Innovative Real Estate with Three Squared, Inc.
As specialists in efficient residential and commercial prefabricated design, Leslie Horn, Breck Crandell, and Jill Ramirez of Three Squared, Inc. share their greatest insights, tips, and case studies from their years of experience in the industry. They'll be giving you their best advice through, trainings, guest features, and Q&A segments so you can turn your innovative vision to a reality.
Innovative Real Estate with Three Squared, Inc.
CASE STUDY: Our First Cabin with Sarah Victoria & Matt Ng
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Dreaming of building your own tiny home or cabin, but wondering exactly how much work it takes?
On this exciting episode we sit down with Sarah Victoria and Matt Ng of Our First Cabin, viral Instagram creators that build their own dream cabin in upstate New York.
They share their experience and lessons learned as first time builders who bought their building plans on the internet.
Here's what you'll learn:
- Sarah and Matt's story and inspiration.
- Buying plans on the internet.
- What's not included in online plans.
- How much research you should be doing as a first time builder.
- Building a traditional cabin with non traditional materials.
- Project Highlight of the Week: Our First Cabin!
Full show notes
Make sure to follow Our First Cabin on Instagram and Youtube to stay up to date with all that Sarah and Matt are doing.
Supplementary episodes for today's conversation:
Buying Home Plans On The Internet: Who Can You Trust And What Is Legit
Why You Need An Architect (...Especially If You Think You Don't)
Launching Builder Ready Plans: Your Questions Answered
Ready to move forward with your project? Contact us here and we will put you in contact with the right member of our team.
Make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay up to date on new project releases, trainings, and more.
Welcome to the Innovative Real Estate Podcast with your hosts Leslie Horn, Brett Crandall, and Claire Olilla. We're here to make your life easier as a real estate developer and teach you everything we've learned about designing and building innovative homes, multifamily, and mixed-use structures. On this podcast, we'll be giving you our best advice, trainings, and QA segments so you can learn from our years of experience and make your innovative vision a reality. Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. And we are thrilled about the episode we're bringing you today. We've been really excited to bring on some guests who have experience building their own homes, cabins, tiny homes, Airbnbs, multifamily developments, all the things so that you can learn from their experience and ultimately set yourself up for success. So as we go through this episode today, please note that we've got all the links, all the descriptions and things in our uh caption below. So go ahead and check out the description of this episode if you want to see the project that we'll be highlighting today. If you want to learn about Sarah and Matt, who are going to be our guests on this show, or if you want to reach out via our contact form, you can check all of that out below. But let's get into the episode. We've got Sarah and Matt from our first cabin, who have been building a really beautiful, it's really turned out stunning. It's a three-bedroom Airbnb cabin and tiny home in upstate New York. And we're really excited that you guys were willing to come on the show, share a bit about your experience, and answer some of our um, some of our crazy questions here. So Sarah and Matt.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we're excited to be here. Thanks.
SPEAKER_01I'd love if you could just start off by letting everybody know, first of all, what inspired this build, because you've got to be, you've got to have some guts, first of all, to like take something on like this. So I'd love to hear what inspired this build. And then if you could give a bit of a description about the project, just so people know, you know, the kind of scope of project that we're talking about here.
SPEAKER_04Can I start here? Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Uh I like to start by saying, you know, I think a lot of listeners might be listening and, you know, coming from a position that we were at, uh, we have zero background in building anything like a house. Like we were just people looking at Instagram and pictures and be like, oh my gosh, that's that cabin looks so nice. I wish we could do that one day. And uh it was just through uh, you know, inspiring photos and our desire to do something like that that we just started to on this journey ourselves. So we have no background, no one taught us anything. And um, but you know, it maybe it can give you it gives our listeners a bit of perspective, like, you know, pretty much anybody can do if you're willing to put in the work.
