of rough cut lumber from a local Sawmill and at a pretty good price too it's what I used on my big cabin and all the other outbuildings on the property not only does it make great sighting but having a stash of the stuff is really nice I've used it for many projects I built stairs I used it to finish my Woodshed lots of other little things so I recommend having this stuff on hand [Music] [Music] it's always a good day at the cabin when Forest shows up he's been a great help for this entire cabin build and we have a lot of fun talking and picking Tunes we even got a chance to record a couple of songs after we were done working [Music] [Music] good boy almost done almost done hi I just couldn't have been more pleased in how the cabin looked with the sighting on on my first cabin I did a real hack job there's big gaps everywhere and I just kind of thought I'd go in with trim and cover everything up but now I take my time get the cuts right and there's no trim [Music] needed [Music] after I put down the underlayment I got started on the click together flooring I would love to use real Hardwoods but I don't have the budget or the skills for it a pretty cool trick I figured out is that a lot of big box stores will sell you this stuff for a lot cheaper if the boxes that the stuff comes in is ripped open I got pretty lucky and somebody with a forklift had accidentally ripped open four or five boxes of this stuff so I got it for next to [Music] nothing [Music] I think it's safe to say that fall is my favorite season in Alaska the trout fishing is phenomenal you get to start hunting the mosquitoes are gone and the leaves are absolutely beautiful but the arrival of fall also means that Winter is right around the corner so this year I sacrificed a lot of those fun activities and just kept to work on the bunk [Music] house [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] w [Music] installing tongue and groove can be a little bit tedious so I decided to use the biggest board I could get to make the least amount of cuts possible if you decide to do something similar make sure to keep a rubber mallet and a flooring tool on hand [Music] [Applause] you over the years I've acquired a lot of neat little tools most of them I got from pawn shops or from friends who didn't need them anymore but when I first started I only had a circular saw a hammer and a couple of screw guns it is really nice to have a jigsaw and a chopsaw as well but don't forget you don't need a really expensive tool bag to get a cabin like this [Applause] [Music] done [Music] oh I started this project in early June and now it's mid-september so it took me about 3 and a half months to get to this point but keep in mind I was doing a lot of other things too I built a new Woodshed cut a few cords of firewood did some fishing and a lot of major improvements on my other cabin I still needed to do the window trim and and the Sills inside of here but I decided that first I wanted to build some log bunk beds so that way if someone wanted to come stay it was ready to [Music] [Applause] [Music] go a standard twin bed is 38 in wide which would have taken up way too much room in this cabin so I did a little reading in dick pern's book and found that he built his b at 28 in wide that seemed a little too narrow for me so I decided to go with 30 in there is something just so satisfying about peeling logs by hand it's really hard work but there's something about the draw knife sliding up underneath the bark that just makes you feel good it really reminds me of all the work that dick periki put in he was doing everything with hand tools he didn't have have a single piece of lumber that was bought from the store I'm not even half the man that dick periki was I'm using power tools and store-bought Lumber I've got solar power and I even have cell phone signal but peeling those logs by hand gave me a feeling a feeling like maybe I could do something a little closer to what he did cuz after all there was a point in my life where I didn't know how to do any of the things that I know how to do now I didn't think I'd ever be able to actually build a cabin but I set my sights on something and just took one step at a time and before long it had become true so maybe I'll buy some hand tools and maybe I'll try to build a log cabin that looks just like his just [Music] maybe [Music] it's [Music] I was able to find these foam pads for really cheap they measure 30 in by 70 in and they fit like a glove yeah another reason I wanted cathedral ceilings was so that I could do bunk beds without having the person on the top feeling cramped up against the ceiling since I had that extra room I decided to make the distance between the lower bed and the upper bed quite a bit more spacious too I ended up doing about 40 in I think which made it nice so that you can sit all the way up in the lower bunk without hitting your head I used the leftover siding to make the decking for the beds I told you that stuff was nice to have around tying the bunks into the back wall rather than using post really saved me a lot of space in there but it also made it really firm when the person in the upper bunk is rolling around the person down below doesn't feel it at [Music] all winter decided to come early this year and it came in full force [Music] the temperatur plummeted and the snow's stacked up but this bunk house wasn't finished yet so neither was [Music] I [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] h [Music] all that was left was to do the window seals and the trim I had a bunch of leftover 1x4s for the Sills but I had something special in mind for the actual trim a [Applause] yet again my leftover Spruce siding save the day using the Live Edge of these I was able to rip them down and make some pretty cool looking trim it gives the inside of the cabin a very rustic feel and by God it was free well sort of [Music] right [Music] for [Music] [Music] a [Music] this was to be the first night that me and Norman would spend in the new bunk house and what a glorious night it was for I realized after spending the last four months building this thing what a shame it is that I don't even get to use it so I figured I'd spend the night in here make sure that the bunks were comfortable that the heater worked that everything felt like it should at least that's what I told myself but in reality I just wanted to lay there in that bunk look up at that ceiling and say to myself yep I built this thing so just just remember I started this journey with nothing no money no tools no building experience and here I am today sleeping in a cabin that I built with my own hands so if I can do it you can too we only get one shot at this life and it's never too late to be the things that you might have been because life isn't about discovering who you are it's about inventing who you want to become thank you so much to all my viewers and everyone who's helped me along the way I'll see you guys on the next episode of Alaska cabin Adventures [Music]

Channel: Alaska Cabin Adventures

Views: 2,305,325

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Id: 4lmbpQvrtvQ

Length: 59min 1sec (3541 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 12 2024