Hobbies And Interests
Conventional building methods
If you have your cabin built on your lot from the ground up, chances are you will be using conventional building methods. You will have the materials delivered to your site and have a construction crew on site building the cabin. This is commonly referred to as a stick build structure. Your contractor will determine the price of the cabin (or yourself if you act as the contractor) by pricing all of the materials and labor including the contractor's services. Divide the total price by the square footage of your cabin to determine the price per square foot. Ordinarily, conventional building methods will be the most expensive. You can cut costs, however, by using less expensive building materials. For example, instead of a wood frame cabin you could have one made with cement block for much less. Your local building center can provide information and help pricing the materials for your cabin and determining available alternatives to save money.
Manufactured Homes
Manufactured homes are relatively inexpensive compared to comparable site-built structures and are considered to be very high quality. Because they are built in a factory, manufactured homes are built to more exacting standards and are subject to high quality control standards.
Starting with a small standard mobile home you can add on modules as desired. Lot preparation is the hardest part. A well must be drilled, a septic tank installed, electric and gas brought in and a foundation built. Once the foundation is built it is just a matter of having the manufactured home delivered and set up on the foundation. The set-up process can be done in less than one day.
After the manufactured home is set up on the foundation, the plumbing, electricity and gas can be hooked up. Manufactured homes are probably the highest quality for the least price out of all your alternatives.
Building Kits
Another cheap way to build a cabin is to buy a kit. Prefabricated kits are available; all the parts are precut for easy assembly. The cheapest kit on the market is the Amish home building kit. It is manufactured in Kentucky by the Amish in several sizes and styles. The largest and most expensive kit they offer is less than $10,000 and they have free delivery within 1,500 miles of their factory. A carpenter can assemble one of these kits in a few days. Like manufactured homes, the hardest part is the lot preparation.
Post Frame Construction
Probably the cheapest way to build a cabin is to use post frame construction. This building method is what is used for pole buildings. New technologies and building materials now make it possible to use post frame construction for residential building purposes. Post frame construction uses much less material per square foot than other building methods and also takes much less time to assemble. The result is much lower cost for both materials and labor. The post frame construction method is becoming popular for residential construction because the exterior and interior can be made to look the same as a conventionally constructed residential structure for much less cost. This means the structure can be larger and/or more elaborate without spending more money than if conventional methods are used.
On a square footage basis, post frame construction is by far the cheapest way to build a cabin. It is estimated that post frame construction costs about one half as much as conventional construction.