How the Caddo Mills Cabin Came to Be

How the guest cabin came to be.

 We bought our ranch just north east of Dallas in December of 2010.  The land is fantastic.  It has the right mix of woods and pastures, rolling terrain, and just 35 minutes from my office in Dallas.  I had been looking at ranches for years, but the larger ones ( >100) acres that were in my price range were too far from Dallas.  The truth is I had seen this property for sale over a year before, but it was too much money.  In late October, 2010 I was at the Equity Trust Conference in Orlando, checking Realtor.com on my iPhone.  I saw the ranch for a lot less money.  The seller split out a smaller portion with a second home and dropped the price substantially.  I got back to Dallas the next day and made my offer.  By Friday we were under contract.

 The house is a Victorian, but had little storage in the house, and no out buildings.  My thinking at the time was, I’ll build a storage building that one day might be converted to a cabin.  I’m always looking for 1 + 1 = 3 scenarios.  It didn’t take long for me to realize that by building a hybrid structure, I was having to compromise in both directions.  I had to make a decision, what was this project going to be?  A cabin is a whole lot more fun, so that won out.

 It has been a lot of fun, designing the porches, the loft, using Cedar trees from our ranch, finding cool furniture.  The one thing that I would have done differently is to have built a stouter foundation.  So an upcoming project is to level it, and to pour some serious piers to keep the cabin from moving around.  That’s caused some issues already.  I should get that done by the end of the month.

 We like to stay in cabins and B&B’s when we travel, so we have plenty of influence on our design ideas.   We wanted to build the kind of place that we’d love to stay at, and that’s what we’ve done.  We like casual and rustic, but with upscale touches.  Like a full kitchen with new stainless appliances, and a glassed in slate shower.  LCD TV’s, but with logs and branches forming the stair case.

 So now what?  Share it with guests!  We’ve just built a website for Caddo Star Cabin  http://www.caddostar.com  I’d like to get to 60% occupancy within a year and then decide if we want to build more cabins, convert our house into a bed and breakfast, or even build guest tree houses. Where there is no vision, the people perish.  Proverbs 29:18

 This project pretty much happened by accident, but we love the results.  I’m ready to build again!