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A Hem table and Muuto rug center the living area.

Ryan McLaughlin watches the sunset from the deck of the 160-square-foot tiny home he built, with no prior experience, at his parents’ horse ranch in Georgetown, Texas. Soon, the trailer-mounted cabin will be moved to a vineyard, where it will operate grid-free and be available to rent for short stays.

In addition to having a queen bed upstairs, Ryan built a sofa that converts to a twin, based on a design by architect Sean O’Neill. The transformable unit cost $500 in upholstery, $35 in wood, and $4 in hinges.

When the sofa is being used as a bed, blackout roller shades can be lowered to turn the living space into a proper sleeping area.

In Texas, where everything is bigger, Ryan McLaughlin is placing his bets on something small. Specifically, a simple 160-square-foot cabin that he hopes city-dwellers will book to get away, find some focus, and reconnect with nature. The result is a laidback, pitched-roof cabin in which every inch of space is thoughtfully allotted so that guests can spend the maximum amount of time outdoors.

Most of the interior, including the walls and storage, is made of Chilean pine plywood, which Ryan chose for its durability and lack of knots. Each sheet, purchased at Lowe’s, cost $20.

After a forest fire destroyed their cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Jeff Waldman and Molly Fiffer built a new retreat with salvaged, charred timber and a community of friends.

A shark-skinning shack.

Enter their latest project: a sleek, airy, 10x12-foot A-frame mini-cabin, which the couple built earlier this year over a period of two weekends, and all out of easily sourced materials. The cost? A relatively miniscule $2,500. On their website Elevated Spaces, which the couple launched shortly after the 2020 fire, Waldman and Fiffer are selling plans to enable even a DIY novice to build their own version of the A-frame cabin.

The modular design of the cabin means it can be easily adapted to different sites, sizes and uses.

Toasted cork floors, an exposed structure, and steel finishes combined for a rustic, natural interior.

Christie hung flowers and a lantern in the outhouse to make it "the prettiest outhouse anyone has ever seen."

The design changed slightly throughout the building process. For example, the window seat bench was initially going to extend along the entire wall to create an end table near the bed, but then "that tall skinny space appeared,

At 20' feet long, the cabin can fit three twin mattresses toe-to-toe on the upper level, and two on the smaller lower level to comfortably sleep five adults. Integrating ladder groves in the wall eschews the need for a movable ladder that would have cluttered up the interior space.

Not willing to sacrifice aesthetics for cost, Christie spent $2,000 on a wood-burning stove. "I could have gotten a propane stove for free, but it would have been ugly,

Free windows helped keep costs down. Christie designed floor-to-ceiling windows to maximize the view, but if she were to build the cabin again, she would forgo the lower windows. "I can see the view just as beautifully with the two square windows,

The cabin is constructed predominantly with plywood that Christie finished with a custom whitewash of 4:1 water to white paint, with a dash of green. "I wanted it pale,