Building 'The Forest Cube' | Tiny 64 sq ft. House on Stilts

he's like where are we gonna build this thing i never start with a plan well i do i kind of gave him a plan it's gonna look like one of those old-fashioned tvs with the crooked legs and it's gonna go right here see where don is hey guys welcome back to the small cabin in the woods today we are going to start the build on our very own guest suite a forest cube if you will it's going to be a box suspended in midair in the forest very majestic futuristic neat did i say neat it's going to be neat little structure i've always kind of wanted to build one of these and it's going to solve a couple of problems that we have and primarily is when you have guests over especially ones that snore when they're in the small cabin they tend to keep everybody awake so the idea is to build another little structure very small the right size we're gonna build the right size and it's going to be a little retreat a meditation cube if you will a nice right-sized box in the forest that somebody could be comfortable with maybe some quiet place to retreat to get away from the hustle and bustle or your snoring bunk mate call it the forest cube the youtube cube the youtube cube so we gotta we gotta move some stuff there's no trees we have to remove it's all just kind of dead no problem only solutions now comes the fun part of doing layout we've got a nice clean area mapped out for this thing this is the rough dimensions of this fourth cube this thing is going to be about eight feet it's gonna be an eight foot cube this cube is to have splayed out legs and in order to do that you got to use a lot of math or we make our cube eight feet right now and we use this as a template guide of where we dig our posts let's do that right now [Applause] you drive the back okay so go straight right there so we're gonna square it up with our kitty corner measurements in order to make sure it's square because you want a square cube i can already see how how spacious this cube's gonna be we gotta dig holes i love digging holes that's why dawn's here because we're digging the walls now that we have our post holes dug we can find our legs our post we're gonna find some cedar posts in order to make legs out of them i've got just the ticket forest where trees have been growing for hundreds of years there's nothing to get to the forest floor so what we're gonna do is we'll harvest a couple of those to do some selective thinning they call it when i first bought this property i had the forest management technician out to look at it and he advised that i cut out three of the four trees that are standing here so there's there's of the cedars if there's a thicket of four trees he wants to cut three out of the four trees now i i'm a little reluctant to do that i'm just gonna cut as i need trees but i understand the practice it's to to increase light to the forest floor basically encourage do growth it's very dark in here there is no there's nothing there's nothing there's nothing anything can eat down down below as predicted it's hung up in the trees it's because they're too close together all right let's go get the tractor well that was a successful trip to the lumber store we've got ourselves four posts or legs look at those legs hopefully they didn't skip leg day don't you wanna drag these over there you betcha watch i'll hold the camera don't lift the log i'm kidding let's go let's let's let me put this down i'm going to give donald and the log i got the turn this way uh yeah oh there's water that was cool those are fancy legs so there is an ancient technique of burning charring the posts before putting them in the ground i don't know if that's a regional thing but around here where they build pole barns and such they use cedar posts and i've been advised that the best way to preserve them is to peel the bark that's it feel the bark set them in the hole there's barns around here in my area that are 100 plus years old that are basically cedar posts that have barks have been peeled and it's been set in the ground nothing else cedar is naturally a preservative wood it's like a pressure treated wood it's it likes it in the ground so we're just going to peel the bark off the post set them in the hole and 100 years from now we're going to check to see if this thing's still standing let's do let's check these in 20 years 20 years all right youtube remind me 20 years check these posts cedar rope mmm delicious that's actually pretty good so satisfying there are lots of right ways to do this one of them would be like a draw knife which is they got the handles on the sides and you pull it down the log and you pull all the bark off um i don't have one of those i'm going to use a dull chisel how's your dull chisel working look at that using what we have look at this stuff look at that we could we could tie it all together you know what the uh was that guy the wooded beardsman guy he ate this stuff right the cambian layer of the tree i don't think it's the right season to eat tree so satisfying it's the latest fashion for fall cheater bark scarf cedar bark scarf is it good i wonder there's a clean spot ah it's not terrible not bad up down around oh look at that i can't even hold on to the thing we should try climbing them get ready lift this up and then slide your post over and then we're gonna lift we're gonna carry it back this way your toes [Music] [Applause] okay talk about progress for one day that's being optimistic we notch the top posts in order for them to sit in the little