A friend of mine happened to be reading The Big Book of Small House Designs: 75 Award-Winning Plans for Your Dream House, All 1,250 Square Feet or Less because he and his wife want to build a small guest house on their property. As we happened to be drinking juice from glass bottles while he told me of his plans, I suggested he build a bottle house. Turns out he’d never heard of bottle houses, and I can’t imagine he’s the only one.

Bottle houses are pretty much what they sound like, namely houses that use empty glass bottles (or jars) in their construction. However, the hallmark of the bottle house is that the glass bottles that provide substance and interest to the walls are highly visible and, in the nicest bottle houses, arranged by color in decorative patterns. Basically, glass bottles are stacked in a binding material like concrete, sometimes packed quite closely together. Other binders might be adobe, sand, stucco, clay, plaster, or mortar.

In some cases, the bottles project into a space like in the house above, but in other bottle houses, the bottles are doubled up in the wall so you see the bottom of a partial bottle on the outside wall and the bottom of another bottle on the inside wall, creating a stained glass effect. The less binder you use, the more your bottle wall ended up being a bottle window. Why build a bottle house? Easy-to-find and possibly free building materials, for one thing. And you can pat yourself on the back for recycling in an unusual way. Plus, according to Wikipedia, “When the bottles are filled with a (dark) liquid, or other dark material, the wall can function as a thermal mass, absorbing solar radiation during the day and radiating it back into the space at night, thus dampening diurnal temperature swings.”

Bottle houses seem to be found most commonly in hotter, drier climates, perhaps because of their ability to regulate the internal temperature of a home, though there are bottle houses and bottle sheds and bottle structures all over the world. Some are made of beer and soda bottles, some older bottle houses are made of bottles that held old timey things like Jhostetters’ Stomach Bitters, and there’s even one bottle house made from discarded embalming fluid bottles!

I go back and forth with regard to my opinion of these most interesting structures. On one hand, they are kind of cool looking, especially when the bottles or jars are arranged in an appealing pattern. But when they’re incorporated into a more traditional home design, a bottle wall can look tacky or gimmicky. Of course, you can’t argue with the price or the DIY friendliness of bottle houses. What do you think? Are bottle houses a yay or a nay?

(Images via: 1, 2, 3)

There’s a long tradition of looking to nature for inspiration in art and design, and no wonder. Once upon a time, there was nothing but pure imagination and what you could see around you in the great outdoors. Nowadays we have a lot more to look at, but nature continues to inspire those who create.

The tree bed from Shawn Lovell Metalworks is a wee bit pricey at $15,000, but how delightful to sleep and dream in the comforting arms of a break in the woods. There’s even a nest for passing birds overhead!

For those who wish to dry their duds the old fashioned way, Insitu has stylized tree clothes lines, suitable for indoor or outdoor use. The colors are great, though the $600 price tag leaves a lot to be desired.

These look like slim vases, but they’re actually quite tall. Jean-Marie Massaud’s Missed Tree Flower Pot has a sturdy steel base so you can be quite sure you won’t be left shouting timber as your beautiful pot crashes the ground.

When you’re using an eco-friendly washing up liquid, it seems a shame to let all that potentially useful gray water swirl down the drain into the municipal sewer system. It feels particularly wasteful when you live in a city or state that has passed extreme water restrictions. And if you live in a country currently facing a water crisis, saving gray water is a no-brainer. But how do you collect usable waste water without sloshing a bucket round the kitchen? Hughie of Australia has one solution in the form of a removable sink insert with carrying handles and a conveniently placed underside drain. First you wash your dishes (or clothes or what have you) in it, then you take it outside or over to your winter garden and give your plants a good dousing. At $25 AUS it’s a pretty good deal if it will fit seamlessly in your sink, though if you’re not down under, you could just find yourself a Rubbermaid dish pan with handles and tip it out as necessary.

(via)

My daughter, for whatever reason, has been the recipient of rocking horses suitable for infancy, toddlerhood, and beyond, yet I would give them all up if she could have a rocking Vespa instead. Unfortunately, these are not available en masse for any amount of money, as this, the sole specimen, was created by a loving (and decidedly skilled) Italian grandfather for one very lucky little boy. Gorgeous, no? I’m jealous beyond description!

(Via Motoblog.it)

A three-bedroom, three-story house with a veranda and two living rooms should be relatively spacious, yeah? Not if it’s the unique and strangely slim house designed and built by Helenita Queiroz Grave Minho of Madre de Deus, Brazil. The whole thing is only about one meter wide, though it stands ten meters tall and can accommodate the niceties of modern living, as well as Helenita’s husband, three kids, mother, sister, and pooch.

