Building a Cabin in the woods (Ep.1)

so after spending an entire year rebuilding an entire house we decided to take a break and focus on some smaller projects so we decided to buy some land we bought over a qu acre of land in the mountains and we want to build an A-frame cabin I love the look of A-frames you do too they're such a cute look and especially in the mountain setting so we decided to go with an A-frame cabin here in the woods this is going to be the biggest project I've ever done so the entire series is going to be multi-episode Series where we're going to walk you through the steps building a piece of property a cabin specifically in our situation from start to finish being your own general contractor now let me emphasize this I have no idea what I'm doing but I'm doing as much research as I can we're going to capture all the right things to do and all the wrong things I've already done so this piece of land is a great piece of land specifically the location it's in it is high in the mountains it has a private Resort down the hill has a golf course there it's got geothermal pool so everything you would need to get out of town which is about an hour and a half to escape the city life to really relax in the mountains and have a great Oasis now it took quite a bit of time to prep for this moment that we're standing right now I would say about 2 months of prep work two months of research with the permitting and and and getting all the right trades in and everything else that goes along with planning a build like this we're finally here let me show you how we got to this point one of the first things you need to do is find a local architect that you like The Architects came up with a great layout they showed me my plot our setbacks from the property lines they gave me an animated version of what the property will look like and with that they give everything you might need to give to every contractor that you're hiring from the Conqueror guy to the framer to even the supplies now this part of the project what my architect charged me was $125 a square foot so if you're building roughly 1,900 ft like we are this close to came up to about 2,200 bucks for the plans and the revisions now we also have to pay an extra $2,000 for them to send these plans to an engineer to make sure that the designs that they came up with is actually sustainable and will'll pass all the coding and regulations then you create a literally a sketch that looks like this of your site plan you're just drawing on you don't have to have crazy architectural skills just right where the drive will be which way the house is facing all that stuff you submit your application and once it's all submitted with the plans the building inspector gives it a stamp of approval any kind of adjustments that are going to be expected pay your fee and you're ready to get started we're going to go drop this off it usually takes 3 to 4 weeks where I live to get your formal approval and in the meantime we could start working on getting our contractors lined up just submitted uh my permit application with the plans uh paid 30,000 bucks for the whole process there they gave me my address sticker so we officially have an address on a be land so the permit should show up about 3 to 4 weeks once that gets uh in the mail we should be able to start getting our excavator guys to start working our footings and all that fun stuff in order to find out if you actually can afford to build your house you have to get bids there's no way around it nobody will tell you how much this will will cost typically it's about $350 to $400 per sare foot to build so with that being the case you got to figure out whether or not it's actually worth it to build at this point to get started you need to find the at least the first five contractors those are your excavator your concrete guy for your footings your framer your electrician and then your roofer all right so we hired our excavator uh Tanner from Ultimate excavation awesome dude uh he's cutting in our driveway he's putting in the pad for the property will be he's going to do our footings septic and utility lines now he's not going to do it all at once it has to go in incremental order so the driveways first and the driveways first and then he has to figure out the septic great thing about his bid is that it also included the cost of the septic system so I don't need to go find one to get into so he's already got that in there I just got a call from him saying that everything is looking good except that the driveway is way too steep he said he got done with the driveway then tried to take his truck back up and he had to put it in four low just to get it up that's not good because when it snows that's going to be very problematic get out so I got to get out there to see what Solutions we can come up with so we can keep this project going all right guys I want to thank the sponsors of today's video hungry root now over the past two to three years I've been really 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on tons of groceries that you don't know what to do with what to make with hungry Roo plans out all of your meal plans for you including snacks and drinks and anything you need hungry root gets to know your personal healthy goals dietary restrictions favorite foods how much time you want to spend cooking and more then they build you a personalized cart with all your grocery needs for the week including easy four ingredient recipes to put those groceries to use each order is fully customizable so you can take their suggestions or choose anything you want they've got fresh produce High Quality Meats Seafoods healthy snacks smoothies and sweets with ready to eat meals kid snacks and meals vitamins supplements and more everything from Hungry root follows a simple standard it's got to taste good it's got to be quick and it has to contain whole trusted ingredients get my QR code so this looks really good right now black and chicken with sweet kale salad that seems fast let's whip that up this kale salad is incredible they planted everything for me later on I'm going to have a snack my zero sugar meat stick I'm going to chug down my no sugar added as very smoothie looking forward to that and for dinner I'm all set up on tacos looking forward to that the first 100 people to use my promo code Mr build it 40 will receive 40% off their first Hunger root grocery order thank you hungout for making it very easy for me to stay to my dietary restrictions now let's get back to this video all right so a big problem that we're having here is uh the inspector for the septic is not happy with the regulations that we got in place here we got our pad up here which is a great Pad but uh to bury our septic we needed to be at the bottom of this Hillside that's supporting the foundation of the house so we can't just bury it right in the hill here uh but that's not the big problem cuz the septic is going to go right over there uh we need to figure out our drain field and they are about like 55 56 ft long and there's two of them so the only options are cut down