I couldn’t afford rent so I turned my childhood playhouse into a tiny home
A YOUNG woman who didn’t want to fork out for student accommodation found a nifty way to cut costs.
Mckean Maston turned her childhood playhouse into a tiny home – and saved herself a whopping £8k in rent.
The 24-year-old executed the project by hand, enlisting the help of family members to transform her old playhouse into a cabin-esque home.
It is equipped with a cosy living space, a kitchen area, and a bedroom.
Outside, there’s beams, a porch and dangling fairy lights.
Mckean’s mum Somare, 54, also mucked in to fulfil her daughters home dream.
The graduate didn’t want to pay for rent while going to a nearby university in Texas, US so dedicated six months to getting the core structure of the house to a livable standard.
The interior design and decoration process took a further six months to finish.
Mckean, who now works as a production manager alongside her dad, said: “I started it with my dad around when I was in fifth or sixth grade.
“I said, ‘Let’s go build a fort!’. My dad was like, ‘No, you’ve got to build a house because when you get big, you can go and play in it or whatever.
“My dad wanted to be a part of something and we went at it full swing – it was just so fun.
“It was probably a six-month project whenever I was younger.
“All we did then was create the core-shell and the outer shell.
“We protected it with tar paper for water resistance.
Years later as the cost of living soared and Mckean wanted to save on rents, she opted to make the “fort” livable.
Mckean added: “ I had the option of either paying for rent my freshman year or building out this fort, which is now the tiny house.
“It was probably about, $850 (£690) a month at least of saving, instead of paying for rent somewhere else.
“It would be at least around $10,000 (£8,000) a year at least.
“You have this dream as a kid and you don’t necessarily think it’s going to come true, but it eventually does – and it’s like totally better than what you could have thought!”