#647： What Happened When Two Friends Left Their Jobs to Build a Cabin Together
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Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, Brent and Brett talk about the idea of quitting their jobs as a reporter and copywriter to build a cabin together in the woods, and the challenges they faced in making it happen.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast it's a thought
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that's crossed many a desk jockey's mind man i'd love to get out of this office get out from under
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the fluorescent lighting get outside and do something with my hands like maybe build a cabin
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in the woods well my guest had these thoughts and unlike most they actually pulled the trigger on
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their long-standing daydream the names are brian schatz and patrick hutchinson in today's episode
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they share the experience they had as a result in which they wrote about in a recent article for
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outside magazine we begin our conversation with how the idea of quitting their respective jobs as a
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reporter and copywriter to build a cabin together in the cascades began as a joke between these two
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then burned out 30 something friends and how it slowly became a real it's still sketchy plan to
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make it happen brian and pat share the idyllic way they thought the project would go and when the
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reality of how much harder would be set in we discuss the unexpected challenges that arose how
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the tensions of constantly working together affected the relationship and how they kept an income
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coming in while on hiatus from full-time employment we get into how long the cabin which they originally
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thought would just take two months to build actually took to finish the extent to which they went over
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budget and how they finally felt when it was done and what they ultimately decided to do with the
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cabin in the end we enter conversation with what despite everything that went wrong brian and pat
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gained from the experience and what they plan to do next after the show's over check out our show
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notes at aom.is cabin build all right brian schatz pat hutchinson welcome to the show thanks for having
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us yeah thanks brett all right so for people who you know our podcast listeners who read the art of
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mailings and have been reading it for a long time they're probably familiar with your names because both
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of you well pat you're a regular contributor right now you've been doing stuff for us on the site
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since 2016 and we were introduced to you by brian who did some guests some articles for us back in 2010
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i was looking at this brian i think one of the things did for us was you did a primer on muay thai
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and your experience in thailand to learn muay thai and that was 2010 so we're coming up on 10 years
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that you did that wow such a long time ago that was fun it was fun well the reason i brought you
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on the show because i read an article on outside online about a crazy project that you guys did
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together because you guys are friends that i think a lot of guys have thought about you know when one
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of those it's one of those conversations you have when you're having drinks and you're like wouldn't
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it be cool if we built a cabin in the middle of nowhere and you guys had this conversation and you
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actually took action and decided to build a cabin in the woods let's talk about the background of it
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when did you guys start floating this idea of building your own cabin so i actually had to go
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back and look through old messages between brian and i and kind of thinking about you know where it
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all started and it had started when shortly after we had met brian and i were both trying to become
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sort of adventure journalists of some sort and i had an idea to build a cob house which is like a
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house made out of hay and mud and that brian would help me build it and with the ultimate goal of writing
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a story about it and then you know i think as the years went on it became more and more about just
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building some kind of small cabin and less and less about writing a story about it i think in part
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because the reason to build it became more and more about not writing anymore and did it start
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kind of off like was it sort of like a joke and then it eventually became like a real thing yeah it's
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funny to hear back now that it was originally a story idea because i had completely erased that from
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my memory for the longest time all i can remember is us kind of like sending each other ideas back and
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forth about different types of professions and the cabin idea is one that sort of stuck longer than
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the rest and it became you know just like increasingly this serious thing i remember
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at one point i was still kind of thinking of it as a joke and pat i think was starting to think of it
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in an increasingly real way and he was you know saying things like what if we just start a tiny home
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company and we'll build tiny homes and sell them and i thought well that's that sounds really cool
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but i have no idea how to do it no idea where we would do it where we would store these tiny homes
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or who we would sell them to and it just seemed like this ridiculous thing and then over time it
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became increasingly serious and morphed a few times until you know we landed on the idea of a cabin
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and what i love it too about you guys in the article about kind of how kind of self-aware you were
