A Little Cabin Dream Comes True
I was so excited for my friend J, who is making her little house dreams come true, when she posted a photo of her new 640 sq. ft. little cabin in the mountains.
J. believes in leaving as small of a footprint on our earth as possible, a principle we also embrace here at Our Little House.
I asked her to write a few words about how she made her dream a reality, hoping it would inspire some others in our community:
“I’ve been wanting to buy a little cabin since 2007.
My partner and I started a “Farm Fund” and had money automatically withdrawn from our accounts every week to save for a down payment. We also downsized to a smaller house in the city to cut our costs.
We spent about 2 years looking at listings online to get an idea of what we could get for our budget — and knowing we’d have to be flexible.
Our #1 priority was a home with at least five acres — everything else was optional. When this listing came on the market, it felt too good to be true. It’s on 10 acres and has several other items on our wish list like a screened porch, a wood stove and a creek on the property.
It was outside of our target area and the land is steeper and more wooded than we’d like, but we ended up liking the location way more than we imagined.
My best advice is to save hard, set a budget, know what is a must have and what is on the wish list and have faith that you can make it happen.”
Thank you, J, for sharing your journey with us. Congratulations and good luck in your new retreat!
Have you put together a plan for your own little house?
SO cute. I’ve learned from experience that it’s important to look at every single piece of property that fits the budget. Even though at first it seems that it might be too steep/too far out/too wet/too dry/too *something, terrain changes quickly in a lot of areas and you just might fall in love with an unexpected place. Congrats to your friend!
What a sweet little home! Love it.
What a lovely cabin! It sounds like the perfect escape from our stressful world.
Dreams do become reality. Everyone’s dreams are different. This post is a nice reminder that, little by little, step by step, changes – and dreams – happen.
What a lovely place. Hope you enjoy it — and good for you.
It’s darling. I love the porch.
Nice find! Look forward to hearing more about it.
THIS is little?? My full time home in the city is 600 sq ft. those 40 extra sq feet make a lot of difference, let me tell you! “Little” to me would be 200 sq feet or less.
It’s all subjective to what we’re used to, Sally. 200 sq. ft.is considered a “tiny” house, anything less than 800 sq. ft. is “little.”
I thought this house was built to down size and as part of the “small house” movement. Then I read that it’s someone’s “vacation” home. Which is it? I will say quite honestly that I’m very distressed by what’s happened / happening in the North Carolina mountains. My mother grew up on “Bald Mountain”… when it was a place for families to grow up, food to be raised, etc. A large family lived in a home about the size of what’s listed here. My aunt lived on nearby mountain until she died… and I visited her place many times. Now all the old mountain homesteads are being chopped up for small plots of acreage and vacation homes (of all sizes… mostly large, ugly and completely out of place). The way of life that was there before was precious and has been lost. I would strongly encourage people to stop buying tracks of land in the mountains unless you want to help preserve what’s left of them!
I couldn’t agree with you more. I just watched the movie Foxfire (Jessica Tandy) again the other evening. It just makes me so sad to see the old home places tore up for fancy people.
Stephanie and Beverly, Jodi has made her little house dream a reality by downsizing in the city so they could save for over 6 years for this home. This is no “fancy” vacation home, nor is it newly built, it is just new to Jodi and her partner. It is an older small home. As a writer who has been exactly where Jodi is now when we finally were able to build our little dream on our land (which, BTW, started out as our weekend home), I know how hard she worked for this. This community is about inspiring and celebrating *everyone’s* little house dreams, whether that means getting a little house for full time living or settling into the little house lifestyle part time.
Well said, Kerri. Well said. 😉
Looks like a perfect vacation home – and the Blue Ridge Mountains are just so beautiful, can’t think of a better place to put a vacation home. 🙂
Hi all,
LOVE this little house. I’m at the beginning of house design. Is there some way to get a better quality (hi res) copy/photo/image of this floor plan?
Thank you!
This is the ideal cabin. Glad for you and hope to have one one like it some day!
I would love to have one of the little houses & would like to see a community that would have all utilities furnished up to the home.
I would want a Washer and Dryer , lights,gas,& water and be able to move just like you would a mobile home only small enough to be pulled by a tuff car or Pickup truck.
I would love to have seen the inside of this.
Enjoyed reading your journey! Enjoy!
Sounds like a lot of hard work paid off for this!
AWESOME find,much envy and happiness for you guys 😀
The DC