saddle so they've got at least an inch and a half sitting over here and that'll support the weight but they're if you look at the posts themselves they're splayed out on a on some sort of an angle leaning in so they're actually they're not straight they're not supposed to be straight they're supposed to lean in at all four corners see picture an old-fashioned tv set otherwise you would need diagonal bracing in order for us to not pancake hopefully we build this thing and we don't pancake but look at the view look at the view isn't it this thing's going to be awesome i'm excited for this as dawn's digging dawn's always dawn's digging we're going to backfill that you got a shuttle you can't just can't just admire we just gotta keep working so don shovel and i should help him we're just gonna backfill the holes and we're gonna pound it in basically make it real tight in there so our post doesn't move i like it and if you can see back here is the pond that's gonna be a great view maybe a hot tub under there right you think who knows maybe hot tub over there i should stop spinning you guys around you guys guys probably don't like that okay we're gonna backfill get a good night rest and we're gonna start this again tomorrow so [Music] [Applause] it's hard to illustrate how splayed out they are so that's that's acting like a like a tripod but it's four is that a four pod it's actually like a four pod a four pot in the forest acceptable level for cube in the forest flush mouth box speed with a bolt all the post to the the ringer this is this is a ringer it's not really a ringer it's a ringer but it's gonna be a box beam so we're gonna bolt that guy together and that's gonna give us some sort of lateral support so we don't pancake on this bad boy and yeah go from there [Applause] sometimes you just need more power or in this case electrical power so i want to grab the generator i've got myself my makita this is my this is my mixer usually i mix drywall mud with that bad boy so that guy like a third of a horsepower or something like that it's gonna make short work of these holes we're gonna run that guy to power the drill to make all my holes because uh battery power just ain't cutting [Applause] [Music] i like how the only spot in this whole bush that is bright is right here it's like being on the surface of the sun you got like it's like whoa look at this it's gonna be a nice view once uh once we've got the cabin building gonna be standing up there you'll be sitting in the in the bunkie and it's gonna be uh it's gonna be very picturesque overlooking the pond the morning sun coming up over the horizon very majestic it's gonna be a neat tree house so kevin why are you using such big bolts for well i went to the hardware store to get the right size one meaning the right length ones and uh barely stuff's gone up in price uh they wanted nearly six dollars a piece for them and if you're doing math that's a lot of money so i had these laying around these are bolts that uh a piece of industrial equipment came in on like the six by six were bolted together with some two by something or others anyways and i saved them all and i was like i'm never gonna use a bolt this size it's true i'm probably never gonna use a bolt this size unless i was building this thing but so this hardware is really expensive once you start you know getting a lot of them six dollars is not bad when you gotta buy eight of them i mean i got eight so anyways that's why i'm using large bolts like this and i find the best way to get them in the hole is to swing with a reckless abandon one more eight oversized bolts in place all i can do is put the nuts and the washers on now that we've got all the fiddly stuff done meaning the setting the posts and the beams and lags and carriage bolts and anchor bolts and all those other things we're gonna do our blocking and what the blocking is is basically boards that go every 16 inches from 2x8 to a 2x8 and that's going to give us a little bit of rigidity it's going to basically consolidate our uh our 2x8 box beam really the proper foundation for this cube because falling eight feet out of the air is not gonna be fun yeah we got the generator fired up we got the compressor fired up we're gonna get our nail gun fired up because uh putting these guys in by hand is gonna take a long time so we got the we got some power got some power we got some proper framing with proper tools let's uh let's bang these guys up so we're deciding how big the opening to this cube because there's going to be a floor hatch here so you're going to come up a ladder you're going to open a hatch and the hatch originally was thinking about four feet in order to get paneled goods up and i was thinking to myself we got a giant window at the front so we'll bring our panel goods through the front like the drywall if we got flooring or if we need sheet goods or whatever like a table the furniture itself in this cube because it's such a tight space it's about 64 square feet that's the outside dimension the inside is going to be slightly probably 60 square feet everything's going to be custom built we're going to have wall hung murphy beds basically fold down on hinges so you can just stow those away when you're not using them little desk will build probably out of some live edge wood a chair a chair will comfortably fit through this hole i'll comfortably fit through that hole and if you can't fit through that hole you ain't going in give me a give me a bunch of them and then i'll nail it in maybe a door jamb that's going to