Wabi warned to look out. I have finally learned to post pics.
I have thought about doing a thread on my house build for quite a while and had reservations. Reading Northern Dave's thread on his snow machine was so interesting and informative that I reconsidered. BTW Dave, fantastic thread. You have skills.
This could turn out to be a very long thread if I tell the whole story. It will have lots of pics but first a little about why here.
We found this land by accident while looking for years for a remote location with an old hunting camp. Ideally with no nearby neighbors. Happened across it on the way to somewhere else. We were not thinking about a lot of land, just a camp with some space. This turned out to be 100 acres and it was surrounded by National Forest on three sides. The existing "lane" only went part way. There was a big clearing where the lane stopped and a little shack of a cabin down in the bottom of the high mountain valley. It was February and the snow was deep so that's all we saw that day.
Called the owner who was in his mid-eighties, and he filled us in on the details. The land had been in his family for at least four generations. It had old gas wells still producing and a spring up above the old cabin. No electric but the lights, heat and old refrigerators ran on natural gas. The old map on the wall of the attorney's office was dated 1840 and his family name was on that plot on the map. A 90 year old farmer told me that cabin was the original homestead making it at least 160 years old at the time.
We could not afford to buy 100 acres and keep our house, but I recognized the potential. Long story short on this part was we listed the house and put a down payment with the owner. He had no realtor. That happened just before the housing crash and luckily we got our house sold to the only people to look at it after two years.
We moved into that old cabin. Rough does not begin to describe it. When the wind blew the curtains waved. The old frig was a carbon monoxide worry but that was not an issue as we were plenty ventilated. No insulation meant some mighty cold nights when temps dropped to minus 20's. The ceiling was loaded with beetles that came out with the warmer temps. Gravity delivered the water from the spring, and we ran it constantly through the winters to keep it from freezing. There is an add on section to the cabin that had a shower stall, commode and hot water tank. You have to go out the front door to go in the "bathroom". The wife was thrilled.
We both worked for the same company traveling the whole country. It was in the auto industry. With the near collapse of the whole country, we both lost our jobs as the company went broke. At least it was cheap living here. No income slowed the overall plan way down.
