Budget Breakdown: It Used to Be a Forest Service Cabin. They Made It Their Wyoming Retreat With $41K

At the start of the pandemic, San Francisco residents Heather Hafey and Eli Chamberlin were suddenly in need of more space. Their sub-500-square-foot apartment wasn’t going to cut it. "We couldn’t live and work where we’d been living," says Heather. So they set their sights on Heather’s hometown, Pinedale, Wyoming.  "We figured we could be outside there without being around too many people, something we couldn’t do in San Francisco," adds Heather. "There’s only about two thousand people in the whole town and it’s surrounded by nature."

Before:

The couple rented an Airbnb in Pinedale that had enough space to live and work, then began the search for something more permanent. "One of our friends is a real estate agent in town and she convinced us to look at places to buy," says Heather. "We couldn’t afford San Francisco, but we could afford Pinedale, and it’s just really beautiful here."

Heather and Eli looked at homes, finding that most lacked the character they were looking for. But one stood out: a 1930s forest service cabin that had been moved almost 100 miles from the woods in Winton, now a ghost town, to Pinedale. They fell in love with the 890-square-foot cabin’s pitched roof and cedar-wrapped exterior, but couldn’t tour the property before heading back to California. So they toured it via FaceTime.