I think they misjudged the timescale and the complexity added by slope. Good outcome though so clearly wasn't too badly misjudged.
Youtube channel Wild Wonderful Offgrid [1] built a much bigger absolutely gorgous house...but on flat terrain and over two years.
The other thing I've noticed is that many successful projects have pretty permanent "temporary" accomodation on site that take the pressure off needing to complete it asap.
That's a good point. Buy an old RV for a year, place in it onsite, and live in it as necessary until the structure is inhabitable, and then sell the RV, hopefully at not too big a loss. It can be a towed RV even, whatever those are called.
Even building the barn takes awhile! I built a 8x12' shed working mostly on weekends 7 years ago and that alone took a couple months. Good thing it was in my backyard and I thus already had a house to live in.
Also, I suspect that if you're building a smaller cabin-type house in the woods, you don't also want a barn. Maaaybe a shed.
My dream house would have some interior unfinished space that opens to the outside for use as a shed/workshop. Basically think of a large unfinished mudroom with storage for tools, a lawnmower, shelving, a workbench, and maybe some larger stationary power tools like a band saw and drill press.
They are called travel trailers. If you buy used, you’ll have much better luck getting a similar price out of it. Only caveat is that they aren’t made to be lived in full time in most cases, so they’ll have more issues than a regular house might.
Youtube channel Wild Wonderful Offgrid [1] built a much bigger absolutely gorgous house...but on flat terrain and over two years.
The other thing I've noticed is that many successful projects have pretty permanent "temporary" accomodation on site that take the pressure off needing to complete it asap.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/c/WildWonderfulOffGrid/videos?view=0...