How Kamaria Built a Tiny House Airbnb in Texas using DEN's modern cabin plans

If you've ever dreamed of turning a side hustle into a real estate win, Kamaria's story is for you. She built a modern tiny home using the A-Frame Weekender from DEN Outdoors — and in just her first month, her tiny house Airbnb in Texas was already cash flow positive.

The A-Frame Weekender design gave Kamaria a compact yet highly functional footprint — perfect for couples, weekend getaways, and smart investing. Located just outside San Antonio in Bandera, Texas, her tiny house Airbnb blends sleek Scandinavian aesthetics with rental-ready durability, making it both peaceful and profitable.

By using pre-designed small cabin plans instead of hiring an architect from scratch, Kamaria saved time, money, and stress — while still making space for creative tweaks like a loft, barn doors, and even an EV charger. Her modern tiny home now operates as a full-fledged short-term rental with glowing guest reviews and weekend bookings locked in for months ahead.

Follow Comfort Cabin on Instagram: @comfortcabinsatx.

Why Kamaria Built a Modern Tiny Home for Airbnb

Mike: Tell us who you are, which DEN design you built, and where you built it.

Kamaria: My name's Kamaria. I'm from Austin, Texas, and I decided to build the A-Frame Weekender for a two-to-four person getaway, just outside San Antonio in Bandera, Texas. Day to day, I work as an engineer, but this is kind of like my side hustle.

Mike: So for everyone watching: Kamaria and I have already met. We had a DEN meetup in Austin about a year ago. So we're reunited to check in on the project.

Mike: The A-Frame Weekender is an A-frame. What made you choose an A-frame over some of our other designs?

Kamaria: I wanted something that was unique. An A-frame is a really nice, unique but also classic design — it's been around for a while, but it's kind of making its full-circle moment right now. I like that it's small, compact, it gets to the point, and it's perfect for a couple. I eventually would like to use the cabin for my personal gain as well, just to get away. And I felt like it was a good size — not too big, not too small.

Choosing the A-Frame Weekender from DEN Cabin Plans

Mike: So the design spoke to you, the sizing spoke to you, you're like "I can rent this, I can use it" — checked all the boxes.

Kamaria: Yeah, I checked all the boxes. And I like the Scandinavian look of it all. It's really nice. It's very clean cut.

Mike: You built a place instead of buying one. Why?

Kamaria: Because I wanted to be able to make my own decisions. I wanted to be creative about it. I didn't just want to buy a place, stick some furniture in there, and "hoo-rah." I wanted the creative freedom — that's one of the funnest parts about building from scratch: you get to choose all the finishes. I didn't have an interior designer, so I designed everything on my own — the furniture, the finishes, everything. It gave me a lot of flexibility and creative freedom to bring something to life. I've never done that before. Very fulfilling.

Mike: There's not too many A-frames of that size up for sale in Texas, so you've got a unique asset.

Mike: Curious how you found DEN initially — what about our company and designs really caught your eye?

Kamaria: This isn't my first go round in real estate, so I'd previously worked with an architect before. Looking online and not having to go through that process one-on-one with a designer — there are already set plans I could follow. That was a really big win for me. The cost effectiveness versus going to an architect who designs from scratch is obviously a lot more. And you guys have multiple plans, so I found myself looking through and I already know what to look for in terms of whether a building design is going to work. Sometimes you look at a floor plan online and you're like "that doesn't make any sense." It was nice to see that it was well thought out and well designed, without having to go to an architect.

How Small Cabin Plans Helped Kamaria Stay on Budget

Mike: I was just on the phone with another customer who told me his architect wanted to charge him $22,000 to recreate one of our A-Frame designs. One of the really great benefits of DEN is you don't have to take a meeting unless you want to — you can just browse a catalog, align to a design that speaks to you, and be off to the races.

Kamaria: Yeah. And I like that you guys added that little estimator at the bottom of the page. You can look at a plan that speaks to you and be like "can I realistically build this in my budget?" That's really helpful.

Mike: So you more or less GC'd this yourself, or worked with contractors?

Kamaria: I ended up having two different contractors — one fell through midway through the project. I ended up getting a general contractor to finish everything out. I am not very good at building homes. Physically. Me.

Mike: So you worked with general contractors, bought the plans, aligned to partners to execute — and now you're operating this Airbnb. What's been the best part of the whole building adventure?