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of this because you talked about one of the things you were afraid of both of you when you decided
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yeah we're gonna we're actually gonna do this was that you were gonna look like those sort of
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insufferable millennials who are trying to live an authentic life and so they're gonna go out and
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build a cabin i mean how did you overcome that fear of how you'd look and just decided we're gonna go for
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it uh it's funny i think there's something incredibly cliche about what we did right like there
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there are many stories like these there's you know go on instagram and you see just a gazillion
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pictures of people out there building cabins and i think originally it was a little bit less about
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the being insufferable for me and more just you know what are my friends and family gonna think
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am i just throwing my future away to kind of chase this dream that you know frankly even at the time
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neither of us knew you know how it would work out or whether or not we would even really enjoy it we
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had this inkling so for me i think it was more a matter of like overcoming i don't know convincing
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say my parents and my friends that like you know i'm not totally throwing my life away and or maybe i
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am but i think it's going to be worth it and then later you know we were approached by outside to
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write about it and then it really kind of dawned on us that yeah like we're just a couple of
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millennials just chasing dreams you know but it just felt worth it we had been in careers for
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quite a long time that we eventually sort of came to i don't know if i don't think i'd go as far as
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resent but just we were ready for a change and it was it was worth it to go ahead and give it a try
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regardless of how it would look parents are obviously their concerns like what is my what are
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my kids doing they should be have a job with health insurance but also like do you guys have
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significant others in your life who you this was a decision that affected them as well
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yeah definitely we both have girlfriends and i think uh a lot of the pressure that we put on
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ourselves about you know what are people going to think about this is a terrible idea i think that
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was mostly sort of self-imposed and both of our girlfriends were remarkably supportive and actually
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so my father was a carpenter much of his life and became a home inspector and when he found out we
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were doing this he was i think he was probably a little bit wary but he also every night before
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he went to sleep he would think about things that we would need to know how to do and he kept sort of
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a journal of how to's and then he sent me that journal and it was you know things like how to make sure
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your foundation is square and plum and how to frame walls and and some of the different techniques to do
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so all around super supportive people you guys had this idea you start floating and you start
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in 2013 you guys do some kind of get some background experience pat you bought a cabin an already built
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cabin back in 2013 and both of you kind of worked on that to i don't know get your hands dirty with
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this idea right yeah and to call it an already built cabin is sort of i've kind of think of it as
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like uh if you know that story stone soup as a kid where it's just like a bunch of bandits come
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together and they're like oh we'll make some soup and you know we just need a stone and you know what
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really goes good with stone soup is a potato and they sort of like trick the townspeople into making
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a soup by just bringing all this mishmash ingredients in it's sort of how the cabin was it really felt like
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someone had you know just like found a couple pieces of wood on the highway brought them up on a
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weekend you know had a few beers and nailed them together so nothing matched nothing was square nothing was
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level and you know everything was about 30 percent completed so it was a great opportunity to sort of
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see like an x-ray of a poorly built cabin and then apply you know what was very little experience on top
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of that but it was a great learning experience for myself and for brian and for a bunch of friends
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you know who all you know didn't really have building experience and you know couldn't really test out
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their skills on you know an apartment that they were renting in the city so it was kind of a nice
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like bunny hill that we could sort of screw up on it it didn't matter and to pat's credit he you know
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he had just bought this thing and it is funny it's like it to say it's fully built was both accurate and
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very generous but pat basically let us just try things out and if we mess things up he didn't get mad at
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us there were no it truly was just kind of like i don't know let's see what happens here throw a wall
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up and if it works great and if it doesn't oh well did both of you have a construction experience before
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this uh i had a little bit my father's a contractor and now a home inspector and so i'd you know growing
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up i'd go out and do some jobs with him nothing too major did a few roofs and you know various gosh i
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don't even remember at the time maybe we framed some walls uh small stuff nothing major how about
