Life

You Can Buy This Tiny House On Amazon & Build It In 8 Hours

by Mia Mercado

Amazon sells pretty much everything you could possibly think of. Pickle-shaped pool floats. Kitchen tools that specifically slice bananas. The 1995 Jonathan Taylor Thomas vehicle Tom and Huck. Now, you can buy a DIY guesthouse on Amazon. Yes, you can buy a whole entire guesthouse on Amazon. The future is now and it includes free shipping.

Shoutout to Marie Clarie for bringing this build-your-own backyard guesthouse to our attention. Made available by the company Allwood, the “studio cabin kit” covers 172 square feet when built. A little less than half of that square footage (86 square feet, to be exact) is covered. Square footage-wise, it’s pretty tiny. Like, you could probably fit the entire thing inside the average studio apartment. However, it is bigger than your typical dorm room. So, it’s cozy but not unliveable-ly so.

The Amazon product description lists the DIY cabin as the “ideal home office or guest house.” If tiny houses are your thing, it could also be that. You could squeeze a futon or a tiny bed into the covered “room” and even have some space to spare if the product image is to be believed. Not to mention you’d have an entire outdoor deck that can fit not one but two chairs and maybe even a grill. Who says downsizing has come at the cost of grilled summertime dinners?

How long does it take to put together? According to Amazon, the estimated assembly time is eight hours for two adults. (As anyone who’s ever had to put together a piece of furniture from IKEA, your mileage may vary.) But ideally, you could build a whole guesthouse in a day. Imagine strolling into work Monday morning, having a coworker ask what you did that weekend, and saying, “Oh, not much. Just BUILT A WHOLE DANG GUESTHOUSE.”

How much does a DIY guesthouse for your backyard cost? This one will run you $7,250.00. However, that does include free shipping, which is good news as the approximate weight of the cabin is 2480 lbs, according to Allwood. Given its price tag, this probably won’t be the kind of thing you just throw in your Amazon cart as an impulse purchase. Or maybe it is. If you have the space for a backyard guesthouse, perhaps you also have $7,250 of disposable income to spare. The cabin typically ships within 3 to 5 weeks. So, if you order now, it’ll get here just in time for summer weather.

The cabin is “made from high-quality Nordic wood,” the product description states. “This timeless design is an alternative to classic log cabin styled structures.” In other words, if you’re going for an updated, log cabin chic, this is your guy. “It works well in a variety of surroundings,” the description reads. Perhaps the most notable setting is a rooftop as this cabin is safe to be built “on rooftops of multi-story buildings.”

While there are currently no reviews for this specific model, Allwood assures the cabin includes “simple step-by-step directions.” The only things the kit does not include are roof shingles and foundation materials, which Allwood estimates will cost about $150 and $170 respectively.

If you want to go absolutely buck wild, there is a 1,108 square-foot cabin available on Amazon through the same company for $46,900. This big boi of a DIY cabin does come with a handful of reviews. One review (which is not noted as a verified purchase) says that they couldn’t understand the instructions and built the cabin according to the picture. “I think it looks good,” the review rights, “but my [homeowners association] is pissed.”

Set it up as an outdoor office. List it on Airbnb for rent. Put it in your local park and claim squatters rights. To each their own tiny house.