In the front living room, couches and chairs are spaced creatively along the walls so one can wind one’s way around the furniture, and a desk finds a spot in an otherwise empty bit of hallway… Scratch that, it’s not a hallway, it’s just the house. And it’s such a narrow house that getting furniture and appliances inside meant dismantling them and then re-assembling them once they were in.

As one can plainly see, however, this narrow house is more than a meter wide in some parts. From what I’ve read, it’s roughly three feet wide in the front near the entrance, but widens to six feet across in the back. Good thing, too, as having a functioning kitchen that could feed Helenita’s family might otherwise be impossible.

Could I live in such a confined space? I suppose I could, if I had to. I read somewhere that living in narrow house that’s this extreme would grow to be exhausting, especially with so many people sharing the space, but I’m not sure if that’s really true. Could *you* live comfortably in a narrow house like this one?

Difficult spaces make organizing… annoying. Having no logical places to put things makes it hard to keep anything for any length of time without clutter taking over. Luckily, one can create logic in a difficult space, sometimes using craftiness alone, but more often with a little money and the help of a clever contractor. To inspire those readers who deal with difficult spaces on a day to day basis, here are four fab solutions to problems of organization.

An under the stair wine rack might be particularly enticing for the homeowner who loves a glass or two or three but has a kitchen that simply won’t accommodate a little wine cooler.

Is that a bike up there? Why, yes… It might not be entirely convenient a place to store one’s bicycle year round, but perhaps it could live up there during the winter when it wouldn’t be in use much. Think of a storage loft as a smaller garage alternative. Those without bikes could store luggage or a fire safe or linens without anywhere else to live.

This is a great idea for those who, like me, work from home but don’t have the space or inclination to put together a private home office. I’m actually typing this at the writing desk in my living room because my home office has been taken over by baby supplies, so I know this solution works. Putting the writing table behind the couch isolates it to some extent from the rest of the living room so you can maintain that work/life divide.

And then we have the stairway bookcase, which is a classic solution to the very real problem of possessing too many books. I think this one is rather novel, however, as each stair simply wraps around at a ninety-degree angle to create a shelf. Plus the stairway itself is narrow and steep, making it a great way to access upper floors without losing a lot of first floor real estate.

(Photos via micasa)

Manolo for the Home is one of the younger blogs in the Manolosphere — did I just write that? — so I don’t get nearly as many reader e-mails with leads on cool stuff to feature as I do over at Manolo for the Brides. A recent communiqué from Sterlingspider brought this to mind, so before I tell you what she wrote me about I wanted to remind you that I want your tips! Bring ’em on!

So what was the lovely Sterlingspider so excited about? Sternocera aequisignata. That’s right, a beetle. But not just any beetle! This beetle, eaten in Thailand, happens to have a exquisite wing case that is as durable as it is beautiful and has attracted the notice of artists and craftspeople, particularly contemporary Belgian artist Jan Fabre. In 2003, Fabre used the used the glowing beetle carapaces to create an awe inspiring mosaic that covers the vault ceiling and chandelier of the Hall of Mirrors in the Royal Palace in Brussels.

Called Heaven of Delight, a nod to Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, the ethereal green ceiling was made from 1.6 million beetle shells, glued by hand to the vault, niches, and formerly gold chandelier. As you might imagine, Fabre didn’t work alone, but instead employed 30 assistants who worked with him full-time for four months to complete. One glance at the detail tells you why…

I can’t imagine that I’d guess what the ceiling and chandelier are made from; most likely I’d wager it was something like green opal. But Fabre knew what he was doing when he chose his unusual medium. As he told the New York Times:

He is convinced that this skin will last far longer than paint: ”The wing cases of the jewel beetles are made of chitin, one of the hardest, most imperishable materials we know. They consist of wafer-thin platelets that capture, reflect and transform light. Oil paint fades; the carapace will keep its original colors.”

As an aside, Fabre is no stranger to using materials sourced from animals. In the course of his work, he has covered columns in marbled ham, as well as bones and other sorts of beetles before settling on the sternocera aequisignata for this very large work.

Curious about sternocera aequisignata? Here’s the little edible jewel up close.

People get freaky about their dolls, but really it’s no better or worse than any other hobby. Silly me, I actually didn’t realize how deep the doll obsession can run until I stumbled upon some dolls that look way too much like real people in little dolly fashion shoots. That led me to some doll houses that look way too much like real houses, which I’m totally digging with a level of enthusiasm equal to the level of horror I feel when looking at those scary high fashion dolls.

These gorgeous wee interiors were created by Michael Williams for his “Welcome to the Haute Dollhouse” feature in Haute Doll Magazine. I actually bookmarked one picture in his album thinking it was a real room, but I won’t tell you which one.

Aren’t they lovely? It makes me want to buy a basic doll house for my daughter when she’s old enough to enjoy it, and fill it with analogs of designer furniture and home accessories. Basically, I want her to have the hottest (and hautest) doll house on the block.