At 50, Jason Fine walked away from his union boilermaker job and cashed out his retirement to buy 29 acres of cheap land in the Missouri Ozarks.

He and his wife Sunni moved into a tiny shack on the property and started building their forever home from scratch without buying a single piece of wood.

They bought a sawmill and spent three years cutting, milling, and drying lumber from trees on their own land: beams, boards, all of it homegrown.

Then he spent three more years building a cordwood home, stacking cut cedar rounds and recycled glass bottles into thick, insulated walls that glow with color when the sun hits them.

The house still isn’t finished, but Jason and Sunni are hoping to finally move in this winter, after 3 years of work on the home and another 3 preparing the wood.

Jason says they spent south of $50,000 on the rest.