SPEAKER_03And I think this is similar to a lot of people listening, uh, was born out of the pandemic. You know, it was 2020. We lived in New York City, and there was nothing to do, and we couldn't travel anywhere, but we could still take road trips. And um, so we were doing a lot of that. Uh, my dad lives off the grid in upstate Vermont. We have a friend who has a cabin in um the woods out in PA. So going between those two cabins and just you know, safely traveling and visiting with our friends and family during the pandemic, we started thinking, huh, like maybe we should do this. Yeah, maybe set ourselves up.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, how about make you know, build our own thing and then and uh and invite people over for that for that reason. And and uh that was what really inspired us. And and at that time, like tiny houses and it was just becoming extra popular at that time too. So we kind of jumped on that wagon as well, and and um and yeah, we did some research and and we can we just decided to move forward with it, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And it was one particular um brand, I guess you could say, that caught Matt's eye. I remember we were sitting in our friend Kate's cabin, um surrounded by friends, and he was just scrolling on Instagram and he found this one company, and that they were just like beautiful plans and beautiful builds, and then he was like, geez, that's it. Like, that's what we want to do. And um, just from that, that really sold us on the dream. The reality of it came a lot later, but um, that was when the dream really sold to us. Yep.
SPEAKER_01And describe how many bedrooms, baths, square footage, what are we talking about here and location as well?
SPEAKER_04Uh the result is we ended up in upstate New York in a small town called New Lebanon, which is on the New York side of the Berkshires. Yep. And uh it's about eight acres, uh square footage. I think it's about 1,600, 1700, uh, three bedrooms, two baths.
SPEAKER_03And we wanted to do something smaller, but we actually stumbled on a very unique little neighborhood that we're in a private HOA community, even though it's a dirt road and it's you know definitely not an apartment or anything like that. Um, it still is an hoa and they had requirements about square footage. Um, so it had to be a minimum, I think, of 1200 square feet. Yeah. So very quickly, our tiny home dreams went out the window, and then slowly it started getting bigger and bigger until we ended up with what we have today. Right.
SPEAKER_02And tell me a little bit about your experience on buying the plans on the internet, because we often get that question a lot. Well, hey, I just spent like $300 for a set of plans. And when we hear those words, we're just like, oh, those poor people, or you know, so tell us just a little bit about your research experience on doing that. And and the company that bought it from everybody is Den. Uh, we don't mind sharing that with it, with them. You know, there's they but we do want to know about how that was as an experience, and just you know, like this is your first time. You you bought architectural plans off the internet, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Right. Um, yeah, Den Outdoors is a very popular uh company out there, and uh and they have amazing renderings and pictures, so that's what kind of gave us the desire to try to do something like that. And um, and at the time, like uh the pictures and they almost they also give like an estimate of cost, and it of course it's much lower than reality usually. Yeah, so people who are listening, whatever number you're hearing on the internet, it's probably gonna be more. Multiply it by three, yeah. Um, but uh but we bought the plans, and um, and there's different packages you can get more detailed plans or less detailed plans. And once we had it, uh in general, I know I needed to find a builder or something, but there wasn't a lot of direction on what to do next. So I basically just watched a lot of YouTube videos. I watched so many YouTube videos during the process. I was a YouTube graduate for sure. That's where I did a lot of my learning. Uh, and and I think the first step we really took was speaking to an architect with these plans uh because we knew we wanted to make some changes. And from there, we kind of went from one thing to another from architect to uh structural engineer, and then eventually we have what we needed to show a builder, and then from there the builder took us on the journey to actually start building.
SPEAKER_03Um Yeah, and I think the the plans were a good starting point. Um, you know, we went that way, so I don't I can't really speak um to doing it any other way, but I imagine I think we saved a lot of hours um for a paid architect to build from the ground up. Um, but that being said, I do remember that there were a lot of different things that um our architect, but also our inter designer, pointed out to us like, you know, the the where the window placements are, if you open the door, you'd actually cover the the window.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_03And so we're like, oh, okay, well then let's move the window, you know, eight inches over and things like that. So I think there was like a lot of fine tooth combing that needed to be done to make sure that, you know, we don't just assume that this is a good plan. You know, we really need to get in there, look at all the details, and customize it. We also did things like we made slight floor plan adjustments. Um, we added an entire um mud room extension onto the side of it, which wasn't there. We just thought for flow purposes and orientation, like it just made a lot of sense for us. We even added like one foot to the width of the house, um, just so that it was a little bit more spacious than the narrow 19 feet wide that we had bought it at. Um, so there was definitely, you know, just a lot of awareness to the customization that we still needed to make, even though we bought it.
SPEAKER_04And I think a lot of people can might just have plans and be totally okay with it. But we're the type of people that like if we're putting so much this, you know, if we're trying to do this, we want to do it right and put in the effort to make sure it's something that we we won't regret in a way.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. I love that. Brecht, did I breck, I'm I I'm interested to hear some of your comments, and I think we can actually even point out a couple of past episodes, Claire, on that exact like past minute and a half. I really do. I think there were some really good nuggets that that Breck you've addressed with the relationship of the three people, the three team members that really makes a build.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, I got a million questions swimming around my head. But um, I mean, this was your first project. I mean, our first cabin. I kind of you know, I kind of leads the way there, but would you would you have done it the same way twice? Would you do it again the same way? And I asked this on a layer of responses because you you bought the plans. Would you buy the plans again? Would you work with the same contractor? Would you work with there's a lot to unpack there, you know? So it it takes uh it takes a couple of iterations to do it right the first time. I think we've we've all learned this in our experience. The first one is always gonna take a little bit more and be a little bit more expensive. And I'll get to the back end of that conversation in a minute. But you bought these plans from a website online. Um, let's start there. Would you have done that again based on the number of changes that you made? Or do you think that the based on your experience in building this project that you might have made your own plans and reached out to an architect directly?
SPEAKER_03Well, I think I it would I would need a better idea of the cost to work with an architect one on one to build from the ground up, I think. Um, because that just seems really daunting. But like I said before, I don't know what that costs, if that's weeks, days, months to do together, and what an architect brings to the table as far as like, okay, here's a basic layout. How would you like to change it? Because if it's coming to me and just being like, here's a blank piece of paper, what would you like to put on it? I don't think I would approach it that way. I think I would like to still start with some type of a footprint and go off of that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think the the challenge is if I was to do if I was to do it again, um I would probably start blank with an architect because now I have more of an idea like what I like, what works, and stuff. But if it was if I was brand new, I didn't know anything and it and I kind of didn't know what I wanted. Um, you know, maybe some maybe buying pre-existing stuff can be helpful. Uh or you know, if you work closely with the architect, you kind of brainstorm, look at pictures, things like that, to narrow it down what you want. I guess that could work too.
SPEAKER_03We definitely have experienced the fatigue with custom building. And so all of those options are endless. And I feel like there's a lot of weight for making the right decision and not and things like that. So I know sitting here being fatigued from that process, I'm gonna say no.
SPEAKER_04Right, right. That that is a big thing. I think if we leveraged professionals more instead of making every single choice by ourselves, probably because we wanted to make choices, and also because we don't know any other way to do it, we just kind of kept rolling with it. Uh, I think that would have made made our journey a little less uh a little more easier.
SPEAKER_00So well, Matt, I mean, yeah, it's uh as as you alluded to at the beginning of the scall, it's a never-ending series of compromises in order to build a custom home. Uh, but I will again return to this conversation because we've we've really harped on this in a number of our episodes in the past, which we'll provide some links to of you know buying custom home plans versus working with a unique architect right out the gate. Uh, because architects themselves will have a number of iterations that they've worked on in the past, right? And so they also have a starting point, but uh but I again want to return to this. Um, you you guys utilized Den Outdoors, which is you know a huge corporation. We've all seen them on our Instagram feeds at one point or another. Uh, and it was a starting point, but you changed a lot of those plans. What kind of support did Den provide to you in order to achieve the house that you guys are calling us from right now?
SPEAKER_04Uh, pretty much none. Uh, I I think at the I mean, I think I think now they offer some guidances, but um, any changes we wanted, we had to look for an architect to make the changes.