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you yeah same same for me i think it was you know i built a lot of tree houses as a kid um but you
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know as an adult it was more like you know going home for for christmas and my mom you know needs
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something fixed and so i'd sort of you know try my hand and you know nailing a couple boards together
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or something like that but very little before before buying that cabin although i did watch a lot of
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this old house uh on pbs for a bunch of years and continue to that's fantastic okay so and with
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this house so you guys you guys kind of completed it i mean we put that quotation marks like what did
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you do with the the the cabin in 2013 after you you did what you want with it we just used it a lot
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i made a bunch of keys and then handed keys out to you know seven or eight really close friends that
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i've got up here and just sort of said you know like here's the here the directions you know where
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the cabin is you know how to take care of it and so i would say you know for the seven or eight years
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that i owned it people were up there using it probably you know every other weekend at least
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all right so you still ended up selling it eventually fast forward to 2018 this is when you
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guys finally decided all the talk you've been having this you know going back and forth with
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potential plans you guys decided you're going to build a cabin from scratch how did that i mean
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this did you guys have an idea of like what you wanted the cabin to look like when you started off
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or was one of those things like we're just going to get started and we're going to figure this out as
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we go i think we had a few different ideas that constantly changed i remember for a real long time
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we were sending each other pictures of a-frames and so at first it was like all right we're definitely
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going to build an a-frame and then we came to realize that i think the only thing that we had
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decided concretely was the general square footage which was i think 384 is that right pat yeah something
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like that anyways and we realized that if we built an a-frame on the footprint that we were thinking
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it was going to be really small inside so that changed after i believe we already had the subfloor in
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so we'd like kicked off a whole bunch of different ideas and we're still planning and drawing things
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out well into after we started and when you first started you guys set a budget for yourself when you
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decided we're doing this yeah you could call i mean we we told ourselves that we were going to spend
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no more than twenty thousand dollars i mean really the only thing it was based on was that we didn't
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want to spend more than twenty thousand dollars and so we thought that that seemed like more money than
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either of us had independently and it must be enough to build a cabin
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it was and that that included the property as well that twenty thousand yeah yeah all right so let's talk
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about that where did you guys end up buying property for your build we bought it in the same general
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area that my little cabin was in and we you know basically got word that a property was going to be
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up for auction and so put it in a super low offer hoping you know that we would get it and sort of
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taking it as as as a sign from the universe that you know we were supposed to be doing this if it worked
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out and it did all right so this is in washington right that's right yeah the so the sort of central
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cascades of of washington on the west side of the mountains all right so you guys got the
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property pretty cheap was i think it was like a lowball offers like three thousand or something
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like that and you're like it's not going to happen yeah exactly all right so you got the property what
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was the first thing you you did when you started building like did you just take the initial plan
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that you you're gonna build a small a-frame and just start you know we're gonna we have the plan
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we have the blueprints we're just do exactly what the blueprints say well we we didn't have any
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blueprints that's for sure everything was sketched out on uh paper and pencil and i think
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once we actually got the land was the sort of oh crap moment now we actually need to figure out
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what we're doing and so we just started researching as much as we could on the internet watching you
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know tons of youtube i remember pat was when it came to the foundation was researching a lot about
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weight loads you know how many like posts and peers you would need and how much concrete and at what
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depth so it was kind of you know when you got to turn in your homework and classes the next day
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that kind of feeling and then also i think it was you talked about too um as you were starting to
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prepare the build you guys together had this idea of what building a cabin and you know in the
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washington woods would be like and it was really idyllic i mean how did you imagine cabin building in
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the middle of nowhere would be like i mean for me i i just imagine all of these beautiful pictures you
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see and i mean i guess our experience up there to an extent also on our building weekends on pat's
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first little cabin didn't really matter too much if we messed up most of the time when i went up there
