Small living space

[RHanna]

I’m thinking about a little 2 bedroom living space that would be about 3 hours from my main house. It would have access to water and electric and septic and it’s pretty rural.

A few options
1) buying the 2 bedroom 1946 home that had an electric fire and rehabbing it. One of my childhood friends own it now. His step grandparents lived there and they looked after me on occasion. It’s about 100 yards from where I would build the other options.
2) small cabin
3) pole barn house
4) barndominium
5) arch cabin

Has anyone had experience with this? I’m not really looking for high end finishes and I’d like to keep the cost down as much as possible.

Main reason for building is to look after the family farm and hunting place in the winter. I’d love to start bringing my son and my 2 nephews down there but it makes for a long day if I have to drive 6 hours round trip.

I’d probably end up buying a tractor and brush hog to keep the fields clear.

 

[bucky]

We put a Manufactured Home on our property in Az. Faster than a stick built. We bought from a high end builder. 6” side walls and insulated well. We are on a dirt road and have less dust in the house than our main house in the city. It definitely was better to this way because we were able to settle in much faster and would not hesitate to go this route again. We were able to customize our home for a small engineering fee. Manufactured homes have an undeserved reputation but we are Very happy with our choice.

 

[JPHikr]

We live in a 640sqft house that was built in 1960 on 5 Acres. Paid $55k in 2015.

Downsized from 2700sqft.

When we got it was move in ready, but we went ahead and did some reno.

New tile floors, new countertops, new shower and vanity in the bathroom.

All in we spent $25k.

 

[BlueC]

The first question you need to answer is cash or financed. With cash you can do as you want. Financing will come with terms like it has to be larger than 600sf, no "barndominium", no geodesic home etc. If there is an existing house in decent shape, that will likely be your best "budget" option, as you can fix as you go. Also, like bucky said, don't discount manufactured houses, they're much better today than 30 years ago. You can even find repo'd ones at a steep discount, but I'd still favor the old site built house if it’s in decent shape due to zoning and code stuff.

 

[JustDandee]

i will second that cash part, time is another. Do you have enough bandwidth in schedule for the long hall for a dyi. Or should you pay a guy. The logistics of working on this project that is two hours away and next to not much is a thing. when yours hours away from a hardware store, will definitely slow down a project…at least for this amateur not bringing enough screws.