Country cabins — an overview of the best options. 100 real photos + instructions for building with your own hands

There is nothing in the world more permanent than temporary. Probably, many people who have looked at the catalog of country houses on the Internet have set themselves a goal to build a chic country house, erect a temporary house in which they can live while the country house is being built, and stop there, not wanting to spend either energy or money on building a house in which they are not going to live permanently.

Well, the initial enthusiasm passes and it is difficult to force yourself to engage in construction for a long time.

Summary of the article:

It is much easier for those who initially did not take on increased obligations and opted for a simple cabin, especially since it can be bought ready-made, it is only necessary to pay money, everything will be brought to you and everything will be installed.

It's just a pity that with all the wealth of choice, the options of country cabins that are offered on the Russian market do not provide for what a summer resident really needs. And the summer resident wants a cozy inexpensive house with all amenities.

You can buy such a household only from someone who made it himself, according to his individual project, and only in addition to the suburban area. However, you should not despair, the task of erecting a cabin with all the amenities is within the power and the means of most owners of suburban areas.

The cabin "for the ages"

The first thing a summer resident should decide on is whether his cabin will really be a temporary structure or it will turn into a full–fledged country house. If you want a cabin "for the ages", that is, for many years, then the most important decision for you will be the choice of a construction site. Your future house should stand high on fairly solid ground.

From a plot of land about four meters wide and eight meters long allocated for construction, it is necessary to remove the fertile layer, leaving not a single stalk or root of plants, because over time humus will form from them.

By itself, the wooden cabin has a small mass, so it does not need a powerful foundation. It will be enough to fill the site with a layer of sand and gravel, then tamp it. Columns of ordinary bricks or concrete blocks can serve as a foundation for a hut.

However, if the owner wants to see on his site not an outbuilding, but a well-maintained, albeit small house, then it is better to install it on a concrete strip no more than thirty centimeters wide.

Foundation preparation

It will be enough to dig a trench with a depth of 50 cm and a width of 30 cm along the perimeter of the future cabin and fill it with sand with a layer of 15 mm, and on top of it the same layer of gravel and tamp it.

Before pouring concrete into the trench, a formwork is pre-made for the future foundation (tape). A drainage sewer pipe for the future toilet and shower is laid in it.

Any structure will stand for a long time only if, during its construction, all corners were straight. Checking the correctness of the angles is done by checking the diagonals of the future house, even at the stage of laying the foundation.

If the diagonals drawn from opposite angles are equal, then all these angles are straight. The diagonals are matched using a metal tape measure. After that, reinforcement is laid in the formwork and concrete is poured. After two or three days, after the concrete has solidified, the formwork is removed.

Living room, bathroom and kitchen

Since the layout of the cabin provides for the presence of sewage in it, you need to decide in advance where you will have amenities, and where the living quarters are. As mentioned above, the width of the cabin will be 4 meters, and the length is 8. This means that its total area will be about 32 meters.

In modern city houses on such an area there is a studio apartment with a kitchen and a bathroom. Approximately the same layout can be used in the construction of a country house.

The number of rooms in a summer cottage can be quite large. Of course, you can't swing much on thirty square meters, but you can place a living room, a kitchen, a shower room and a toilet in it without any problems. If we consider the kitchen as an ordinary room, then we get a two-room cabin.

Heating a two-room cabin is not such a difficult task. To do this, it is enough to install an electric boiler with a capacity of no more than two kilowatts. Such a boiler does not even require a three-phase connection to the power grid.

Construction of a cabin

The construction of the cabin begins with the installation of the lower strapping of timber. After installing it, it is also necessary to check the diagonals. At the corners of the binding, the same bars are installed vertically, which will become the skeleton of the cabin.

Vertical bars should be located not only in the corners, but also along the entire perimeter of the cabin, at a distance of one or two meters from each other.

The most important elements of the cabin – the door and windows should be tied to the bars of the frame. In general, the more vertical bars there are in your cabin, the stronger the whole structure will be. The bars are connected to each other by a transverse binding of boards.

Elements such as doors and windows should be thought out in advance. Their installation is carried out even before the frame of the beams is sheathed with boards.

Lay the floor

Now you need to lay the floor, it will be two-layered, so the bottom layer of the floor can be lined with thinner boards. A layer of mineral wool is laid on the lower floor boards, which will have to provide reliable heat protection of the dwelling from below.After that, the upper part of the floor is laid, for this part of it, tongue-and-groove boards with a thickness of 40 or 50 mm are used.

The walls of the cabins are also made from tongue and groove planks. They are nailed or fastened with screws to the vertical posts of the frame.

We build a roof and sheathe the walls from the outside

It is enough to look at any photo of a country cabin to come to a simple conclusion: a cabin is such a shed for storing all sorts of junk, as evidenced by its small size and a single–pitched roof.

Therefore, in order for the country house to look more presentable, it should be crowned with a gable roof covered with roofing iron, slate or siding.

The wooden walls of the cabins are not able to provide sufficient heat protection at home in the autumn and spring periods, not to mention winter. Therefore, in order to ensure a comfortable stay in any weather and at any time of the year, the walls of the cabin should be sheathed with sandwich panels.

A country house can hardly be called such if there is no veranda among its outbuildings, a place where our man drinks tea in the air in the summer, and in the autumn he puts potatoes before taking them to be eaten in the city. Therefore, a cabin with a veranda becomes a country house by definition.

Bathroom

Since the project of the house provides for the presence of sewerage, it will be a cabin with a toilet according to all the rules of a civilized dwelling. The cabin standing on the tape provides for its long-term use as a residential building, so why not install a septic tank next to it.

If you just dig a cesspool, then, in accordance with sanitary rules, it should be located at a distance of 25 meters from the water source (well or well).

Having spent on a septic tank, you can slightly neglect this rule and dig a well or drill a well in the immediate vicinity of the construction site. Otherwise, a cabin with a shower and toilet will become just a fiction.

Although, of course, the presence of a septic tank is unprincipled, because instead of a regular toilet, you can install a bio-toilet, then sewage will only be needed to divert drains from the shower and kitchen.