2021 marks the beginning of the end for our family on this little slice of off grid Alaska. 5 years on just over 5 acres living in under 500 square feet. We’ve felled trees, built a cabin and carved out a garden. I’ve loved every minute of living out here, so why leave?

Here’s the truth:

We’re moving farther off-road! A friend of ours sent us a listing for property a few miles away from us with an old cabin built in 1959 on it. Since moving to this area in 2016, the one thing we would change about our place was being right on the beach, and this place is it. So we made the leap and went in on the property with family. While it’s in disrepair now, it was obviously much loved once and I can’t wait to fix it up to be a family home again!

 

A Solid Start

While we’ve gone back and forth on starting our dream home, pivoting to fixing up an existing cabin will do just as well. It’s a 30×20, three story A frame with a log base and stick frame upper stories. Not exactly the same dimensions we were planning. In fact, it ends up being a bit bigger! It does need a lot of work, including a few logs replaced and needing all new windows and doors. But having a solid foundation, walls and roof already in place puts us way ahead of the game.

That said, the current layout does need some rearranging.

I know Sims is approximately zero percent accurate when it comes to creating a house blueprint, but it’s user friendly for someone who just needs to imagine moving walls. Most of what needs changed is on the main floor since we are starting with a primitive dry cabin. Hooray for not having any old wiring or plumbing we need to replace! Here is the current layout:

The green is where the stairs are. As far as I can tell, the living space is 15×20, the hall is 5ft, and the bedroom is a 10×12. The kitchen is tucked back and set away from the rest of the house, and it’s obviously missing a bathroom. Not that I mind using an outhouse, especially in the beginning. But I’ll need an indoor bathroom at some point if I’m going to keep living out here despite my MS.

Here is how we plan to move things around:

Again, green is highlighting stairs. The living room and hall will stay the same, but the wall will between the two might be shortened and replaced with posts and a beam. I’m fairly certain that wall is load bearing. The bedroom would be cut from 10×12 to a 10×8 bathroom. The current walls of that room don’t go all the way to the ceiling, so they aren’t load bearing and can be easily moved. The kitchen would be pulled forward with a 4×12 pantry running behind the length of it. And this is assuming everything goes to plan. Who knows what surprises might jump out at us!

The Beginning of the end

I’m really excited to start this next chapter in our off grid and off-road Alaskan adventure. We’ll explore the cabin and all its cool features, like this catwalk on the second floor. And because it’s an old homestead, I expect we’ll find all kinds of neat things on the property too. We even lucked out and found an old well already!

Here’s to new beginnings ♥