Budget Breakdown: This $225K Catskills Rental Hides a Pink Wonderland Inside

Originally, Nicolas Potts just headed to Saugerties, New York, on weekends. But over the years, the idyllic forests around the upstate town became too hard to resist. His time in Manhattan started to dwindle, and trips to the Catskills became more frequent. Now a full-time Saugerties resident, Nicolas and his partner, photographer Emma Pilkington Mead, are enticing others with a new vacation rental. Just across from their home on a one-lane road is a tiny cabin: a simple wooden and black metal box with a sloped roof and a carved-out porch beckoning visitors in.

The 475-square-foot house is a collaboration between Nicolas (a self-described jack-of-all-trades now wearing his interior designer hat), Emma, and architectural designer Christos Athanasiou. The latter was introduced to the couple by a mutual friend who identified kindred goals: Nicolas had an aging rental cabin in need of replacement, and Athanasiou was cofounding MiniMax, a prefab business specializing in small structures. "I don’t see large homes as sustainable with respect to affordability," Athanasiou says. He sold his first prefab to Nicolas.

In their collaboration, the two took wildly different approaches. Athanasiou opted for understatement—he points out with pride sleek details like the gutter, concealed behind the roofline. The cabin’s exterior neither blends in with nor distracts from the scenery, instead letting the surrounding forest pull focus.