Tiny Cabin Built On a Micro-BudGet Is Really CharMing InSide

Size-wise, it's only maybe a hundred square feet. The place is about, you know, half reclaimed materials. The cedar siding was salvaged. The windows were basically being given away for 20 bucks each. You never have enough storage space inside of a tiny cabin. Whenever he comes to me with one of his crazy ideas, like building a tiny house, I'm like, hell yeah. I do. I'm like all for it. I'm like, yeah, go for it, hell yeah. When you come out here, you'd never know you're in the suburbs. You might as well be out in the forest. I'm Neil. And I'm Alice. This is our Funky Little Shack. Why did I build a tiny home in my backyard? I found the plans online. You know, this half A-frame design by Deke Diedrichsen, and I just sort of fell in love with the angles and the cathedral-like shape. It's almost like a church. So I just became obsessed with building this tiny house. Prefabbed all the walls in the garage over the course of a couple of winters, a winter and a spring. And then me and my neighbor and my 85-year-old dad and Alice, we all took a weekend and put the walls up. Yeah, raised the tiny house. Part of what I get out of building something like this is just the act of trying to figure things out. It's little things like that that they'll give you a sense of accomplishment. I didn't have to consult CHAT GPT because it wasn't around at the time. That's part of the the joy in building something like this is is the ingenuity that it inspires. I was an art student actually, which I guess you know is sort of why you know this design, it's not as practical as it is visually appealing. But growing up, art is drawing and painting and all that. I think my ten-year-old self would think it's pretty badass. Art that you can actually walk into and climb around in and and sit around and light a fire, you know that's that's better than a painting. The place is about you know half reclaimed materials. I was just kind of troll Facebook marketplace waiting for something right to come up. The original plan said you could build it for 1,500 bucks but you know that's just the the framing. All in, I probably spent about maybe five, seven thousand dollars on it. Not that much because a lot of it was you know free materials. The cedar siding was salvaged, the windows were basically being given away for 20 bucks each. So all in with the tiny stove and the power inverter and the solar panels, yeah maybe five to seven thousand dollars. And in fact I think the tiny Easy-Bake Oven in there is the most expensive item in the cabin. It's not an Easy-Bake Oven, it's a serious off-grid wood-burning stove. This whole thing is sort of like a little backyard homestead where growing our food, you know generating electricity, got the water and the heat. I mean I like to think that I could live in a place like this, maybe not her, but yeah me I'd be happy out here. I'll occasionally come out and sit with him and then it's our kind of oasis away from the humbug of the you know the kids in a way. Even though we have a home, this is kind of like become our space. It's been really nice to have that like you know that she-shed. Man cave. She-shed. Man cabin. Anyway. We're very fortunate that you know I was able to build something like this in my backyard. Where we live there are very few building regulations. I mean anything under 200 square feet kind of falls under the radar. Building inspectors don't care. I had originally planned on doing this as as trailer of some sort and it's actually resting on wheels. So technically it's a non-permanent structure even though you couldn't tow it anywhere it's too tall. You know after I fell in love with the design I figured moving it somewhere is out of the way. Although I the whole thing is bolted together. Technically I could dismantle this whole thing, flat pack it on a truck and move it somewhere else. Size-wise it's only maybe a hundred square feet if you count both the loft and the main floor. So the bump out here is the one sort of design change that that I added for a couple of reasons. One is I knew I wanted to have the wood-burning stove inside. So it gives me an area where I can vent the the chimney out the roof. But it's also with this angle here you know someone like me can still walk around in there but it certainly creates a lot more headroom and makes that main room a little more useful. Otherwise you'd be banging your head on the on the rafters. This year we've added a few things like we've added the rain collection here so that we can have fresh water right off the roof. I assume it's clean. The door was actually the first thing I built for the cabin. So this is just made from Home Depot lumber and I just watched a few YouTube videos about how to build a door. And you know the one thing I learned is there's no glue. It's just all you know mortise and tenon joints and you don't glue it because you need it to expand and contract with the weather. So that's what actually one of the things I'm proudest about. So here we got the name of the cabin. Cabin McCabin Face. You might recall several years ago there was a some sort of a research vessel in England and they they decided to ask the internet for naming ideas. And of course the the winner was Boaty McBoat Face. And they decided they didn't want to use that. They called it like the Sir David Attenborough or something. So in the spirit of not taking yourself too seriously I decided to call this Cabin McCabin Face. Here's the birdhouse. Somebody's trying to move in. I joked to my wife that it's my mother-in-law trying to move in furniture that's a little too big for the place. Come. Let's check it out. There's not a lot of room in here. Actually you could probably fit over here in this corner. Am I coming