A FORMER miner has shared how he turned a 5,700 sq ft cave in the wild into a stunning home – and now rents it out for thousands.
Grant Johnson, who was kicked out of school when he was 17, spent 25 years transforming a slab of rock into an amazing three-bedroom house.
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The crafty man spent endless hours using dynamite to blast a cave in the boulder and shaped the walls by hand.
And he now has an incredible cave that he rents for £760 ($1000) a night – or just a room for £260 ($350) a night.
Speaking to Newsweek, Grant told how he moved to the mining town of Moab in Utah after he was booted out of school.
In 1995, he bought 40 acres of land for £19,000 while he was living in a 19ft trailer.
He said: “It was always my dream to mine a cave in the wilderness, away from the city.
“I bought it for $25,000, and a lot of my friends thought that it was a foolish decision because the land had nothing on it.”
He explained how he started gradually starting carving out his cave home by blasting a little tunnel into the rock.
“I soon began mining out the rock and developed a certain type of blasting that involved drilling parallel lines,” he said.
“After I hollowed it out, I trimmed the rock, shaped it, and carved it.
“It was my art project and took me eight years to complete.”
Grant worked on his project over the next few years by building the windows, installing the plumbing, flooring, and woodwork and constructing the rooms with the help of a friend.
The cave was eventually ready in 2014 when he moved into it with his wife.
The unusual property is now available for rent on Airbnb – and he and his wife move to a nearby cabin when it’s being rented out.
Another stunning cabin is located on a cliff in Israel after a former homeless man decided to carve himself a home.
Nissim Kahlon, 77, created a remarkable structure filled with tunnels, mosaics, and winding staircases out of beachside sandstone cliffs.
Over a period of fifty years, he created a complex, maze-like structure – which curious tourists now make an effort to come see.
He claims the project began when he ran away to the beach to avoid an arranged marriage, and one day started scratching a hole into the coastal cliffs.
But the modest scratches became a distinguished home, with mosaic tiling for floors, bending staircases, plumbing, a phone line, and rigged electricity.
And a crafty Mr Kahlon even used a swathe of recycled materials to make the home – with the mosaic tiles filched from dumpsters in Tel Aviv, as well as reused wood, ceramic and stone.
The remarkable cave is known locally as the “Hermit House”.
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