but today we've traveled to another property in Olympia where we're about to see where it all began and

visit Jacob's very first Cabin in the Woods

Yo, Jacob. What's up man? Good to see you again, man. Good to see you dude.

Dude, it was a bit of an ordeal getting out here eh oh yeah, you mean from where we parked yeah

Yeah, I don't know if it's I always it sometimes it gets longer and longer

But it must be a hundred two hundred yards out here crossing a river

Using the hand trolley yeah, but it's cool right I knew it's amazing

This is exactly the kind of remote location where you would want to build a cabin like this

It was a blessing and a curse. I mean, I think that it's really beautiful to be out here away from

roads and away from everything but very difficult to kind of forge the path and

To bring all the materials that was also really difficult so you carried everything out here by head on the shoulders and me yeah

It was hard the river is crazy because it'll go from 4 feet wide to 30 feet wide so there were times when it was

not crossable

But mainly I had crossed over a fallen tree and post me living here someone put in a trolley and make it easier

But I still use the tree because it's still there this place is actually really special because this was your very first

Cabin wasn't it? this is where I started really

Working it out, and I mean, I just went for it. I jumped into it. It was made with 100% recycled materials and

Costs me about 800 bucks and getting all the materials together this place only cost you 800 bucks to build your must have been

really resourceful with your sourcing that's one where did it say the other would be like I was like a crow you know I was

just picking at the scraps that were outside job sites or my job sites that I was working on or friends job sites or

Some salvage stuff that I did actually have to buy like the metal roof was salvaged

But I sourced it through Craigslist, and I was a scavenger

That's what I'm looking for carrying so I was just like getting everything free that

I could as your very first build project though this still doesn't actually look like a super simple project

There's some quite complex geometry and everything that's going into this house as well, isn't there. It wasn't easy. I didn't pick just an easy

Cabin I wanted it to look different than things that I had seen and I also had this

Vision in my mind that I wanted to see it realized you know so in my mind. I wanted to see

A shed roof that went from a high point to a low point instead of a high wall to a low wall

So it was basically like a normal shed roof

That's just a single pitch, but then the roof rotated and the whole actual building kind of rotated

So it was more angular looking I suppose and I also wanted to be really really tall like I want to have

12-foot ceilings on the on the ground and then I also wanted to be able to do a substation up in the high point

so that shot it up to something like 18 feet and

It was only a 10 by 10 because in my mind

I thought that it had to be under a hundred square feet when the rule is actually 200 square feet

so I made it really tall and skinny and

That was complicated for sure and that was very much what?

went on to define something that's kind of become your style hasn't it these really unique and

intricate shapes that are actually going into the cabins that you build now yeah, I guess like everything I do is based on shape and

Based on like a theme almost like those little wings that kind of shoot out. I wanted it to have this sort of like witch's

hat look and then I started thinking well, that's not really which is Kevin looks more like a Manta Ray

That's maybe where I feel like it's more of a sculpture, and I can I want it to be different. You know cool man

Yeah, look at it. Let's go inside and have a look

Come in

Hey, wow, it's definitely very Sparse right now

Yes, I think part of the charm of this kind of sort of Rustic Cabin

And it doesn't need a lot of things to fill it and make it look right

I was a college student and I was trying to live this low-impact lifestyle, so this was way more

My kind of a cabin and when I did live here it was definitely closer to this where it's like candles

I didn't have a couch and I had pillows like the upstairs right now looks exactly like I did when I lived here pretty much

And what I loved about living out here was that there was just

Less of everything and when I started this is kind of when I started out on my own. I was really young carpenter

I didn't even know what I was doing. I didn't have tools, but I like it all bare bones, and I don't know school

Maybe it's just Nostalgia. That's why It means so much just being back in it

We kind of talked about this a little bit with your last cabins that we visited

but when you are building a cabin like this in the woods

maintaining that intimate connection with nature is so vital and keeping all of the area a bit more Sparse and then having

Features like this elongated window just really help bring the outside into this space

I mean yeah

That's the idea the windows like I want you to feel like you're inside one of the trees in that these are just the windows

From the inside of the tree that you're in to all the other trees that are around you if you look at those trees?

There's these lines in there, and you have the tree kind of being separated by these lines

but it continues up, and then if you go upstairs you see that same tree you're up in the top of the tree and

upstairs has some real big windows and a real big skylight and

the same sort of thing like I want you to feel like your

Tree house style like you're in the tree. All right, well should we have a look upstairs. No doubt

Man, this is just so cozy. It's a little bit like camping that's very much how it feels cool, and yeah

That's what it is

It's like a big wooden tent that you get to leave set up all the time in the middle of the woods

And that's one thing. I love about building is that you start in a place that humans haven't touched at all it's just

nature trees mud and you

start

sinking that shovel and

making a place to protect yourself from

the Elements and

It's not you against nature

But we need shelter and people have been doing it for Millennia. I think especially in today's Modern society

It's really easy to fall into that trap of thinking that we need so many of the things that we're just used to having

but for three years you

Successfully lived out here with no running water with no power and yet still managed to be a functioning member of society

Right what are your thoughts around that and what advice would you have for people who are?

Looking at taking the plunge into a simple cabin project

but it may be afraid of doing that if it means giving up some of the modern conveniences

One thing is that you don't have to think like oh my God. I'm never going to I'm not gonna shower for three years

It's kind of just

Looking elsewhere. There's also a creek, so in the summer

I swim a lot, and you know it's just like there are other ways of getting clean

And then I would say that there is to some extent yeah, you've got a roughing

but if you are willing to believe that the value is not

Just tangible you know the value and being a space like this and living in a space like this and living a more

Simplified Lifestyle the value is not tangible if you don't believe that then you might be like yeah

It's not worth it is it's more work. You definitely like I said hauling everything back here

Oh, that was a pain. You know those really hard, but right now especially

there's this insane joy that I feel from and I did that I really loved the

Adventure of this place. I love the this story of

The adventure that you had actually creating this I'm a little bit envious

Of the fact that you lived here because I would have loved a place like this when I was in university

But I loved as well the adventure that it still represents today like climbing up this

Ladder and coming up into this loft and being amongst these trees. It does it just makes me feel like a kid again

So thank you so much for sharing with us. Thanks for coming man. I really appreciate it

Jacob is a cabin builder who is now constructing these wonderful

Ornate sacred Geometric works of art in the forest

But coming here is so special because this is where it all began

this is where he got the courage to actually learn his craft and just

Experiment, and in the process he built himself a wonderful home that served him for three years and then that I am finding a lot

of inspiration

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