SPEAKER_00So after purchasing the plans, you still had to hire somebody to alter those plans. Oh, yeah, and then it was pretty much on you to find the general contractor and to put all the pieces together, correct? Absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_04So you you pretty much have to because there's a lot of details that aren't in the plans. Um, and if you have any desire to change anything, you definitely need a professional architect and there's structural stuff to consider as well that we don't we don't know anything about. Um, so yeah, definitely you have it's just it was a necessity.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, oh it's great. I I mean we've definitely talked about this in the past, and that that's always been, you know, a lot of people reach out to Three Squared and ask us um, can you just provide us plans? And and it was always like a moral decision for us that yeah, we can provide you plans, but we also need to have a support network for after we give you those plans. We we as a group, you know, Leslie Claire and I have talked about this for for years now, where we don't want to provide someone with plans that don't have an additional plan of action, right? Like we don't just want to like hand you drawings and it's like, well, good luck. You know, what a what a one of my clients in the past uh alluded to a little anecdote that was like, Well, you diagnosed me with cancer and now I'm on my own. It's like, no, you need a plan of action, you need the doctors, you need the sport network, you need everything to help you through this challenge. And that that one struck a chord with me where it's like, yeah, you know, we're not just gonna provide plans with no plan of action in addition to that. Um, we we want to work with the whole team in order to achieve the total project, and this is just shining a light on exactly that scenario. Like, yeah, the plans were probably phenomenal, they were great, they were well thought through. There was a whole team of people that put their heart and soul and energy into those products, but every scenario, as you guys have now experienced, is a little bit different than one another. And you're gonna have to make some alterations and you have to adapt it to your actual site. So, my next question is what things were not included in the plans that you purchased that you had to go out and problem solve after the fact.
SPEAKER_03Well, I think the plans that we have, we couldn't just take to the town and have them approved. Um, they still had to be um structurally approved because that detail wasn't in there. There was also no um plans as far as electric and plumbing. These are the rules, you know. So that we had we found out later that that's typical that you you would have an electric plan, and we're like, oh no, I'm I'm literally printed something and I'm using a a marker and I'm marking it down, and that's where the outlet's going. Um, so those were sets of plans that were definitely missing.
SPEAKER_04Um, but I think there was just a lot of details too um that we didn't consider that wasn't in there.
SPEAKER_03Um I can't think of specifically, but I remember working with our architect. He, you know, he was opening it in CAD, but he was still like, there's still these measurements that don't work or this line that doesn't connect, even though it's like within CAD. So something there.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, our architect really kind of cleaned things up, so much so that we actually don't know what he did per se to make it all work completely, but there was work to do to kind of you know to really to really get all the details that was missing.
SPEAKER_02Amazing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, I'm not your architect on this particular project that we're talking about, but this is a very familiar scenario where yeah, we're kind of left with some loose threads that we have to weave together in order to make this project happen. And this is something we talked about at length here on this podcast, uh, that you can get plans and it's a great design, but there's still a lot of details that we have to resolve. And no matter where you buy plans online, the fact remains that what happens under the ground is just as important as what happens above the ground. And so when you plan out your foundation, uh, your site access, your utilities, that's all excluded from that initial design. The design of a house is really just like, hey, here's a beautiful house. Even though we know you're gonna change some doors and windows, there's a lot of the background information that is a necessity to making this project happen that isn't included in those documents. My am I off base here? No, that's totally right.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, like you can't just throw plans on a pile of on a piece of land. Like there's a lot of things to consider, like you said, orientation, how you're gonna get into it. Uh uh, the foundation was very important too.
SPEAKER_03Plumbing, electric, gas, all the utilities that have to come into it for and where they come into it.
SPEAKER_04Right. And there's just a lot of things that we didn't know until we got to the point where like we needed this information. So, oh, I didn't know we need this, let's let's go get it. A lot of those and also, and then this this could be maybe a segue. Uh, I we were we at the time lumber was uh this was like two years ago or something, lumber was really expensive. And so we stumbled on the idea or the concept of using SIP panels, which is uh structurally integrated panels. And so we went with Guardian, this company called Guardian, and uh and so doing that required our architect to really help us modify plans and to make it um uh usable with with with this uh with this product. And um, but uh you know, just to slightly go into it, it's um it's much more foam and metal than it is wood. And we thought, you know what, that could be a good way to maybe save some money. We're not sure. Uh, but definitely it is known to have um a lot of benefits in terms of uh insulative properties. Uh a lot of people use it for to create passive homes, and of course I had to figure out what that one that meant. Um so uh but we're like, hey, you know what? This this seems like a good way to get a lot of benefits and maybe save some money, then let's let's try that out.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and our the den plans that we bought, that's all for stick build. That's all two by fours, two by sixes, and then to go into a guardian uh material, we're talking about 12-inch walls. So everything gets thicker. Um, and where does that space come from? The inside or come from the outside? So even after our architect um adjusted our plans, we still had to give it to Guardian and Guardian's architect adjusted the plans again.
unknownYeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Sarah, you guys are beating me to all the punchlines. That's fine. As our regular listeners might know, I am building my own house here in the city of Detroit. And as of recently, I have opted to utilize these Guardian structural panels for my own house, which is actually the reason why Matt and Sarah are on the call today, is because Guardian is the company that's manufacturing these foam panels, put us in touch with another one of their collaborators, and we met each other on Instagram, and the rest is history. So I also firmly believe in these, but you you've touched on some really interesting points. It's like, okay, we were given plans, a design, a starting point, if you will, but we had to alter things and then we had to work with a number of teams to corroborate in order to make this actual building be buildable and to be able to put it together. So now I want to switch gears a little bit because we have a we have we have a background of where you're coming from and what you built. But now I want to talk a little bit more about these products because you guys strike me as a couple who did a ton of research and found some very forward thinking solutions to some of these challenges that very in line with three squared core values, are challenging the conventions of traditional buildings. Just fascinated by this. So we met each other through these structural insulated panels, these SIPs. So we are actually going to have the Guardian team uh on our podcast here in a future episode coming up very shortly. Um, but this is a team of uh it's it's a crew of people based out of Cleveland, Ohio that are doing the same but different, right? Like they found a solution here that utilizes all of the technologies and efficiencies that we've built into the profession, but they they found this little sweet spot that makes them just this much more efficient where they're building panels. So it is a prefabricated system. Your building comes in chunks, and you put your chunks of the building together to make the shell of your house. And the shell is exceptionally insulated, it's uh it's a very sustainable product. I mean, all the foam that they're using is EPS, which is the only foam that's 100% recyclable. You can actually break this home down and rebuild it again and again uh with embodied energy, which is, you know, it's it's following our core values from start to finish. Um, you know, as we've talked about on this podcast, it's it's not about the initial cost of a building, it's about the lifetime cost of a building. Where it's like, okay, I've I saved a few dollars per square foot here or there cutting corners in the initial process, but my heating and cooling bill being 30, 60, 80 percent lower than a traditional home is gonna pay dividends in the near future. And so I just I I want to give uh Matt and Sarah an opportunity to talk about some of these systems because from top to bottom, I feel like you guys did your research. And you know, the guardian panels for the exterior envelope was just one piece of the puzzle. So in addition to the panels that you use for the exterior envelope, what other systems did you explore and what research did you do that led you to this outcome of the building that you're calling us from today?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, one of the other huge um pieces that we considered are windows because once you have really insulated walls, the only place you're gonna leak a lot of energy and heat are windows. Um, so Matt did a lot of research with that, just between you know, standard residential windows, high qualities, and that got them to a couple different brands and then landed on triple pane.
SPEAKER_04Right. Uh uh yeah. Speaking of windows, I think I looked at five different brands. I don't remember them off the top of my head. I know there's Marvin, there's there's three other ones that's pretty common. Anderson, Allah, yeah, you probably all of them. So, who did you end up going with for when I ended up going with a company in Colorado called Alpin? And I think they're not as pop as as big or as well known. But when I did all this research in terms of cost and performance, uh, they were really uh on top in terms of what I was able to get uh for the cost. And um and really when we received it too, like the quality really shows. Uh there we ended up going with triple pain. Uh, and I forgot what the performance numbers are, but uh, but it was like the best bang for the buck, and and we really like them actually.
SPEAKER_03Um our carpenters were really impressed with them when when installing, they are heavy as heck. Yeah, uh, but they are some serious windows, and we also you know landed on that too because we have in our design a lot of huge windows. So all of these were as big as they can come and custom, you know. So we really just came to Alpen and said, What's the biggest window you can make? And they, you know, for our picture window, they said nine feet. We're like, then that's the size we want, you know. So that's that's how we decided that too.
SPEAKER_04Uh and aside from windows, we also needed to consider the foundation.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And we went with a company called Warm Form. And uh, they've been around for a while too. And it's almost like sit panels, but on the ground. I think that that might be the way I can explain it. But they come in chunks as well, and it really kind of was cohesive with the idea of keeping things extra insulated. Um and uh and actually you were talking about you know the cost of you know heating and so forth. And we we've been for the first time, we've been uh we just moved in very recently, and so we start to really use and utilize this, and it's awesome in terms of how we're able to retain heat. Basically, like over two, three days, the temperature only drops like one or two degrees uh without using any heat. Like it just keeps it that that warm for so long. And um it's just the beginning, really.