in or no? I just got the double finger. Come on in. Oh I am coming in? Yeah. So here's where I come when she kicks me out of the house. It's where I spend most of my time in the fall and winter. This is probably the only screen in the whole place. The window to my fire. I can spend hours looking at that. Smoking my pipe. Today with all the screens. I mean my son's probably in there playing video games right now. And all the AI videos. I mean you just don't know what's real anymore. To me you know you come out here and everything's real. You know you've got the analog thermometer. The weather station. The you know wood-burning stove. All of it's real. You come out here you'd never know you're in the suburbs. You might as well be out in the forest. I've got all kinds of reminders of friends and family. This little squirrel here. It reminds me of my brother. He's always loved squirrels. Don't know why but he's represented. I would say about half of the place is reclaimed materials. Like this this cordugated steel. My buddy Doug he used to live out in the countryside and they had an old chicken coop that was falling apart. But I pulled all this stuff off the chicken coop and now it's part of the not only the interior here but it's also the roof of the cabin. So that's sort of a reminder of those good times. Discovered early on that folding furniture is very important for small spaces. So yeah the flooring I also is also reclaimed material. I got it from you know they're just leftovers from somebody's home remodel. You can never have enough storage space inside of a tiny cabin. And I built these crates so it's a little easier to put things in and out. I like to think it's like the Millennium Falcon. I can smuggle. Smuggle my contraband. The handles for these crates actually provide supports for the doors on top. My additions to the design were the floor compartments and this bump out. Because obviously if this were where the thing ended it'd be hitting my head all the time. So yeah the the effective room would only be about this wide without the bump out. And that it also gave me a exit for the stove. This is the one piece of furniture I made for the place. Because it's just it's such a confined space it needed something. It needed some sort of surface, writing desk, food preparation. It's got the sink with the water jug and which drains down to a jug below. Yeah one thing you know I forgot to mention about the this whole piece of furniture is I don't think my dad knows about this but I ordered these these little knob pullers and they've got this Buffalo nickel embedded in the the pole that have 1937 which is my dad's birth year. So that's sort of another little tribute to my dad. And here my wife's favorite room of the house. She loves the idea of the composting toilet. The whole idea of this place is to be as self-sufficient as you can be as you can pretend to be in your backyard homestead. So we've got the composting toilet, we got heat, got our own electricity, growing our own food, water. When she kicks me out I could live out here. So I mean yeah I mean that's the grand tour of the great room. And then here's Alice to show you the loft. So we are now on the loft area of the cabin and the nice thing is we have storage space underneath here where we can keep some extra supplies. These are potato sacks that we sourced from eBay and also flea market. When you open this up this is the only screen that we have in here and this is our solar power battery source. So in the spirit of not having anything digital we have a analog alarm clock to wake us up when we need to. And I sleep comfortably. Neal may not but I fit here very comfortably. I can lay down and sleep very well. No I'm just calling you Husky. I actually fit out the window as well. So when it's nice and warm up here I sleep snug as a bug in a rug. This phrase that I came across when I was building it was just because it's not perfect doesn't mean it's not good. It's important to remember I mean you know when I you know walk through this place and give tours I'm looking at all the imperfections and I see all the little things that aren't quite right. Everyone else comes here and they're like oh wow this is so wonderful. That's like a lesson that you can apply to every aspect of your life you know your marriage you know your country. Just because it's not perfect doesn't mean it's not good. You find you're a lot happier when you remember that. I see how happy it makes him and I see how fulfilled he gets and then I I start thinking to myself you know a couple hours here several hours there but then we still have time in the evening we still have time together but ultimately he's happier when he's tinkering with something or he's doing something. Whenever he comes to me with one of his crazy ideas like building a tiny house in our backyard. Like hell yeah. I do. I'm like all for it. I'm like yeah go for it hell yeah because it makes him happy. I'm a much better husband and father because I've got outlets like this I think. Yes and I'm a much better mother and wife because he's not on my ass. I'm out of her hair. He is out of my hair. He's out of my kitchen. I am able to do stuff as well and then we respect each other enough to come back to each other at you know at the end of the day and talk about what we've done during the day and it's kind of cool to hear him say like I figured it out. You know I figured out how to how to raise the tallest part of the the wall or I figured out how to fix this thing and then I'll talk to him also about what I've done and I think that's what kept that component to what's keeping us happy together. He's my best friend. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Wait. Okay. 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