One of my twelve readers was inquiring about land, ostensibly for planning purposes. He is thinking of building a retirement cabin and was beginning the dream phase. To assist him in this, I have attached an article written near the beginning of the actual ‘doing it’ phase.
How to Build a Cabin With No Money, Skill, Materials or Friends.
I just spent a week mangling my hands and feet in an amateur’s attempt at building the concrete pilings for a shore-side pier. We planned on building 12 such pilings. We built five. We did not have time to frame the spontaneously re-designed pier nor deck it but it didn’t matter, on the last day neither my wife nor I could stand up or walk anyway.
Another half ton of Ibuprofen and a few extra days in massage therapy and I’m sure we’ll be fine.
The marriage counselor thinks so, anyway.
We undertook this task with little hesitation, no fears and few, if any,
real concerns. What the hell?! It was only concrete. I see it every day. I
even walk all over the stuff. How can one go wrong?
real concerns. What the hell?! It was only concrete. I see it every day. I
even walk all over the stuff. How can one go wrong?
We also had no idea of the evil forces involved in this exercise nor were we burdened by any awareness of the material’s inherently cruel character. Concrete is the original ‘dead weight’ from which all other dead weights are measured. Dry or wet, concrete lays heavy and lifeless but somehow lurking and dangerous nevertheless.
I am now suspicious of concrete. Surprisingly, it has the audacity to be temperamental. Do it wrong and you have literally built a monument to your ineptitude. Be forewarned; it is sneaky stuff! It will turn on you. Concrete is the builder’s version of the watched kettle, it never hardens when you are ready or want it to. But turn your back and you have a just made a perfect wheelbarrow-shaped boulder.
Mixing concrete in a wheelbarrow isn’t half the experience, by the way, unless you do it perched on moss-covered rocks at a 35 degree angle. See for yourself the magic of gravity, the phenomena of slow motion, the pointlessness of crying over spilt cement. Once again appreciate the isolation and distance from the building supply store. Yippee.
Conclusion: all cabins, regardless of appearance or construction integrity are worth ever increasing amounts of money the further they are located from the building supply store. Once you are more than twenty miles by water from the store, the most humble cabin is worth more than any suburban mansion. I consider my half-built pier priceless.
I am not unrealistic in this – my evaluation is based on labour costs with an additional percentage for danger pay. We packed our many dusty and Marquis de Sade-packed cement bags on a twelve-foot inflatable boat and then ferried the tonnage across the water. Then we clambered up the slime-covered rocks like Michael Jackson moon-walking on LSD and fell down in a sweat and cement covered heap. It’s a good thing cement doesn’t harden in salty perspiration or else Sally and I would have accidentally self-interred ourselves.
And someone better explain to me the logic of putting cement in paper bags! Those marketing geniuses also managed to design in mid-bag vulnerability and supine-bag invincibility. The bag can easily split on your round pudgy shoulder but can resist repeated blows with a sharp shovel once it is in the confines of the wheelbarrow. How do they do that? Does Al-Queda have this technology?
Still, we managed. The pilings aren’t straight. No piling is equidistant from another. The whole schmozzle looks like a Greek ruin, actually, but it stands and it stands solidly. Like an old-time sailor on a worn wooden leg, the structure leans but looks like it will remain on the planet for a longer period of time than I will. This is especially likely if I continue to hurt myself in the style to which I have rapidly become accustomed.
Tragically, self-mutilation may be the inadvertent answer to my getting the cabin finished. Another few mashed appendages, a crushed vertebrae or two or another few hormonally based encounters with my increasingly muscular wife and I may qualify for a disability pension or a handicap grant. I can’t believe there isn’t a group out there somewhere called Cabin Vets or Construction Amps or something. In that government subsidized way, I may be able to finish the cabin and, despite the pain, enjoy myself. Maybe even participate in a rehabilitative therapy group already in progress?
Has anyone else noticed that most cabins are enjoyed and more fondly remembered by the second generation rather than the ones who built them?
Our Off the Grid Home 
A fellow traveler told me the tale of the family vacation spent putting up a prefab cabin kit. Now this is a family that works until the wee hours of the evening and does not stop until they can not go any longer. At one point in this working vacation some of them went on strike. I know your concrete story from experience.
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From Susan in Dundarave – My husband (a Planner, by the way) built a house by himself on his land in Oregon, using hand milled timbers from trees he cut down himself. Your experience with concrete sounds even more brutal than some of his experiences, even though he did learn the hard way that you can't build with green timber…My grandfather the carpenter loved concrete and loved working with it. I often wish he was with us, only partly because he could build or fix anything with his own handmade tools.
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