SPEAKER_03The last system I I want to mention too is our choice in um heating. Um, we have a slab build, so we don't have a basement. And um we wanted to go with the um polished concrete floor look for the first floor. Um, so concrete obviously can be very cold. So we decided to do radiant heating throughout the first floor. So that has just been really efficient way to heat everything in the house.
SPEAKER_04We we love it. Like it's it's something I've always wanted and you know heard about. And uh we went with the hydronic route, so just use you just use this water. Uh, there's different radiant type floors out there. Um, but this is pretty standard, very kind of traditional kind of radiant floors, and it's it's amazing. We love it so much. It keeps things warm, not it's very super efficient, and uh it's nothing like walking in your feet are toasty.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. All right, so to break down a couple of these systems here, uh, we talked about the envelope, makes a lot of sense. I mean, you you have a superior thermal insulation and it's unbroken throughout the entire project. So if we talk about traditional sticks and bricks framing, and you've heard me say this before on this podcast, on average, a traditional American-built home has more than two miles, that is correct, two miles of cracks and openings throughout that development. Because you're putting a series of small pieces together and we rely on like sealant material to get the thermal performance. Whereas if we can work with systems that have much, much less material waste because they're panelized, they all come to the site and lock together. Ideally, you don't have any waste on a job site. If a panel doesn't fit, you're in trouble, right? So that's why there's a lot of upfront coordination between your architects and engineers to make sure that those panels fit the system. All right, so now we got two other options. We can talk about doors and windows, and we can talk about foundations. So, doors and windows, you guys went with a triple paned, very insulated material. There is a gas that's actually pumped in between those panes of glass that helps insulate those materials. Triple pane is about as efficient as you could possibly get. Because if we talk about, I mean, get put yourself in a cardboard box, put a heater in that cardboard box, you're gonna be very warm. Cut a hole in that cardboard box, you're gonna be very cold. It doesn't matter if you have a heater or not. Windows are just punching a hole in your thermal envelope. And so if you use cheap windows, which unfortunately most people do, you know, then it's it's literally just making an opening in this thermal envelope. And it doesn't matter how efficient your system is that you've generated to create this structure, uh, if you make a hole in it, it's a hole. Uh, and so you guys went with a with a product that is is great insulation and it has its thermal values, and so you you you chose your battles, right? That makes a lot of sense. Now we look at the foundations. So we're we're both building houses. Well, you built your house. I'm building my house, and we're going with very similar systems. You used a company that actually makes form work for your foundations. What we did on my house in Detroit is we dug into the ground, and because our our soil condition is clay, the actual clay material holds its shape. And so we used that clay soil to be the formwork of our foundations. So what we did was very similar, but just slightly different. And what both of these systems do is that we created a whole envelope and foundation of a house that actually kind of floats on the ground because we're not tethering it to a basement. Now, you guys, you guys know I loathe basements. I think they're the worst idea ever. Like you're building a swimming pool underneath your house, it's gonna flood. I don't, I don't care. You can argue with me all day. It could be five years, 25 years, 50 years, it's gonna flood. It's gonna flood at some point in time because you're pushing your building into the ground. But what Matt and Sarah and what I did on our respective homes is that we floated our building above the ground. So if that ground freezes, if a ton of water gets into the ground and it lifts or reduces the height of that building, the whole building operates as one piece. So this is this is new to the code books. Um, this is something that we've been toying with for a number of years. I worked on a number of uh habitat for humanity homes that actually utilize this shallow footing because a shallow footing is you could think of it like a raft and the floor is lava. It's not lava, it's water, but the floor is water, and the floor of the ground is going to change shape, but the building itself rises and falls in line with that footing so that you don't have cracks in the foundation, you don't have to deal with basements that have water in them. You can just let your building rest on its foundation that as the earth freezes and thaws will actually lift and set the building back into place. And it's a very efficient model for a couple of reasons because that foundation uses less material, like you don't have as much concrete in the ground. Uh, you don't use as much equipment on the job site. We're not digging as deep to get down into the ground. So my house is in Detroit. Your guys' project is in upstate New York. This is the same climate zone because it works laterally across the nation and across the planet. So we're actually in the same climate zone, 5A, which means that our frost depth is the same as your frost depth, which means that the ground freezes down to a certain level. We don't have to worry about that. We don't have to worry about that because the ground actually keeps the temperature around 55, 60 degrees. Like if you dig a deep, deep hole, you'll understand this because the ground retains the temperature. We are borrowing some of that temperature to heat the underside of our homes that allows the slab beneath the house to retain that 55 to 60 degree temperature year round. So we actually don't have to worry about frost heaves cracking our foundation or changing the foundation situation for our buildings. So all I'm saying is that you guys did your research. You chose some very, very smart and efficient systems for your home, and that's how we got to meet one another. So as we wrap up this conversation, I want to leave you with a couple of questions. This is your first house that you guys built together, and it was a journey. Would you do it again? And if you did it again, what would you change about the process?