Kamaria: The best part for me is just being able to be creative about it. Picking out the color of the roof, what color tile I'm going to use, what backsplash. Those things really over time started to pull it all together because you have this idea of what you think it's gonna look like or what you want it to look like, but it's so spread out in different little pieces. But over time, they slowly come together to become one piece of art. I really liked that.

From Vision to Reality: Designing a Tiny House Airbnb from Scratch

Mike: What about our plan packages made certain things easier — or harder?

Kamaria: Easier: telling a contractor that you want to swap things out. Instead of metal siding, I want Board and Batten — the plans are easy enough for them to figure out that it's an easy swap. It's not "I don't understand how I'm going to get this from here to there." One of the things we ended up doing was adding the loft addition, which I didn't even think about in the beginning. The contractor was like, "oh yeah, you'd get more square footage and you've got enough height." The plans made it pretty easy for them to pivot when needed.

Kamaria: The only issue we ran into was: since it was going to be an Airbnb, I wanted to add laundry. Because of the pitch of the roof, where we were going to put it, it wasn't enough height for a double stack. We had to find a way to use a small two-in-one and fit it in a tight area. But that has nothing to do with the plans — that was just an addition I made.

Mike: Did you stick to the original plan or did you throw in some of your own ideas?

Kamaria: We did the in-unit laundry, changed the pocket door to barn sliding doors — pretty interesting and cool switch. We did the loft addition and added a ladder to access it. Since we added the loft, we were able to add a scuttle for the water heater, router, all that stuff. I also added an EV charger.

Mike: That's a sweet amenity.

Kamaria: Yeah. I wanted to eventually switch over to electric vehicles, so it was partly for me. But I have had people come who have Teslas and they've been able to charge. So they enjoy that amenity.

The Build Process: First Month as a Short-Term Rental in Bandera, Texas

Mike: The project has been live on Airbnb for about a month now. How's that going in terms of rentals and occupancy?

Kamaria: I'd say it's about a quarter of the time occupied overall — mostly just on the weekends. Sometimes it bleeds into the beginning of the week; some people book a four-night stay, like Thursday to Monday. But everybody has said it's a beautiful place and it's very peaceful. I just had a guest check out today and she told me how peaceful and beautiful it was, and her husband really enjoyed it. They were there for four nights.

Mike: I've got the million dollar question for you: in month one, were you cash flow positive?

Kamaria: Yes!

Mike: And yeah, we've added you to our national network of customer-built showrooms — hopefully that throws some more bookings in your direction.

Kamaria: Yeah, that'll be great. I count it as being booked out already — even though it's not 100% every day, it's every weekend. October is pretty much done now, and bookings are starting to roll in for November.

Mike: To have an entire month's runway already figured out — sick!

Kamaria: It took off a lot faster than I thought it would.

Mike: If a friend of yours was thinking about building their own DEN, what would you tell them?

Kamaria: I'd definitely tell them to do a DEN — it's very easy to follow. Some of my friends are handy and would be able to build one from scratch if they really wanted to, saving a bit of cash. But for the non-handy person, the plans make it very straightforward to communicate with a contractor.

Mike: If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about the whole process of building something, what would it be?

Kamaria: The cost — no, I'm just kidding. [laughs]

Mike: That's a great answer! How did the DEN plans help you control cost?

Kamaria: It helped me on size, first of all. No matter how tiny the home, there's a base cost built in — every house needs electrical, septic or sewer, water or AC. No matter the size, it doesn't scale accordingly. Even a tiny home still needs a foundation, still needs all those things. Whereas if you went bigger, you'd spread the cost over the price per square foot. But you're still gonna pay for those things. So keeping in mind that the plans gave me a clear sense of scope upfront — that helped me have honest conversations with contractors from day one.

Mike: Last question. What's something cool or unexpected you've discovered about yourself since you finished building?

Kamaria: Kind of proving to myself that I can adapt to change more than I thought I'd be able to. It's a stressful ride, but I was able to pivot and problem solve and figure out more than I thought I'd be able to. I thought I was just going to have a mental meltdown, but I didn't. You get to see how resilient you truly are, because building something from scratch will test you.

Mike: When I was building my first cabin, someone gave me the best advice — that the cabin would be done for a lot longer than it took to build, and to have patience.

"You have this idea of what you think it's gonna look like or what you want it to look like, but it's so spread out in different little pieces. But over time, they slowly come together to become one piece of art." — Kamaria