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Priced out of the New York City real estate market, the couple rent an apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They decided to make their first home purchase a weekend house in the Catskills.

They had looked at about 30 houses during a four-month hunt for a country home last summer, and finally closed on the two-bedroom, one-bath home for $95,000 last September. Along with the house, a 700-square-foot 1920s cottage, the property in Sparrow Bush, a village in Orange County, N.Y., includes eight and a half wooded acres and a detached garage/barn 800 feet from the house.

Every weekend, starting in October, the couple drove two hours from their home in Brooklyn to the house, undertaking all of the necessary reconstruction themselves, except the re-roofing, which was done by a contractor. Both urbanites, neither had ever tackled a renovation before, but the project was thrilling to them.

“That’s the luxury of being a young, first-time home buyer,” Ms. Salway said. “It was empowering to see what we could do.”

This is a great story.