Manolo for the Home

Brrr, so cold here. And the snow that’s still on the ground has turned that dismal gray color that means it’s no longer at all nice to use for snow ice cream. I’m entirely sick of winter at this point. I’ve exhausted my to-do list of indoor projects needing my attention, and I’m itching to tackle some outdoor projects. Alas, it is too cold for exterior painting and too wet for sanding, so I’m SOL. The worst part is my brain keeps retreating into itself where it can dream of places like this uninterruptedly.

Maybe not places exactly like this, as those lovely little bungalows are in Wells-Next-The-Sea, a seaport situated on the North Norfolk coast in England. I’m sure Wells-Next-The-Sea is quite picturesque just now with all those pretty colors, but I can’t imagine that it’s at all warm, which makes it less than inviting in my mind. Summer (or at the very least springtime) cannot come quickly enough, in my opinion.

(Photo by russelljsmith)

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)

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?

Among the many books I received as a gift this Christmas, Wary Meyers’ Tossed & Found by Linda and John Meyers was a definite favorite. The husband and wife team visits places where furniture goes to die and brings that furniture back to life in awesome ways. It’s very. very cool.

So imagine my delight when I discovered that the Meyers have on their web site not only pictures of the spaces they have designed and decorated for others, but also photographs of their own home, which they call “a work in progress.”

Color, color, and more color defines this space — but it’s not overwhelming, balanced as it is by the muted couch and unusual but unobtrusive coffee table. This is just one corner of a living room that is elegant and beautiful, but also obviously made for living. It doesn’t look like a cut-out from a magazine; it looks like someone’s home.

Love the table. Love the chairs. Love the sideboard, exclamation point. Love the wallpaper. And love the way this dining room exists seamlessly between the living room and the kitchen.

And don’t even get me started! This guest room reminds me so much of a childhood spent in the house of a determined art book collector that it’s not even funny. I used to go to sleep surrounded by books upon books in a cozy room with mod furniture and eclectic artwork on the walls. Does this room’s familiarity make me love it more than I might? Just a little, but I like it plenty fine anyway.

Were it not for my having chosen to acquire a husband, a baby, and too many cats, I’d be just fine living in some tiny flat. When I lived in Costa Rica, I rented a teeny condo that was no more than a bedroom that barely accommodated a full bed and an all purpose room with a two-burner hot plate and sink installed. I’m not sure that I’d go as small as these folks, but having lived as a subletter in various New York City apartments, I got used to spending all my time in a bedroom-size space to avoid talking to roommates.

Of course, once you’re comfy living cozy, there’s no longer any reason to limit yourself to stationary housing. Those Tiny Houses can be towed around quite easily with a truck. And there are absolutely brilliant caravans out there! I’m particularly besotted with the restored 1959 Airstream owned by Andreas Stavropoulos. He painstakingly restored it to its former glory, then went a step further, installing mod track lighting, a cabinetry system that allows for quite a bit of storage, cork flooring, and cheerful paint.

It’s parked in the backyard of a co-op, near a garden and some friendly chickens. My only question is, seeing as that Stavropoulos removed the necessary facilities, where then does he poo?

Not in the lovely sink, I hope, bordered as it is with its brushed metal backsplash and deliciously simple cabinetry. There’s a ton of storage under the bed, which is the only reason that the owner’s wardrobe can be contained within a tiny Airstream.

Add in a home office, and you have everything the singleton needs in one tiny Airstream… excepting a bathroom, of course.

(via Dwell)

Living small. Small space living. Whatever you want to call it, there are people doing it all over the world. Some get into small space living out of necessity — usually because either the money or the space simply isn’t there. Others do it because they want to see how low they can go when it comes to their ecological footprint. And I suppose there are those who think that 175 sq. ft. is plenty, thankyouverymuch.

Zaarath and Christopher Prokop appear to be just that, according to the NY Post. They work a lot, they don’t eat in, and they don’t host guests, which is why they had no qualms about buying a microstudio — possibly Manhattan’s smallest — for $150,000.

The kitchen is used to store the few articles of clothing they keep in the microstudio, with most of their clothes living at various dry cleaners. Oh, and the couple’s two cats eat on the counter. There’s naught in the fridge other than espresso and champagne. A queen bed takes up a third of the microstudio, and the bathroom is the size of a small closet. At a mere 14.9 feet long and 10 feet wide, you can bet it feels a little claustrophobic.

