Building a Mini-Cabin: Part 4 Framing

Details of framing the mini-cabin are not particularly notable. I used standard 2x4 framing for the walls. The walls, including the top cap, are 7' 3-3/4" high so that the total height including the floor is 8'. I made them this height so that an 8' high sheet of siding would cover the entire exterior without any cutting.

The front wall is framed for a door and each side has one window opening.

NOTE: I know I didn't frame the door and windows properly, i.e. using a header, but at this point I was still just building a shed. It was a conscious decision to save time.

For the roof, I used a 2x8 as a ridge beam and the rafters are 2x6. I used hardware ties to attach the rafters to both the ridge beam and the walls. The overhang the walls by about 2 inches.

I built some supports from 2x4's to hold the ridge beam up while attaching the rafters. These supports remained as part of the gable framing.

I mitered the edge of some 2x4's to match the roof pitch and nailed them to the ends of the rafters. The pitch of the roof is 8/12 making it easier to calculate the measurements as everything forms a 3-4-5 right triangle with known angles.

Finally I added 5/8" OSB sheathing to the roof.

Building a Mini-Cabin: Part 3 - Foundation/Floor

For the foundation of the mini-cabin, I used deck piers sitting on gravel filled holes. The holes are only about six inches deep. Six inches is well above the frost line so this was a big shortcut but if the structure starts to move due to frost heave I figured I could just jack it up and make it level again.

I built two 12' beams, each beam consisting of two 2x6's with a strip of 1/2" plywood sandwiched between the 2x6's, screwed and glued together. The resulting beams are 3-1/2" wide allowing them to fit the brackets of the deck piers.

I used three deck piers per beam and the beams are placed six feet apart. To level the beams, I used treated 4x4 posts where necessary.

For the floor, I used 2x8 joists on 16" centers. The floor is 12' by 8' so the floor overhangs the beams by roughly a foot on each side.

I added insulation to the floor by first nailing 1x2's along the bottom of each joist and then laying a piece of 1/4" hardboard in the joist spaces, resting on the 1x2 strips. This forms a bed for the insulation to rest on.

Adding the insulation was then as simple as laying it into the joist spaces. I used 5-1/2" thick fiberglass insulation.

Finally, three sheets of 3/4" tongue and groove OSB are nailed onto the floor joists.

The resulting floor turned out perfectly flat and level and was very solid to walk around on.

Building a Mini-Cabin: Part 2 - Preparation

Building on land with no water, electricity, or existing structures entails certain challenges. The primary challenge is lack of electricity to operate power tools. To address this, I purchased a 3500W gas generator for about $300. The generator will run about 11 hours on a tank of gas (4 gallons) at half load. It's a cheap generator but has worked really well so far and starts easily. For $300 I think it's a bargain. the specific generator I purchased is an ETQ TG28P41 3,500 Watt 7 HP 208cc 4-Cycle OHV Gas Powered Portable Generator. I purchased it from Amazon.

Not too long ago I purchased a 5'x10' utility trailer. This is generally what I used to transport tools and supplies back and forth from the build site. It has a ramp on the back which makes loading and unloading easy and sidewalls which sometimes served as makeshift sawhorses.

Tools

Most of the tools I used I already owned but I did buy a few new ones for the project:

I bought a cheap Hitachi 10" chop saw because I didn't want to haul my Makita slider with its stand out every time. I did end up using the slider once or twice but the Hitachi worked great for 95% of what I was doing.

I bought a Milwaukee roofing nailer which worked very well.

I sold my MAC700 compressor because it didn't drive my framing nailer very well and bought a MAC2400 to replace it. It was better with the framing nailer but I still wasn't that satisfied. These compressors have a fixed pressure at which they kick on which apparently isn't high enough to fully drive my framing nailers so when the tank pressure gets low, the nails aren't driven fully. I can't find any information on the internets about this problem on this compressor so maybe it's just me. I would have bought a different compressor but I wanted one with a low enough amp draw to run off my generator, which the MAC2400 did fine.

Later in the project, I bought a cheap Ryobi portable table saw, primarily to cut interior siding and trim. It actually worked okay but using it after using a cabinet saw was a difficult adjustment. It just sounds and feels wrong somehow. When I build the main cabin, I may get a nicer portable like the Bosch or Jet or at least build a better stand for the Ryobi.

I bought one of those big tool carriers on wheels to haul hand tools and supplies back and forth. It's just a plastic box on wheels with a handle and worked okay. It has a single tray but mostly the tools are just piled up in there. I spent time before every trip filling it with only the tools I thought I would need to keep the weight down and as uncluttered as possible.

Preparation

I think building the mini-cabin went well for two main reasons:

  1. I did everything I could back at the shop. This included building the beams of the foundation, cutting all the framing members to size, cutting the holes in the siding for the windows, etc. Obviously, this required a much greater degree of advance planning but it was so much easier to work in the shop than on-site that I believe it probably cut construction time in half.

  2. I made sure I had everything I needed before driving to the property. I'm actually really surprised I never got to the building site and discovered I had forgotten some critical tool or supply for that day's task but I didn't. I think I usually spent the week leading up to a weekend's work making a mental list of what I would need. Driving two hours round trip to get something I'd forgotten would have seriously impacted the timeline.

Here are some pictures of my trailer loaded for a trip out to the site and using the trailer as a support for the chop saw:

Building a Mini-Cabin: Part 1 - Introduction

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.

Buying Land in Utah

In January of 2009, a friend and I proceeded to purchase a parcel of undeveloped land in northern Utah. We both planned to semi-retire in the next 5-6 years and wished to establish a location upon which to establish our retirement homes/cabins.

Affordable acreage is available in many locations in both northern and southern Utah. Unfortunately, much of the cheap land is entirely unsuitable for actually building a permanent residence either due to zoning, lack of services, harshness of climate, or general ugliness.

One exception is Duchesne County where affordable land is available. Duchesne County plays host to some of the best camping, fishing, boating, hunting, hiking, water skiing, and ATV riding in the state. The High Uintahs wilderness area is thirty miles to the north and boasts great hiking, fishing and alpine camping. An added benefit was that Duchesne County was only about an hour's drive from where I currently live.

We started our search for land by contacting land brokers in the area and making appointments to look at land meeting our general guidelines. The guidelines included:

  • Size of the parcel

  • Availability of services

  • Year-round accessibility

  • Price

We looked at approximately ten parcels varying in size from 10-80 acres. Ultimately, the size of the parcel and cost per acre became the primary factor in our decision and we decided on a 60 acre lot which directly bordered SR-40, providing good accessibility.

It wasn't the most beautiful lot we looked at and had a definite lack of trees, but it was very buildable and the price was good at what eventually turned out to be around $660/acre. 60 acres is a lot of land and provides plenty of area for both of us to build our retirement homes.

Here are a few pictures of the property: