The Build

Why a consulting company has a 30-acre build site

Most ADU consultants have never swung a hammer. We have.

On 30 acres in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, my father and I are building a series of off-grid structures by hand — an A-frame, an octagon, and more to come. Different shapes, the same approach: figure out the land, the septic, the off-grid systems, the permits, and the build, ourselves, start to finish.

It started as something we wanted to do together. It's become the reason I can sit across from a homeowner facing a $300,000 ADU decision and actually know what I'm talking about — not from a textbook, but from the cold mornings, the framing, and the problems you only learn by solving them yourself.

These cabins aren't for sale. They never will be. They're ours. But everything we learn building them is exactly what we bring to your project.

Build One: The Off-Grid A-Frame

[PHOTO: finished black A-frame against the mountains]

We started with raw, wooded land and a dirt road. We cleared the site, set the foundation, framed and sheathed the A-frame, put on the standing-seam metal roof, and finished the interior in shiplap — off-grid the whole way, through a New Hampshire winter.

[PHOTO GALLERY, in order:

  • the road and land when we first got it

  • the cleared site with the mountains behind

  • the A-frame framed and wrapped in ZIP, standing in deep snow

  • Dad on his back, installing the metal roof

  • the cot and lantern — nights we slept on the jobsite

  • the triangle window and the view from inside

  • the finished A-frame with the shed]

Want to build one like it? The complete A-frame plans — our SketchUp model, dimensioned drawings, and materials list — are available in the plans store. (We sell the plans, not the cabin.)

[BUTTON: Browse the Plans]

Build Two: The Octagon (in progress)

Next up is an octagon — a different shape, a different set of problems, the same father-son approach. Follow along as it goes up.

[BUTTON: Follow the build on YouTube / Instagram]

Follow along

We document each build as we go — the wins, the mistakes, and the off-grid systems that make it all work.

[INSTAGRAM EMBED] [YOUTUBE EMBED]

The plans store

The structures stay ours. The plans are yours to build from.

  • A-Frame — Complete Plan Set — SketchUp model + dimensioned drawings + materials & budget list

  • Octagon — Plan Set (coming soon)

  • (more designs in the works)

[BUTTON: Visit the Plans Store]

And if you're building in Massachusetts...

Building one of these taught us how hard the path from idea to finished structure really is — the zoning, the septic, the permits, the contractors. That's the exact thing Together Home does for Massachusetts homeowners building ADUs. We've been through it ourselves.

[BUTTON: See How We Help With ADUs] → links to Services