Forget the Blog Cabin – Consider Steel Buildings as Your Vacation Home

If you’re a confirmed DIYer, you’ve probably followed closely as the DIY Network designed and started construction on Blog Cabin 2012, complete with lots of daydreaming and wistful sighs about your own vacation cabin. If you’re dreaming and plotting your own blog cabin in the woods or the mountains – your own little space of heaven for vacationing and perhaps, someday, retirement – why not take a more modern and more ecologically sound approach. Consider steel buildings as a base for your home-away-from-home.

Steel buildings, best known as storage buildings and garages or, conversely, as cavernous warehouse shells, are remarkably versatile and adaptable. If you’ve never thought about the advantages of choosing a metal building as the basis for your vacation cabin, consider these important factors.

Affordability

With few exceptions, steel buildings don’t need a dug foundation. A poured concrete slab foundation is almost always enough, though your local building codes might require something more. By eliminating the cost of digging a foundation, you’ll save money and time. In addition, steel is one of the most affordable building materials on the market. You’ll also save money on maintenance and energy costs over time because metal buildings require very little in the way of ongoing maintenance. Finally, you’ll save money on insurance costs because steel is, quite simply, a safer building material than wood.

Ecological Soundness

While you might feel closer to nature in a rustic log cabin, you’re actually kinder to the earth when you choose a steel building. Nearly all steel used in construction is 100% recycled steel made with metals mined years ago. By using steel, you’re diverting the steel from the waste cycle and reusing it instead. In addition, because you’re substituting steel for wood, you’ll be reducing the strain on limited non-renewable resources. And because pre-engineered steel buildings are designed for high energy efficiency, you’ll use less energy for heating and cooling, reducing your carbon footprint in a surprisingly large way.

Flexibility

Steel buildings provide an amazing amount of flexibility in many different ways. First, because most designs for metal buildings require no interior supports, they provide a completely open interior that you can customize to your heart’s delight. One room, two rooms, a single large room and a loft? The possibilities are endless. Secondly, steel buildings are easy to expand. If you decide you want to add on to an arch frame steel building later, it’s a fairly simple thing to do. All you need is the land for your expansion.

And if you really have to have that log cabin look? Today’s steel buildings can be finished in just about any style that pleases you, including a log cabin exterior. So go on and dream about your vacation home. It’s a lot less expensive than you think.