How about a cabin?

[Cruiser]

Covid has us reconsidering our vacation plans/budgets. Thinking we should buy a cabin in the woods instead of saving for airfare.

Current, former, and not-quite-there-yet cabin owners, please check in. Do you love your cabin? Why did you buy it? Is it fulfilling it's end of that bargain? Any hard knocks lessons you could share for the benefit of the group?

Also, please post your cabin pics for inspiration!

www.cabinporn.com

[old goat]

What kind of cabin do you think you can buy for the price of airfare?

We don't have a cabin but a friend of ours who lives in Ohio has a two room off the grid cabin near Joshua Tree. Solar power, water trucked in, shit in a 55 gal drum behind the cabin. 30 minutes of bad dirt road once he leaves the pavement, and once your on pavement it's at least 30 minutes to anywhere. He mostly hikes and looks at little desert plants with a magnifying glass and a very, very large identification book. He loves the place and can spend months there; his wife will stay there for shorter periods of time and doesn't have much to do there. No kids and they're retired.

In considering a cabin you need to ask what's there to do near the place and there is enough to keep you entertained. We're not all Thoreau (neither was Thoreau.) How hard and long is it to get there? How often will you realistically use it? How will you feel about owning it once the pandemic has passed and you have your traveling money tied up in the cabin?

One thing to consider with rural properties is that you can't take things like utilities, road maintenance, property lines, easements, internet and cell phone coverage for granted. You need to do a lot of due diligence and you can't count on realtors to tell you the facts; very often they don't know the facts and if they do they may not tell you. There's a glaring example in our little neighborhood I could bore you with, and that's in an incorporated town. Talk to as many people in the area as you can.

[ötzi]

I wish cabinporn had thumbnails, or maybe they do and I just haven't seen them, it takes forever to page through that site. I don't have a cabin so I got nothing on that, sorry. But I do have a situation where I might be building a little oceanfront beach shack and trying to sift through that site to find relevant stuff is time-consuming.

[Cruiser]

The interface used to be better before they went all up market

[ötzi]

Yeah I remember it being pretty good, you scrolled through the cabins and clicked in if you wanted to see more but now it seems like all you can do is scroll through everything. Still cool cabins and nice photos though.

[Cruiser]

What kind of cabin do you think you can buy for the price of airfare?

Almost certainly not the kind of grand place that retired physicians enjoy in Tahoe. But seriously, the cost of saving for a couple of nice family trips a year would offset most of that monthly obligations associated with modestly appointed spot in the hills not too far from town.

[Cruiser]

Perhaps the problem is tumblr. I feel like they used to just have a website that you could browse chronically but now you have to look at it as though you were scrolling through a social media feed. In any event, their cabins are tits.

[bad dancer]

There is a cabin thread somewhere. I have a few pics posted up on the build etc.
Here is the latest. Its small but been damn fun to build.
I am just finishing the outdoor kitchen this summer.

[78Brad]

Looks fantastic! Futuristic and cute at the same time.

[Marshall Tucker]

Think goat is kinda touching on it. you have to figure out what makes you truly happy, because a 2nd property, particuarly ifi you own dirt, will dominate vacations as long as you own it.

Sorta at the opposite end of that spectrum, I grew up near the SE coast, and have many great memories from THE BEACH. not everyone's cut out for it, but I can literally stay on the beach 9:00 AM to past dark returning only for more adult beverages. Will huddle under the umbrella in a storm. Married a girl who's parents lived at THE BEACH. She's not as fanaticall but at least understands. We finally bought a place last year. Gave her a shit ton to do for a while fixin it up with the kids gone to college...wait what where we talking about? where did I put my beer.

[whipski]

My mining claim. 36 miles door to door. Great skiing, hiking and relaxing. Heading up today for some defensible spacing i.e. dropping beetle kill for firewood. It's a lot of work but a bucket list acquisition for me.

[ötzi]

Well that's cool. What do you do for power?

[carlh]

RVs are cheaper than cabins (usually) and can move to different locations. Both require work to use.

[happytimefunbox]

There is a cabin thread somewhere. I have a few pics posted up on the build etc.
Here is the latest. Its small but been damn fun to build.
I am just finishing the outdoor kitchen this summer.

Oh wow that looks sweet! I wish I had the spare time, skills, and patience to build my own.

Not so much a cabin in the sticks but I have been looking at dirt and homes about a 3.5 hrs from current home near my favorite place to fish. Wife hates fishing and isnt on board. But a boy can dream.... about divorcing wife and buying said dirt.

Sent from my SM-G892A using TGR Forums mobile app

[old goat]

As a kid on a canoe trip in norther Ontario we stayed in a really cool cabin reachable only by days of paddling, until the French Canadian trapper who owned it threw us out.

[old goat]

Oh wow that looks sweet! I wish I had the spare time, skills, and patience to build my own.

Not so much a cabin in the sticks but I have been looking at dirt and homes about a 3.5 hrs from current home near my favorite place to fish. Wife hates fishing and isnt on board. But a boy can dream.... about divorcing wife and buying said dirt.

Sent from my SM-G892A using TGR Forums mobile app

Some marriages do well with constant togetherness. Some do better with time apart from time to time. Ours is the latter.

[skaredshtles]

Much like boats, the best cabins are the ones someone *else* owns.