sit that's going to prevent the hatch from falling down that's going to be squared up a little bit more than this one that's not so square this is rough framing it doesn't have to be well it should be perfect but it doesn't have to be perfect because the trim carpenter comes in and trims this thing out square than it already is these are joist hangers they're like garters for joists they hold up the joist they're structural use uh nails they're 18 penny nails they go in every single hole don't use screws screws do not have structural shear strength you got to use nails in every little hole that stuff's osb you guys don't like me when i use osb oriented strand board you can use plywood or you can use this stuff it's much cheaper and for the amount of time it's actually going to be in the rain it's perfectly good stuff we're starting the osb plywood argument this osb in canada anyways it's coated with like a wax coating and it's designed to keep the water off of it while you're building would you spend more money in your house to buy would you do with plywood i'd probably go with plywood in my house for a situation like this where it's two sheets literally two sheets of osb you know what i would go with this when you frame you've got a couple of options the easiest option is to put everything together on the ground put your which put your insulation in even if you can um put your plywood on and then once you've done that you just stand it up you make sure everything is square obviously and then when you stand it up you basically plumb the plum the walls and you're good for your finished material ready it's not coming at you is it i realized that uh either i'm not young enough or i'm not strong enough or i don't know maybe it's because it's up in the air it's hard to build a wall on a little tiny platform and stand it up by yourself so i'm not to do that anymore i've learned my lesson on this this wall that was we just did it's questioning questioning all sorts of things when i was doing that it's up it's secured it's not going to go anywhere but what i'm going to do on this back wall here looks like a giant picture window i'm going to stick frame it and what stick framing means is that i'm going to basically put each individual stud up level it off and uh nail it off and then i'm going to sheet the outside afterwards and that you can do by yourself uh it just takes a little bit more time a little more effort but uh can be done you can't do it alone it's easier with your buddy we are coming right along on this build as you can see i've put some i see the framed door this is the door and this is the window so the door is very narrow i have a special it's actually going to be a reclaimed garage door with windows in it so i'm going to cut it down and that's going to be my door to the outside and there's going to be another this is going to be a functional window it's going to open and then where you can see is there's a giant window going here so yeah just move right along i might have prematurely put pants on it's uh it's not warm but the heck it's humid it's uh feels very tropical around here so i'm gonna go put my shorts back i'm gonna get back to sheeting sheeting my unorthodox use of a chainsaw i think spawned from an early age i think about probably eight six seven eight years old i uh was growing up and i remember the house next door was being built in the framer i remember his name his name was cliff and cliff used a chainsaw every opportunity he had he was doing fascia chainsaw he was framing rafters chainsaw he was cutting out windows chainsaw every single time he had the opportunity to use a chainsaw he used it and i thought that's got to be the most efficient way to cut something it does a pretty good job as long as your chain's sharp see we got our doors got our doors got our front window we're just gonna there's no there's no ceiling yet so we're gonna we're gonna we just fired up the compressor fired up the generator now we're going to uh frame up the ceiling the ceiling the roof's going to be flat now i can hear them already why are you doing a flat roof well i got some special product that i'm going to try we don't have a ladder how do i get out of here swinging the window i'm not seeing anything you should always wear a mask when you do insulation or any construction really because you should use safety glasses too because we're going for the four season warm cube today is the um i guess buttoning up the underside we ended up picking up a bag of insulation some uh some roxul i like roxul some roxul insulation we're gonna un insulate the underside of the cube in order to keep us nice and toasty we went with the r14 vat and we're going to leave it lower to the side then we're going to the air space underneath the subfloor and that should provide us with adequate uh adequate amount of insulation this type of situation so you can see underside we could fill it with like you know our 22 i think this is our 22 which is the six inch stuff but instead we're going to use the r14 which is a uh anything did you know about installation there's a depreciating rate of return and anything above r12 uh if the the graph starts to go down you look it up it's interesting i've done a lot of r value a lot of r value looking but again insulation is is is a funny thing you know you should always go with as much insulation as you can afford i feel like i want to talk a little bit more about insulation insulation is only good as your weakest link meaning if you insulate with an r14 bat but