This Cabin No Longer Exists—But Strangers Keep Rebuilding It

A wildfire wiped out our build. What came next was bigger than we imagined.

Editor’s Note: This is the first installment of Builders, a series featuring regular people who, through persistence and trial and error, have managed to learn what they needed to make homes of their own. This month, we invited Jeff Waldman of Elevated Spaces to share the story of his phoenix-like cabin—lost to wildfire, but the spark for more than a hundred others.

---

A curious thing happened a few years into our DIY cabin-building adventure: total strangers started to write and ask to buy our cabin plans.

Our cabin in 2019, a few months after completion. Tucked away in a clearing of redwood, oak, madrone, and fir. Construction took one year.

This seemed like a good deal, though tricky as we didn’t really have what you’d call plans.

After some discussion about what we did have, there’d be a Venmo or check sent in the mail and I’d send off our collection of sketches, digital models, and some framing diagrams—though I felt the real score was a trove of hundreds of build photos and videos.

Window details and deck post layout from our cabin. The framing diagrams generated from the 3D SketchUp model were significantly more useful, but we passed along all the information we had.

I always made clear that I was happy to answer questions throughout their project. Buyers generally seemed satisfied—though I’d rarely hear back with status updates.

Molly surveying the remnants of our cabin weeks after the fire. We’d hoped to recover some cast iron pans, if nothing else, but the handles had melted off. The trees in the background were killed by the heat but not consumed. Cleaning up the structure took us a couple of months. Cleaning up the dead trees took a couple of years.

In 2020—about a year into casually distributing these plans—a wildfire destroyed our property. This was… not great. At a time when the economy was already uncertain, this financial setback was disheartening. Selling plans was starting to look like a pretty attractive way to recoup some losses, so three months later I set up a website to streamline the process.

Week by week I steadily improved the existing cabin package and developed new plans for all the various projects we’d lost to the blaze—made possible because we enthusiastically documented every stage of our construction. I even began writing illustrated step-by-step guides, which really elevated the usability for novice builders.

Actual honest-to-god blueprints. And a version of our cabin with an additional bedroom. Step-by-step guides included photos and diagrams of the build process, and covered various approaches for differing levels of comfort and tool ownership.

But… there was a problem.

Even though I was providing the product that folks had asked for, I still felt like I was peddling snake oil.

The earliest plans were crude, and that justified some of my hangups, but even as I made the plans more professional and buildable, there was virtually no confirmation that anyone was actually building anything. It felt like I was hawking dreams to dreamers, and it was tough for me to feel proud of that.

What I hadn’t considered is the time it takes—sometimes years—to spin up even a cabin-sized project. I wrote about this reckoning a while back.

Suddenly, like a dam breaking, pictures began rolling in, not just from the US, but around the world: Australia, Canada, Nicaragua… Folks were building, and it was surreal to finally see our structures—most long-burned—reassembled in new locations and on different landscapes.

Micro A Frame, by Alfredo and Destiny, somewhere in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Cabin on Estonian coast by Chris and his wife. Outdoor storage shed by Ron in Ulster Park, NY.

Today that flywheel is still turning, and a recent conversation at our new, post-fire cabin prompted me to check just how many people have sent in photos of their builds.

The current number of people who have built a project using our plans is an awe-inspiring 125, which is 125 individuals or groups who also learned some skills and hopefully had fun along the way. It’s pretty wonderful—especially considering that Molly and I didn’t initially aspire to sow cabin seeds like modern-day Johnny Applecabins, nor did we enter this project as building experts.

Sent in by Russell in southern Utah, somewhere between Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park. Available to stay on Airbnb.

Despite the build photos piling high, our relative lack of experience is still something I wrestle with. It’s easy to feel a little weird about putting building plans out there; I’m not a terribly accomplished builder nor a talented designer—largely self-taught and oh-so-so-many-mistakes along the way.

But one advantage of my entry-level perspective is that I have a deep understanding of the insecurities faced by novice builders, coupled with an amplified joy in witnessing others overcome those challenges and create something meaningful—because, boy, have I been there.

As I wrote about recently, I’ve come to recognize that the value I offer—especially in light of ever-increasing AI-generated fluff—is that I actually built this stuff.

Bert’s Fort—plans based on a playhouse that our friends Tim and Cait constructed for their daughter. This one is by Dave and family in New Hampshire.

I create plans, yes, but what I’m also providing is my experience as someone who also didn’t exactly know what the hell they were doing and the enthusiastic encouragement earned from going for it anyway—something that shines through in my “You can absolutely do this!” emails and regular pleas on my Substack to embrace the discomfort of the unfamiliar, just give it a go, and learn by doing.

Off-grid up in Alaska, accessed only by helicopter or boat. Built by Sydney and her family.

The appreciative notes that so often accompany photos from new builders have cemented for me that the plans and the supportive words are a package deal—lots of “Thank you for offering these plans, but also thank you for the encouragement.”

And the fact that 125 people have found enough confidence through these plans and motivational sentiments to tackle something intimidating, rally their friends, and reconstruct our builds all around the world is just So. Damn. Cool.

You can see most of these builds in the reviews on our site. And for the diehards, here’s a folder of all 300+ photos we’ve collected over the years.