Lowe’s sells a ton of various wood-frame sheds and gardening houses that are ripe for conversion to a country shack. I’d love to tear into one of these and wire, plumb, insulate and panel it as a first project. Relatively cheap way to get immediate shelter at a property, letting you focus on interior finishing during the rains. A 12′ x 16′ (192′ sq) or 12′ x 20′ (240′ sq) would be quite a lot of space to play with.
Here’s a short video of the interior of one (unfinished). A Home Depot model to compare.
A good example of the type is this gambrel-roofed barn. I’m not crazy about barns in general, but the gambrel roof is the thing that lets you put the bed in a loft space, preserving more space for living below. I suppose you could also use a folding couch bed, and make the upper space storage or something else.
The full Lowe’s search is here if you are curious about the options. There are many compelling ones. One such is the Arlington (pictured to the right), which is more expensive, but has a more “house-like” look to it.
There are a bunch of pictures here of one of these (a 12′ x 24′) that a church used to build a house for an elderly homeless woman. The interesting thing is that they added onto the length (which you can see clearly) to make it 20′ long (for 432′ sq).
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