[MarcusBrody]

I grew up with one (well, we called it a camp as I'm from hicksville). I think the key to use is distance. If you want it to be a place that you use a lot rather than make one big trip a year two, I think the key is finding something that's farther than you'd often drive for an afternoon, but within range of what you'd happily drive for an overnight/weekend. For me, that would be 1-4 hours away from my house.

[wendigo]

On my 3rd cabin in 12 years...

Some info The Cabin-Design-Seeking-your-ideas/

1. As previously stated, make sure it is a place that you want to go to repeatedly.

2. Know thy neighbors, we had one who cut down all the trees and basically made a parking lot for heavy equipment, the others wanted a helipad, and since selling it another neighbor has put in an airstrip. That’s all fine, but not our interest.

3. If you build from scratch you will get tired of having all of your cabin trips actually be work trips, favorite 4 letter word is done. Though the rough framing is nice (easy visual progress) and I like chopping wood, building a sauna etc., but those are after the main project is done.

4. Make sure you can get to the place on the semi regular, if it is a long way to get to or hard to get to how often do you realistically think you would go there?

5. How many forest service cabins, or what style truck camper could you buy for the same money - we could have a 2020 revel for what our “studio” has cost, though some of that ties into having a house on site in the future e.g. septic instead of outhouse.

[Grange]

Up until about a month ago this was the family cottage.


My folks have since moved up to the cottage and are adding a big addition including an attached garage to go with the large separate garage not pictured. Hunting season will be weird going up there now that they live up there full time.

There is no better place for me to visit. I'd sell my house before I'd sell this place just for the memories. My family built the place by ourselves from the footings up. The only thing we had done was have the basement hole dug and had the plumbing put in. Everything else we did ourselves including placing the trusses and rafters without a crane.

[cravenmorhead]

My parents bought a little (650 sq ft?) lake cabin when I was 9. It was 45 minutes from our house, and we spent every weekend there during the summers. It was great, at least for us. Lots of fishing; I learned to singlehand a little sailboat so I was on the water any time there was wind. As others have said, it took up much of our free/vacation time, but that was fine. It still felt like vacation. I still try to time trips to visit my parents so we can spend time there.

A few years back, I got the idea in my head that I wanted a mountain cabin. We looked at cheap pieces of land, tried to see if we could get a tiny house on one, etc. But utilities looked expensive (my wife wasn't interested in carrying water, and was very pro-hot-tub for a mountain cabin). We ultimately bought a ski condo, which is about 1:20 door-to-door without traffic.

It's worked out great for us. We get to ski a lot and avoid traffic. We can rent it out when we're not using it to offset the costs. When we were considering the purchase, my dad was strongly in favor of it, saying that our lake cabin was the best thing he ever spent money on.

You certainly hear horror stories of big money pits that people never use. How much you're actually going to use the place is absolutely critical. Consider whether kid sports games or whatever are going to keep you home for the weekends. Or visiting out-of-state relatives. Or whatever. Value of a second property is hugely tied to user days. By way of example, we probably sleep in our condo 60-70 nights a year, which seems worthwhile. Drive time is important, since it has a direct impact on use days. There's no way We'd drive 4 hours each way every weekend.

Also consider whether you're interesting in renting the place out to offset costs. It can really lessen the financial bite, but it'll have an impact on your tolerances for location, accessibility, etc.

[Dantheman]

As a kid on a canoe trip in norther Ontario we stayed in a really cool cabin reachable only by days of paddling, until the French Canadian trapper who owned it threw us out.

Some friends in high school came across a similar cabin out hiking one day. It clearly hadn't been used in years and was in a pretty good state of disrepair. The door was unlocked and a window was broken. So, they let themselves in and used tools and scrap wood they found inside to board over the broken window and spent a few hours cleaning the place up. At that point the owner just happened to show up and had them charged with trespassing. The judge assigned to the case listened to their story, shook his head and gave them the lightest slap-on-the-wrist sentence he possibly could.

RVs are cheaper than cabins (usually) and can move to different locations. Both require work to use.

Much like boats, the best cabins are the ones someone *else* owns.

Both of these.

[yeahman]

Our house is kind of like a cabin in the woods, so I feel no desire to own another cabin in the woods.

However, I think buying a little land in a nice spot on a lake or stream and having a sweet RV to park there would be a good alternative. Basically creating your own permanent campsite where you can live in total comfort, but with the option of taking the RV to other awesome places on vacation. My personal feeling is that the rustic allure of an actual cabin wears thin and it certainly can cost $$$. My 88 yo dad has a 1920s cabin on a lake and while I've been going there for 35 years and I love it, I have witnessed how much work and expense it is to own something like that.

[wendigo]

Both of these.

heh - we have both, but we abide by the old adage "if your going to be stupid, you better be tough" - we're tough

[BCMtnHound]

It's all been said. My wife has a cabin in a land corporation just outside of Pemberton. Going there is not a relaxing time, there is always work to be done just to keep it going let alone improvements, but it's in a nice off-grid community with close friends nearby. Mandatory spring clean-up and fall shut-down at a minimum. We live a 5hr drive away so it's not an easy weekend jaunt to spend time there. We've since bought a travel trailer that is much better for actual recreation, especially in a province as beautiful and diverse as BC.

So if anyone is looking for a turn-key cabin 50min from Whistler, or 20min to Cerise trailhead on the Duffy, send me a PM. Sorry, land corps scares away the banks so getting a mortgage is not an option. Supposed to get title within the next decade, and the value will double if current local property market keeps its heat. If it doesn't burn down in the next week from a nearby wildfire