Dixie Salvage is a pretty cool place. You never know what you will find since their stock is always changing.

I finally got around to putting together a spreadsheet last night. I had to pull my credit card statements from the last 2 years, cut and paste all the data into the spreadsheet, then sort and organize and then add stuff that I paid for with other resources and also add all the labor that I have outsourced. Then I cleaned up the whole thing and totaled it up.

The grand total so far $36,920.18

That cost includes most all the flooring that I purchased last week and the interior doors. The only major expense I need to still pay for is the septic system, so we will probably be a little over $40,000 when we finish. $35,000 was my initial goal, and I almost did it, but the more it became apparent that it was not going to be just a vacation cabin, but our eventual retirement home, then things started to escalate. For instance we are going to have about $2500 in just the shower up stairs now.

Still even at $40k, if you include the lofts as living space I have about 1100 square feet, and that works out to the fact that I have built a pretty nice house for about $36 - $37 a square foot. I attribute that to: An efficient design, I made use of inexpensive labor when it was available, a lot of free stuff from friends, found a lot of good deals on other stuff, and I think not being in a hurry allowed me the time to find good deals, on materials and labor, and not have to finance anything.

Amazing. Great job.

Man!! It looks great and what a freaking view!! Yall are doing a great job!!!!

If you do I hope you will let us know what groceries to bring and you can cook one of your awesome meals for us.

Cabin looks awesome, you should be proud of your efforts.

That's a helluva nice place for 40K! Great job man.

It'd be 160k from where your at

Sadly, that might be low.

I realized I haven't posted any updates to the place lately. Things have been coming together pretty quick. We'll be ready to put down flooring very soon. My brother is setting the interior doors this week and I will be doing more interior trim work this weekend. Mrs. Irish will be painting the bathrooms and closets, and my brother will start building the upstairs tile shower soon. I should have permanent electrical service hooked up as I type this. Still trying to get all the felled trees out of the way so we can get the septic tank people in here to set the tank the the field lines.

We found a nice gas range on sale at Lowes and bought it and a refrigerator, (They are going to delay delivery until September 29th.) so all the appliances except the stacked washing machine and dryer are purchased. All the flooring and doors are purchased and waiting install.

We are up to about $43,415 spent so far.

Here's the "Burrito Rojo" loaded up with flooring and doors. I hope it makes it up the mountain!



Nice looking doors stacked upstairs and part of my chimney waiting to be installed when I rent a bucket lift...



Bathroom wallboard...



Closet for stacked washing machine...

Now all the closets are getting primed by Mrs. Irish and I have started the trim work around the top where the exposed ceiling meets the walls. Keep in mind all of this wood is milled on a portable lumber mill, so most of it I am ripping and cutting as I go. Basically making the trim as I work. You can see some of what I'm doing at the top of the picture. There's the pantry on the left, then the half bath, then the closet for the washing machine and dryer and then the space under the stairs for the refrigerator.



You can see the kitchen starting to take shape. The butcher block counters are flipped upside down waiting to be installed. All the wallboard is up. The vent is installed and vented to the outside and the lights are in. The camp stove is temporary... All of the area that you see in wallboard will get subway tile and then there will be butcher block shelves that match the counter tops hanging from the rafters with galvanized pipe. (If that makes sense.) There will be a bar counter top in the foreground and two pendant lights hanging from those boxes.



Looking back the other way you can see the dining room with more doors and flooring waiting to be installed and you can see more of my amateur trim work up at the top and in the corner.



What it looks like from the road with all the trees cut down. I hated to cut all those down, but I had to have a septic tank, and while they were cutting those down I had them remove some other tall pines that made me nervous every time the wind blew hard. We have a lot of clean up to do... I still haven't covered my grilling deck yet, but that will come after I finish the inside. Hopefully those Leland Cypress will take off like I'm hoping and shield us from the road soon enough.

I think the moderators need to close this thread. This has been carrying on for almost a year and half. I personally have been following the devolpments. Irish should be ashamed of what he has done to us. There is no way one person should shell out this much cabin envy on us! His actions are deplorable. He needs to be held accountable for his actions. I vote we give him 60 more days to finish this up, that way he can have everything in order for the open house sometime around Thanksgiving. Who is with me?

In all seriousness, great job! I hope one day I can do something like this. You have given me a lot of great ideas. I know you will get years of enjoyment from that place!

Looks Good.
I have a tight area at my house for the washer and dryer stacked frontloads and it is a huge pain in the rump to get them hooked up.
We have to go over the top to get to it. Hopefully you will have enough room in that closet.

i like those doors alot

Thanks.

We certainly hope too get a lot of use out of it. I know that up until my brother started helping us we were getting seriously burned out spending every weekend up there working with very little progress (In our eyes) being made. Still every little thing is a victory and one small step to getting it finished.

I agree, and I certainly hope it works out. It was all the space I could carve out of the little area. Had I had more time to figure stuff out, I probably would have changed up quite a few things about the floor plans, however at the time I only had a small window of opportunity to get the framing done while the framers were out of work. At the time, I only had a weekend to finish up the plans.

Thanks. We looked at a lot of doors and decided we wanted real wood, and we got a good deal on these from Dixie Salvage.

Dang irish that looks great.

Lookin good..what is that under the center window on outside?

Thanks man.

That's a window A/C unit with a thermostat. We also have 2 very small ones mounted in the wall in the lofts above the second story bedrooms too. With the theory being that the upstairs and each bedroom would be cooled by the two smaller units and depending on if that other bedroom was occupied you could choose which A/C units you ran. What we have discovered is that just the two smaller units keep the whole cabin cool on the hottest days. We set the thermostat on the lower to 68 degrees and it will rarely if ever even kick on.

Last months power bill was $50 and that with my brother being up there full time, using power tools and running the A/C units 24 hours a day. So, fingers crossed, it's going to be a pretty efficient place.