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i was really lucky and it was beautiful weather the river's always running at like a nice pace
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so just like this beautiful area and a great time with friends and i think i had it in my mind that
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it would certainly be difficult and we wanted it to be difficult but it would be totally manageable
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and we'd have time for for hikes and you know having as much coffee in the morning as we want
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and sort of leisurely getting over to the job site doing a great job during the day and then having time
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to like play in the river or whatever else afterwards and that pretty quickly came to an end i think that
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lasted about two or three days yeah like what was the the moment where you realized like oh crap this is
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going to be a lot harder than i thought it was going to be i mean it might have been the
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i think the very first couple of days we were basically just digging holes and toiling in the
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mud and it was super fun we were having a great time and then it might have been after kind of
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putting in the first foundation posts and building up to the subfloor where we had like a really long
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day that was really difficult and sort of troubling a few things went wrong and we had to kind of wrap
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our heads around how to make it right and our our idea of how long it would take was just nowhere near
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realistic and i think that's when it kind of started to dawn on us that you know maybe we're in over our
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heads and we were going to have to like actually put in some work to get this thing done well and the
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thing to note too is that you there was no electricity out there and there was no water so like you had
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there's these pictures in on the the article of you like there's a you had to basically go down to the
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creek and climb up this giant hill with just big buckets of water so you can get the water to mix
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concrete yeah yeah i think in hindsight you know we ended up installing a 1500 gallon water tank
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at the at the cabin as one of the finishing touches and uh in hindsight we should have maybe done that
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first so yeah and anytime we needed water for anything you know especially mixing concrete it
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was you know going down to the river with a big five gallon jug filling it up which required getting
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into the river deep enough so that we could actually get it under there and we also did this
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in the middle of winter to mix up concrete for the hearth under the wood stove so i think literally
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trudging through snow to get into the river and fill up those jugs well let's backtrack when did when
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what part of 2018 did you guys start the cabin was it like spring summer it was june 2nd june 2nd
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june 2nd a day in infamy it was supposed to be june 1st and something came up something and when did
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you uh like you guys started in june you got were you expected to be had this you know done and wrapped
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up by the end of summer yeah i had a four-month leave and i had budgeted a few weeks at the end or so i
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thought for like a little vacation time which you know wasn't at all realistic but yeah we thought
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we would be done i think by the end of august if that's right yeah all right and then very quickly
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you realize that's not going to happen and something you note both of you note in the article is that
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the thing that really threw you guys off were like there's all these little small things that you
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overlooked before you even started working on it that just sucked up all your time i imagine one of
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them is getting water to mix concrete was one of those small things any other like things that
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they're really small but they just they piled on each other that just really suck a lot it sucked a lot
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of time uh from your work day uh man getting materials was always a challenge especially because we
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didn't have cell phone reception at the site and so a lot of times you know trying to check
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you know how to do something required like oh we need to drive into cell phone reception for half an
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hour and then you get into reception and you know to like watch a video on how to do something
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and then you forget exactly what you know your situation is so we drive back to the site to look
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at it take more pictures and then back to cell reception and then you know you're into town to get
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materials but the first hardware store doesn't actually have what you know they say they do online so
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you drive to another hardware store and it's just these days unravel like instantly and you know
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you spent seven hours just figuring out you know how to screw a couple of things together and find
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the screws to do it and then the day is over and it's dark and you don't have electricity so you can't
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see anything and you know you only need two or three days like that to realize you know that this
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project could take three or four times longer than you know you ever expected it to there's also some
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like small things that you just don't realize when you're getting into something so something that
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would happen would be i guess later on once the cabin was built up higher you know we need ladders
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and so you throw some ladders up but it's on a really sloped hill and so the ladder would be pitched