“I’m amazed we can fit two people and two cats in there,” Zaarath said. “But it’s harmonious at this point. I have friends who say they could never live with their husbands in a place this small. It’s a good thing we like each other enough to live there.”

The only other resident of the microstudio is the couple’s Roomba, which must scare the bejeezus out of those poor cats every time it’s turned on. On one hand, I applaud Zaarath and Christopher Prokop for making the most of the space they can afford — they’ll apparently be able to pay off the $150,000 in a mere two years. On the other hand, they seem a little self-congratulatory about their knack for small space living.

Houses that are nothing but windows? Yes, please! I have a real thing for houses that are more window than wall, even if they can be hell to heat if not done right and privacy is at a premium aaand birds get bonked heads thinking they can fly right in. Glass houses tend to be super mod, but they don’t have to be. My grandparents, for example, live in a glass house that was crafted from a barn dating back to the 1700s. It’s a cool mix of modern and traditional styles, and wonderfully light and airy within.

This glass house from Arquitectura X was created to mimic the feel of unlimited space. The living areas open out visually onto wherever the house sits, making the house itself feel expansive.

A glass house found in Freetown Christiania, Copenhagen exemplifies modern “architecture without architects.” It appears to be literally all window. (Photo by seier+seier)

It’s more common to see glass houses around the ocean, especially in warm locales, where you get beautiful views year round. The downside is cleaning the salt spray off of all those windows, though presumably if you have a glass house like this one, you can afford to pay a window washer.

Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut was Johnson’s own residence. As glass houses go, this one is superlative.

The beauty of glass houses, of course, is that they let the outside in without actually letting the outside in. In tropical climes or mountainous areas or in the woods, having a glass house is one of the best ways to appreciate nature’s splendor. (Photo by Ah Hman)

I’ve never imagined a hamster’s life to be anything but repetitive and a tad dull, but I could be wrong. Maybe human beings are truly missing out by not stuffing our cheeks with food for later or munching on pellets? The truly curious can now find out, for $150 per night plus plane fare to France because a hotel in the French city of Nantes is offering the chance for people to become hamsters. You read that right. People. Becoming. Hamsters.

Or something like a hybrid human-hamster with a flat furnished with a bed of straw and an exercise wheel.

It is the latest venture from owners Frederic Tabary and Yann Falquerho, who run a company which rents out unusual venues to adventure-seekers. Both architects, the men designed the room in an 18th century building to resemble the inside of a hamster’s cage.

“The hamster in the world of children is that little cuddly animal. Often, the adults who come here have wanted or did have hamsters when they were small,” said Mr Falquerho, who was dressed as a hamster.

I think that last bit says it all, but since a picture is worth a thousand words and a moving picture a thousand more, here is a video.

Unfortunately, the Hamster Villa video is in French, but you can probably get the gist. There are cedar shavings here and there. The big wheel exerciser, of course. One drinks not from a glass, but from what the gentleman who created the Hamster Villa envisions a giant hamster bottle tap to look like. The things that stand out as missing to me are those tubes hamsters enjoy running through and flavored wood to chew.

I’m loving the 1840s farmhouse the painter Sean Scherer shares with his partner, Marc Mayer. It’s rather deceptive — outside it has all sorts of rustic charm, while the inside is home to botanical, zoological, and anatomical artifacts. Mercury glass shares space with transferware and precise renderings of human guts. Where else can you find an old slaughterhouse table share space with midcentury Scandinavian ceramics and newsprint wallpaper all in one space?

I adore people who know what they like, which means I have a real thing for John Webster of Kitsch’n. He gets his kicks with kitsch and isn’t afraid to take his flair for retro chic decorating and DIY to the next level.

Ooh la la! I’m loving that little wall clock… and how about that mantel? Gorgeous! (I’ll leave it to you to decide what you think of the other odds and ends.)

Lots of the furniture you see here has backstories that can be found in the archives, like the weirdly shaped coffee table and the pretty blue side table. Anyway, Webster’s entire blog is delightful, and I thoroughly recommend that you give it a read.