I Built a 2,000 Sq Ft Cabin With Zero Experience!

My wife and I have always dreamed about building a cabin in the woods. And I've always wanted to be a professional home builder, but without anybody to teach me or guide me along the way, I decided to build an entire 2,000 ft² cabin in the woods from scratch with no experience. Today, I'll be showing you the entire build process, start to finish, mistakes that you could avoid in the future when doing it yourself, and the exact budget breakdown so you could do it yourself. First up is acquiring the land. We bought this half an acre of land back in 2020 for $80,000. The first thing that we fell in love with was the fact it was on the hill and had a beautiful view. First step in the process was acquiring the building permit. That cost me $3,000. The building permit quickly arrived three weeks later, so we're able to break ground. After acquiring three bids on the property, we finally landed on one. The excavators came out and gave us a rundown of what could potentially work with this property. Being on the hillside, this was supposed to be our original driveway. And this is where things went wrong. They took our money, they created us a pad, and they gave us a driveway, but the drive was completely unusable due to the slope. That was the most frustrating part to me because yes, you can drive up with a lifted truck, but not with a regular small SUV or even a sedan, making this property completely unusable. This brought us to our second bid. We hired Ultimate Excavation. They were incredible. For $30,000, they were able to create us a brand new driveway on the top, give it us a big, beautiful, wide enough of path to actually fit this cabin. And within that price point, they also included cutting into the utility lines and setting the septic tank and all the necessary supplies that come with that. Next up is the foundation and the framing. The foundation for the concrete and the labor was $16,000. The guys knocked it out very fast and we were ready to start framing up just within 5 days. For 2,000 ft of building material, the total cost was $74,000 in materials alone. At this point, we need to find some framers. Luckily, we found a great bid for $30,000. The guys came out and put this entire structure up. What was supposed to be 2 weeks, ended up being 4 weeks. That was totally expected due to the nature of the travel here and the lack of materials showing up on time. One thing to consider when hiring framers to do a remote cabin that's outside of town is you are going to be probably expected to pay for lodging. That being said, we got our framers the lodging to stay nearby so they're able to knock this job out as fast and quickly as they could. Now, the biggest problem we ran into through this entire process was the structural design of this A-frame. The architects designed it where it has what's called a ridge beam. that is a glue lamp, meaning they just glue together a bunch of 2 by10s together to create this one giant beam. The beam runs completely across. It's 64 feet long and weighs 5,000 lb, which means we had to go get herself a rental crane. Well, the troubles didn't stop there. When we hired the crane, we told them situation and the layout of the land. And after crunching their numbers, they realized that they could not actually get the crane to lift the beam exactly where they want without being a risk concern. way more than I could lift from that distance. >> Luckily enough, we're able to use our tandle, which is a glorified forklift to lift the beam up in the air and set it right into place. We were just at the right weight capacity in order to accomplish this tilting. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. One thing to also avoid if building this kind of structure, look at your design plans and see what they're using for ridge beam. This could have definitely been avoided if having detailed look at the architectural plans to see what kind of ridge beam they're using. Not only was it difficult to get this beam up with the crane, but we also ran into issues by getting the beam to actually get access through all the roads. When building in a remote area like this, you don't have much wiggle room. So, a 64t long beam, it could be a tight stretch to some of these roads. Next up on the list is the windows. If you want to save yourself an extra added cost for window installation, talk to your framers that you hire. Most of the time, they'll be able to do that for free since they're out here anyway. They'll install those windows and doors for you, making your build process go a whole lot smoother. The total cost for these windows were $30,000. And that cost specifically comes from not only the quality of the windows, but also the style of the windows. Black trim windows are very popular at this moment. So, you better believe there's going to be a markup on them. However, I'm super excited how they turned out, and I couldn't be more happier how beautiful everything ties together with these windows. Now that we have a full structural building, it's time for the roof. In our situation, we are chasing the snow. that's right around the corner. The roof that you see behind me is each individual pieces that run all the way to the top measuring at 32 feet long. That means these are special cut pieces that be installed right at the moment. The huge problem that we ran in at this point was the fact that the materials that were measured were not the correct length. We were off by 2 ft. There's definitely solutions where you can overlap them, but being such a high steep pitch, you would see this really awkward seam down the middle, which would definitely be a huge eyesore. We were lucky enough to get the new materials ordered just within weeks and have the waterproofing membrane on top of the roof cuz of course we got rained on and of course we got snowed on. But we're able to clear everything out and install the brand new roof. All in all, that entire budget was $14,000. We'll be talking about something a little bit more important than anything I've ever done on a YouTube video. The UI PoE NVR security system. It's like a secret agent for your home. Stealthy, all knowing, all seeing. Let's get into it. First things first, this beauty shoots in 4K Ultra HD. That means you can finally catch that delivery guy that never rings the doorbell. And here's where it gets really cool. It doesn't just watch. It thinks with AI recognition. It can distinguish between pets, people, cars, and even strangers. And you can set up to focus on specific areas or faces to make sure that it doesn't give you a false alarm every time a leaf