A 28-year-old woman who's lived in LA and Hong Kong gave up city life to renovate a cottage in the forest alone. Take a look at how she did it.

It's a far cry from the lifestyle the 28-year-old once saw for herself.

"I lived in Oakland, I've lived in LA, I've lived in Hong Kong. I thought I'd move to New York and obviously that's not where I ended up," Duggan, who's from St. Paul, Minnesota, told Insider. She worked as a freelance model and background actor, and her work contracts allowed her to move around.

During the pandemic, Duggan moved back to her mother's house in a small town near Lake Superior, expecting it to be a short stay.

"I got kind of stuck there, and it turned out to be a really lovely place to be stuck, so I ended up looking for property around that area," Duggan said.

She fell in love with the first place she looked at: a cottage on 15 acres of wooded land nearby. The cottage, together with a smaller cabin next to it, sits at the end of a gravel path that branches off from the main road. She declined to share the exact area where she lives, citing privacy concerns.

"I'm not even sure if they really ever slept in the house. I think they would bring out their tent and just sleep in the yard," Duggan said. "It was very rudimentary."

"When I moved in, it didn't have a bathroom. There was only an outhouse," she added. "While they had running water, it was just a well."

A screened porch covers the front of the main cottage, which is built out of wood that looks almost hand-hewn with its rough edges. The main entrance opens up to a kitchenette and a dining area.

A video Duggan shared to her YouTube page in 2020 shows what she was working with when she moved in: The walls of the living room were completely bare — stripped of any insulation — and a tiny ladder-like staircase led up to an empty loft. The rooms were sparsely furnished and very rustic, a far cry from the charming, cottagecore aesthetic that's flooded social media in recent years.

But Duggan saw what the cottage could be and got to work renovating the place.

Duggan is hardly a stranger to DIY projects: Four years ago, she converted a van into a tiny house, where she lived while traveling around the country.

"When I started property-searching, because I have the van, I was actually going to purchase only land," Duggan said. The original plan was to park the van on the land that she bought and continue living out of it.

When it came to the house, Duggan focused on fixing up one room at a time, starting with the rooms she needed the most, like the bedroom and the bathroom. She documented her projects on her YouTube channel, which has 829,000 subscribers.

Her most-watched video has racked up 5.5 million views to date. In it, she takes viewers through what it's like to spend a morning in her van. Her next most popular video — which has 3 million views — is a house tour of her cottage the way it was as she bought it.

Almost all of Duggan's videos are filmed by hand or with a tripod, and she adopts an informal, vlog-like style to her uploads by speaking directly to the camera and to her viewers as if they were old friends.

A handful of her videos are sponsored, and they involve paid promotion of items that relate to her lifestyle, such as portable solar generators and mattresses.

"I have been learning a lot about tools," Duggan said. "I'm on my own here, like, I can't just call my dad. He lives in the city and everybody I know lives pretty far."

She's also gotten into the habit of studying different furniture pieces and trying to figure out how they're built. On average, it takes her about a week or two to get a room done.

"I haven't gotten to the point where I'm good at making anything very ornate, but if I need to build a simple desk or something, I can usually get it pulled together," Duggan said.

The nearest large town is a 40-minute drive away, but there's a small community about a 10-minute bike ride from her property.

"It doesn't really have much. It's just kind of like a little main street," Duggan said. "There's a gas station, and there's a little general store and a little restaurant."

"I feel very claustrophobic now when I go to a city," Duggan said. "I think when I lived in the city, I didn't realize how much you're around people all the time."

In contrast, when she's at the cottage, she can go days without seeing anyone.

"I think in a city, a lot of times, any time you leave your house, you have to go do something that involves spending money," Duggan said.

Now that she's in the woods, there aren't many places that are convenient for her to go to that cost money, she said. She spends a lot of her time outdoors, going on hikes or hanging around a bonfire with visiting friends. New DIY projects are her main expense at this point.

When she lived in the city, she liked to spend time holed up in her apartment on her own. And when she was living out of the van, there were times she would find herself parked in the forest, alone in the dark.

"I've read comments are like, 'Oh, I'd be so scared to be alone in the dark.' But I think having lived in the van, I've had to get over a lot of those fears," she added.

"Obviously, everybody's got different financial abilities, but beyond that, the fear of not knowing what you're doing is a big hindrance," Duggan said.

She could barely start a fire when she first moved in and had to learn survival skills to ensure she could do without the comforts of city living.

"You definitely have to enjoy the things that come with it. Like I'm somebody who likes to be alone. I like to be in nature. I like to work on projects," she said.

Duggan acknowledges that she's been lucky to earn money through her YouTube channel and that it's definitely more difficult to make a living otherwise.

"I have a lot of friends who live in similar situations who don't have YouTube channels," she said. "You have to be willing to work hard and be willing to work any job."

"I've seen deer maybe four times. And there are birds in the springtime that sound amazing. But other than that, it's like chipmunks and squirrels but I see these in the city, too," Duggan said.

While she gets some small snakes in her orchard, she's been trying to manage her fear.

"I've been learning to be calmer about them because where I live, there are no poisonous snakes really. And if you see snakes, it usually means it's a sign of like a healthy ecosystem," Duggan added.

The house is heated via a wood stove, which means preparing for winter starts in the summer, Duggan said: "I have to make sure in the summer I get all my wood stocked up, piled, chopped, and ready to go."

There have been times when the temperature has dipped to negative 15 degrees Fahrenheit or even negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit, she added.

"There were mornings where I would sit and stoke the fire until almost noon because I just didn't move. I was so cold," Duggan said. "You kind of end up wasting most of your day just trying to be warm, so that's definitely the hardest."

"I think it was fun to not know anything and just kind of have this blank canvas to figure out," Duggan said. "Even if there were things that were hard or maybe felt like missteps, I've always kind of looked at them as like learning experiences and I wouldn't take them back."

Duggan has a piece of advice for people thinking about living alone: It's still important to build a community of friends, especially when moving to a new place.

"Even if that means just having one or two friends that come over for a bonfire every once in a while or that you can call if you know something's going wrong," Duggan said. "That's part of maintaining your own happiness and sanity, even if you love being alone."

This time, it's a proper house — with bigger rooms and a larger living space to accommodate more people.

Duggan declined to share the location of her new homestead due to privacy concerns, saying it's within the same area but "far enough away that it's a drive."

"The homestead feels very practical, everything kind of functions," she said. "I'm not trying to level the foundation or worry that the walls are gonna fall in on me. I can focus on the garden there or have family come to stay and have their own room."

Duggan also sees her new place as an investment in her future — that's where she'll live if she wants to start a family.

"A lot of people have asked me if that means I'm going to sell the cottages," she said. "Well, no. They feel so different and I love them both in such different ways."