SPEAKER_04Uh so for me, I would say I might not do it again because it is a lot of work. I mean, like seriously, it's one of the hardest things I had to do, really. Uh, but if I do have the desire to, I will do it very differently, where I would have more of a team to help me rather than doing this solo because it was just uh a lot of learning, a lot of mistakes, a lot of decisions to make. But if somebody else kind of took the reins on a lot of those and and we just made them the more critical decisions, I think um I think the process will be much easier, more enjoyable. Uh, probably save some money too.
SPEAKER_03So I think overall I would be open to doing it again. Um, there's just a lot of parts of it that I still loved to do. I did really love the the project manager aspect of it. Um, what I would do differently is now I know so much more about the timeline. Yeah. You know, I thought I had to pick a sconce light when I had a painted sheetrocked wall. That is not the case. Or a faucet when I have a vanity. Not the case. Um, you know, we we were scrambling and always behind on all of the fixture decisions, um, simply because we just did not know I needed to know all those things, even at the architect phase of like deciding how how big a wall is or narrow a hallway is based on those decisions, you know. So, and obviously we we do a lot of buying online, so does everybody else. And, you know, to get something in person and then see it and feel it and touch it, color, texture, everything like that is so different. Um, so we we did so much trial and error with buying, seeing, testing, returning, buying again. And that process takes a long time too. So that would only make us more behind, and then we'd have to make quicker decisions, or you know, we're like, whatever, we'll just like build it and we'll just have to figure it out later. Um, so we didn't love being in a lot of those situations, but that's what we learned simply through um doing this for the first time.
SPEAKER_04And and I wanna I want to retract my answer just a little bit because I forgot the most important part. And it's this when you build your own house, you're going, you're gonna go on a journey where you're gonna learn a lot and uh you're gonna experience a lot. And a lot of that actually, the journey, you know how they say, you know, it's not the destination, it's a journey. Many ways, it's true. Um, because we learn so much, we're much more capable now than we were when we started in terms of understanding how to build things. Uh, we were really hands-on with a lot of things, and uh, when you're hands-on, you're making decisions and you're there on site. Um, there's so many stories and experiences, funny mistakes, like good times, moments of like when you, for example, when the slab was poured for the first time, we wrote a little message in there. We wrote built with love into the cement. And now it's there in our living room, right next to the dining room table that we planned to be at. And it's so true. Like we put so much love and effort into it. Uh, when the structure of the SIP panels came up, we're like, wow, we can step into it. All those like first moments is is is so unique and really it's it's it's it's rare. Uh, not everybody gets to experience that. And I think even with all the challenges and stuff, the all those memories and the and the experience we've had is really worth that work.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that was so beautiful. Go ahead, Claire.
SPEAKER_01I have one more final question, and I I think Breck needs to hop off for a call. So feel free to do that, Breck, if you need to. But something that comes up for me that I really want to ask you guys is first of all, like, I so honor you for taking on this beast of a project and all the ups and downs. And I can only imagine how that could really show like the strength of a relationship and like the strength of two people coming together for that. So, my curiosity is what did each of you learn about yourselves through this process? And how did it strengthen your relationship together?
