Building Wild - TV Show on Off-Grid Cabin Building

[Kento]

If you're looking for some fun project ideas before or after you build your LHBA home, check out the TV show "Building Wild" on the National Geographic Channel.

The simplest way to describe it is "Extreme Home Makeover" meets "off-grid recreational living"--on a much lower budget. The show features carpenter/designer Paul Dimeo from the Extreme Home Makeover series. Like that show, they tackle an ambitious project in 7 days. That's where the similarities end. The building sites are always remote, difficult-to-access locations. The clients get their friends and relatives to contribute a week of labor and provide whatever materials they have laying around, significantly reducing costs. The cabins are not over-the-top mansions but end up as small but very unique and clever designs.

It's fun to watch to see how they'll deal with construction challenges on a remote site and the cabin ideas are really inspirational. In one build, they stood up a shipping container vertically to make a lookout tower (complete with a backwoods "elevator" powered by a winch). They've also incorporated abandoned school buses, boats, and just about anything they can scrounge. It shows you can have a creative design just by using what you've got.

Fun show...if you have National Geographic Channel, check your listings to catch an episode. If you've seen the show, did you get any ideas?!

Check out their website at http://www.cabin-kings.com/index.php.

Kento

[rreidnauer]

No need for me to see it. I'm already living it! :D

[eagle]

I hate to be negative but I've watched quite a few of them, I just don't see how they do all that in 7 days, foundations and all. even with all the labor. I will say they are quite creative, but I wish they would slow it down a bit with a bit more detail so we could see how they do some things. I guess it is hard for a short tv slot. It is pretty funny though how they argue, not too much drama like other shows but just enough to be humorous.

[Plumb Level]

I've watched quite a few of those. Some were good, some left me a little concerned. One was a kit the guys had already bought, and that episode left me shaking my head about the kit, squared "logs", tiny overhangs, etc. But what was pretty cool about that one was they built the cabin on a old excavator chasis. So you could spin the cabin to take advantage of sunrise and sunset.

The school bus episode was also cool, but again, I think that was a kit home. The owner is a school teacher, so they cut an old school bus in two and made that a wing of the cabin.

I have gotten some neat ideas on how to I want to finish off the inside of mine.

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/building-wild/

[rckclmbr428]

I saw an episode where they converted the concrete base of a ski lift into a cabin, and had a steep metal roof, pitched right onto the only stairs to get onto the deck and into the cabin. I saw it and said to my wife "thats the dumbest design ever" the home was in Vermont.