Nathalie Kupfer will tell you proudly: She is not beyond dumpster diving.

Steel doors rescued from a condo renovation; perfectly preserved plywood discarded by a soap warehouse undergoing expansion; cork flooring donated by a neighbor. Nathalie (a retired industrial designer) and her husband, Greg (a former paramedic), are longtime DIY builders, and they see opportunity, not waste, when they bike past a renovation in action in Canmore, their southern Alberta ski town.

Last year the couple’s mental wheels started turning when one friend offered them a derelict garden shed and another provided a little spot of land on his ranch in the Canadian Rockies. What if they built an all-season, off-grid micro-cabin? What if it was made from as many salvaged and repurposed materials as possible? For two seasoned DIYers, the self-imposed challenge was too enticing to ignore.

“A neighbor once said to us, ‘You have too many ideas.’ But we can’t help ourselves!” says Nathalie with a laugh.

“We have no cell service, no Internet, and no phone—the lights are powered by the sun, the water comes from the sky, and it’s just wonderful.”
—Natalie Kupfer, designer and resident

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The finished product is a snug, solar-powered, 97-square-foot retreat that cost the couple a grand total of $2,109—although they did splash out another $20 to complete an accompanying outhouse. But they got back almost all of their outlay by selling off unneeded items they’d acquired through bartering.

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To have a project like this during the Covid-19 lockdowns was a welcome distraction. “In Canmore, there are a lot of affluent people, and they’re always renovating and throwing out incredibly good materials,” says Nathalie. The couple spent six weeks collecting castoffs, and they camped out under the pines as they assembled the tiny home over the course of the summer. Their demolition squad consisted of neighborhood kids.

“We had a three-year-old Superman pulling out nails,” Nathalie recalls. Another neighbor offered her own about-to-be-torn-down shed to mine for materials: some pristine windows and insulation. Repurposed steel became the siding, and they filled a gabion wall behind the woodstove with gravel from their home driveway. By early September, they were sleeping in the newly completed loft.

Despite its small footprint, the cabin somehow feels, as Nathalie puts it, “palatial.” Part of the majesty of this tiny home comes from its vaulted 14-foot ceiling, while a built-in corner sofa maximizes space on the lower floor. The trimless, oversize windows don’t hurt the feel, either. “It almost looks like there are holes in the house, like, ‘Oh, I forgot to put windows in,’ ” she says.

Although Nathalie and Greg live as simply as possible when they’re at the cabin, the possessions they do have stow away neatly in a built-in storage unit cobbled together from Ikea bookshelves and kitchen cabinets. The wood-burning stove and solar-powered lighting keep the place cozy at night. On the semi-enclosed porch, a two-burner camp stove and barbecue do the trick for meals nicely.

They’re still tinkering and tweaking—is a DIY project ever truly done?—but Nathalie has that familiar spark in her eye again. “I already have six windows collected for the next one,” she says with a grin. “Perhaps on the coast next time?”

Budget Breakdown

GABION WALL—“Materials came from everywhere,” says Nathalie. “We built a great gabion wall behind our fireplace. The gravel came from our front driveway. My husband hated it, so we raked it up, took it down, and put it into the wall.”
WOODSTOVE—Their rancher friend donated a small Woodsman stove, although it didn’t hold heat—so the couple lined the interior with fire bricks, and Greg built a new door. The couple also installed a $63 steel hearth plate to create a baffle.
FLOORS—Cork flooring gives the cabin’s lower and upper levels an easy feel underfoot. Greg and Nathalie supplemented the material, a gift from their neighbor, with leftovers from previous projects.
SOFA—The couple built the seven-by-seven-foot corner sofa using three-quarter-inch plywood. For the upholstery, they spent $22 on secondhand padding, $15 on zippers, and $27 for a drop cloth from Chicago Canvas & Supply.

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