blows by. Nobody likes leaves. And if you thought that was crazy, it has cross camera tracking. So that means it will track all the activity across all the cameras and move with that motion. So where the stranger goes, it goes. It's like having your own personal drone without all the drone part and the creepiness. And it's got bullet PTZ triple lens. What that means it's the perfect 360° camera with autoframing up to 164 ft. That means you can crop, zoom, and adjust. Now, let's talk about night vision. It's got AI ISP processing. What does that mean? Well, no more looking at grayish blurish Blair Witch Project kind of footage. Nope. Three words. Spotlight activation HDR. It's a fancy way of saying when it's sunny outside, you're not going to get the sky looking like a big blob. You can finally identify stuff like license plates. A nice clear view. And of course, it's got two-way audio, so you can tell that pizza guy to leave the pizza at the door cuz you're not wearing any pants. But my absolute favorite part is a smart video search. So instead of looking through hundreds of hours of footage trying to find whose dog took a dump on your lawn, you can just simply type in pet and it'll give you the exact pet or a deer that's running through your lawn. Installation couldn't be any easier. Just simply screw it into wherever you want, run the little Ethernet cable, plug it into your receiver, and you're in business. It's compatible with Google Assistant and Alexa. So if you're already living in the future, you can say, "Okay, Google, show me the front door." And boom, your front door is right there. Nobody took your front door. All because you have the Yui PoE NVR security system. There's a lot of great bundling options to choose from, like the Bullet or the Turret. Personally, I'm a big fan of the Turret simply because how slick of a design it is and how highly adjustable it is. That's a lens that we put right over the pool to make sure that that section never loses any focus. And you better believe we're going to hook you up. Click the link in the description below. Use my promo code buildit 15 to receive 15% off your Yuthi PoE NVR security system. So go get it or don't. I got mine and I love it. So that's all that matters. Let's get back into this video. One of the first places I started saving money was doing the siding myself. One of the problems that came about when installing the cedar siding was a contractor that I originally hired wanted to just install the siding straight to the back of this wall. The problem with that being a cedar tongue and groove sighting, this is a natural wood which needs natural air flow that comes from the bottom and escapes from the top. This keeps any kind of moisture out but also allows it to breathe to prevent any kind of warping or any kind of deformation. Once I found out that he was not going to install it properly, at that point it was time to go. So I took it on to myself to install the sighting myself which total cost for all the materials was $12,000 and I saved an additional $8,000 by not paying the contractor to do it well let's say wrong. And that's another big thing is if you know a little bit enough about building things yourself and know the certain process, it's a good thing to ask these contractors how they're going to do it to make sure they're doing it the right way. One of the biggest concerns when building a structure that has a view and chasing that view build location is considering the location of your building. In our situation, we are somewhat down the hill, probably about 100 yards from the very top of the hill, which means that if we want this beautiful, gorgeous view, we need to do something about the retaining wall in order to keep the safety of this house. The total cost of this retaining wall was $40,000. That included the rock and the labor in order to accomplish this the right way. One thing to also consider, retaining walls at a certain height need to have engineering plans behind them. So, that's something you should definitely keep out top of mind. So, if you're going to be building that dream home of yours and you're chasing that beautiful view, understand that certain properties with an inconvenience of needing to build a retaining wall might be cheaper in price than finding a piece of property that's dead flat and a beautiful view. Those prices are guaranteed to be so much higher. It's not a beautiful exterior of a home without a beautiful landscape area. Knowing that landscaping is such an intricate process that you could throw hundreds and thousands of dollars at the problem and still want to add more stuff. In this situation being a cabin, I wanted to have as low maintenance as possible. So, I didn't have to consider too many plants to be planting because I know there's a lot of natural wild plants out here, but I wanted to spruce up the landscaping. So, we wanted to go with a little bit more of a budget approach where we have a PA walkway without using concrete because concrete when it freezes, it'll crack on you. So, it won't be that great of a look in the long run when tons of snow and freezing cold temperatures pile up over time. It will crack on you, at least the very top surfaces of that area. And at that point, it's just an ugly eyesore. So, we went with just classic old pavers here with aggregate on the sides to prevent any kind of too much of movement, but also helps with the drainage when moisture does build up around here. The total budget for landscaping, we kept it at the very minimum of about $6,000. Now, the decks, we have two decks on the property. This one and we have this one. This one's roughly 10x 20 ft. Now, one trick you could also do when it comes to hiring your framers is negotiate with them whether or not they could build the frame of your deck for you themsel. Most of the time they're happy to do that as long as they didn't under bid you significantly, which made the installation of the frame very quickly. So, all I had to do was spend an additional $3,000 just for the top decking railing and the TX, and this deck was complete, saving me time and money all at the same time. This deck is 10 ft by 30 ft long. This is another place where I saved money by doing it myself. Materials alone on this deck was $10,000. That included all the trex decking, all the beams, all the footings, and all the railings and the steps that you see here. Apart from a tight space to be able to get any kind of heavy equipment to dig for the footings, there's not too many problems that came along the way. However, our original plan was to have steps here and there, but based off of the layout of the land