two more trees right here which that can get really expensive and you don't want to get rid of all the trees cuz you're in the woods and you need the trees that's why you want a cabin in the woods but that's not the only problem the other problem is how far off the road those drainage fields for the septic are going to run uh there's another road on the other side of the property it's surrounded by two roads and it has to be 20 ft away to start so we have our marking right over there that's our 20t so what the excavators and I kind of came up with a plan to avoid cutting down any trees is we're going to run our first line down here completely across and then we're going to try to skip over this tree they have to be a minimum of 6 ft away from each other cuz there's two lines but that's a minimum that means you can go further so the second one is going to go on the other side of this tree in fact closer to this brim here which will be perfect once all that's buried what I'm thinking is that in this little section right here with all the lines buried we're going to have another pad coming out here to put like a fire pit so the idea would be you got an A-frame coming out here beautiful view that's right behind me right there you're going to have grass ins the side here some steps coming through the middle of it to this little fire pit area that at night you get to overlook those mountains right there that's going to look incredible another problem that we're running into is this is where the pad is or the foundation is but the plans include another like four feet of p uh patio to come out so we realized we have to extend this pad a little bit further that's my line right there but we also have some walking room on top of it so you're just like falling down and rolling down the hill so a lot of variables a lot of unforeseen variables I think we're going to change some plans here this is originally supposed to be one long driveway going down there and that's the part that you really get in trouble with there's no way to get speed uphill and also when all this freezes over at in the winter time you're just going to be on an ice rink and that's going to be dangerous so we put our heads together and what I think is because I have this tree right here oh actually these two trees that's going to be our essentially our stopping point and this section is going to be where you can park your cars in so you would come down right here we're going to create a flat pad all this is going to be a flat pad and you can put two cars there while at the same time being able to back up and then go back out the hill and as you can see the way my truck sits it doesn't look like it's slope too much um I think it's going to be a good look for at least what we got going on here but that's the adventure right don't be afraid to try and fail except this time it's going to when I fail cuz I will fail it's going to be an expensive mistake that's primarily on me CU I have to think through all the steps I have to think about drainage and water and ice and transportation so a lot of things well I'm going to start getting out of here uh Tanner said he's going to be able to get everything done by the end of the day tomorrow uh which is crazy how fast they can work and uh we'll come back in about a day or two to check out how everything's looking and go from there hey Alex attaches a bid for the windows I quoted you for aluminum black exterior blah blah BL blah I quoted your fiberglass 2 the Le time is 6 to 8 weeks cuz right now we're the beginning of fall here and it's going to start snowing in November we got to get this thing dried in roof Windows uh at least weather strip uh moisture barrier around the house DED in before the snow kicks in cuz when the snow kicks in over there in the mountains it's you're you might as well start all over on this project so we locked in our electrician they are setting up temporary power to the property uh let's go see what it's looking like this seems a little overwhelming but I'm trying to go one bite at a time I mean besides I did the whole abanded house this should be a lot [Music] easier all right just got back to the land here and it looks like they added a few things now in the steps of building anything on a piece of land you need to figure out power once everything's excavated you got to get some temporary power for your contractors to power their equipment we contact our local power company and they came out and they ran power off of the existing power line over there to my property here now this will be my permanent power pole that the power will be running down into the ground to the cabin but before they can do that they put a temporary power post this is where you talk to your electrician we're working with Noah from Red Dog electric he's incredible he's local here in Idaho he came out with his team set a temporary Post in place then they put out a meter on there and this is temporary power for all the contractors to be able to power their equipment I think it's 2 20 amp Outlets power your generators power your saws drills all that stuff and then 130 amp outlet there essentially you can also power your trailer if you want to come up here and do some camping now when you're going to do something like this there's so many hidden costs that you don't realize that goes to building a property so to run the power just to your property it always varies depending how far they have to go is it underground or whatnot um so for this step alone is about $4,500 I live in the state of Idaho that's kind of the cost right now so put that in the back of your mind of when you're running power you're looking close to about 5 to Seven Grand just to get power to that property guys we got our footings dug out this looks like an aggressive pit so the the the architect and the engineers came back we submitted the plans to the building department and the only difference we have to make is the footings have to be 36 in past the frost line so this is a big deep hole you got to consider you got 8 in of footing plus your stem wall That's total of 36 in above and then however many inches above the grade so water can slope away this is nuts this is absolutely crazy I actually feel intimidated while being excited cuz this looks like a crater fell into it we are excited to start building we're going to have the conquer guys come in next week for the foundation we're going to have the framers come in right after that and then we're going to have the roofers come in this is going to be an insane insane project yeah I'm so excited I'm so excited to see it come to life with the A-frame with the beautiful windows and that gorgeous view out there I'm excited I have so many ideas for the inside too which probably you're scared about I'm less scared of that than this big hole that's dug right there there's no turning back now we let's get after it let's do it make sure you tune in for the next episode it's going to be beautiful what's going to come after this thanks for watching in the meantime time check out this video I think you might enjoy bye