Featured Plan “Giles Guest House”

A Tennessee Cozy Cabin With a Rustic Feel

This cozy cabin is truly one of a kind.  The smaller size is what makes it so savingly inventive and unique.  What Giles sacrificed in space, he made up for in quality of materials.  Because he had less square footage, he could spend more on antique heart pine, and he did so by liberally using it throughout the cabin.  The quality of this cabin is impeccable.  

The big question is why would someone who builds cabins for a living want to shoehorn his own large family into a small cabin with only an 18×24 footprint?  The answer from Randy Giles is quite simple.  “It was an exercise in trying to build small and live small,” says Giles, owner of Hearthstone Homes.  That was important to me.  I wanted to say, ‘Yes, I can build a livable cabin that is this small.”

In the early 1980s, Giles came across 80 acres of land overlooking Douglas Lake near Dandridge, TN. There, in 1985, he constructed his three-story, 1,200-square-foot log cabin. He added a bedroom and bath suite in an enclosed loft above the main living area as well.

The cabin’s efficient design enabled a lot of living space in a small package.  The Giles family lived in the compact cabin for 15 years before Giles built a larger home on the land’s premier site.  Looking back, Giles is satisfied that his exercise in living small succeeded.  “The small cabin worked amazingly well for an amazingly long time,” he says.  “A small house is more livable than you might think.”  Giles looks back fondly at the good times the family shared in the cabin.  It brought the family closer and provided so many memories that will last forever. 

The Giles Cabin/Guest House had the amazing opportunity to have a featured spread in the March 2016 issue of Cabin Living Magazine.  Take a look at the pictures below for an even better insight on the Giles Cabin

Call 800-247-4442 to see how you can get a personalized cabin of your own!