Will Etling
Designer
- October 22, 2008 • 2:21 pm PDT
- + responses
I recently finished building a little house in the woods. I wasn't able to pull it off for Thoreau's twenty-eight bucks, but the total cost was under $5,000 -- pretty decent for for 192 square foot cabin with a porch, lots of windows, insulation, and a tin roof.
One of the biggest helps was Habitat for Humanity's Restore in Goleta (a few miles north of Santa Barbara.) It's one of the more recent stores to open; Habitat already has a host of the used-material outlets around the U.S.
If you're about to embark on a building project, check out their list of locations. Used materials cost less, reduce waste, and best of all, the money you spend goes back to helping Habitat build homes for those in need.
More photos of the cabin-building process here. 
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