I've got several posts planned over the next few weeks, and wanted to start the series by sharing a few numbers from our excavator and builder.

I've posted some of this before, but no matter what you end up building on a rural lot, you're going to have fixed sitework costs, and these can add up fast. Here are ours, in round figures:

• Septic: ~$40,000 (3-bedroom)
• Well: ~$20,000 (continuous pressure)
• Stump Removal: ~$5,000
• Fill: ~$25,000
• Driveway: ~$10,000

So before there's a foundation, we've got $100K into sitework. Not included in this total is the *hundreds* of hours I've spent clearing the lot — once heavily-wooded — and roughly $10K into brush and tree removal, and hauling logs to the sawmill. Also not included is the ~3K to get power from a nearby pole.

At this point in the post I was planning on line-iteming the rest of the build estimate. But it's just too much effort and there's too much noise in the spreadsheet, so I will simply post the remaining total: $540K.

So the grand total was $640K for 864 square feet (not counting the loft), with no garage. And here's the kicker: it doesn't include a 💩-ton of materials and labor I was going to have to provide/do myself:

• Foundation stonework
• Siding and trim
• Interior and exterior painting
• Interior ceiling and wall cladding
• Flooring
• Final plumbing (setting toilets, hooking up sinks, etc.)
• Final electrical (light fixtures and outlets)
• Patio
• Landscaping
• And I am probably forgetting a few things.

And here's Kicker #2: it appraised! We were 1 signature away from starting the project when life changes forced us to pull the plug.

Stay tuned for what happened next.

Due to several factors beyond our control, we decided to delay starting the MVC (Minimum Viable Cottage) build until 2024.

What this means for you, dear reader, is a bigger focus on birds, tree felling (known as "lumberdacking" here), wood stacking and stickering, and preparations for the ski run, including rope tow hardware and engineering. It will probably also lead to at least one and possibly several more pivots on our plans for the MVC.

So, let's get to it.

Here's the entrance to the back bowl. This initial run has been cleared down to the gorgeous white pine in the distance, which is about 250 feet long with 65 feet of vertical drop. It's roughly the halfway point. It's ready for ❄️. Anticipating that I flagged some of the bigger stumps and rocks I couldn't remove by hand.

Here are our kitchen shelves, along with the some 6" stock for our pocket door slabs. The initial idea was to have these being floating shelves, but 2" x 12" solid oak will demand beefy steel brackets (and probably a steel-reinforced wall).

Here's our 1-by material so far. It's flooring and cladding for all the walls and ceilings. There is lots more still to be milled.

Well here it is; what we think is the final first floor plan for the MVC (that's Minimum Viable Cottage for the uninitiated).

This is not going to win any tiny house efficiency awards, but I feel like we crammed quite a lot into a 24'x36' box:

• two bathrooms, both with showers
• one with the critical his/hers sinks
• the same one with the even more critical 💩-ing closet
• laundry room
• living/dining room big enough for a puzzle table
• cozy den with a Stuv fireplace

There is a even a narrow, steep stairway up to one of the two lofts that's split into two tiny rooms.

Let me know what you think: dack@dack.com.

I still spend a lot of time on the Door County Land Information site, looking at our lot's elevation contours (for the ski run, of course), easements, road setbacks ... and just seeing our name legally attached to a piece of the peninsula.

When I checked yesterday I immediately noticed a new satellite photograph that showed both the February felling frenzy and the March wide-plank oak flooring stack and sticker. Just too cool!

After doing a little more digging, I learned that this picture is taken in early spring every two years, so I got lucky putting some human activity on camera. Two years from now, hopefully, the MVC will be visible from space, too.

Here's the satellite pic from spring, 2021. If I had to bet, I'd say this year's picture was taking earlier in the day, with the shadows being cast to the west (the left of the picture). The 2021 picture has shadows casting to the north (the top of the picture).

Back in the fall of 2022 we thought we'd settled on a slab-on-grade foundation. It seemed like the easiest and most inline with MVC principles.

After some more research and back-and-forth with our builder, we've pivoted and decided to go with a crawlspace foundation. There are several reasons:

• Mistakes will be made. It will be a lot easier to fix them with a chase under the MVC than with things cast in concrete. This I am sure of.
• We are getting old. An appeal of the slab-on-grade was the notion of simply using the slab as our floor. But standing on concrete sucks, especially as cartilage has become thinner (or non-existent). A forgiving wood floor on top of a forgiving wooden floor truss — combined with Hush Puppies and Dr. Scholl's inserts — will make everyone happier and healthier.
• We can put some mechanicals down there. We're not sure what, exactly, quite yet. But given the MVC's petite 24x36 figure, even an additional square foot is precious.

