Log Cabin Simplicity: Recrafting Pioneer Tiny Homes

This one is slightly related to the tiny house theme, but more esoteric. It's about an Iowa man (Paul Cutting) who stumbled on some of Iowa's abandoned history - mid-19th century Norwegian-American log cabins - that were being destroyed by farmers, often eager to raze their land for corn.

These are 150 year old log cabins - built using dozens of century-old trees - but curiously, Paul seems to be one of the few people even interested in their fate. In the past 6 years, he's nearly single-handedly taken down 10 of them (piece by piece) and reconstructed four of them.

The story goes beyond the actual buildings... it's also one man's homage to a past where things were built to last. There is one scene where Paul goes through his collection of objects found in buildings he's taken down - he shows off still intact leather shoes, intricate door handles, his town's Norwegian-American newspaper.

He even lives in one of these reconstructed log homes (built for just $20K, not including his labor). His work hasn't really been recognized by a broader public, but he's painstaking with his attention to detail (even hiring an Amish carpenter to recreate windows and doors).