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An angry teenager spent 6 years digging a hole after getting into a fight with his mom. Videos show how he transformed the dusty pit into an underground home.

Joshua Zitser   

An angry teenager spent 6 years digging a hole after getting into a fight with his mom. Videos show how he transformed the dusty pit into an underground home.
  • Andres Canto fought with his mom in 2015. To channel his anger, he started digging a hole.
  • Over six years, he transformed the hole into an underground cave with a bedroom and living room.
  • Canto has plans to further improve the cave by adding a jacuzzi, he told Insider.

Six years ago, Andres Canto got into a fight with his mother. "My mom wanted me to change my clothes before I went out with my friends," he told Insider. "But I refused and had to stay at home."

Instead of sulking in his bedroom, as most 14-year-olds might be expected to do, Canto decided to release his anger from his "prepubescent tantrum" in a more productive way.

The Spanish actor, who is now 20 years old, began digging a hole in the backyard of his family home in Alicante, Spain. "I was an angry teenager with a pick axe," he said. "After I started digging, I came back every afternoon for three years to continue digging that hole."

Six years on, Canto's continuous digging has resulted in a dusty pit being transformed into a fully-fledged "man cave." The underground bunker is complete with stairs, a stereo system, heating, an oven, and a single bed.

He spoke to Insider from inside the cave, where he spends up to five hours a day relaxing, using the WiFi system he installed himself.

Read more: An Airbnb host says he raked in $69,000 in bookings this summer for his 8-bedroom Wisconsin home before he even furnished the place

Canto said that while the argument motivated him to start digging in March 2015, he'd long considered embarking on such a project. "I was bored and alone in my neighborhood and I wanted to do something athletic," he said.

His initial plans were just to dig a bottomless pit. "For the first three years, I just wanted to see how deep a hole I could dig," Canto added.

But, in 2017, he began realizing that he could transform the hole into a liveable space. He called on his best friend, Andrieu, to help out. Andrieu lent him a pneumatic drill to speed the process up and came every afternoon to assist in the digging.

Within a year, the pair had more than doubled the cave's depth from five feet to 11 feet deep.

Canto has worked tirelessly over the past few years to build a functional underground space, spending around three hours every day on the construction.

A video tour, shared on his social media, shows that the cave now has many of the features of a standard home.

"When you enter the cave down the stairs, the first room has heating pipes and a coat rack," he told Insider. "That's the hallway."

The second room, Canto continued, has a seating area and a stereo system. "In the center of that room, there's an oven," the 20-year-old added.

The underground cave even has a bedroom with a single bed, shelving, and seating for four friends.

His friends think the underground cave is "awesome," he said. "They come every week to see any improvements or to simply enjoy a beer down there."

Canto's parents, on the other hand, are less thrilled by the construction. "Whenever I finish a room, they ask if I'm done already," he said

The underground bunker is far from finished, Canto told Insider. "What hooked me on the project was that it is never-ending. I think I'll probably add a jacuzzi next," he said.

The 20-year-old has no regrets about the six-year project. "It's been a long and rough adventure but, in the end, I love what I've achieved," he said. "All of the bad memories have disappeared."

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