I swear one day we are going to start on our off grid dream home.

I guess today is not that day! Our current project is adding onto our original cabin. It’s a bit of an odd building because, like a lot of Alaskans, we’ve been building as we could afford to. Also, each addition (3 in total now) has been a different style of building while we experiment with what works building off the grid. It’s a good thing there are no building codes out here!

Our first step in building off the grid was buying a sawmill.

Considering the lumber shortage, and the fact that a 2×4 is now $9 here, the mill has already paid for itself several times over. Our latest cabin addition is nearly all our own rough cut lumber. The sub floor and roof plyboard were purchased, but everything else from the foundations up is all us! Part of the challenge in building off the grid is getting materials here. Having a sawmill on site means no hauling lumber an hour down the beach. It’s good for our wallets and our vehicles!

 

The next thing we had to do was take the porch “kitchen” off of the cabin.

Since the foundation of the porch was just pallets, I’m surprised how well it held up the last few years! After that was down, Kyle dug holes and dropped peeled logs into them for the addition to sit on. This is the same kind of foundation we used on our last addition, and it hasn’t had any changes throughout our freezes and thaws. We’ll be using the same kind of foundation when we build our dream home. There are quite a few cabins out here that have been built this way and are still standing 20+ years later. I did a lot of foundation research, but seeing this kind working in the area makes it an easy choice.

After the foundation and the floor, it was just a matter of measuring, cutting and stacking our home milled 6×6’s. Keeping everything level with rough cut lumber was interesting. Just another trial when building off the grid!

Attaching the two buildings was interesting, to say the least.

The new addition is shorter than our last one, so we didn’t need to cut so much roof this time. It always makes me nervous to be cutting holes in my house with a chainsaw! And getting the center beam up meant pulling up tin roofing which will need patched back in.

There are a few things left to do still.

We need to insulate the roof and floor and chink each edge in case of gaps. Cabins are notorious for having gaps from settling that let in bugs and weather. The roof still needs tin, but it has tar paper for now to protect it from fall rains. We’ll also need to seal and stain (Amazon link) the logs. Of course, it still needs the finishing touches of a door and window, but it’s the cutest part of our cabin so far. And I’m confident at this point that we can build our off grid dream home just the way we want it!

Once we get moved over to the big house, this will make the cutest little guest cabin for friends and family!