The House “That YouTube Built” (Has Solar Power)

A senior lady who had a house in Baltimore decided to sell it and moved to rural Idaho. She built her own homestead after acquiring some land there, without any prior building knowledge or experience. Somehow she learned how to build and constructed two attractive cabins and a small workshop on her 16 acres. She also started her homebuilding as a senior! Her motivation was that she didn’t like the existing properties on the market, so she decided to build something more suitable.

Her historic rowhome in Baltimore during her previous life needed some work when she lived in it years ago, so she did acquire some renovation knowledge by working on that, but never built a house from scratch. Her first Idaho structure was not a cabin, it was a small workshop using a similar arch shape. She had some help building that from a guy who seemed more interested in creating a non-arched structure.

The point of having an arched shape, an ‘inverted boat hull’, is that snow does not accumulate on it as much as a flat surface. The workshop structure cost $11,000 for labor and materials.

The two larger cabins are 20 x 24; the workshop is 12 x 24, but much lower than the cabins. Each cabin cost $125,000, including labor; the building process took 20 months.

She says her ground-mounted solar arrays are paired with several home batteries. Her washer and dryer are energy efficient as well. She also has some trees that bear food she can self-consume. To go with them, she has chickens, beans, tomato plants, okra, and herbs.

Of course, there are many wild animals and excellent sunsets. The arched building style might be offputting for resale values. She says she doesn’t care because she built the structures for herself. There is a theme that runs throughout her building experience; the boatbuidling activity of her ancestors. She may not have had much prior building experience, but she did have family with it in a different way.

Credit goes to her for starting a new adventure and making some changes to improve her life. Some seniors become too conservative in their old age and fall prey to thinking and being “old” instead of living fully.

An older couple built their own house in Colorado in a rural area for much less — just $39,000 — so it is possible to build your own home for less than $125,000. The lady in Idaho has two cabins, and one apparently is used sometimes for rentals.