A Filmmaker Builds a Rustic Off-Grid Cabin Deep in a Canadian Forest for $64K

This clifftop home on the east coast of Canada was entirely built by the owner—who had no experience building a house—and his friends.

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Mandi Keighran

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Escaping the city and building a home in the wilderness from the ground up is a dream for many—but too often reality sets in, and the technicalities involved relegate this desire to the realm of fantasy. A Canadian filmmaker, however, recently brought his dream to life on a remote forested clifftop on the east coast of Canada.

"Living in the city as a teenager, I always looked forward to going to my friend’s family cottage in the country," he says. "It always felt right to be in this old, rustic home—I loved the history of the place, the charisma of the land, and the open space."

The owner was motivated to build his own home to avoid a mortgage and to gain the know-how to undertake his own maintenance and repairs. "I was craving the personal challenge to cultivate a home for myself," he says. "As it was the beginning of a new adventure, I wanted it to be personal. Also, practically speaking, if I built each piece of the home by hand, I would have a good sense of how to solve problems or improve it, without having to ask anyone else to journey through the forest, down the trail, and up the cliff to make an adjustment."

When he decided to build his own home and set down roots after a decade spent traveling and filming documentaries, he wanted to recreate the feeling of this childhood memory by crafting a simple home from timber and other raw materials. "I would rather live in a cabin than a condo or a house that is merely a design trip," he says. "I wanted a comfortable home that is inviting to live and function freely in."

"I’ve been looking at cabins and small homes since I was a teenager," says the owner. "I knew I wanted the home to have a small footprint, but for the interior space to still feel open and expansive." This informed the interior planning, as he knew he didn’t want the upper floors to completely enclose the ground floor. By minimizing the second floor and including an open third-floor loft bedroom, he was able to maintain a spacious feeling and avoid making the interior spaces feel too enclosed.

He sketched an initial design on the back of a pizza box, and found a site on the east coast of Canada on a clifftop overlooking a river. The former farm was tucked into a dense forest of yellow birch, oak, hemlock, and sugar maple trees. "Before I began building, I camped and spent time getting to know the space," he says. "It’s like what the British artist Andy Goldsworthy describes as ‘shaking hands with a place.’ Just because I bought the land, doesn’t mean it belongs to me."

The owner is a freelance documentary filmmaker who found that city living was stifling his creativity. "I have always been more creative in a vast space," he says. "So, being surrounded by wilderness really attracted me." It was important that the surrounding forest not be dramatically impacted by the build, and only five trees were removed during the construction.

"I didn’t consider what I needed to build a home...I didn’t even know how to put a nail in the wall. I just began, which gave the project momentum." —Canadian Castaway

The home is situated on a steep site and is accessed from a cedar stair that leads to a wraparound deck on the east side of the house. The construction all follows the shape of the cliff. "The vision was to hold to the expansive and unobstructed feeling of the land," says the owner. "If I were to build something else, I would consider finding a flatter space or building near a field. Sometimes it’s just nice to walk on a flat surface."

As he had never built a home—or anything at all—before, the design and construction process was a steep learning curve. When he first arrived on-site, he didn’t even have any tools. Luckily, he was able to employ the help of an architect neighbor to assist with the design, and friends to assist with building the foundations and framing.

The owner wanted to achieve a simple and rustic aesthetic throughout the home, with a focus on raw materials. "I didn’t want to paint the wood white, for instance," he says. "I just wanted to let it age naturally and invite it to mirror the natural world it was now a part of."

"I didn’t consider what I needed to build a home, and I was a real kook in the beginning—I didn’t even know how to put a nail in the wall," he says. "I just began, which gave the project momentum. Once we had built the shell of the home, I began to build on my own. Friends helped along the way, but I relied on my own research from talking with folks at the hardware store, YouTube, and books. Step by step, the house started to come together."

The L-shaped kitchen is located by the entrance to the home, and has a window looking out to the north. Medicinal plants and flowers foraged from the surrounding forest are hung from the roof to dry.

The resulting home, which took three years to build, has a simple, open plan. The kitchen, living area, bathroom, and electrical room are on the ground floor; a film-editing studio, main water tank, and closet are on the second floor; and a loft bedroom overlooking the living space is on a small third floor.

The bedroom is on a mezzanine level at the top of the home, and is accessed via three small steps next to the closet space. There are no curtains on the windows, and the owner wakes up with the first morning light.

It was important that the home reflected the owner’s sustainable ethos, and he initially planned to build entirely from recycled materials. "At the rate I was able to track down materials in between work trips, though, it would have taken me forever," he says. "So, I began with salvaged doors and windows and worked from there."

The main living area on the ground floor has 20-foot-high ceilings and an open floor plan. The high ceilings allow the 395-square-foot home to feel expansive, light, and breezy. In cold weather, the owner grows seedlings by the south-facing windows.

A hammock chair in the living room overlooks the wood stove at the center and the sofa against the west wall, creating a cozy living space.

The home is built primarily from locally milled and dried timber—red pine on the interior and cedar on the exterior. "I chose them because they look great, they were affordable, and they felt accessible in the region," says the owner. "If the material couldn’t be recycled, I wanted it to at least be local and reflect the context of the forest."

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Built-in shelving in the ground-floor living area provides ample storage for books and records. "This is my favourite chair, where I like to sit and watch the fire or read a book," says the owner.

The remote location also means the cabin is completely off-grid, with solar power, a rainwater system, a composting toilet, and drinking water from a nearby spring. "The systems work so well for us that we are able to have a fridge, edit video, and water the garden," says the owner. The most expensive part of the home was the solar power system, but this was essential to allow the home to be livable—and to power the editing studio from which the owner works.

The owner is a filmmaker who works from a cozy editing studio on the second floor. "You need electricity to run a computer—and a lot of it when editing," he says. "I can't work at night or during cloudy days if there are several cloudy days in a row—when there’s no sun, there’s no editing because I save the electricity for the refrigerator."

The bathroom features a freestanding tub made from an upcycled feeding trough from a farm, and a salvaged door. There is a composting toilet, and water comes from a 1000-liter rainwater tank located on the second floor.

When he first drew the plans, the owner thought the cost of the build would be around $10,000 Canadian (about $7,500 US). "That was completely foolish," he says. "I exceeded that by eight times. I had no idea how much it cost to build something!" The cost of the basic construction ended up being around $60,000 Canadian (about $45,000 US), and as he has developed and refined various aspects of the home, the total cost is now around $85,000 Canadian (about $63,500 US).

A small, open wardrobe space is also located on the second floor, next to the editing studio and the raised loft bedroom.

Living in the midst of the forest has its challenges, but also many rewards. "I love how easy it is to experience the fullness of your senses up here," says the owner, who shares his life in a remote cabin with the world through his Instagram account @canadiancastaway. "You wake up with the first light and you can smell the cedar, pine, fresh air, and forest soil. You can smell the seasons and sense them changing, and witness the timeline of migration from listening to the birds."

Living in a remote cabin poses challenges in the cold winter months. "The latest challenge is keeping the two 1000-liter backup rainwater tanks in the shed at the back of the house from freezing," says the owner. "I experimented this winter with installing a doc-fan ventilation system in the connecting wall that pushes heat from inside the house to the shed to keep it hovering just above freezing point."

"Living in this home has not only facilitated an attentiveness to what is happening around me, but also allows me to find space to feel free—free from things which brought too much unnecessary stress, and the freedom to create," he continues. "The experience has been an adventure to say the least, and I imagine the home will never be finished. It’s continually evolving and unfolding, adapting to the seasons and my changing needs."