BySome time ago, Alyssa Craft and Jesse Stafford bought a piece of land in the Pacific Northwest, with the hopes of securing a mortgage-free future for themselves and escaping the hectic toil of modern city life. They’ve been living in a trailer while they build a homestead on the property, but in an effort to live more comfortably, they also built a small cabin, which only cost $300 to construct.
The plot of land they own measures 5 acres (2 hectares), and they’ve been living in a trailer parked in a carport there, getting their electricity from a generator, since September 2015. The cabin they built is attached to the trailer with the trailer acting as a kind of base for the structure, which they extended by building a 10 x 12 ft (3 x 3.6 m) timber cabin.
The roof is made of cedar wood, while the windows are made of clear plastic. They also insulated it and installed a wood-burning stove and air-movers, which help circulate warmth throughout the living space. They also equipped the cabin with a water tank and pump, and even built their own cedar wood hot tub for bathing.
Most of the building materials they used were salvaged or bartered for, and even though the cabin cost only $300 to construct, they estimate that the materials, which they were able to get for free, would have cost several thousand dollars had they purchased them new.
While the cabin is quite rudimentary, it does serve its primary function of offering them a comfortable place to live while they build the main house. The latter will be off-the-grid. They plan on drilling a well and fitting it with a solar system. They will also be growing their own food, so they will be entirely self-sufficient once it is finished.