you leave little gaps around stud spaces and it's not evenly fit your insulation value drops significantly and so it's really important to make sure it's a tight fit tight but snug snug fit not compressed you want it loosely in there in order to uh keep the cold and the hot out air sealing is also important and uh that's what we're gonna do the kerdi that schluter kerdi system is going to air seal this guy pretty much uh pretty much airtight for the exterior door on this guy so i got a hole up there i gotta fill so that's the that's gonna be the door to the ultimate wraparound deck at some point so to make it kind of like a little boutique hotel i am going to employ a old garage door panel so i've just got to cut it down to size in order to do so because this is aluminum it doesn't like to be cut it's not about the saw it's about the blade so if you take the blade on a traditional circular saw and you turn the blade backwards that gives you the ability to cut anything well maybe not anything but it does cut aluminum quite well when you turn the blade backwards wear eye protection and ear protection because it's uh it's loud take a look at that that's uh that's a fine door i i wouldn't even want to know how much door like this would cost if you had to buy that's amazing it's got thermal pains those will clean up nice and that's going to be on the back add some light keep some keep some heat in some cold out i like it just gotta hang the door now uh laughs feel that airflow this is a door to the porch and this hatch area here is going to be the regular access to the cube i'm just about to install my window but first i want to waterproof the opening because it's flush there's no overhang there's nothing to keep the water out what i've done is actually use the product called flu skin i happen to have a roll of it kicking around on the back 40. it's been seen better days it's actually soaking wet but what this stuff is it's almost like a self-healing membrane if you poke holes in it it kind of self heals itself you try to cut it and it glues itself back together it's going to waterproof the opening i've got it all the way around all the way around the opening and then i got my piece of glass this piece of glass was a thermal paint it had two pieces of glass with you know the inert gas inside argon or whatever it was fogged what i did was actually took my knife and i i split the glass i've got a single pane of glass it's extra thick i think it'll uh it'll do it'll do it'll do its job this stuff's great blue skin it's pricey but it does the job you can see there where the the window is you don't have any sharp edges are metal digging into the class hopefully that'll it'll prevent it from exploding get the flashing i'm going to caulk it from the outside and then parge up the uh purge up the rest of it that's a big window it's a four foot window the good thing is i have a spare i have a spare if that thing breaks now that we've got all the plywood up i'm going to waterproof it using something a little unorthodox i'm using kerdi membrane this is a schluter product designed to waterproof showers i've got a little bit of it left over a lot of it left over this is a a membrane and it's basically like wallpaper really thick wallpaper and you apply it with thinset with a notched trowel and you basically embed it into the plywood and it provides a waterproof membrane on the outside of this thing now so this cube ultimately is going to be parts with concrete so it's going to look like a big concrete block like if i do like a custom shower in somebody's home i'm using this curvy stuff this great stuff i've never had a callback i've never had a leaky shower you know he goes on the floors the walls are going curbless showers if you're going you know a tub with a tile surround this is a great you know for tile backer and stuff like that this is this is the stuff to use this is the the kerdi membrane and uh yeah we're gonna install it on our forced cube and see how it works i don't want to leak a cube it should be overlapped i believe three inches overlap so what we're doing is we're cutting this a little bit long our cube is eight feet by eight feet so what we're doing is cutting it eight foot six and we're gonna put it on the roof and then uh it's gonna overlap the roof a little bit so we're basically making a shingle or a flashing the manufacturer's recommendation is two inch overlap on seams we're gonna go four because it's on my roof and uh they don't really spec force cubes on the on the on the instruction guide i guess in this situation we're just gonna think outside the box a little what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna trowel it out with the flat side of the trowel that's the flat side and it's important to have all your notches go the same way meaning you're not going like this and changing directions and the reason being is because when you lay your material in you want to be able to crush that little notch so everything crushes the same way but if you've got one going this way and that way it doesn't crush evenly especially when you're laying [Applause] tile [Applause] i'm going to roll this membrane out and then we use our grout float in the directions they say use the drywall trout i guess i could have used the dry water but you're basically pushing the kerdi membrane into the mud all the way around basically working the air bubbles rinse and repeat do that for the entire building well they don't recommend well i don't know not that they don't recommend using it