DIY Cabin Plans: Building a Cabin with a Loft

Anyone with basic carpentry skills can construct this classic one-room cozy cabin for about $6,500.

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by Len Churchill
Provided you're willing to invest your own time and effort, a cozy cabin like this could be yours for about $6,050.

Learn how to build a small cabin in the woods with these diy cabin plans. Realize your cabin dream by building a cabin yourself.

Rays of early-morning sunlight gently peek through the windows, easing you awake. Looking down from the sleeping loft, you see everything you need: a pine table; a box piled with hardwood, split and ready for the woodstove; and a compact kitchen in the corner. This is the cabin dream.

In this article, I’ll show you how to build a 14-by-20-foot cozy cabin featuring a sleeping loft over the porch for about $6,050. Who can resist it?

My own cabin-building adventure began in 1986, when I built one as an inexpensive place to stay while constructing my house — that’s when I began learning what makes cabin design and construction successful. (I’ve always had a debt-free approach to developing my property.) The four years I lived in this cabin were a good time in my life — perhaps one of the best. I fondly recall the simplicity of waking each morning with the sole purpose of building my own house, working well into the evening.

What follows are DIY cabin plans with the hands-on know-how I wish I had 20 years ago. It won’t replace the need for basic carpentry skills, but it will alert you to the main challenges of framing a cabin and how to clear the most important hurdles. And even if you never need to know how to build your own cabin in the woods, these basic instructions will be useful anytime you need to build a garage, shed or other outbuilding. (For more on the author’s cabin experience, see Our Life in a One-room Cabin)

  • Updated on Sep 8, 2020
  • Originally Published on Jun 1, 2006
Tagged with: Basic Carpentry Skills, Cabin Plan, Cozy Cabin, Framing A Cabin, Rafter Fraiming, Timber Rim
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