over there, we couldn't squeeze another set of stairs just because how tight of a fit it would be, which is another thing to consider. Just because you have a certain set of plans in your head when it comes to actually building the structure out, a lot of these numbers change and a lot of the spaces you thought you might have, you don't really do have at the very end. Now, one thing to consider when it comes to building a deck in, let's say, a remote area like this, is the amount of snowfall that'll be coming down. As you can see, the snow will pile up on top of this roof and always build up on top of this deck. If I was to change things, which I don't know how I would right now, but if I was to change things, I would have this roof overhang as far as it could. Therefore, I wouldn't have to have any kind of additional cleanups or maintenance of this deck when it comes to crazy snowfalls in the winter time. Now, on to the interior. Now that we're what's called dried in, the structure cannot be affected by the weather elements seeping inside. We're handling the electrical, plumbing, and HVAC. For the most part, all of those went smoothly, apart from just a quick walk through with the contractor to make sure that you want outlets or you're okay with certain plumbing pipes coming out certain areas. This step of the process is actually really fun cuz you get to kind of anticipate future inconvenient setups. Like perhaps you want an outlet right next to the top counter of your laundry so you can turn on your iron and iron your clothes or maybe have a convenient three-way switch in a hallway that would could turn on certain lights that otherwise you'd have to go clear across the room for. However, in the process, they do recommend for you to have your plumbing guys come in first because it's so much easier to move electrical lines or HVAC lines before anything else happens. Now, the one step the process that I didn't consider that my HVAC guy told me is that it's up to me to figure out how to insulate and drywall in the utility closet for the furnace. The reason being is once the drywall and insulation's in, there's no way to get in there, paint or do anything else. So, all of that has to be on before any other drywall in the rest of your house is in place. There was, however, a small inconvenience that we ran into when the architects specifically specified to have a ceiling fan in the middle of the ridge beam. As you can see, the ridge beam is a solid structure. There's no way to attach any kind of electrical box housing apart from a channel running outside of it. Now that the electricians, HVAC, and plumbers are done, it's up to me to get back to business of saving money again. And this is where insulating the place was my job to figure out. Based off the engineered plans, we need to have a very high R value. An RV value is just a fancy way of specifying how efficient your home's insulation is. That being said, it called for spray foam insulation and traditional bad insulation in the walls. Having no attic to crawl into, it had to be both an airtight insulation and thermal barrier insulation. The entire cost of the materials for me to insulate myself was $13,000. And primarily the most expensive part was that spray foam insulation. Fortunately enough, it was a very simple process where it's already this kind of DIY kit that has two tanks and you combine them together with one spray hose and you just spray away until it starts expanding and on its own. I didn't have to trim anything down. I didn't even have to slice anything down. Just spray on and let it do its thing. After that was completed, it was as simple as simply cutting and setting in place the bad insulation between the rafters and that section was done. It was at this point that we finally hit winter. The road conditions were terrible and we are now having to get drywall in here. Fortunately enough, we have access right here and somebody informed me that you can actually hire a truck that has a crane that lifts up these giant pallets of drywall and are able to place it into a second, third, or fourthstory building. Now that the drywalls inside the building, we're ready to hire our drywaller guys. They came in quickly. the day where it was just two guys, I was able to hang the entire building. And in just 4 days, with the drywall being all complete, this is a perfect time for us to save some more money by doing more things ourselves by painting. This part was super easy because we didn't have any flooring or finished trim to deal with or mask anything off. After just $1,500 worth of paint and primer, the entire inside was done, and it finally started looking like a home. At this point, we were ready to hang all of our baseboard, all the finished trim, and the doors to make this cabin interior all complete. For the flooring, it was another spot that we saved money. It would only cost me 5,000 materials, and I was able to bang out this entire cabin in in just a few days with a simple laminate floor installation. Some of the new stuff out there has such great durability in terms of waterproofing and scratch resistance that just for that $5,000 in a 2,000 ft building, it was a cakewalk. At this point, you probably noticed we don't have a set of stairs that takes somebody from the bottom to the upstairs. The reason for that is because we're going to have a custom spiral staircase that will come from the top to the bottom. The fabricators are quickly working on fabricating those staircases so they can come bring it in. However, the big concern that we had was the scheduling that we had to bring it in was very dependent upon whether or not they had access. Snow at this point was an issue and the opening of the biggest sliding door in the building was just enough to squeeze it in. So, with access being an issue, the fabricators decided to pivot a little bit and bring the staircase in in sections and assemble it in place. That was a big lifesaver. But in the meantime, we had our framers build us a temporary set of stairs in order to give us access to the upstairs quarters. Next up, another opportunity to save money is doing the bathrooms myself. One of the first major builds I started tackling was the bathrooms. This is a great opportunity to save more money on more parts of this building. Each bathroom was pretty simple, starting with the primary bathroom. I didn't want to put in a tub. I wanted to have a nice big standup shower that would be easily used. However, the building only has two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and the main bathroom is actually the primary bathroom. So, we decided to do a little…