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to an angle and so you'd have to dig out a patch of the hill to get the ladder you know lined up
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with the cabin so that you could actually go up to it and only later did i realize that you can
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actually get these little like leg extensions on the bottom of your ladder so that if you're on a
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slope you just extend that one leg and then you're good but we didn't realize that so we wasted you
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know tons of time just like digging holes in the side of the hill so that our ladder would sit properly
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small things like that add up too we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors
00:20:18.240
and now back to the show how long were your work days when you finally you guys kind of finally
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got in the groove of of your working schedule they felt very long yeah i think they basically became
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just whatever daylight hours were so at the peak of summer that could be you know up here in
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washington like you know 6 a.m until 10 o'clock at night and were you guys sleeping out by the at the
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cabin site during the summer no actually at this time pat still had his small off-grid cabin that
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he had purchased in 2013 so we'd retire there every night every night but then wake up at 6 o'clock
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but you didn't have time to enjoy your coffee and look at the sunrise you just had to get back to
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digging a hole there was no enjoying sunrises no some sunsets on occasion well and during this time
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i mean so you guys you kind of budgeted that you wouldn't be working or you'd have a leave of
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absence from your your job but you also had to keep money coming in because you guys quickly
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realized this is going to cost more than we thought so what did you guys do to keep money coming in so
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you keep the build going would you take it pat you had to do a lot more of this yeah so i had had quit
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my job so the only way to keep money coming in was doing freelance copywriting including for the art
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of manliness so on select nights that you know i had to do work or brian had to do work we would
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you know go from the build site to a bar that was about half an hour down the road and that was
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open until like midnight or so and so at you know nine or ten at night we'd be sitting down for dinner
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and to start you know work day number two and write you know marketing copy or art of manliness articles
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until you know 12 or 12 30 at night and then try to get back to the cabin and get some sleep
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well yeah well really we really appreciate it and like during this time i don't think you really
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you mentioned it all that much i think you might have in a few emails like yeah i'm building a cabin
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and i was like oh okay you know i didn't know the extent of like what that actually meant until i read
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this article yeah pat in particular was really grinding it out i had some freelance writing to do
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but i you know i had taken my leave and i had kind of cashed out on some vacation hours that i had
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piled up and so i was in a slightly more comfortable position i guess and that i i at least wasn't
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concerned about what would happen at the end of the build because i knew i had a job to go back to
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so i could really sort of drain the account down pretty far all right so you guys started making
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progress you guys got the floor the foundation laid guarding some walls uh well before you got to
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the walls there's this part in this in the build where you had to put in place the ridge
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ridge beam and i like this story because i think it's it's a it exemplifies some of the improvisation
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you guys had to do because like you like you just said you're describing how you're learning on the
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fly you'd have to go in town get cell reception watch a youtube video then go back and then try it
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the ridge beam this is a really really important part of the cabin and a really hard part to put on
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a structure for those who aren't familiar with what a ridge beam is what is that what makes it so hard
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to put into place and what did you guys do to get that in place so yeah so the ridge beam is
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essentially you know you're building the cabin up you've got your you know floor and you've got your
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walls and then it's all got to come back together to get closed in you know on the roof and so the
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ridge beam is sort of that initial you know very big piece of timber that goes across the top of the
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cabin that all of your rafters that all the rest of the roof can attach to and sort of stitch
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everything back it's sort of like the the backbone of the cabin and i guess i'm still not certain how
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people you know are supposed to put these in uh but ours was um i think about 28 feet long
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and how much did it weigh yeah i think it probably weighed about 200 pounds yeah maybe 250 or 300
00:24:25.220
pounds and so it was impossible for i mean we struggled to lift it the two of us on the ground
00:24:32.700
and so the idea of getting it up you know 18 feet above our heads into a very narrow slot that it had to
00:24:40.280
fit in was it was just one of those things that we just sort of ignored until the day that we had to do
00:24:46.480
it because i don't think that we could comprehend how it was actually going to happen and so what
00:24:51.560
did you guys end up doing i had sort of dreamed up this uh i think what brian eventually got like a
00:24:58.180
slow motion catapult so sort of built this like a shaped structure out of two by fours and then tied
00:25:08.220
one end of the ridge beam to that and then we sort of pushed pushed that a frame structure up bit by bit
00:25:15.920
