I follow a lot of YouTube channels, covering a wide variety of topics. One of my all-time favorite channels is My Self Reliance. As the channel states:
Shawn James is an avid outdoorsman building a self reliant lifestyle from a log cabin he built in the Canadian wilderness. Join him and his dog, Cali and listen to the sounds of the forest while he works and cooks in the tranquility of this wilderness setting.
Here’s a time-lapse video showing the initial stages of Shawn’s project:
Channel link: (448) My Self Reliance – YouTube
My thing with homesteading
One of my dearest pastimes is homesteading. Wifey and I bought a run-down little house high on a treacherous hill in Brown County Indiana in 2012. Besides the original 2-bedroom, 1-bath house, it had two partially-completed rooms (a 24×24′ great room with a 12×12′ anteroom) which were only “dried-in” — they had a roof, windows and doors, with Tyvek sheeting on the exterior walls, nothing else. They had no wiring, no lighting, no insulation, no heat source, and only the sub-floor to walk upon.
The old part of the house was intact, but in sad repair. Sparing you the more excruciating details, suffice to say there is not a single square-inch of the house interior where I haven’t laid my hands since moving day. Every wall and ceiling has been cleaned and painted, every floor completely redone with either carpet, wood flooring, or ceramic tile. I’ve totally remodeled both kitchen and bath, using good used cabinets I acquired on Craigslist. Out of deference to my dear wife, I will post no pictures of our humble abode from those early days, as she doesn’t like to be reminded of how sad the place was.
Before we could even move in, I had to spend several days building a deck and walkway leading down the hill. The deck spanned 12′ across a 3′ chasm to the front door. There were no soffits, so birds could fly up under the eaves, land on the top of one wall, and fly across the room to the other side, and from there exit the house. We used those rooms as a warehouse for belongings and building materials as we began the slow process of making a silk purse of the sow’s ear we had purchased.
We bought the place for several reasons, one of which was the fantastic deal we were able to work out with the owner. Now, all my life I’ve fantasized about building my little Thoreauvian cabin in the woods, but being a married man who’s collected a lot of guitars, with a wife who’s collected a lot of clothes, a simple 1 or 2-room shanty wasn’t going to cut it, so this place was probably as close as I was ever to get to that dream. So also on my priority list was to acquire a place where I could invest some sweat equity, using some new and a lot of repurposed materials to make the house our home, on our terms.
For instance, I found a great deal on discounted used panel insulation, salvaged perfectly good rough-sawn cedar for the great room’s walls, and solid ¾” oak flooring that once graced the old Brown County Bowling Alley back in the day. I bartered web design for electrical work with a musician buddy who’s also a licensed electrician.
We sided the unfinished rooms with native Indiana poplar I bought from another friend and had rough-sawn into 1″ planks, the video of which is, to date, my 2nd-most popular video on YouTube:.
I’ve lots of finish work left to do, plus adding on to the massive deck we built on the north side. I expect to never run out of homesteading projects, and only regret that I’ll never live long enough to get anywhere near finishing my work. But I guess that’s just part of the charm.
So my respect and affection for self-sufficiency, for acquiring the skills for carving out what you need in this world as frugally as possible, with more emphasis on hard work than high finance, has always been a central theme in life for me. I firmly believe that building your own home is more than just an architectural exercise… it’s a process to strengthen one’s character and soul, as well. Plus, it’s darn good exercise.
This would explain why I derive such pleasure from watching a quiet, hardworking and creative outdoorsman taking on the challenge of making his woodland home by hand, the old-fashioned way. Shawn James’ skill with hand tools and ability to fearlessly improvise with natural building materials is an inspiration to me to keep plugging away at improving our modest home here in Brown County. It might not be “from scratch”, but hey, I’m scratching an itch I’ve had ever since I read Walden as a lad.
