For a little more than a year, Ms. Key, a 34-year-old New York artist and M.F.A. student at Hunter College, has been bartering stays in the outbuilding behind her 1899 brick row house in Brooklyn in exchange for help fixing up the main residence. The cedar-shingled one-room structure, which until recently had been her studio, was built in 2009 on the footprint of an old garden shed. She furnished it with a quilt-covered bed and framed botanicals, and guests are treated to the clucking of her three chickens, which roost nearby.
Recently, Ms. Key, who is also an owner of the ArtShack, a Brooklyn organization that runs art classes for children, discussed the arrangement, which she calls the Den Transaction. She blogs about it at dentransaction.blogspot.com. 

Q. HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE IDEA OF THE DEN TRANSACTION?
A. I own this house, but I don’t have any money to put into it. It’s a real fixer-upper. Space is such a commodity in New York, especially. I just kind of put those two things together and thought I could have people stay here and have help. It was a total experiment.
 
HOW HAVE PEOPLE FOUND YOU?
 
Posting photos on Facebook and other social media was really helpful. I also posted it on this artist’s residency Web site Trans Artists, but I think I need to take it off because I’m getting enough people through word of mouth. I like the idea of not booking it up for years.  A lot of people e-mail me last-minute. 

WHAT HAVE BEEN THE BEST BARTERS?
I’m a single parent. I’m a student. I own a business and a house, and I make my own work. So I have a lot going on. Some of the most helpful things have been people cooking for me and my daughter, and fixing things and gardening.
One person who comes to mind is Akemi Martin, who cooked traditional Japanese food for me for a week. Every day I got home and there was an amazing, delicious, healthy spread. I just felt like the luckiest person in the world. 

ANY WILD ONES?
The aunt and uncle of a good friend of mine stayed here over Christmas while they were visiting their family in New York. They’re sending me a chick from Montana, which is where they live. 

ARE YOU LOOKING FOR ANY SPECIAL SKILLS?
 
I’m going to put together a wish list soon. The stairs are really old and falling down, like, inside the house. There’s a wall I want to knock down there. I need a new kitchen. Where do I stop? 

AS MUCH AS IT FILLS A PRACTICAL NEED, YOU ALSO SEE THE DEN TRANSACTION AS AN ART PROJECT.
 
All my work stems from architecture. I’m interested in how and why we create the spaces we live in and function in. A lot of my work is about meshing public and private spaces. The cabin strikes me as the most private space that you could have. But it’s in this very public realm. Of course, the yard is not public. But it’s a dense urban environment. You’re living among other people. 

WOULD YOU EVER RECREATE THE DEN TRANSACTION IN A MUSEUM OR GALLERY SETTING?
 
No, no, no. It can’t be done. “Site specific” is kind of an outdated phrase, but it’s about the experience of coming here. It can’t be recreated. I like to work in a specific space and respond to that and the politics around that space. Every space has a set of politics swirling around it. 

YOUR DAUGHTER IS ALMOST 6. WHAT’S HER REACTION TO ALL OF THIS?
She loves it. Having interesting people come through is priceless. When Akemi was cooking, we would help her, and she just learned so much. 

DID SHE ASK, “WHY IS THIS WOMAN IN OUR KITCHEN?”
No, she calls them the “den people.” She’s used to it. She’ll ask me, “Who’s coming for dinner tonight?” It’s weird if it’s just us.