A tiny house built by a determined woman for $3,000.

When the cabin was finished she looked up at the moon and twirling her arms out she was ready to cry.

  
   
     
 
 
 

Sandra (below) built her tiny shabby-chic retreat on a 14 acre farmstead by converting a 9ft by 14ft hunting cabin. The renovation, including the old windows with wavy glass; an old porch door and the front porch pillars, cost $3,000. As a child Sandra had a brief taste of homelessness which coloured her life.
   
       
 
   
 
   
 

She says, "We were four kids and two parents living in a single room. I got used to living in small spaces.”

In 2007 she and her husband Trevor found a wooded property with a trailer and the rundown cabin for $46,000. Sandra knew the cabin could be her dream hideaway. It was just a timber box with a peaked roof, five small windows and a sleeping loft over a small porch supported by tree trunks. Sandra began work on it as soon as time and money allowed, in July 2009.

Armed with a crowbar, hammer and saw, much like Simon Dale around the same time, she removed the front of the cabin and extended the floor and porch, using salvaged floorboards. She framed out the porch and found columns and a screen door at New York Salvage, in nearby Oneonta. The only help Sandra needed was setting the columns and rafter over the porch. The four columns cost $60 each, and one was split lengthwise to make decorative pilasters for the porch. Because the studio is without water she doesn't have to pay taxes.

  
       

Armed with her saw Sandra cut out spaces for windows, which she bought for $30 each at Historic Albany Foundation’s Architectural Parts Warehouse. She found a tin ceiling on Craigslist for $200, and a wooden mantelpiece at the Linger Corner Gift Company antiques store in High Falls for about $350.

The shabby-chic retreat doesn't have a bathroom or a kitchen, but it is a dream of Victoriana. When the cabin was finished she looked up at the moon and twirling her arms out she was ready to cry. Get some shabby-chic advice from Sandra as she give a tour of her tiny cabin .