Here's the drawing for the crawlspace subslab. Once this is in place, 3" of rigid insulation goes on the interior of the foundation walls, and then a 4" slab is poured on top of the 10mm poly (the yellow part).

The MVC (Minimum Viable Cottage) is part of an 8-lot development called High Bluff Estates.

We're not crazy about the "Estates" part, though anything more than 5 acres is an "estate" in Door County, Wisconsin.

"High Bluff" makes sense since these lots are on one of the highest points in the county.

Anyhow, I signed up to design the logo for this tiny development, and here's what I came up with (which was approved during the 4/19 HOA meeting).

Wait. Before I show it, I should note the objectives:

• Simple
• Legible on signage
• Highlight the Niagara Escarpment
• Highlight the highness of HBE compared to the other Door County bluff sites (hence the name).
• With some imagination, show the surrounding area and even the eight building sites.
• Surprise and delight, with an element not everyone will see at first, but will say "Ahhh." when they see it later.

Here's a description of each part of the logo. Very little of this will make sense if you're unfamiliar with the area. Even if you are familiar with the area you need to use your imagination as I've taken some liberties with the overall elevation (i.e., it's not to scale).

The logo has already appeared on our inaugural annual HOA billing statement, and will next show up on signage: I'm laser etching this on some of the oak I've had milled. Can't wait to see how that turns out.

About two weeks ago I met with our architect for a deep dive into wall height, roof pitch, and what makes a cottage a cottage.

We couldn't figure out that last one — cottage architecture is all over the place — but we did agree on abandoning our original 10/10 plan (10' wall + 10/12 roof) and pivoting to an 11/11 approach. In short, to make the MVC more Silvernailsy.

I pulled the idea into SketchUp and I think this is where we're going to finally land. I love how this looks.

Why all the glass, you ask? The view! We want to see it as much and as often as possible. This is the front of the house. The money side. The entire reason why people pay a hefty premium for escarpment lots in Door County.

We're putting folding patio doors in the center bent to connect the indoor and outdoor spaces, and also enlarge the size of our mere ~850 square feet. If we weren't in Climate Zone 6 and at ~45° latitude and have a shit-ton of giant 🦟🦟🦟, I'd put these doors in all three bents and have them open all the time.

One thing I did discover in doing this was SketchUp's new Live Components. So cool. This feature is clearly MVP — there are so few LCs — but these windows and doors are all drawn with components built by and hosted at SketchUp, so they can be configured live and presumably updated with new features as the SketchUp team adds them. My favorite part was playing with the window and door openings to see how things look open, closed, and in-between. SketchUp team, if you're reading this, kudos and please add way, way more.

The first slide of our Google Slides inspiration deck lays out the requirements:

• timber frame
• barn style
• net positive
• fireplace
• west-facing outdoor space

These are the non-negotiables. Without these, there is no MVC.

One of the first images pasted into our deck was Silvernails, a 5,000 sq. ft. barn-style house designed by Amalgam Studio, and built in Rhinebeck, New York.

The interior isn't really our cup of tea — nor the glazing style (skylights 😱!) or exterior cladding for that matter — but I'm deeply in love with its shape, and even after I paste something else I find cool into the deck I always return to Silvernails.

It got to the point that I needed to know *why* I find Silvernails so visually appealing. A big part of it is the clipped eaves and rakes, like most barns. But it goes deeper, and it's so simple.

The house is 22' wide, with an 11/12 roof. Based on this trusty pole barn ridge height calculator, this means the total roof height is 10' 1". Guess how high the walls are? Yep, 10' 1". They're balanced, and in harmony.

I could be reaching a little here, but I think there's even more to it. Of course every gable roof is a gorgeous isosceles triangle — which is what makes them so appealing — but Silvernails comes within a foot of *nailing two more* when you split the gable down the middle. Surely this was all thought through, and it's brilliant.

We're going a slightly different route, primarily because 22' just is not wide enough to fit three different spaces across, as we *need* to do in an ~800 sf structure. The MVC is 24' wide. Those two feet may as well be made of 🪙.

But we are (for now) adopting the core principle: 10' high walls and a 10/12 roof (on a 24'-wide volume that's 10'). We're also clipping our eaves and rakes, in order for the weather to wreak havoc on our doors and windows. As with fashion, architectural style comes with a price.

