Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Aldeer General Forum New Addition to the Cabin Build...

I'm finally retiring at the end of March and Mrs. Irish and I have been wanting to build an addition to the cabin ever since we built it. We planned for it from the beginning, and now we are going to have the time to do it ourselves.

Starting this week, I'm cutting my hours down to just 3 days a week and only working Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to burn up my vacation days before retiring the first week of April. I've been apprehensive about it for sometime, but now I'm starting to get excited about it.

I'm the kind of person that is not going to just sit around. I'm a project manager at work, so I need stuff to do and keep busy, and to that end I made a quick sketch to lay out the new addition to the cabin. It will be my first big retirement project. Thank goodness Mrs. Irish got a lot of experience building the cabin with me.

With the addition we will get a new master bedroom, master bath, living room with a morning kitchen and bar area, large shared closet, and an area for either a laundry room or a make-up room for her. Plus a lot of extra outdoor deck space to enjoy the view and the outdoors.

Sweet

That’s cool. I still remember how beautiful it was up there when I came and got that trailer from you years ago. Yall really hit a home run up there

Thanks man... It's a pain living on an old dirt, Forest Service road, but there are thinks like the quiet, the stars at night, and the view that makes up for it. Plus we are blessed with some great friends up here.

Looking forward to the build thread!

I can't wait to see the build thread and the finished product.

You will work harder retired than you ever have for the man. Looks great and I'm sure you will have fun.

That looks great! How many sf you adding?

I’m gonna guess about 600 if that’s to scale

Can't wait to see the pictures.

When you get finished with that, come on down here and build me a cabin on my hunting land.
The site is ready and the I’ve sketched out the plans.
It’s only 1,000 square feet. 😁

Sweet but man that’s not an addition.., that’s a re-build and it’ll be nice.

I think I see a bump out for a wood burning stove. Not sure if the chimney will exit over a short roof and then extend the full height exposed to outdoor temperature? I don't have a lot of experience with them, but I've read chimney's have trouble drawing when lighting when the main length is cold/outdoor temp relative to inside. I think I remember reading that if the chimney is indoor temperature they want to draw better when lighting. (warmer air in the chimney wanting to rise vs outside as opposed to a long stack of cold air wanting to sink into the house).

You already have experience so you probably know better than me and have it worked out anyway. Regardless very cool plan and I'm sure will be very nice when done!

Congrats on the retirement!

Sweet

Yep...

That's going to be a single sloping roof at a 3 to 12 bevel with the high side on the view side of the cabin, just like the existing cabin, and I'm thinking of building a loft over the new master bedroom similar to the existing bedrooms upstairs. That would give us an extra 120 s.f. over the master bedroom if I do that, but we haven't decided yet.

We built the original cabin fully furnished for $65k and I'm hoping by doing the majority of the work ourselves like last time we can get the addition built for under $100k, but times are different now so we will see. That would be about $175 a s.f.

If I do all that the finished cabin with the addition would be about 1884 s.f. when we are all done. Not including about 880 s.f. of total deck space to enjoy the forest and the view.

That's exactly what mine does now. It's triple insulated, but it still will get a back draft when I try to start a fire on a cold morning if I didn't have a fire in it when we went to bed and it can be a booger.

What I do now is if I know it's going to be cold in the morning and I I'm not going to sleep with a fire in the fire box, I will open the dampers all the way and put a large candle in the wood stove, light it and close the door. The candle puts off enough heat to keep the chimney drafting all night.

Now whenever Mrs. Irish goes to garage sales she picks up old candles for cheap just for that purpose.

I want the flue to be on the outside, like the one we currently have, because on this one the mantle will be lower and I'm going to put the biggest damn flat screen I can afford up there. The way the cabin currently is there is no provision for a TV and that was a mistake by me, thinking... "we weren't going to have any electronics in our weekend get away cabin."

That lasted about 3 weekends...

Thanks for the retirement well wishes... Without our company I don't think it would have been possible. It's the best place I have ever worked and I honestly hate to leave. Great people and a great environment. I'm really going to miss it and the folks I get to work with. Mrs. Irish has been retired since the end of February 2023 so she has been asking me "When are you retiring?" for almost a year now...

I hope so on both accounts. I have a list I have been building in my head of all the projects and hobbies I'm going to do.

Hunting
Fishing
Canoeing
Hiking
Golf
Working on my old project truck
Working on my old project motorcycle
Weightlifting and Cardio
Woodworking
Forging
Travelling (Long slow trips)
And chasing Mrs. Irish around the house nekkid...

awesome man, enjoy every ounce of it.

Man this is great. I’ve always been a DIY guy myself, started building houses when I was 16. My family has always been carpenters/home builders. Being an attorney, it’s hard for me to get much done on my own without all of my friends constantly saying “why don’t you just hire someone to do that?!” They don’t understand that undertaking projects like this is my therapy and I guess not everyone appreciates the satisfaction received from doing something with your own two hands.

I have a friend building a new house right now, $185.00 per sq’ it’s being built by one of our fishing buddies who is a home builder.

My barndominium is 2,688 sq’ and to be honest I didn’t really want to stroke a check for $497,280.

Never heard of that and I’ve built many true working masonry chimneys over the years. Not the prefab kits you see today. It’s is extremely hard to build one that doesn’t draw correct. Height above roof lines I believe has more bearing than anything. I’m not saying what you are saying is incorrect. Because I’m sure an engineer somewhere said. But remember most all disasters go back bad engineering somewhere