SPEAKER_03I'll start. I um yeah, I through this process, I became a lot more grateful for my upbringing. Um, because I grew up in New Hampshire in a small town. My house had multiple constructions, additions, you name it. My dad's a carpenter, handyman, mom's landscaping, gardening. Like we were always a build it hands-on type of family. And um, you just don't get to use all those life skills and really appreciate your upbringing and your parents until you are building a house, you know. So for much of my life growing up, I thought just like any teen or kid, like, oh, this is stupid or this is lame or this is never gonna apply, or like, you know, whatever. And then I'm here and I'm like, thank God, like I know a little bit about tools and how to use them and all of that jazz, as well as this was a huge project that my family got to come back and help us with, you know. So that was really, really mean meaningful um for me. And um, it, you know, also brought Matt into my family more and helped us create like this really big family unit. Um, with his, you know, he got to learn things from my dad, and my dad only has four girls. So that relationship was beautiful to see, that's for sure. Um, and and our relationship became a lot business, you know, we became business partners um as well as romantic partners. And so that was probably the biggest challenge to um have both of those roles and change roles and um still communicate through the process. Beautiful.
SPEAKER_04Um for me, uh gosh, I think I kind of took away just learning to really be patient and communicate. Uh, communication is huge in relationships and also in building. Um, and if you're especially if you're deciding to make a lot of the choices, you really have to communicate clearly what you really want. Uh, so there's a lot of that that that was really important. But on the relationship side, I want to I want to jump into is uh it's it definitely was a challenge for us and it really brought us together and made us a much stronger team than ever before. I feel like we have an amazing teamwork, and I can't say that on on behalf of everybody that might go through this process, but it is um they say like if you can build a house together, you know, you can go through anything, you know, it really is that way. There's definitely moments where, like, you know, I got frustrated or you know, we're tired and we're trying to do this, and you know, we we get irritable and things like that, and um, but um, all of that just allowed us to understand how to work with each other, uh, what works for each other. And it definitely is a relationship strengthener. Um, and really, again, the journey, it's the story that we can tell and we share forever that is that is truly ours.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's building a house, but then you you don't really, we didn't know going into this, um, all of the the ripple effects and it would have with the people around us as well as our relationship. So that was a great reward.
SPEAKER_02Ah Claire, that was an amazing last question. That was just an amazing, amazing last question.
SPEAKER_01Well, I can imagine it's kind of like a magnifying glass. It's like if you have a strong foundation and then you have this big project to tackle, it's like if things were already going well, like it would probably strengthen that. And if things were already like kind of struggling, that it might be too much pressure. So, again, I I really commend you guys and all of the couples going through this process together because to separate out that romantic and business relationship, like that can be a lot to navigate. So, kudos to you guys.
SPEAKER_03Thank you. I mean, we wanted to totally avoid building this and then resenting each other for it, you know. So we were like, we better, we better enjoy some of the process with it and be able to laugh at parts and help each other out at parts and everything like that. Lovely.
SPEAKER_04And Sarah really carries the weight. She's so smart with all this stuff, she's so organized, she's so patient. I'm the lucky one here just to put it on my phone.
unknownAwesome.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. Well, we would love to point our listeners to you guys as thank you for coming on our show. Would you mind sharing with everyone where they can find you? And also when are you taking bookings?
SPEAKER_03Right. That is a big question. Now that we built it, we're like, ooh, we need to enjoy this for a little bit. Um, but we are um aiming to open bookings in 2024 after mud season, which if you are in the northeast or anywhere that's cold, you get what that means. Um, so you can find us on Instagram at our first cabin with underscores in between and uh on YouTube too.
SPEAKER_04Right. Yep. Those uh but Instagram is where we're most active. And YouTube, we're gonna start picking up more to kind of share our journey, our lessons, and just kind of give back to people that are interested in this process to follow us. They can maybe do the same and reach their dreams of having their own.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. Thank you guys so much. This was awesome. Maybe we can do a part two when you're starting taking bookings and getting through a little more of the process there. But we're so grateful for your time and sharing your experience. And for anyone listening, we'll have all those links. If you want to connect with Matt and Sarah or follow along their journey, we'll have that all below in the description. Thanks everyone for listening.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, thanks for having us.
SPEAKER_01It's a pleasure. We hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you found it so valuable, you want to connect with us one-on-one, click the link in the description to tell us all about your project so we can help you get started. And to get notified on the next episode here on Innovative Real Estate, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes so you never miss a beat. Get out there, put today's advice into action, and we will see you in the next episode.