One look at the MVC floor plan and even a casual observer could see that we're doing timber frame construction. (The posts are a dead giveaway.)

I didn't get exposed to timber framing until way too late in life, and now I wouldn't consider stick frame construction for anything, even a shed. Every day I bike by all these massive new stick frame additions and new stick frame construction here in Edina and after I say, "Gross!" — usually in reference to the already dated, cheesy-ass architecture — I next ask myself, "Why?"

Even putting aside timber framing's subjective superiority over stick frame, like its clean, simple, organic, timeless, rugged, and sturdy appearance, it's *objectively* more practical and better than stick frame in three important ways:

• They can be cut offsite. In a controlled environment, with precision, *before you even own a piece of property*, then shipped to the building site. I don't care if it's Larry Haun's Ghost doing the stick framing; he still can't do it offsite.
• They can be erected quickly. While the MVC is small — just 36x24 — the Big River Timberworks (BRT) crew will put up the frame *and fully enclose it in SIPs* in 5 days. Let's call the frame erection half of that; 2.5 days. Stick framing is measured in weeks.
• They don't have structural interior walls. I've laid out interior walls on the floor plan, but this is all still pretty flexible, for the most part, and they're all partition walls. Nothing is load-bearing. Nothing is critical. I can put an interior wall anywhere, and when I goof it up, I can put it somewhere else, no problem. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but unless you use trusses, stick frame will have an interior load-bearing wall.

Onto the specifics about our frame:

• Port Orford Cedar. All my previous — and very limited — experience is with EWP (Eastern White Pine), which is readily available, cheap, and easy to work with, but I hate how it yellows over time. Thanks to BRT, I got turned onto Port Orford Cedar, which grays over time. Please don't judge our carbon impact having timbers shipped from Coos Bay, Oregon, but we far prefer POC over EWP, and really all the other timber options we looked at.
• No braces. Timber frame purists might scoff at our frame, but a brace-free design really cleans things up, pretty dramatically. Again thanks to BRT for pointing us in this direction.

For a few days I thought I could cut this frame myself over time, in my garage, but after practicing this rather advanced joinery (for me) on some scraps, I gave up. 4 hours yielded this sad-looking post. At this pace we would have the MVC when I'm dead.

The best space in our current Minneapolis house is this den. We spend countless hours here in front of a fire watching Dateline, 48 Hours, and 20/20. On network.

The 🐕 🐕 love it, too.

A key objective of the MVC (Minimum Viable Cottage) is to recreate this space, except with a view of Lake Michigan. On paper it's somewhat of a success. Our current den is 12' x 13' with an 8"6" ceiling. The den on this floor plan is 12"4" x 11' with an 8"6" ceiling (once the loft is built).

Taking two feet from such a small room turns out to be a 15% reduction, but it's not a "hard" 11 feet because there isn't a rear wall. At least this is the rationalization I am going with.

The rest of the floor plan needs a lot of work, but it's pretty simple: 1 bedroom, 2 baths, 2 lofts (not shown yet), galley kitchen, laundry/mechanical room, puzzle table, and 3 garage doors to the western (view) elevation. Much more to come.

Everyone has an opinion on floor plans. Lay them on me: dack@dack.com

Here's the first look at the parcel, with the property lines and dead-end road draped on the topographic, and the three volumes placed about where I think they'll go.

The first build, which we are trying to get started in summer 2023, is the 36'x24' structure on the far left of the image (the northernmost volume). This is an "expandable house plan," where we will add on the larger 72'x24' house and the 30'x24' garage later, and everything will be connected via conditioned breezeways.

We just need to get a place up there ASAP, and a MVC — Minimum Viable Cottage — is the fastest, most direct route. Plus, we'll (hopefully) make all of our biggest mistakes on a very small house.

In order to make this drawing, I had to painstakingly trace elevation lines from the Door County map, elevate each of them, and then in SketchUp choose Draw > Sandbox > From Contours. Then I placed the three volumes.

It took hours but was totally worth it. Having spent a fair amount of time on the parcel, the satellite elevations are incredibly accurate. I completely trust that what's on this drawing is what's in real life.

Please note the vintage Ford pickup that's in my future.

Also please note, this plot not only provides a pretty awesome view of Green Bay, but a challenging ⛷️ run as well.

Here is another view of the drawing, with the view. This is aiming due west, and the SketchUp horizon (the blue part) is the bay.