My Oasis: more small living

I have lived in Saskatoon since I was ten years old.  While we always had enough food on the table and a roof over our heads, there was never enough money for vacations and outside of a yearly day trip to Waskesiu in Prince Albert National Park, we never vacationed. Instead there was a small second hand book store that would sell a 2 cubic foot box full of books for $1 and a couple of times a summer I would go over with my mom and get one. While that made the summers bearable, it wasn’t a vacation.

My mom had a dream of owning a Boler trailer. I am not sure how the four of us would have fit inside one but it never happened. Later in life, I became a bi-vocational pastor in Spiritwood, Saskatchewan while living in Saskatoon. I drove for two hours back and forth from Spiritwood each weekend and made several other trips up and back each month. On top of that,  I had a full time job in Saskatoon, our first child and Wendy who worked opposite hours from me all of the time. I spent a lot of time wanting to get away as a family and not knowing how to do it.

A couple of years ago I found myself working as the Residential Coordinator of the Salvation Army Community Services in Saskatoon. The Salvation Army has been great to work for but the job involves being on 24/7 call and can be stressful. I was at a point in my life when I could start looking around for property on the off-chance we could find a place to get away to.  I saw this cabin by the founders of Hive Modular made out of two shipping containers in Minnesota and was inspired to go looking for a place of my own.

My brother and I started to look around. We found a garden shed sized cabin at Waskesiu for $400,000.  I doubt it was 250 square feet. We found some land by Mout Nebo for $100,000.  I wasn't sure if I could afford the taxes, plus I wasn't sure if it was a lake rather than a glorified slough.  I had kind of given up on the idea until one day a friend who is the Executive Director at a camp and conference center emailed and said he had what he called a rustic cabin really cheap.  I bought it on the spot.  Then I asked him to send me some pictures.  I realized that I hadn’t told Wendy about it yet and so I called her on Skype and said, “Guess what? I bought a cabin and no I don’t know what it looks like yet”.  There was silence on the other end of the call.  Then she said, “I would appreciate it if you would not purchase property without letting me know you were thinking about it.”  Some friends at the same lake owned this cottage and I said, if it’s the same size or bigger than Dennis and Wilda’s cabin, we can make this work. 

Wendy didn’t sound convinced but I was on a roll.

We had some friends out there and they checked the place out for rot and structural issues and later that day I got the photos.  The cabin was 14x18 feet with a a 8x12 add on that was divided into a master bedroom and a storage closet.   348 square feet.  2 adults.  2 kids.  1.5 dogs.  That Boler was looking spacious.  The first time I showed Mark the cabin, he wept (to his credit, he thought we were moving out to it).

I have always loved microarchitecture and here was our chance to see if it would work for a family and a dog that is like a bull in a china shop. Three years and some renovations later, it’s been an adjustment.  We took out a wall and two 7x7 rooms in favour of a big common room, we painted, we tossed out most of the old appliances and made do with a convection toaster oven and microwave.  We added on a $100 gazebo that gave us an additional 100 square feet of space and a quiet space to drink coffee in the evening. 

Our fire pit was the inside of a washer machine surrounded by stones that we pulled out of the lake. Our washroom/showers are a half-block away in one of three different locations that are shared by a bunch of camera owners and campers.  It’s not great at 2:00 a.m. but it works.

The great part of living in a small space is the cost. The appraised value of our cabin is $6000 and $4000 of that is the land. The bad part is that we have around 1/3 the room as our house (891 sq. feet over 1 1/2 stories). It is not a quiet weekend getaway  as our boys at ten and two years of age, have yet to embrace the contemplative lifestyle. 

Along the way we put together a weblog to track progress of the renovations and the changes to the cabin. We discovered a community of people who were seeing how they could live or at least get away with less. Not only that but there are architects who are designing smaller and more cost effective places all over North America.

Finding them has been a lot of fun and while it won't replace Our Daily (evil) Bird, I'll take some time to post some fun examples of micro architecture over the next couple of months.  Hopefully you can find some inspiration for your own oasis.

Comments

[René]

Really good to hear how the Cooper cabin got its start. Thanks, Jordon.