I came across this site about a month ago and since then I have been addicted. And now I figured I would share some information on my project. I share my land with a group of long time friends, we have about 10-15 acres and on the property there are eight cabins. All of the cabins were built in the early to mid 1920’s and all but one of them were fixed up back in the early 80’s. Mine is the one that was never fixed up, sadly it is now too far gone to be brought back to life so I will be rebuilding the whole thing. Though I have been going to this spot since the early 80’s I was only made a partner a few years ago.
The original cabin was built directly on a log foundation though when I rebuild I will be pouring a concrete stem wall foundation. The plan is to dig down four to six feet at each corner and the midpoint of the walls build some rebar cages pour these and then tie them into the stem wall, though most of the ground is solid I will be building near a slope looking over a river and want to avoid any shifting in the future. Though my cousin the structural engineer thinks this is overkill my father and I agree a little overkill never hurt anyone. On top of the foundation I will be building a ~1100ft^2, 2 bd/2 ba “cabin.” Though we call it a cabin it will have the comforts of home as well, we do have water, power, septic, and propane on site, though we may look into solar in the future. We will use this cabin year round, spending most summer weekends there and then hope to spend a lot of time in the winter months there too.
We are also lucky that until we build our cabin we are able to use the other cabins on the property so there is no rush. The plan is to build as we have money doing things in stages, 100% of the work will be done by myself with the help of my father and probably some friend. We would like to build this without any permits but being in CA this could prove to be tricky so I am not going to give too much detailed info on the location. The only permit I know I will have to pull is for PG&E, but we have a plan to do that (my father has been a building inspector for the past 36 years).
I will post up a picture of the floor plan I have come up with for now, though I will most likely change some things down the road as I don’t like the flow the way that I have drawn it. In the next month or two the lady and I are going to stake out the rooms with some string line and see how it feels and what tweaks we want. In the meantime here is a picture of the space we will be building; our deck will be over looking the river. The are to be cleared is to the right of the burn pile. Wow, this is a horrible picture, I will take a better one of the space next month.
