Miami Couple Builds Off-the-Grid Holiday Hut in the Bahamas: Photos

They started the project in 2016 and approached it as a side project. Because their property was on a remote island with limited resources, one of the Brillharts’ main concerns was that the hut should be easy to construct.

“It needed to be affordable, it needed to be something that we could ship over on a shipping container, and it needed to be something that we could assemble ourselves,” Melissa said.

The couple experimented with the design of the hut by building miniature models.

“We did some sort of creative design strategies where it’s a combination of stick frame and post and beam construction, which enabled Jacob to just build it on-site by hand,” she said.

Jacob constructed the house frame in their Miami backyard, then took it all apart and shipped the parts to Eleuthera.

“I had more tools and more capabilities in Miami than I did out there on the island at that time, where we had no power and no water,” Jacob said.

This gave him control over how the frame would turn out, which in turn determined how the rest of the construction process would go.

“Building the frame first meant that I could get everything to fit and work, and put it back together in a much shorter amount of time on the island,” he said.

The couple managed to complete the construction of the hut in early 2021, more than five years after they started working on it.

Eleuthera is a 55-minute plane ride away from Miami, and their house is a 30-minute drive from the Eleuthera airport. The couple spent their long weekends and free time going to the island to work on their vacation home.

They started living there before anything in the house was ready, building the rooms and facilities that they needed as they went along, she added.

“We moved in way before we should have,” she said. “My daughter Simms was three months old when she first stayed there, and it was just plywood. There was just maybe a sink in there, with a bathroom, and that was about it.”

The completed hut is about 600 square feet. There’s a smaller outbuilding on the side of the home that’s connected by a boardwalk that runs through the entire 1.8-acre lot.

The main hut comprises two stories: The first floor has a kitchen and living room, while the second floor has a bedroom and a small bathroom.

“Jacob literally built every single thing that you see in the cabin, with exception of maybe some dining chairs that we had bought off of a hotel in Miami a long time ago,” Melissa said. This included the furniture such as the kitchen table, the sofa, and the bed frames.

Since they did the bulk of the work themselves over a period of five years, it’s hard for them to estimate how much they spent in all, Jacob said: “We can’t put a number to it because we don’t really know.” 

The Brillharts originally intended for all the walls on the first floor to be made of glass, but ended up with a half-glass, half-screen design.

“When we were building it, we were working with limited funds so we just used screens to keep the bugs and the animals out,” Melissa said.

The couple ended up loving how the screens looked, but realized that the winds were too strong. Eventually, they made a compromise, she said: “We made this hybrid decision to put glass in the Eastern side where it was windy, but keep the screens on the back.”

The hut is completely off-grid. The Brillharts gather rainwater from the roof in a cistern and rely on solar panels for power.

“For waste, we dug a septic tank and we have a drain field,” Jacob said. “The stove and the hot water heater run on propane gas that we can just fill up at the local gas station down the way.”

The outbuilding has evolved over the years from its original design.

It currently houses a bathroom and a kitchenette, but it used to just be an outdoor shower, Melissa said.

“After we had lived there for several years, we realized it would be nice to have another bathroom and an enclosed shower, and then somewhere where we can cut fish or keep drinks out there,” she said.

The Brillharts are planning to expand the property. They recently bought a neighboring lot, which they plan to turn into a pickleball court or an outdoor theater.

So far, they’ve been enjoying life on the island, and they’re excited to get started with the next part of their project, Melissa said: “I feel very rooted in a way here that I don’t feel so much in the city, just because we really are connected to nature.”

The biggest difference they had to adapt to was the Bahamian weather, which determines how they spend their day.

“Whether it’s rainy, or sunny, or too windy, your daily activities are really governed by the weather — unlike in the city where life can go on because you’re constantly inside,” Jacob said. “We don’t have air conditioning.”