you know to sort of pull the ridge beam up we got it in one end and then to get it into the other end
00:25:23.060
was sort of a combo of that plus we had the thing tied like to my car at one point that we were like
00:25:30.440
you know up on the hill trying to drag it upwards into place we had a neighbor come down with some
00:25:36.200
come-along straps to to use those and pull in a different way and i remember there was one point
00:25:40.940
when we had so many different things that we had just made up on the fly to help push this thing up
00:25:47.960
and hold it in place and at one point we looked at it and nothing was touching the ground anymore
00:25:53.520
and we didn't understand what was holding it up and then it was like all of a sudden we all just sort
00:26:01.680
of like all right everybody back away let's look at this thing from 20 or 30 feet because it could fall
00:26:08.100
at any second because we don't understand how it's being held up right now and you call this
00:26:13.720
improvisation i thought it's funny you guys called this improvisation you called it jazz we're gonna
00:26:17.200
use some jazz to get this ridge beam up yeah yeah jazz was was the word that we use anytime we didn't
00:26:24.520
know how to do something and knew that we were just going to sort of you know make it up and see
00:26:28.760
you know if we could get it to work there was a lot of jazz was there a lot of jazz like most of the
00:26:33.360
it was just it was just jazz the entire time the entire yeah the entire cabin was jazz essentially
00:26:39.000
besides the ridge beam was there like another thing part of the cabin where you just like you
00:26:44.020
had to just wing it and to say okay we'll see how it turns out you know to a certain extent we did
00:26:50.300
we did that with a lot i mean we built the cabin you know to code we've got you know brian's dad to
00:26:56.620
sort of use as a resource because he inspects homes and so you know that the place was built to code
00:27:01.800
but what sort of hurt us in the long run was winging it in the way of saying like oh it'd be
00:27:07.700
cool if this wall was a little shorter you know instead of being eight feet let's make it like
00:27:11.800
seven and a half you know not realizing in the moment that okay well you know all boards come
00:27:18.640
in standard lengths of eight feet all plywood comes in standard lengths of eight feet you know
00:27:23.200
everything is eight feet and people build walls at eight feet for a reason and so now you can't just
00:27:29.260
you know throw this material up you have to custom cut every single board that you put in
00:27:35.840
and i think that we actually took some time to think about it once and realized that there's not
00:27:42.920
a single standard piece of lumber in the entire cabin that might be true maybe a couple sheets of
00:27:51.220
plywood at some point but in you know like a home or a house or a cabin or whatever is sort of built
00:27:56.340
in layers right you have like the framing and then you have the interior wall cladding you've got to
00:28:02.540
sheave it and then you put the exterior finishes on and so by you know cutting our studs shorter than
00:28:10.200
their natural length you had to do that at every single stage of the build so it just was this
00:28:16.260
compounding problem over and over and over again making your life harder yeah it needed to be well you
00:28:23.560
guys are you guys are friends you guys been friends for a long time how did you all work together
00:28:27.780
during the the build mostly good not always good there's there's a scene in the article that we wrote
00:28:36.900
about where you know different people have different jobs and so when we're getting the roof in one
00:28:42.180
person would be up on the roof and the other person would be down on the ground and the person on the
00:28:46.920
roof is sort of it's impossible for them to really get anything for themselves because they're on the roof
00:28:52.460
right so they're always yelling at the person on the ground you know can you get my tape measure again
00:28:58.020
because i dropped it for the fourth time or you know can you get me a sheet of plywood or whatever
00:29:03.260
it is cut at this length and then if it's not quite right you send that back down and meanwhile the person
00:29:09.160
on the ground is just like running all over the place making all the cuts fetching all of the tools
00:29:14.700
and you know moments like that can get really tense especially when it's not all coming together
00:29:20.300
right and so there were definitely times when we i don't think we ever like yelled at each other but
00:29:25.800
we would get pretty passive aggressive or just kind of like just kind of mean to each other and you
00:29:32.660
know that could last for anywhere between like an hour or a day and eventually it would be fine we'd
00:29:38.740
you know have a good laugh about it later on and make up but there were some moments for sure
00:29:43.560
and was it like the disagreements were they just kind of or like the the tension was just about was it
00:29:47.880
about small things you guys have big disagreements but like the big picture with the the project
00:29:52.100
you know i think the big picture project stuff brian and i were just talking about uh the other day
00:29:59.100
that it seemed you know we'd put on these really long days and a lot of them back to back to back
00:30:05.100
and every once in a while we'd you know really just realized that we needed even an afternoon just
00:30:13.960
away from the project and so we might take like on those days like a longer hike or something
00:30:18.920
and just sort of talk about you know really you know are you still doing okay with this project
00:30:26.340
it's taking much longer it's costing a lot more um you know you've not been home for a month and a
00:30:32.500
half or whatever it is and really try and check in and make sure that we were doing fine and i think
00:30:37.220
you know for the on the grander scheme of things we were always pretty aligned and most of the
00:30:43.640
disagreements came from you know because brian wanted me to cut a rafter for the eighth time and
00:30:48.400
it was like well you know i mean all you had to do was not cutting it right or is it you not
00:30:53.480
measuring it right what are we really doing here it was definitely you not cutting it right
00:30:57.480
or the roof guy wanting something too much right it's like bring up all the nails roof guy
00:31:03.740
yeah and if it's not obvious brian was usually roof guy
00:31:07.840
um so you guys started this in june you thought it'd be done wrapped up by the end of august at
00:31:16.100
what point did you realize that it wouldn't be august that this thing would be finished
00:31:19.880
probably pretty close to august or like five days after starting like what what did the cabin look
00:31:28.060
like in august oh that's a good question i mean did you have did you have the ridge beam in place
00:31:33.540
i think it would have been in august that we got the ridge beam in place but the you know all the
00:31:41.560
rafters weren't in the you know roof had not been covered in you know plywood or tongue and groove
00:31:47.040
boards that we used to cover it i don't think we finished the roof until early october is that right
00:31:55.860
brian or was it late september i think you're right about early october by the time if i because i remember
00:32:01.780
that the uh the sort of fall storms were well underway and we were sort of racing against a really big
00:32:07.300
rainstorm that had been sort of building for a few days and i if i remember correctly we got the last
00:32:14.920
you know screw of the roof in i mean just you know minutes or hours before like a huge rainstorm came
00:32:23.280
