After an arduous three-and-a-half-years building it in her California backyard, Kendall Ronzano is donating the excellent "tiny home" she started at age 16.

Last week, it was pulled on its portable trailer to Austin, Texas where it will provide shelter to a homeless person or family in a cooperative housing community there,  a twenty-seven acre transitional homeless community called Community First.

Now a 20-year-old Dartmouth College sophomore, Ronzano solicited public donations of cash in materials amounting to nearly $16,000 from more than 200 people.

"My parents have always encouraged me to dream big, and one idea that really stuck with me is that I want to learn to build a house from the ground up," she wrote on her construction blog, Nerd Girl Homes. " I've always loved building things. When I was little I created contraptions and structures out of Knex, Legos, Playmobile, and much more. I've learned to weld, use plasma cutters, power tools and to light the wood stove with a blow torch!"

(READ the story, w/ more photos, from the Monterey Herald)

Photos via FB, Flickr / Story tip from Mike McGinley