A man bought a tiny cabin from Craigslist for $7,500. It changed his life.
After buying the cabin in Washington state, Patrick Hutchison spent six years and $30,000 refurbishing it. The experience sparked a career change.
admin
Patrick Hutchison
- 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.
Patrick Hutchison
When he found the cabin on Craigslist, Hutchison was new to real estate.
"I had never bought a place before, so I had no idea about inspections, escrow, or title searches. I just walked in without knowing the usual process," he told BI.
Still, he said, his inexperience benefited him because it allowed him to make quick decisions and eventually dive into the reconstruction process without hesitation.
At first, he did try to negotiate a lower price, but when he found out three other parties were interested in the cabin — one he had already envisioned as his own — he panicked and agreed to pay the full asking price.
Patrick Hutchison
The 120-square-foot cabin was in a tiny hamlet called Index, about 50 miles northeast of Seattle. It was just a simple room, with no electricity or running water.
Hutchison didn't begin the cabin restoration with a rigid blueprint or detailed spreadsheets. Instead, he had a rough list of obvious fixes: an outhouse, a covered deck, and a driveway.
"There certainly wasn't a master plan," he said, and the process was more about learning and evolving with the space rather than following a strict timeline.
Patrick Hutchison
"I didn't know enough about what makes a building structurally sound or watertight or any of those things to know how poor of shape the place was in," he said.
So, every new detail he discovered revealed a new problem, making Hutchison feel like he had to constantly start over despite making progress in his work.
"It was a bit of a rabbit hole. And some projects, like putting in a wood stove, created as many problems as it solved," he said.
Hutchison didn't live at the property full-time — he traveled there from Seattle on weekends, often with some friends in tow to help. He also took a break to travel, and a landslide in Index prevented him from visiting the cabin for a period.
Ultimately, the cabin took six years for him to fix up. He hadn't anticipated it would take him so long.
"I thought I'd just tidy it up a bit. I wasn't even sure if I'd use it much," he admitted, adding that "there was a chance I'd end up like the guy before me, buying it and never really doing anything with it."
Instead, the opposite happened.
Matt Badger
Hutchison credits much of his building knowledge to a mix of traditional shows like "This Old House," which he watched on PBS growing up, and more recently, to YouTube tutorials.
"I've always loved watching skilled craftsmen restore classic homes," he said, adding how these videos became his go-to resource for learning while fixing up the cabin.
But the lack of cell service and WiFi at the cabin presented challenges.
"I'd watch videos, try to memorize the steps, and then head up there to apply what I'd learned. But without the internet, it was tricky to recall all the details," he said.
Patrick Hutchison
Even more frustrating, however, was the cabin's haphazard construction.
Despite hours of research, he often found the cabin didn't match the standard practices shown in tutorials.
"I'd learn how to fix a floor joist," which were structures that helped support the in-house flooring, "but the structure in front of me had nothing to do with what I'd seen. So, I had to get creative," Hutchison said.
Patrick Hutchison
In a world that demands perfection, learning to build gave Hutchison the freedom to be himself. But more importantly, it allowed him to make and learn from mistakes.
"It felt like the building equivalent of singing in the shower," he told BI.
The absence of constraints also allowed him to approach each challenge with curiosity rather than stress.
Kate Palmer
"It was always a joy to get out there for a few days," he said, adding, "It allowed a space for my friends and me to gather and just be in this cozy little intimate space."
Through laughter, games, and deep conversations, the cabin strengthened their bond.
"A lot of really, really good friendships got made stronger in that place," Hutchison said.
Patrick Hutchison
Hutchison unknowingly built his outhouse on his neighbor's land, a mistake that cost him $8,000.
In the end, he had to buy the extra land from his neighbor and pay more for it than he did for the whole cabin.
A prior property survey would've prevented this.
Patrick Hutchison
The biggest expense was the land, which, including fees, cost around $16,000. Beyond that, hundreds of hours were spent sourcing materials, planning, and working on the cabin.
Other major costs included $1,000 for a chimney pipe, multiple rounds of gravel pouring, and tree removal to ensure safety. In total, Hutchison estimated he spent $25,000 to $30,000 out of pocket, not counting his labor.
While he eventually sold the property in 2021 for $52,000, the profit wasn't as large as it seemed.
"People latch onto, 'Oh, you bought the cabin for seven and sold it for 52,'" he said, adding, "but I sold both lots and put all this money into it."
Ultimately, the cabin wasn't a big moneymaker, but it changed his life.
Patrick Hutchison
For Hutchison, building his career from scratch wasn't about a sudden leap but a gradual shift.
For over six years, he and his friend and fellow builder Bryan Schatz talked about building cabins full time. But Hutchison continued working as a copywriter until he felt he could afford the financial risk.
"It was a very slow separation," said Hutchison, but ultimately, it allowed him to walk away from his old career and fully dive into his new path as a carpenter.
In 2018, a few years after restoring his first cabin, Hutchison and Schatz took on an even bigger challenge: buying ¼ acre of land to build a cabin from the ground up — not just a Craigslist fixer-upper, but one of those dreamy snow-covered cabins you see while scrolling on Instagram.
Today, Hutchison works full-time as a carpenter at Wild Tree Woodworks, a Seattle-based company that builds treehouses. He and Schatz recently sold their latest project, Cyclops Cabin, and are already on the hunt for their next build.
"Whether that means rehabbing an existing place or starting from scratch, we're not really sure," he said, "but yeah, building is how I spend my time now."
