Couple Built Tiny Cabin From Scratch in Portugal in 6 Months: Photos

Pepe Romero and Eugenia Diaz, both 35, know a thing or two about making dramatic lifestyle changes.

The couple moved from Spain to Los Angeles in 2012 after finishing university, Romero told Insider. Diaz had a background in medicine, but she pivoted into starting a handbag brand in 2014. As the brand grew, Romero left his job at an architectural firm to help manage the business.

Five years later, in 2019, the couple decided to shut it down because they wanted to change their lifestyle.

“We built a camper van and traveled around Europe for a few months when the idea of building our own house came to mind,” Romero said.

Part of the decision was inspired by their experience of transforming the camper van, Romero said.

“When we bought our empty, second-hand cargo van, all the quotes we received to transform it into a camper van were very high. We could not afford it,” Romero said. “We were forced to build it ourselves and after that, we realized that anything can be done if you try hard and study it.”

When they wrapped up the van conversion, they realized how much they enjoyed working with their hands, and decided to bring that same ethos to a new project: building a tiny cabin.

“When it came to building a house, hiring someone to do it was not what we wanted as we had already tasted what it felt like to do things by ourselves,” Romero said.

That’s how the couple came to build a tiny cabin in the countryside in Alentejo, Portugal. The cabin is tucked away in a small town of around 30 people, most of whom are elderly folk who have lived here their whole life, he added. The cabin sits on the side of a private dirt road that leads to the land of a next-door neighbor.

“I have many years of experience in architecture design, and Eugenia is a designer by trade, but none of us actually built anything until we built our van,” he added.

Originally, the couple had been on the hunt for a run-down home they could renovate on their own.

“Renovating an existing structure felt like something that was easier to do and more achievable, but all the ruins that we came across were not what we were looking for,” Romero said.

Many of the buildings they found were illegal and poorly taken care of, he said.

“After a few months, I said to Eugenia that maybe we could search for an empty piece of land, so we could design and build what we wanted from scratch,” Romero said. “We found our property in a couple of weeks, signed the agreement, and moved with our camper van to live on it.”

The plot that Romero and Diaz bought measures almost 1.2 acres, but the cabin occupies only a small portion of the land.

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