no it's actually the last half of the roof that entire day that we were working on it it was
00:32:31.000
pouring down rain oh my memory is notoriously bad you just wanted to forget that it wasn't a good
00:32:37.780
wasn't a good memory exactly see i've shut out certain things well so brian you had you had your
00:32:43.280
leave until august did you have to go back to work in september i did yeah i returned to work or um
00:32:50.060
let's see was it uh well no so i had my leave a bit longer than i had thought the build would take
00:32:59.780
so i we thought that the build would end sometime in august and then i would have a few more weeks
00:33:04.700
basically to um i think what i originally had planned was to spend some time with my girlfriend
00:33:10.000
since i would have been gone for so long and that time basically just got turned into continuing
00:33:15.740
working on the cabin and then eventually i did go back to work and i would just you know basically
00:33:21.760
go up for really long weekends or i'd take a week off here and there if it's not already obvious my
00:33:28.080
bosses were remarkably generous and patient with me for this whole thing well and at this point like
00:33:33.940
and you know when you decided you had to go keep building even into the the fall possibly the winter
00:33:39.280
were there moments where you're like we should probably just give up uh move on we're doing sunk cost
00:33:44.820
fallacy at this point right we're just we're gonna keep doing this just but it's just costing us too
00:33:49.380
much time and money did you guys have those moments i don't think i ever got to the place where i
00:33:54.760
fully wanted to quit i mean it probably would have been wise at several different points
00:33:59.520
but i ultimately i mean this even though it was you know pretty challenging at times and hard on
00:34:06.340
relationships ultimately i just really really enjoyed it and every time i needed to go back up i looked
00:34:13.000
forward to doing so and it kind of i mean at some point you know eventually you'll you'll run out of
00:34:19.440
money or you'll run out of time and i guess we just kind of squeaked by and it always felt worth it to
00:34:23.900
keep going and pat did you have any quit moments or were you just like no i'm gonna finish this you're
00:34:28.640
you knew that from the beginning no i mean i think the more that we that we worked on it the more
00:34:35.100
clear it became to me that it was like a hundred percent what i wanted to be doing with my days
00:34:41.980
and that if there were any way to combine you know seeing family and friends into the same lifestyle
00:34:46.740
that that is what i wanted to do with my life and so i think as brian said quitting never really
00:34:53.620
was something i thought about because it was i kind of realized that i would be working on the cabin
00:34:59.180
at the cost of you know pretty much everything else that was going on and then you also mentioned
00:35:04.360
you guys didn't want to be i didn't know this is a thing but apparently in washington the wilderness
00:35:08.740
there's lots of unfinished cabins because people they ran out of money or they just said i don't
00:35:13.060
this isn't worth it you didn't want to be one of those guys yeah that's true i mean there are a
00:35:18.360
bunch of cabins even in that immediate area that you know you see and and maybe they got halfway
00:35:24.320
through on the interior they they built up to the roof and and didn't go any further and you know
00:35:31.080
some of them look pretty good and others are just totally thrashed and look like they'd been there
00:35:35.360
forever and they each one just sort of represented um like a broken dream perhaps and in as depressing
00:35:43.740
and sad as it was to kind of see those i think they also fueled us to keep going and make sure that
00:35:50.520
this cabin wouldn't be another one of those so you went into fall did it go into the construction go
00:35:56.420
into winter as well oh yeah yeah yeah okay well yeah you mentioned that so you had to actually go
00:36:01.900
yeah you said that you had to go down the river in the the ice cold river to get uh water for cement
00:36:07.700
to make the the platform for the uh stove yeah and and that cement actually so there was a pretty big
00:36:12.900
snowstorm on that trip and we had to we strapped on snowshoes because we couldn't drive up to the
00:36:18.580
cabin there was too much snow and we piled all of the bags of concrete into sleds and just like
00:36:24.280
towed them up to the cabin so it was pretty deep so i mean right and besides going over budget on time
00:36:32.640
i mean did you guys go over budget on money as well oh yeah more than double where do you guys get the
00:36:39.160
funds you have to take out a loan from the bank or did you just have to you know go into savings you
00:36:43.300
started go fund me what'd you guys do you know i returned back to work and so i basically took
00:36:48.480
everything that i wasn't using for just my life and import it back into the cabin we also had a
00:36:56.960
very generous buddy our buddy dan who had agreed from the start you know he was sort of looking for
00:37:03.100
an investment and he's not one i think to be into the idea of just putting his money into into stocks
00:37:11.020
or something like that and so he thought that we would be a good investment and this project would
00:37:15.800
be a good investment and so he was blindly giving us you know thousands of dollars he put in you know
00:37:22.940
a third of all the costs to help us realize realize this project you know hoping that we'd eventually
00:37:29.600
be able to sell it and he'd get some sort of return i'm not entirely sure it was even necessarily
00:37:35.000
an investment for him because originally we weren't even sure whether or not we would sell it you know
00:37:39.940
we we had right right maybe throwing it on airbnb maybe we'd all keep it and it would just be
00:37:44.700
this fun cabin that we all got to you know hang out in on weekends nonetheless i you know he did uh go in
00:37:52.480
as a sort of a third part uh financial backer and was both generous in that and also generous in
00:38:01.080
not getting too upset that it was taking us longer and longer and costing more and more he was uh yet
00:38:07.360
another very supportive person in this process yeah he was a romantic like you guys he had the
00:38:12.120
he caught the vision yeah exactly so when did you guys finally finish the cabin you started in june 2018
00:38:17.820
when did you wrap it up i think we stopped working on it and uh in early july of 2019 and that became a
00:38:28.220
hard thing it's really knowing you know like when is when is a cabin done but i think early july is when we
00:38:36.120
we kind of put the last finishing touches on it except for you know starting to bring in furniture
00:38:41.600
and things like that we had a big you know party i brought the fog machine in we had some you know
00:38:47.280
a bunch of friends up and sort of pristened the cabin i mean so what did it feel like when you guys
00:38:52.320
finally decided okay this is a year almost over a year since you started what did it feel like to
00:38:57.340
finally think i'm gonna i'm done with this like what was it anticlimactic or did it did you feel
00:39:01.360
some closure what was that like oh man it's tricky i think it was a huge relief for me it was also
00:39:09.120
it kind of made me think like all right how do i get to do this again you know when we decided to
00:39:16.960
sell it we had a lot of people ask like are you gonna miss it do you feel bad about selling it and
00:39:22.760
i think correct me if i'm wrong pat but i think for both of us in the end it was a lot less about
