A Hermitage in the Woods

My son Mark has an independent streak and he likes his own space.  When my two year old was born, Mark offered to move out and in with his uncle if we needed some more space.  While he loves spending time with us, he dreams of having his own pad.  A couple of years ago I was surfing the web with him and he saw this hermitage and he fell in love.  He even offered to share the space with his younger brother.

This hermitage is a tiny retreat in a 64 sq ft footprint.  It has a twin bed, a desk area, a storage closet, a basic kitchen area and 32 sq ft of covered deck space.While I love the concept, something looked wrong to me.  It was the roof, I realized I would slope the roof towards the back of the cabin rather than the front.  Luckily the plans are simple enough that it wouldn't be a big job to change things around.   For only $17.00 you can purchase an ebook that not only includes the blueprints but also shows you how to construct your own little hermitage.

While not as refined at the famous Hermit's Cabin by Arvesund Living AB, it did let me know that a project like this is within reach and pretty affordable.  Once insulated, the body heat from two boys, a dog, and a small space heater should be enough to keep it comfortable in anything but the most severe Saskatchewan winter night.

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.

Small Living

The Boston Globe covers a class from Green Mountain College that built a 8x12 cabin for under $2000 using all reclaimed materials.

According to the Globe:

Students settled on a rectangular building with one low corner to create a curved roof that rainwater can pour off of and be collected. A sloped back wall helped make the home feel more spacious and a loft, furnishings and lighting fixtures were also designed and constructed by students. Sheep wool was even added for insulation into the window casing. Construction took two months.

Can you really live in 96 square feet? Well, according to this house tour on Apartment Therapy, a family of four and their dog do quite well in this 180 square foot cabin situated in British Columbia's Gulf Islands.

Like a lot of small projects, economics played a big role:

We started off with grand plans. We thought we'd take out a small loan and pay a local company to design and prefab a bigger cabin right away. We even went so far as to have the plans fully engineered (we still have them; they're awesome). The entire thing cost us about $3,000. But then the economy started to deflate and we realized we didn't want to have a loan hanging over our heads. That's when we decided to start over with a new, more modest plan and DIY the whole thing, with the help of our aforementioned awesome friend Stefan.

Initially, we made the deck way too small. It was only 4 by 10, and it made the cabin feel claustrophobic. We realized that we needed to expand the outdoor space so that we could just throw the doors open and have one large 10 by 22 foot area.

Here is what they learned:

Even out in nature, kids need toys. Don't get me wrong. Our boys are happy to do their fair share of digging, playing with sticks, pestering insects, throwing rocks and whathaveyou. But after a while they want to kick back and chill out with a pile of Legos. We've built up a discreet stash of toys for these occasions. We've also realized that even kids need their own space, which is why our next project is a sweet little playhouse in the trees.

The purging is neverending. Things creep over to the cabin from our home in the city, and every so often we have to do an audit of what gets to stay. (In fact, John wanted me to point out that the Ikea Bekvam stool you can see in the top photo has been brought back to the city. That's how ruthless we are. Even poor little stepstools can get cut.)

Into 2011: Making stuff and small.

This year's theme came to me as I watched Mr. Rogers videos with Tiny Niece. We were both fascinated watching people make stuff, soothed into relaxation by quiet narration and gentle piano music. There go some painted red wagons, some fortune cookies, canvas sneakers, and bright yellow crayons. As I watched all this industry , I realized that the factories in these videos probably don't exist anymore, everyone laid off and all the cookie dough and crayon wax shipped overseas in search of a bigger profit margin.

It's easy to wax nostalgic about manufacturing gone by and forget pollution, bad labor practices, and Red Dye No. 2. But in the middle of it all, there is the making of things, the creating of something with hands and the help of machines that contribute in their own small way to someone's daily life. As Frank Sobotka said on The Wire, in the least Mr. Rogers way possible: "You know what the trouble is, Brucey? We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket."

So I think this year at the Hedge we will continue, in our own small way, to talk about making stuff - soups and calendars and music and communities and books and a life. If it was good enough for Mr. Rogers, it's more than a good path for us. We hope you join us.