Small cabin, big ideas – One woman's journey out of modern life and into cabin building

Oddly enough, it didn’t. Geography wasn’t the problem. She found herself simply recreating the same life as before, just in Spanish, and realised that she had to completely change her mindset from one of earning enough to live, to one of living simply enough to shift the focus off money. This is where the cabin comes in.

Elizabeth found an old metal chassis with a single wheel attached and turned it into the literal foundation of her new life. She set out to build a home that had everything she really needed, in a space small enough to tow, if need be, although it would eventually settle in an orchard in the hills outside Malaga.

The learning curve was steep. ‘I’ve always been creative,’ she said, ‘but I’d never done anything like it before. I’d built a rabbit hutch once, but that was about it.’ What followed was a crash course in building, from work with small cardboard models and hours of YouTube videos, to the odd bit of local help. The cabin began to take shape, rising up from its tiny base in a patchwork of free and found materials.

The walls came from wood that she found dumped outside her flat, the kitchen unit was discovered by the side of the road, and every inch of space was carefully thought through and utilised. Over the course of a year, Elizabeth found any time she could, working three or four days a week on the build and finishing with an intense home straight of long days and nights over several months.

The result was a cabin with three distinct rooms that took up less than the space of most people’s lounges. There’s no doubt that the warm Spanish weather, turning the surrounding orchard into a fragrant living room, made this an easier existence than it would be in a harsher climate, but Elizabeth had grasped the heart of cabin life. It’s about living with what you really need.

Elizabeth described moving The Little Wooden from where it was built to its new home as ‘the most incredible yet scary journey of my life’, but she also knew that she was achieving exactly what she’d set out to do. She lived in the Little Wooden House for three carefree years, until the opportunity to put her newfound construction skills to work on a rundown finca proved too tempting.

Now she welcomes others to the tiny cabin and has found that almost as rewarding as building it. ‘Guests come and stay, and they leave inspired,’ she says. ‘One couple spent their whole time here sketching out the small space they were going to build when they got home. It’s lovely to think that the little house is giving people some big ideas.’