George and Willy’s DIY Urban Cabin (Created from a Tiny 1991 Suburban House)

This week we’re revisiting some of the most popular DIY stories from our archives. Read on for end-of-summer project inspiration:

Remodelista regulars no doubt have admired the work of George & Willy. They’re the charming, young New Zealander duo who made their design debut with the Studio Roller, a hanging roll of kraft paper for keeping To Do lists and making sketches. Since then, George Wilkins and Will McCallum have gone on to offer a suspended clothes drying rack, a fire starter inspired by Alaskan whalers, and a collection of signs including a Scrabble-like letter board.

Their creations are all about modern utility paired with a delightful Down Under playfulness. They sum up their M.O. as “making your space exciting”—which led us to be curious about their own quarters. For the last 18 months, we’ve been told they’d soon be ready to unveil the first George & Willy remodel: the two have been working with friends on a house for George and his wife, Hannah. Built in 1991, the structure—”tiny, nondescript, and uninspired,” says George—was priced right and had potential: to them it was begging to be transformed into an urban cabin. That required these first-timers to panel just about every surface inside and out. Come see.

Photography courtesy of George & Willy.

They say the overall layout of the house “was actually not bad and didn’t require too much changing,” but the plasterboard exterior and landscaping called for a total overhaul. In addition to cladding the structure in macrocarpa, an evergreen that’s a less-pricey alternative to cedar, they built a picket fence (to keep in George and Hannah’s dog, Frida) and a wooden walkway that, George says, “gives the feeling of being on a bushwalk every time you enter the house.”

George tells us they finished the exterior paneling with tung oil, “a natural product that unfortunately hasn’t worked as well as we would have liked because it doesn’t have mold inhibitors in it, so the timber has developed a slight mold. We got a cleaning product from the company that sold us the cladding oil that we’re going to use and then recoat; over time the wood will gray off nicely.”

Here’s George’s story of how they stumbled on a big cost break: “I called the sawmill ten days before we were starting work to order the timber and was told there was an eight-week lead time, which left us with quite a problem. While I was pondering what to do, I got a call back saying that the mill had a pile of seconds timber that we could have for a quarter the price. We ended up using that which was great.”

The indoor swing is a quintessential George and Willy touch. “We design in tandem,” George tells us, “but Will is more on the ideas side of things and I’m the practical one, so, for example, Will designs the swing and I design how it’s going to be fixed so it’s strong enough.”

Before and In Progress

Browse our archives for more favorite Cottage & Cabins, including:

• O Canada: Mjölk’s Renovated Scandi-Style Cabin on a Lake
• A Tiny (but Glamorous) Seaside Cabin on the Riviera
• Off the Grid Retreat: Anthony and Phoebe Dann’s Homemade Cabin in Australia