Introduction

Hello!  Welcome to my cabin construction blog!  My wife Tracey and I will be building a cozy 2 bedroom, 1 ½ bath cabin/cottage this summer near the Western Catskills town of Hobart (population: 436) in Upstate New York.  A couple of years ago, we purchased a 1.7 acre property on a lightly traveled “back road,” about two miles outside of town.  The property sits up off the road with a gentle slope all the way up to the back of the property which will provide a nice perch for the cabin, facing South, with nice mountain views to boot. 

“But Bob,” you might say, “Do you have the necessary skills to build a house?” 

“No, I don’t” I would respond, and that’s exactly why we’ve hired a highly respected professional builder in the area as the General Contractor.  We will, however, be investing a bit of sweat equity into the project, which will be discussed and illustrated in future posts.   

One other very exciting thing:  I, with helpful feedback and input from Tracey, designed every square inch of the cottage which has been an enormously, rewardingly creative process.  The thought of watching what we've designed on paper slowly taking shape in the coming months is an amazing feeling .  Drafting has been a secret passion of mine for a long, long time. The final plans for this cabin we’re about to build is the result of a long evolutionary combination of various aspects of plans I've been working on that contain everything we want inside of 1150 sq ft.  And since purchasing this property a couple of years ago, significant adaptations have of course been made to achieve the best possible design in regards to how the house will sit on the property. Hopefully, everything will come to life as we imagine it.  

Mostly, this blog will be a mixture of photos, descriptions of photos, with thoughts and observations occasionally mixed in.   I also intend to include some thought processes behind various aspects of decision making that go into designing and building – and there are thousands of them.  So, while the purpose of the blog will primarily be to keep anyone who’s interested in the project up to date on how things are progressing, I also hope it will provide useful information to anyone considering a similar endeavor -- in the years we’ve been preparing and planning for this (which has required a good deal of online research), architectural and construction blogs/forums have been extremely helpful to me.  However, any commentary or opinions I offer up in re: to decision making around building and design should not in any way be taken as professional advice.  

Well, thanks for taking the time to read my introductory post!  Building a cabin in the mountains has been a life-long dream and I look forward to sharing the process with you.  Building permit is in hand and weather is beginning to break -- stay tuned: things will be getting underway shortly!  

A couple of photos of our land, as yet untouched. 

View from the future site of the cabin (photo taken in late Autumn).

Several trucks have been on site, waiting to start cutting in the driveway.  The snow has kept them idle but it's looking like that's about to change shortly (photo taken a couple of weeks ago).