Bigger on the inside: Single dad builds huge home from tiny house for teen daughter

Todd Segal’s tiny 1919 home in Highland Park, Los Angeles, was inhabited by squatters when he purchased it five years ago. Looking back, Segal likes to joke that removing the squatters was “relatively easy compared to the work that had to be done on the house” – mainly because the house is tiny: a 57sq m cabin in an almost 700sq m hillside lot.

Segal, a contractor, took the house down to the studs and rebuilt everything. Given that the house was poorly built and framed – he presumes it was once a hunting cabin – Segal was forced to remove the walls, floors, fireplace and ceiling. “The roof is the only thing that stayed,” Segal says. “Every stick of wood is new.”