Quonset Hut Outbuilding--Staging for Cabin

[dgc]

I LOOOOOOVVVEEEEE half-baked ideas. My wife can tell you about all the visions of grandeur I've had over the years. I've dreamed so many different things in my adolescence and young adulthood, that it's a wonder she stayed married to me.

BUT... In the last 10 years, I've left one career, finished three degrees (including law school), spent two years earning a black belt in taekwondo (lifelong goal that I never seemed to commit fully to) and found a great new life with a strong commitment to the future in that new life. So, when I told her about the LHBA and that I sincerely believed we could achieve success, she didn't laugh at me this time (well, not too much anyway).

As I said in my earlier post, I've not been to the class yet, and I have absolutely no experience in the LHBA method. All I know is that the members are extremely helpful and gracious and are always willing to lend advice or opinions. Sometimes, a few of those opinions might seem rough around the edges, but I treasure them for the knowledge and experience I can get from them. Having said all that, this learning process is frustrating at times, and is not unlike military basic training or law school (or medical school). To fully understand and appreciate the information here, we have to completely UNlearn all the stuff filling our heads from years of our past experiences. Unless you were fortunate enough to have "Elsworth" as your last name and grow up with Skip and family, it's unlikely you've been taught the building concepts they have at LHBA (let alone their philosophy of life).

I applaud your effort and diligence to wade through the publicly available information. KEEP DOING IT! Read everything on this site you can and keep asking questions. Then, as you are no doubt already planning, get into the first class you can. Once you've done that, you'll be well on your way, as the members attest.

In the meantime, without stepping on LHBA toes, I can give you one piece of common sense advice that might be useful. If you do plan to hold back on making any decisions or commitments until you've attended the class, there's ALWAYS a need for cash when building, even doing it the LHBA way. Between now and the class, save every penny you can. Find a way to retire some debt. The class and traveling expenses cost money, and so does building a house. If you get a jumpstart on the cashflow issues, it could make the process much more enjoyable, less stressful and faster.

Just two more of my cents....

DGC

[panderson03]

I applaud your effort and diligence to wade through the publicly available information. KEEP DOING IT! Read everything on this site you can and keep asking questions. Then, as you are no doubt already planning, get into the first class you can. Once you've done that, you'll be well on your way, as the members attest.

In the meantime, without stepping on LHBA toes, I can give you one piece of common sense advice that might be useful. If you do plan to hold back on making any decisions or commitments until you've attended the class, there's ALWAYS a need for cash when building, even doing it the LHBA way. Between now and the class, save every penny you can. Find a way to retire some debt. The class and traveling expenses cost money, and so does building a house. If you get a jumpstart on the cashflow issues, it could make the process much more enjoyable, less stressful and faster.

Just two more of my cents....

DGC

GREAT advice from a newbie:) in this post and the one of yours before it. (of course I'm something of a newbie too, only having taken the class a few months ago..)

what's your area of law? my eldest daughter is in mergers and acquisitions.

[dgc]

Heaven help her.... M&A is somewhat like tax law (and actually involves tax law a lot) - lots of higly technical rules and very few opportunities for highly exciting cases.

I respect folks who have the stamina to do that kind of work. I'm somewhat of a general practitioner in my firm. The firm is 60+ attorneys, nearly all of whom specialize, more or less. So, I'm somewhat of a black sheep. But if I didn't have such a diverse practice, I wouldn't enjoy cases like the one I got recently. Wife runs husband down with the car. Hospital calls me to ask, "Can we report this to the police, or does HIPAA prevent us from reporting it?" The answer is, as most lawyers will tell you, "It depends." In the end, there wasn't enough information for the hospital to know whether the wife rammed her husband on purpose. So, they didn't have the necessary information to justify a belief that his safety was in imminent danger to warrant breaching patient confidentiality. I do a good bit of HIPAA consulting work. Another similar case was where one of my hospital clients discovered that a 737 pilot had a rare congenital heart defect that could cause him to lose consciousness and die of a sudden heart attack at any time and without any initial symptoms or warnings. The hospital asked if they could breach confidentiality under HIPAA to notify the FAA. Again, there wasn't enough information to demonstrate that there was an IMMINENT threat of danger to others (just a possible one). So, under HIPAA, they weren't permitted to disclose the information. But, after some discussions, the hospital realized that it might be worth taking the minor fine from the government for breaching the rule, just to be able to prevent a tragedy in the air. To this day, I don't know which path they took (they gave me plausible denial by refusing to tell me what their decision was).

In addition to the HIPAA work, I do contract work, some litigation, estate planning and probate and other various projects. I'm trying my best to refocus my efforts into estate planning/probate and commercial work (including litigation) that keeps me centered on client needs, as opposed to practice areas. So, if my contract client calls me next week with an employment discrimination defense need, I'd jump right in - but I might not take a new case from a non-client in areas outside estate planning/probate. I hope that makes sense, because I'm not sure I completely understand the strategy yet!

Thanks for the compliment about the advice. I'm looking forward to the class, and I certainly don't want to sound like I'm in any position to offer any information that you members are (for a while, anyway!). But some things are easy to learn from the public areas of the LHBA site, and some are common to all methods of building. If my barely coherent thoughts can be useful to anyone, I'm happy to offer them for whatever they're worth!

DGC

[edited for typos]

[WillandHelen]

First of all, you do not need to take the class to realize that a shop is going to be very usefull! I did just what you are saying. I built a 40x60 arc steel building from american durospan before I built my house. Believe me, having a place big enough to work and not just store things is a huge advantage. I was able to just lock the door while I had table saws and trim and who knows what else set up and ready to go for the next day. Before I built the shop I would spend a couple hours a day just putting everything back into a small shed.

Steel building companies are terrible to deal with. And I think they all get thier buildings from 2 factories. American Durospan did the least messing around with me. ("If you act right now" "we just had an order cancelled!!!" sort of things) But, they were not all that great in the end either. See what you can find. Quote as many companies as you can since you are truly comparing apples to apples.

Good Luck!

[Mark OBrien]

I think an outbuilding such as a quonset hut, pole barn etc. depending on your wants and needs is a great idea. I plan to have one for woodworking equipment, firefighting equipment, etc. The only caution I have is to plan very carefully where you would build it. It needs to be in harmony, for lack of a better term with your planned building site. You don't want an obtrusive building blocking access to your site, or blocking your view from your home. Pick your building site for your home and then plan your outbuilding to complement your home and not detract from it. I plan on living as rural as possible so I want to have a tanker truck of some kind for firefighting, hauling water and so forth. A quonset hut would be perfect for that.