After purchasing 60 acres of land upon which to build my eventual retirement cabin, I was anxious to start working toward the goal of turning it into a place to live. The longer term goal is to build a cabin which I would eventually live in but that was still in the early planning stages. But I wanted to start something right away so I decided to build a small mini-cabin would would serve the following purposes:

  • Provide a place to store building supplies so I wouldn't have to haul them back and forth while building the larger cabin.

  • Provide a place to sleep overnight while building the main cabin.

  • Provide me with a little more experience in building methods and design.

  • Allow me to evaluate the challenges of building in a location with no electricity or water.

  • Provide a place to "camp-out" recreationally on the land.

Honestly, my original intention was to build a "shed" to provide storage and overnight camping but as the project progressed I got a little carried away with adding features and amenities and ended up with what I consider to be a true "mini-cabin." But since the project started out as just a shed, I did cut a few corners in its construction, notably in the foundation and some areas of framing. I'll try to point those out in the construction details in later posts.

General Description of the Mini-Cabin

The mini-cabin is exactly 8' by 12' providing an interior space of roughly 90 square feet. The walls are 7'3" high and the roof uses a ridge beam and rafters rather than trusses for an open ceiling. There is one door and two 36"x24" windows.

In the following posts I'll describe the building of the mini-cabin.