00:39:28.860
the end product and more about the process and as much as we liked you know what it turned into
00:39:35.900
for me it was going to be missing actually building it and being up there with you know close friends
00:39:41.960
doing something that we really enjoyed was that for you the same sort of sentiment for you pat
00:39:46.640
yeah i would say that you know the the last day that brian and i actually worked on it you know
00:39:53.560
was a much sadder day than the day that we you know handed over the keys to it it's kind of like
00:40:00.320
now what right right well and selling it was was kind of a hassle too because because it doesn't have
00:40:06.900
indoor plumbing right people couldn't get a house loan a more you couldn't mortgage it so you had to
00:40:11.940
find someone who was willing to pay cash just to buy the thing yeah it was either cash or we
00:40:17.680
essentially we were hoping to find someone that was going to pay cash and eventually we had to do
00:40:21.720
seller financing so essentially we become the bank and you know someone gives us a down payment and
00:40:27.280
then makes payments to us every month and fortunately finally found a couple that were up for that and
00:40:35.460
they've actually paid it off now full and they couldn't have uh gone to a better a better couple
00:40:41.560
of people they've really done a lot to the cabin and really embraced it and absolutely love it and
00:40:48.200
yeah it's great seeing they've also uh thrown it up on airbnb for times when they're not using it
00:40:54.680
themselves so if people are interested they could check that out right so the title of the article
00:40:59.220
is we quit our jobs to build a cabin everything went wrong and you know we highlighted some of the
00:41:03.560
stuff that went wrong but it sounds like both of you guys it wasn't the end product that this was
00:41:07.600
all about the experience like you it was in the end it was worth it to you guys right yeah definitely
00:41:12.580
100 so what are you going to do so people ask you what are you going to do now are you are you guys
00:41:17.380
planning another cabin build you guys gluttons for punishment we indeed are you know we would
00:41:23.840
we had hoped maybe this fall would be a time to start again and uh that's not happening you know
00:41:29.860
coronavirus and and other we got the wildfires out wildfires yeah yeah there's a lot of disruption
00:41:36.620
going on right now obviously so we we definitely are hoping to and we're hoping to now in the spring
00:41:42.300
i guess we'll kind of see you know what spring brings but uh that's the idea and i mean what
00:41:48.500
would you guys do differently this i mean are you it's gonna be one of those things here's one of
00:41:52.240
the things i've done with like diy projects is that i've done the same sort of thing that you guys do
00:41:56.600
on a much smaller scale and i'm not building a cabin but like i want to learn how to do something i
00:42:01.220
watch youtube videos i learn how to do it and then because i don't have to do that thing ever again
00:42:05.620
when i do have to do it again i completely forget and i have to go through the process all over
00:42:10.960
again do you think that's going to happen to you guys or do you guys think you learn some things
00:42:14.580
that you will kind of cut down on that having to go to get cell reception to watch a youtube video
00:42:19.940
right right i'd like to think we've learned some things you know also between then and now we've
00:42:27.000
both have kind of continued uh not doing the same thing but similar things like i mentioned i'm in
00:42:32.300
woodworking school right now we're actually pat and i just started doing a sort of backyard office
00:42:38.680
build out for some folks down near where i live and pat works for a company that builds these
00:42:45.200
really cool travel trailers they're kind of these retro trailers that you could glamp in and so it's
00:42:50.700
not the same as you know sort of cabin construction but we're still you know getting our reps in to some
00:42:55.880
extent so hopefully it won't be too we won't be too rusty and i mean how do you guys think the
00:43:01.480
experience changed you like what like can you looking back on it and you've done some introspection
00:43:05.520
like how have you grown because of this experience oh man you know i think it taught me
00:43:11.980
sort of the thing that i had suspected for a lot of years is that you know being at a desk you know
00:43:18.640
working on a computer is is just not something that i can do long term and that you know i really
00:43:24.960
value spending my days as actively as possible i think it also reminded me you know just sort of
00:43:34.780
how much i enjoy really giving myself big challenges putting myself in situations where
00:43:41.440
you know i'm uncomfortable and sort of need to to rise to the occasion kind of things and just how
00:43:48.160
you know valuable and meaningful those you know growing and learning experiences can be and you know
00:43:54.140
how kind of toxic it can feel you know just sort of just get comfortable and live out your days
00:44:00.880
sort of without ever challenging yourself that i've you know tried to apply that after the cabin
00:44:06.640
and hopefully am but i think that it was a great experience for reminding myself of all those things
00:44:11.160
and brian for you any big lesson takeaways from that experience i mean i really have to echo pat in that
00:44:17.800
one of the reasons i think that we were drawn to this to begin with is we you know like we mentioned we
00:44:23.440
had both been in jobs for a number of years and for a variety of reasons we're you know looking for
00:44:30.500
something new and i think for me i really kind of needed a big challenge i felt like i hadn't really
00:44:38.380
stretched myself in in a long time i'd been doing you know much the same thing for several years
00:44:43.560
and building this cabin definitely stretched us and i think the fact that in the end we pulled it off
00:44:49.940
was sort of a relief because i think i had gotten to a point that i really wasn't sure if i was
00:44:56.260
capable of doing something like that anymore because i just kind of you know gotten into a
00:45:00.460
routine and so that in particular resonates and i think you know constantly challenging yourself
00:45:07.280
to the degree that you can is super important i don't want to keep that up all right so the article
00:45:12.080
is called we quit our jobs to build a cabin everything went wrong it's available on outside online.com
00:45:17.480
are there anywhere people can go to follow you guys and your exploits building trailers doing
00:45:22.020
woodworking or your next cabin build or anywhere can people follow you at we do have an instagram
00:45:27.660
page that is very sparsely updated but hopefully we'll be doing more of that and that is at landing pad
00:45:34.320
cabins at landing cabins on instagram well brian schatz pat hutchinson thanks for your time it's been a
00:45:39.360
pleasure thank you brett thanks a lot brett my guests they are brian schatz and patrick hutchinson they're
00:45:45.420
the authors of an article in outside magazine called we quit our jobs to build a cabin everything
00:45:49.560
went wrong you go check it there at outside online.com also check out our show notes at
00:45:53.460
aom.is slash cabin build where you find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic
00:45:57.960
well that wraps up another edition of the a1 podcast check out our website at
00:46:08.320
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00:46:11.940
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00:46:37.900
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