A Slew of Fresh Tiny House Pics

New tile, rug samples, kitchen cabinets, inspo for our painted stairs...a (tiny) panacea for election anxiety.

Welcome back to our Future Cottage series, where we’re tracking the progress, challenges, and breakthroughs as we build a modern, energy-efficient cabin upstate for around $120k. It’s a regular fixture of the ATA Paid Family, so, if you’d like more updates like this one, along with all the other Paid perks, consider upgrading for just $5/month. It helps make this whole newsletter possible, and we really appreciate it.✨

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Quick note: Being honest, I couldn’t decide what story to run this week. For most of us, it’s a heavy moment in life and in history…so whatever headspace you’re in right now, I want to acknowledge + honor the weight of tomorrow’s election and all the stuff it might be bringing up. While most of us are focused on election updates, as well as real-time voting support, today’s newsletter is offered as a tiny respite when you need it❤️. I hope it inspires you/brings you some joy. Thanks for being here…xxCb

Persephone season at the cabin—everything’s going to sleep now (except me 😬).

I’ve always wanted this newsletter to be a refuge of inspiration, discoveries, and just a cool and relatable place to see and learn about how we connect to beauty and design—whether that’s in a collectible statement chair or a $2 thrift store dress. Living in small spaces my whole life has helped me get more focused about (all!) the stuff in my world—figuratively and literally (mostly literally:). And building a 650 square-foot modern cabin upstate, paycheck to paycheck, has really put these principles to the test.

I started posting about the cabin, which we’ve been calling Future Cottage, in 2022, not too long after launching this newsletter. At that point we were already nearly a year into it, so here at the end of 2024—and still not quite finished—an earlier version of me might be disappointed or frustrated or even freaking out. But then again, that earlier version of me never built a house before.

We don’t know stuff until we know it. Sometimes we learn the hard way, and other times, we get an event or a project or a teacher that guides us along on the path. The path to knowing…but also the path to seeing the whole world around this particular lesson completely differently. That’s essentially what this house as been for me. A teacher, a project, a shape-shifting destiny that seems to offer limitless potential and ideas even though it’s 100 square feet smaller than what we’re used to living in. The truth is tho, I love that it’s small—that keeping the structure under 700 square-feet was the only way to contain the budget to what we could afford, while making no sacrifice to its design and ecological integrity.