Building A Shabin On An Off-Grid Property

This is part of a series of posts on how we built our shabin (shed+cabin). A new post will come out the first Thursday of every month until all the topics are covered. You can find all of the posts here.

Building a shabin

We were incredibly fortunate to have our friend, Mikal, help us with building the shabin.

Mikal is a construction foreman for Hollywood productions. Because of COVID-related studio shutdowns, he happened to be available to help us build our shabin.

He really gets credit for the speed of our build. He knew exactly what to do and when to do it. And since he’s used to working as part of a team, he was also great at coordinating and directing everyone else.

The work camp

Since we were building on an off-grid property, we camped while building the shabin.

The kids and I did all the cooking and dishes so the other adults could focus on shabin building. I cooked large breakfasts and dinners. Set out a make-your-own-sandwich buffet for lunch. And we had plenty of after-work beer and ukulele around the campfire.

The only thing that we didn’t have (which we really would have liked) was a real shower. Our solar shower just wasn’t that great… mostly because it wasn’t a sunny week.

Otherwise, everyone was a happy camper!

BUILDING OUR SHABIN: A DAY-BY-DAY BREAKDOWN.

Before we got started, I really wanted to know more about what it was like to actually build on an off-grid piece of property. There’s a lot of photos of tiny homes after they’ve been built. But not a lot of what it was like to build on a remote location.

Here is a day-by-day breakdown of what we did.

DAY 1: GETTING SUPPLIES TO THE BUILDING SITE

Coordinating the delivery of building supplies was a bit tricky. In the end, we rented a 17″ moving truck and delivered them ourselves.

I’ll admit it was tricky to get everything to line up.

• The lumberyard needed to have our order completed and bundled up on the morning of our truck rental.
• Our order included everything we needed for the build, including the siding and roofing.
• We had to work with the ferry schedule (greatly reduced because of COVID) to unload the truck then head back for the return.
• Unloading 50 sheets of plywood and 110 2X4s from the back of a truck took a significant amount of time. And after all of that, we had to set up our campsite. It was an exhausting day.

Day 2: Building the base

We started the second day by clearing the building site. We had already made the foundations, but we had hired someone to take down two risky looking trees and the area was covered in the bucked logs.

The rest of the days was spent building the floor, which would provide a base for building the rest of the shabin.

Day 3: Framing walls

By the end of the third day, all the walls were framed and attached to the base of the shabin.

Day 4: Gable ends and rafters

On the fourth day, we put up the gable end and each of the rafters. There isn’t a ridge beam, so the rafters were just anchored to the header.

Day 5: Windows, door and tar paper

The windows and doors were pre-hung, which made them easy to install. We then used spray foam to seal any gaps between the frame and space in the framed walls.

Tar paper was used as a wind and vapour barrier. We had the siding prepped and primed, but didn’t start putting it up until a later visit.

Day 6: Roofing

Putting on the roofing was probably the hardest part. Mostly because neither Brad nor Mikal had experience with it. However, it was made more difficult because of a mistake in our order. We received 8 x 10ft panels instead of the 10 x 8ft panels that we ordered.

We realized the mistake as soon as we went to pick up but couldn’t do anything about it since we only had the truck for one trip over to the island. It meant that we had to create a roofing panel out of offcuts, which really wasn’t ideal. But it seems to be keeping the water out!

A FEW HELPFUL TIPS AND TRICKS FOR BUILDING A SHABIN.

Looking for some advice? Here are a few things we either wish we had known beforehand, or wish we had done differently.

1. It’s really handy to have at least one person who knows their stuff. It would have taken Brad and me at least two or three weeks to build the shabin without Mikal.
2. If you’re building in a remote location buy at least 1 extra of everything. That way you can keep on building your shabin if something breaks or you make a wrong cut.
3. We had a ton of batteries for our drills, however, they only lasted about 3 days. Then we had to beg power off of a neighbour to charge them up. We also charged up our cellphones that way. Thank goodness for neighbours!

Building a shabin while camping isn’t for the faint of heart, but if you’re the sort of person who thinks it would be a good idea, then it’s probably for you!