The Outhouse
For three months, we planned our bathroom breaks around the hardware store.
The tent had gone up in May. The treehouse build was underway. We were spending real time on the property — full weekends, long days, the kind of stretches where you stop being a visitor and start being someone who lives there. We had a kitchen of sorts. We had a wood stove. We had a porch and two hammocks and a place to sleep. What we did not have was a place to pee.
So we improvised. We learned which restaurants in town had bathrooms we could use without buying a coffee. We figured out which hardware runs to schedule for which hours of the day. We got very efficient about errands. There is a particular logistical art to homesteading without plumbing, and we became reluctantly proficient in it.
By August, we were done.
The outhouse was, by design, a much smaller project than the tent. After two weekends of off-grid framing in May and a summer of treehouse engineering, the prospect of a 6x8 platform and a 4x6 enclosure felt almost relaxing. This was a build Alex and I could handle ourselves — no Greyhaven Builders Society required, no come-alongs, no professional help with leveling or beams. Just two people, a stack of cedar, and a weekend.
I sketched the concept. Alex worked out the details. We ordered the wood — pressure-treated 2x6 joists for the platform, 2x6 cedar decking on top, 2x4 framing for the walls, 1x4 cedar siding throughout. We borrowed our tent-building skills and our familiarity with the F-150 Lightning. We started on a Saturday morning.
The platform went up in a weekend. The outhouse itself took two more.
There was one moment of real comedy. Partway through framing, we stepped back to look at our progress and realized one of the walls had gone up backwards. We stood there for a long minute, trying to make it not be true. It was true. We pulled it down. We put it up the right way. We laughed about it for the rest of the afternoon, and then for the rest of the summer, and we will probably laugh about it again the next time someone uses the outhouse and we remember.
The hardest single design move was the moon.
Cutting a clean crescent through cedar siding is harder than it looks. We measured. We re-measured. We drilled the pilot holes. We cut. We sanded. We cut again. The moon is a small detail and it would have been completely fine to skip it — most outhouses don't have one — but we both wanted it. The moon is what makes an outhouse feel like an outhouse rather than a porta potty in a wooden box. We were making something specific. The moon was non-negotiable.
The rest came together quickly. We framed in two triangular windows — one on each side — and stretched hardware cloth across them for ventilation. We added interior shelves. We installed a Trelino Evo Large composting toilet, which has been working beautifully and which we may upgrade someday but probably won't. We mounted a motion-sensor light. We installed the door — cedar, with the moon, and a real handle, and hinges that close cleanly.
And then, because the outhouse is only half the story, we built the washup area.
A 4x6 covered porch sits to the left of the door, sharing the same platform and roof. We installed a butcher block counter. We cut a hole in it for a sink. We ran a hose from our outdoor well to the faucet — cold water only, which is fine in summer, character-building in fall, and an open question for winter. We hung a few utility hooks. We added shelving for soap, hand towels, a coffee mug. The whole structure is shielded under a single sloped corrugated roof, the cedar everywhere stained the color of a freshly poured glass of bourbon.
It sits twenty feet west of the tent, next to the wood shed Dave built, in the small clearing that has quietly become Greyhaven's work zone. There is no view. There are no Olympics framed through the door. What there is, instead, is a small, cedar-scented, moon-doored, motion-sensor-lit, fully-functioning outhouse that we built ourselves on a piece of land we own.
It is, I will say plainly, one of the fanciest outhouses I have ever seen. And we made it ourselves. Moon and all.
We haven't named it yet. We're taking suggestions.
Build Notes
A practical appendix for anyone trying to do the same thing.
Footprint
Platform: 6′ × 8′
Outhouse enclosure: 4′ × 6′
Covered washup area: 4′ × 6′
Platform
Joists: 2×6 pressure-treated lumber
Decking: 2×6 cedar, stained
Framing & siding
Framing: 2×4 lumber
Siding: 1×4 cedar
Posts: 4×4 pressure treated lumber
Roof: corrugated metal, single slope
Toilet
Pros: clean, odorless, easy to maintain
Cons: capacity is fine for two people on weekends; we'd want larger for full-time year-round use
Washup
Counter: butcher block, with cutout for stainless sink
Plumbing: cold water only, fed from outdoor well via hose
Faucet: standard
Storage: open shelving above the counter
Lighting
Motion-sensor LED, mounted on the porch ceiling
Ventilation
Two triangular windows, one per side
Hardware cloth (no glass) for airflow
Door details
Cedar 1×4 siding
Crescent moon cutout (cut by jigsaw, sanded)
Black exterior hardware (handle, hinges)
Build timeline
Platform: 1 weekend
Outhouse + washup: 2 additional weekends
Total: ~3 weekends, finished August 10, 2025
What we'd do differently
Check that walls are oriented correctly before nailing them in. (We will not elaborate.)