This article will show you how one couple built their very own mortgage-free small house for $5,900 and how you might be able to do the same using reclaimed materials that are inexpensive and many times completely free.
All it takes is your dedication and labor…
My wife and I decided to build a small house as cheaply as we could as a weekend getaway.
We had a relative who worked at a lumber supply house and would call us whenever they had seconds on sale.
We purchased anything they had figuring we would need it eventually.
We worked every weekend I had off and it took us a little over a year to finish.
Here it is about four weekends into the project.
Below is a shot when we were putting up the roof.
We put up blackboard to keep some of the rain out in our absence. We also treated the floors.
The French doors were a return so they were on sale for just 50 bucks.
We insulated well as you can see below.
After that we used 1×6 pine for the interior walls.
The cabin was planned for two rooms from the start, but we built one room at a time.
The main room is 14?x16?, the bedroom/bathroom is 12?x20? and the porch is 6? wide.
The second room going up.
The metal roofing was one of the most expensive building materials.
Under roof in the cold months we worked inside a lot. I built the kitchen cabinets one weekend out of the 1×6 pine.
The sink and countertop came off of craigslist. The countertop was very long, I would find many uses for the leftover countertops.
We used a local mill to rough saw pine logs we brought from the coast.
We found this old porcelain sink, literally in a yard and used it for the bathroom.
I put the water heater in the bathroom and built a cabinet around it. Remember the left over counter tops?
Shower was also a junk item that was cracked and broken. I used bondo to fix it.
I’ll show you the finished bathroom after I used Bondo on it and cleaned it up later.
All my trim work was done on this ancient table saw.
The propane stove was free off of craigslist and so was the flooring.
Below you can see one side of the bathroom after I created a door for the water heater enclosure and installed the toilet.
Below is the repaired shower.
Mostly completed bedroom, later I’ll add a nightstand which I’ll show you.
Kitchen/living room below with some furniture.
Another piece of kitchen counter top becomes a nightstand.
Pretty much done now…
We spent the weekend putting on some fake rock underpinning.
That was also a CL find.
We enjoy our little getaway. With careful shopping, re-purposing many items, and the use of seconds, we were able to build this small house mortgage-free for less than $6,000.
Source: The post How to Build a Mortgage-free Small House for $5,900 first appeared on Tiny House Talk.
