Man Transforms Shed off Craigslist into Tiny Home He Rents for $74 a Night
In just 245 square feet, a Texas man created his dream tiny home in his own backyard that now attracts friends, family, and Airbnb visitors looking to spend a night in unconventional surroundings.
Daniel Salas, who travels frequently with his wife, said he built the backyard house out of a storage shed he bought on Craigslist.
In the span of five months, he transformed the unit into a living space that he now rents for $74 a night.
Their one-of-a-kind property was modeled after an old barn that was transformed into a small stand-alone home that the couple fell in love with.
The fully renovated shed now sits in Salas’ backyard waiting for visitors and guests.
The original shed Salas bought for just over $1,000 and turned into a fully functional tiny house
Daniel Salas and his wife, who now have a mini house in their backyard
Salas told Newsweek: ‘My wife and I love to travel. We started visiting more Airbnbs in Texas and beyond and were intrigued by this house we stayed at about an hour north of here.”
We liked the privacy. With a smaller space, we spend more time together. So we said that one day we would love to have something like this in our backyard.
In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic set in, Salas, like many others, found himself with some extra time on his hands.
“I started doing a lot of research and preparing my backyard because I knew I wanted to create a tiny house. I was doing a lot of planning and rearranged my patio into the space I wanted to use,” she said.
About a year later, in the spring of 2021, a Craigslist ad appeared that caught his eye.
A man who lived nearby was selling a relatively new shed. When Salas inquired about the item, the man said he would sell it to him for $1,200 on the spot if he could pick it up that day without taking it apart.
Salas found a way to transport the shed to his house in about 45 minutes and even went so far as to knock down his backyard fence to successfully maneuver the shed into the backyard.
He told his wife, to whom the shed purchase was a surprise, that he tore down the fence to work on it over the weekend.
“Then Monday came around and she came to me and said, ‘There’s a storage shed in front of our house,’ and that’s how she found out I bought it,” he said.
During the first summer they owned the shed, the couple used it exclusively for storage. But after saving $25,000 to invest in the project, they got to work.
‘I had to do plumbing, get permits, electricity, everything. I used the contractor who had renovated my kitchen the year before,” Salas said.
The couple took several months to complete the small house, and when it was finished, they decided it needed a little more space, so they knocked down the back wall and extended it another eight by twelve feet to make room for a bedroom.
After another six weeks, the house was complete and ready to welcome the family over the Christmas season.
But by the end of the renovation process, the couple had spent around $40,000 and thought, ‘let’s see if we can rent this out.’
Upon completion, the house had a fully functioning bathroom and kitchen. It also works with its own energy and has air conditioning and TV.
It took Salas about five months to get the little house up and running.
By the time the project was finished, the couple had pumped around $40,000 into the project.
Image of the shed being transported to the house of Daniel Salas
The house is equipped with an air conditioning unit and a fully functional bathroom.
The small house gave visitors the opportunity to live intimately
The couple tore down the back wall of the original shed to build a bathroom.
The house also has a functional mini kitchen and a mini fridge.
The couple welcomed their first visitors to the tiny home on New Year’s Eve 2022.
Now, the couple have visitors from all over who come to stay in their small house at a competitive price.
“I joined a couple of Facebook groups and started getting people from all over the place asking me questions and wanting to come and stay,” Salas said.
‘Friends and family come in from out of town and want to stay at our house. It has been quite popular: from a small idea, it has become very big.