The Campfire Trail: September 5 - DIY Homestead - Starting With Nothing (Part 2)

September 5, 2022

Day 339 of the Adventure

Cross Timbers Cabin 1 (after renovation)

I began a series yesterday about "Starting with Nothing". It chronicles our early experience with getting our first cabin when we had almost nothing to start with. We are now in the process of building a Homestead from scratch beginning with a raw piece of land. This is a new experience for us but one we are tackling with the same approach we did when we bought our first cabin. This time, it includes things like a tight budget and unaffordable building materials. So, nothing is happening as quickly as we would like. But that's okay. It's actually a good example of the same things that happen when starting from scratch with nothing.

There are so many productive things you can be doing prior to finding and buying your dream property. One of the most beneficial things we had done was accumulate supplies ahead of time. Some call it "Hoarding", but I knew better. My wife and I had always planned on building a house or cabin off in the woods somewhere. Before we were actually ready for that move, I began stockpiling materials and tools for when the time came. Later on, when we did purchase our first cabin (it was actually a property with four cabins on it) much of the materials and almost all of the tools were already in my possession. So even though we were starting with virtually nothing, we had accumulated quite a lot that had not been useful until the time came when we started our first cabin renovation.

The cabin I'll be referring to in this posting ended up getting called "Cross Timbers Cabin 1". It was one of three small 16'x20' cabins that came with our first cabin purchase. As I mentioned in yesterday's posting, they were in such bad shape that the purchase was not only a bargain, but the financing process was very easy due mostly to that low price. Make no mistake, bargains usually happen a property is extremely distressed. In this case the distress was due to condition. Sometimes it's due to financial issues by the seller. In our case, the cabins on the property were simply un-inhabitable. What made them workable for us is our willingness to take something completely broken down and rebuild it.

A willingness to build or repair something is important when approaching a project with nothing to start with. Part of the reason we use the title DIY Homestead. If your skills to do this do not exist yet, then a good step is to start accumulating skills along with tools and materials. This project would not have been possible for us in another respect as well. With the cabins being in as bad of shape as they were, we had no place to live while renovating them. We had an older camper that made the perfect camp-out home for us while doing the work. Again, something that was obtained long before we needed it on our cabin project.

I guess if there's a theme to this posting, it's "Get Start before you Start". Meaning, even if you have not begun the search for a Homestead, Off-Grid or Cabin in the Woods property yet, you can still start the process of preparing for it in many, many ways. In the picture to the right of the Cabin 1 kitchen area, the TV and the drywall were the only items bought new. Everything else including the lights, sink, faucet, cabinets, counter-top tile, wall heater and furniture were all either stored up ahead of time or cleaned up and repurposed from the cabins themselves.

When faced with "Starting with Nothing", it's almost a certainty that you can accumulate bargains and skills ahead of time. (More Tomorrow)

Carry On

Adventure Quote: “Opportunity does not waste time with those who are unprepared.”

― Idowu Koyenikan

Base Camp Coffee of the Day: Lost on the Trail (Guatemala)

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