on buildings i just don't think they i don't think they've they don't think they've thought of that i've got little corner corner blocks for it and then once we fold that over and stick it to the wall there's no way water can get in there very waterproof system i love this system especially for showers maybe not maybe not forest cubes but uh definitely this stuff is the the go-to for showers if you're gonna do showers this is the stuff to use i'll set you up i'll set you up you guys watch a wall chunk we got a couple more strips to go on the walls i think it takes three strips to do one side of the wall so there's a little bit left to set this guy at this stage of the game you might be thinking if you're doing a project yourself you're like at the grind and you're like oh why did i start this thing it's been a haul like it it's taking a long time we're gonna get through it this is the this is the stage where you're kind of like uh we're gonna do some uh parging uh we're gonna pardon this this guy here we're gonna parge it with uh parking parging mix i don't know if anybody's ever done that to kerdi membrane before we're gonna give it a whirl i've got some i got some pre-mixed parting mix i'm gonna add a little bit of binder to it and we're gonna parge it on the wall but first safety safety safety eventually they uh well not they one guy maybe one guy was it two guys i don't know mask even though if i stand down wind you always want you know your mask to protect you from fine concrete particles this is a p100 mask this will uh this will pretty much catch any of those little fine particulates that may want to inhale i should probably wear safety glasses gloves safety shoes there's lots of things i should do you should do them too don't do what i do the good part about that is i only have to do that four times and every time i bought a scaffold i think to myself these are kind of like monkey bars i feel like i have a banana today build my monkey bars in the forest and butter my cube quack quack quack quack i think it's a good thing that the ducks have uh decided that they don't necessarily like me anymore they still do they still come to me um they're getting more independent they seem to be doing their duck thing i don't have to teach them how to swim that's a good thing so yeah so they're just they're just hanging out hanging out in the pond looks like they're getting the forging for some bugs and sand and all that sort of stuff duck house is still very duck house as you can see i have i have beach the duck house um i found they were eating the styrofoam eek so uh yeah i took that away from them very quickly so yeah they're just uh they're hanging out with me today just uh doing their duck thing ideally whatever they can regrows around here which it will in the spring the uh the ducks and wildlife and whatnot that's gonna come to that pond it's uh it's gonna be fun to watch from the cube so i've developed an interesting technique and i'm not sure if this is the uh did i reinvent the wheel so i'm using the whole hawk as the trowel and it's working really well i just want to just want to show you this is kind of cool because this stuff is really goopy i've basically used it on the hawk and then if i place the hawk on the ceiling and kind of use it as a trowel it kind of it all stays on that i reposition the blob and then repeat you don't lose any that's impressive i see a lot of parts ceilings and garages uh and i'm always curious how they did it i imagine they did it like this big hawk trowel smooth it out this stuff's not overly sticky it's just it's purging right it doesn't really want to be upside down a couple more details let that dry for a bit the underside is done are you being what do you think hey hi buddy oh buddy yeah you let it set up a little bit and then you uh you knock it down with either a piece of uh i use a piece of styrofoam they say you can use a paintbrush a wet and p wetted a wetted paint brush to to knock it down i prefer the swirl method with a piece of styrofoam so you gotta let it set up because it is very mushy well hello so this is the entrance to the cube it's going to be from below so this is going to be on hinges at some point but yeah this is the ultimate access the back door on the cube is uh designed to get on the side ports it's not quite built yet well guys we're obviously not finished on this one so you got to stay tuned for the next time when we finish the inside i think i'm going to do some really interesting stuff in here kind of like a boutique hotel sort of vibe it's got drywall tray ceiling it's going to glow it's going to be a little windy stove it's on its way a little bed a little city area a little little prep area gonna be really really fancy for in the bush it's gonna have all the amenities of home in a force cube so join me on the next one hi who are you i'm kevin i wanna stay up here you're gonna live in the tree house now okay okay all right

Channel: Modern Self Reliance

Views: 954,212

Keywords: building, tools, hand tools, power tools, sawmill, cabin construction, how to build a cabin, tiny house, forest house, small house, construction, cabin design, sawing, cutting wood, off grid, homestead, cottage, tiny cabin, self reliance, solar powered house, small home, axe, saw, build, house build, tiny house build, tiny house design, lumber, framing, windows, doors, house on a budget, off grid living, off grid cabin, mini house

Id: FNC6ijU7pPA

Length: 36min 33sec (2193 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 03 2020