Southern VA lot - What to do

[Hay Dude]

I worked for a farmer in the 80’s that had settled in my area in the 60’s. He started off building a “shop” that was basically a 1 or 2 room building they lived in. Once they saved enough they built a house. The original “shop” became his repair, welding garage. Worked out very well for them.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

My wife & I built our "cabin" 10 years ago while we were in our early 60s. It is 24x36x10 with a 4/12 pitch roof and a shallower pitch over the porch. It looks just like your photo without the garage doors. It is an open plan in that it has no interior walls except for the bathroom, so maybe more appropriate to call it a studio apartment. Full kitchen and full bath. We lived in a camper for a year while we built it. With us doing the work we have it very well insulated. 2x6 walls with spray foam and 3/4" foam sheet on exterior with an air gap then the siding over that (google for rain screen). We installed an 18k BTU air conditioner which was much smaller than the HVAC companies wanted to install. My calculations indicated a 12k to 15k unit would be sufficient, but I was concerned about going to small. We insulated it better than required and it shows in our reduced electric bill.
My point on this is that these are not that hard to build and you will get a better built building than from someone else.

Think about future expansion and provide for electrical, water, & sewer stubs for future buildings. I have a half bath in the barn along with a washing machine for clothes that my wife doesn't want in her machine. Also a yard light that can be switched from any building.

That’s current plan.
Did you build on a slab? Post frame?
I’ve been looking at sturdiwall brackets for the posts.
Did you use posts or frame it?
Sheathing on walls/ roof?
What did you use for ceiling and walls? Drywall?
Even if I post frame, I still might sheath the roof.

I’m going to price all material soon. Course it changes quickly.

If I frame it I’ll probably go 40 ft long, just 6 more sheets of metal. Same number of posts at 8 ft oc.

 

[3Ts]

We built our cabin with the intention of just my wife & I working on it. It was visible from the main road and ended up being the subject of discussion for the locals - essentially, we were the entertainment for a while, which got us introduced the neighborhood.

We built our cabin on a poured slab that we contracted out. We did a standard 2x6 stud framing and trusses for the roof. We used 1/2" plywood sheathing on the outside walls and covered with Tyvek, then moved to the roof, used 5/8" plywood on the roof sheathing. The tar paper kept tearing off due to the wind so we removed the tar paper and went with ice & water shield over the whole roof and then shingled it. Then back to the walls with 3/4" polyiso foam sheet over the Tyvek with metalic tape over the joints. Then 3/8" lath over the foam where the wall studs were located and Hardie planks over that.

For the interior we have a flat ceiling and went with drywall thruout. We did spray foam in the walls which requires specialized equipment so we hired that out. I've done attempted drywall before so we hired that out also.

We added what appears to be a chimney on one end of the cabin. There is no fireplace, it serves as an electrical conduit and HVAC chase. I have conduit running out to the barn, and a house (we recently built) and a spare for future use.

We did have help from the neighbors for a few things like setting a 36' long beam and installing the 5x6 picture windows. Turns out being the entertainment got us some help when we needed it.

I'll try to look up some pictures tomorrow and post them.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

3Ts, thanks for the description.
How did you seal the bottom of the exterior foam between the sheathing and the hardie?

I’m now a fan of synthetic felt, but Ice underpayment is good. I’ll go metal roof.

 

[3Ts]

Here's a couple of pics.

As for sealing the air gap at the bottom, I used 1/8" mesh galvanized hardware cloth. I cut strips about 3" wide and long enough to fit snugly between the 3/8" spacer strips. I bent them into a J shape and used long roofing nails to hold them in place. The Hardie plank compresses against them to complete the seal. I did not try to seal the foam. In retrospect, next time I would put the hardware cloth up, then put the foam and spacers up and bend the hardware cloth over the combination.

The first picture is what the inside looked like when we moved into it. We still had the trim around the windows and baseboards to do and something for a floor covering. The second shows us setting the trusses. They are 24' clear span and the heaviest weighed about 170#. Normally, one would start with the truss upside down and put one end on the top plate then the other end on the opposite wall, then rotate it upright. It was to heavy and the wall to tall for us to do that. Also note: That tractor is rated for 3000# at the pins, but with that 20' extension, 200# is about all I'd attempt to lift with it. If you do this, be sure to go very very slowly. A one inch movement at the pins is about 20" out at the end of the boom.

Note: The mini-split does a good job of cooling the whole thing. The cabin is 36' long (35' inside dimension)

We were comfortable enough with it at this point we stopped working on it and went to other projects that were higher priority. A few years later we, took out the cabinets and replaced them with better quality ones and added upper cabinets. We hired a company to put in an epoxy floor, and all the trim work is now done.

The important thing is to have a plan and identify everything you want on it. There is an electrical outlet to the upper right of the window near the wall corner. That was put there for lighting both under cabinet and above cabinet when we finally got all the cabinets in. You can add things easily if the basics are already there for them. (i.e. There is another outlet up high behind me that is for above cabinets that may get installed in a few more years.)

This cabin was originally designed to do two things. 1st a place to live that wasn't in a camper while we figured out a house plan and found a builder for our permanent house and 2nd this would then become my wife's studio/she shed or a place for her to work on her hobbies. So the design is different than if it was going to be our permanent house or if we had different plans for it. (Things such as size and placement of windows and interior walls.)

 

[buckeyefarmer]

This is how I set 30 ft trusses when I built my barn. 12 ft high walls.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Been watching post frame house builds on YouTube. Lots of good ideas. I am still designing. Definitely set on post frame at this point.

Did go and mowed the lot last week. Replaced camera batteries and swapped out SD card to get the HD pics.

Deer approved.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Did get the lot mowed again. Gorgeous day.
Met the neighbor behind me, nice guy.
I’m really thinking about putting cabin back in the notch, at top of this picture. It levels out up there for a bit. Need to clean out some trees and see what it looks like. Maybe I should get someone to come in with a dozer or excavator for a couple days and clear out some of the trees along the edge.