Bunkie

About these experiments · Last updated August 12, 2026

One of the first real buildings that we built on the property was a 9 foot by 12 foot “bunkie”.

The term “bunkie” originates in Canada. It describes a small/tiny wood outbuilding that can be used for extra sleeping, an office, or a bit of extra storage. For us, that means some storage in an office space.

As the building is under the minimum requirements in Ontario, I’m able to build this without needing a permit, and as a remote worker the space was well appreciated for a place to work on my laptop at a real desk.

This building was also one of the first things that we built together, one of the first larger projects that we undertook.

Foundation.

The foundation for such a small building is not particularly complicated. For us, this meant a ~6” gravel pad, patio stones, deck blocks, and pylex saddles on which we built a wooden platform.

This was the first time I’d ever built any type of foundation and I was surprised at the amount of detail and work that went into something so small But as we’ve continued to use the Bunkie throughout the years, I’m gaining an appreciation of being able to independently raise different parts of the building to level it.

The build.

This particular style of building was something that came in a kit. I wanted to try to simplify the process overall and not have to think about materials lists for something that was a first build.

The build wasn’t complicated, it essentially linked together notched boards on top of each other, building up the walls with long leg bolts and screws going through the different sections at varying points. What this means is that the outside of the wall is the same as the inside of the wall and that the entire building is just pure wood.

This meant that we had the entire build up within about two days. I really liked how fast this part went, but what they don’t tell you is that this is also the smallest part of the work. The foundation had already taken a couple of days. The roof was going to take another two days and the staining was going to take another week because you had to sand the entire building down inside and out and stain it. this day we still haven’t stained the inside of the building.

Thoughts.

I don’t think I’d buy at this type of building again. While the actual build part was pretty quick, it didn’t really make anything more simple. It turns out that framing a building is very quick, and having the same piece of wood be your inside and outside isn’t always that great. For example, it’s really hard to insulate this without ruining the look on one side of the building, whereas if we had a normal 2x4 construction we could easily insulate this and make this a four-season building.

The kit also costs a lot in comparison to just building yourself. When I started getting quotes for the new garage, it ended up being cheaper than what I paid for this bunkie.

All in all, I think I learned a lot about this and it gave us an opportunity to build together for the first time as we led up to the full cabin build.