Mrs Barsby, who is one of the founders of the Southern Heritage Trust, was ''very encouraged'' that Creative New Zealand had since agreed to provide $15,000 in matching funds through a recently established fund.
This will support conservation work on the cottage.
The dwelling had stood near the Dunedin Gasworks Museum and had been the last of its kind in Braemar St.
''They think I'm mad,'' Mrs Barsby said last year about the reaction of some of her friends to her decision to pay $15,000 of her own money to save the cottage.
She said this week she was ''most grateful for the generosity'' of everyone who had helped save the building, including the new buyer of the building and its site, who had donated the building, provided it was relocated.
And Mrs Barsby had no regrets about stepping in to save the cottage, paying to have it removed last year, to save it from demolition.
''If I hadn't done anything, it would be lost, so immediate action was needed,'' she said.
As well as the Creative New Zealand support, the project had also since been backed by $2300 in various donations from concerned individuals, plus the Edward Theomin Charitable Trust provided another $1000 on top of that.
A positive feature was that the financial backing had come from ''different sources'', from public funds, from a trust and from concerned individuals.
Sufficient funding was now available to start doing some of the necessary restoration work to safeguard the cottage for the future, and it was hoped to complete any urgent exterior work by the end of May.
She welcomed growing public awareness of the cottage restoration project, and said more funding was needed to complete it.
The biggest long-term challenge was to find a permanent site for the dwelling, near the museum, where it could provide a hub for interpretation of the social history linked with the museum, she said.
