Exploring a Rustic Retreat: Tour of Our Self-Built Montana Cabin in the Woods

I'm going to show you the oldest unit that we have here at the Honestead called the Shanty, which we built 12 years ago. Let's take a look. So here she is, the Shanty, still standing after 12 years. Just kidding, it's over here. 12 years ago, 13 years ago when we bought this property, there was nothing on it. Just bare ass land, no roads, nothing, no electricity. We only got that in 2017. But when I came here, I just liked this area so much that I decided to build something. That's something being less than 100 square feet because of permitting or lack thereof. And I'd never built anything before, but my dad, who's been in construction, kind of came down here and said, oh, you're doing that wrong, do it this way. And over the summer, we built this 8 by 12 and we've brewed beer out of it. We've stored stuff in it in the summertime. We've actually lived in it because it's so nice here. But now we've turned it into an Airbnb that we've been renting out since 2017. So I'm going to show you some of the improvements. So here we have our new deck. The old one was getting kind of janky, but we replaced it with Trex boards. And we did Trex because during COVID, it was the same price as 2 by 6. And Trex, apparently you can last for, or it can last for 25 years. And so no splinters, no painting, we're really excited about that. The subflooring, and we'll show you pictures of that, I used off of another unit that was starting to not look as aesthetic. So we used it in the joisting. And I just basically built the deck in three different sections. This section is 20 feet wide, and I came out 6 feet, which is what I had available from a spare project. This section is just 8 foot because the Trex boards are 8 foot. I didn't want to waste anything. And same thing with this, 20 feet wide, I had 8, 8, 4, 8, 8, 4, 8, 8, 4, so there's no waste there. And the other side mimics this side the same, 8 foot, and then I don't know, it's about 6 or 6 and a half feet out. I reused the header down there, it was some milled lumber from the property, so tried to reuse whenever we could. We built up a rock wall here because Rocky Mountains, turns out we're pretty rocky, and just filled it with different decaying matter from around the property. So we built it up, and if these get water next spring, hopefully they'll perk back up. But yeah, this is all a dry cabin, it's off-grid, so we have a solar panel for the 12 volt DC lights inside, but otherwise these are pretty much just left for dead. One of the things we took over here is I wanted to keep this tree, I really liked it, so I framed the deck around it, and as I mentioned it's 20 feet, so it's just, I think it's 2 by 8s, there's two of them, and they're 10 foot long, and then the joists run this way. Over here we opened up a little hangout area, and we have a beautiful mountain view that way. Cleared some trees to make that happen. And as mentioned before, it was pretty utilitarian, we just built it as a brewing shed, or a storage shed, so it didn't have a window. So we slapped a window in there a few years ago and it really brightened it up. But over here we got the 100 watt panel, charge controller here, and I think we have two lights inside and a couple DC charge ports for tablets and phones, but it's very basic. So let's go inside and show you some of what we got inside. But first let's talk about the door handle, deer shed antlers. So naturally we use it for projects, whether it's kind of a mini chandelier, but in this case in our rentals around the property we use them as door handles. So let's go inside. A couple things you'll notice here, or maybe you won't, but it is, it's quite cool in here because it is 2 by 6 construction, it's well insulated, and it's small. Inside we have the floor here. That's worth mentioning that all the lumber was cut on the property except for the OSB, which made it really cheap to build with all the used stuff. But the flooring is softwood, we don't really have any hardwood to speak about here. But it was tongue and groove by the Amish and it's obviously developed it's own kind of wear pattern, patina, which we really think is cool. And on the back end here we used to have like a little dish washing station, but we took that out and we put in live edge, the kids seem to like live edge, so we go with that and it's easy for us because we have a sawmill. Over there we got 2 gallons of water for doing coffee and tea, Coleman cook stove, just basic accoutrements. The Coleman cook stove is a feature in all of our units, it has a disposable cartridge, and over here we have 2 gallons of drinking water, cooking water, coffee and tea water. The live edge, as mentioned before, with the sawmill makes for easy tabletops, countertops, and some bar stools in front of the nice little window we put in a couple years ago to get some extra light in and get that nice mountain view in the distance. Underneath the loft we try to utilize that for storage, so we got towels and kitchen utensils and like a first aid kit. In 96 square feet lighting is pretty simple, so we went with just a 12 volt LED light, I think maybe upstairs we got a LCD light, but down here, very low watt, I think it's like 8 watts, and we even pulled a single bulb out to make it less, so it's plenty with flashlights and such. Let's go to how we get up into the loft, because that's what I think makes this unit special, yeah you got 96 square feet up here, but we got a loft that kind of covers about 75 square feet. So this is the bookcase, and it rolls on a caster, 2 hinges on the side, and it's got a drop pin that fits in a pocket right there. Go to the back side of the ladder with the drop pin in, climb up the back, once you get to the top there are 2 handholds here, and climb into the loft. Up in the loft we have another 12 volt light, and a mosquito catcher that we don't need, not a mosquito catcher, a mosquito net, that we don't need it because we're so dry here. Otherwise it's a queen size bed, got pillows back there, got a window there to promote air flow, and of course, typical of us, we don't have enough seasoned lumber on hand so we cut this stuff up to cover up the OSB, but it shrunk, but it's just another thing that makes the shanty the shanty. So it's pretty simple as you can see, but we love it, and our guests love it too. Finally the personal touches that my wife and my mom put in here, such as the hand-sewn curtains and the embroidered little pictures and various knickknacks really tie it all together for kind of a rustic, cozy, and sweet little cabin in the woods. We've hosted over a couple hundred people and they always say that we've thought of everything here. We try to include things that will make their stay better such as flashlights and bear spray because we are in the woods, as well as personal touches such as books from Montana, as well as tea from Montana. So if you're interested in staying with us we are open from May to October, look us up in Bonner, Montana. We are The Homestead. Thanks.