Paul Cutting buys his first abandoned log cabin in Iowa for $600, with no construction background, and starts taking it apart log by log, numbering each piece so he can rebuild it later. The cabins date to 1850-1870, built by Norwegian-American settlers out of local timber and now mostly hidden behind modern siding, which is why farmers keep bulldozing them for cropland without anyone noticing what's inside. Over six years Cutting dismantles ten of these structures and reconstructs four, including the one he lives in, a 16-by-17-foot home that cost him $20,000 and two years of labor. He hires an Amish carpenter to remake period-accurate windows and doors, and keeps a collection of what he finds inside the walls: intact leather shoes, old door hardware, a Norwegian-language newspaper from his own town. Nobody commissioned this work and no institution tracks it; it runs on Cutting's own time and money. The film follows him through the teardown and rebuild process, treating the salvage itself, log by log, tool by tool, as the real subject.