- After a home robbery, Patrick Hutchison scoured Craigslist, hoping to find some of the lost items.
- Instead, he found a tiny cabin for $7,500, and spent six years and $30,000 refurbishing it.
- It inspired him to pivot from being a full-time copywriter to a carpenter.
For many, owning a home is a major life goal.
It for Patrick Hutchison, too — although, for him, it was less about having his own place and more about feeling responsible for something, and homeownership seemed like a natural step toward that path.
“But I couldn’t even come close to affording a house,” Hutchison, who was working as a copywriter in Seattle at the time, told Business Insider.
While scouting for viable options, Hutchison tested out different filters on the real-estate website Redfin, only to stumble upon cabins in the woods.
“Then I sort of forgot about the idea of doing something responsible and just became obsessed with this idea of buying a cabin,” he said.
But not all tiny cabins come with tiny price tags, and affordability was still a challenge.
So Hutchison gave up on his idea — until his house was robbed. While searching for some of the items he’d lost on Craigslist, he found himself on the cabin listings instead.
“This place popped up, and it just said ‘tiny cabin in Index,’ and the price was $7,500,” said Hutchison. The listing “just showed this little semi-abandoned shell of a structure,” which intrigued him, he said.
A few days after seeing the listing, he owned a 10-by-12-foot tiny cabin in Washington, set against the stunning backdrop of the Cascade Mountains.
What came next was even more unexpected. After renovating the cabin, he ditched his copywriting career, embraced carpentry full-time, and wrote a memoir about the experience, “Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman,” which was released last year.
From making bad cuts to accidentally building his outhouse on his neighbor’s property, here’s how Hutchison’s off-the-grid adventures changed his life — and some of the biggest mistakes and greatest lessons he learned along the way.
