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Archive for the 'Unusual homes' Category


Twelve Cubed Micro Houses

Monday, August 16th, 2010
By Christa Terry

You know already that I love me some tiny houses< ?a>, whether we’re talking about actual standalone houses, super skinny townhouses, or itty-bitty flats. My new favorite source for these havens of living small is Twelve Cubed, maker of twelve-cubed or ten-cubed micro houses that start at around CDN$24,500.

Featuring a dishwasher, microwave & modern oven combo, bathroom, closet, and plenty of natural light, one of our sustainable cubes has everything you need to make your life, modern, simple, and convenient.

Not bad, not bad! It sounds way more comfortable than some of the tiny houses out there, like apartments made out of closets, caravans with no bathrooms, and spheres you hang in a tree. I still don’t see them catching on in North America any time soon, however. Yes, the average size of newly-built homes is definitely dropping, but not by much, and the average size of a house now is still much bigger than the average size of a house in, say, 1960 (which is then itself much, much bigger than a Cube)

A Cube is set up so it gets its power, water, and sewage disposal handled by the primary house on the lot, so think guest house or home office, not primary residence. It has its own sewage pumping system which allows it to be up to 300 feet from its support house. There is a solar version available that does not need to be plugged into a support house for power, but I’m not sure how water would work.

Check out some interior pics under the break!

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My Favorite Ever ‘Before & After’

Monday, August 9th, 2010
By Christa Terry

I never really thought I’d have a favorite ‘before & after,” but I definitely do and it has to be Sandra Foster’s amazing tiny DIY Victorian cottage! She took a 9-by-14-foot cottage (an old hunting cabin) that happened to be on her property and renovated it herself for a mere $3,000 – a figure that includes furniture and accessories.

The part I like best about Foster’s story is that she’s not a professional designer (she’s a fiscal administrator), she’s not rich (Foster’s other house a trailer), and the whole thing was a personal labor of love – and when I say personal, I mean that Foster DIY’ed it to the max. While she may be just a little bit on a higher plane than most of us when it comes to using the contents of a toolbox, her amazing little cottage makes me feel like I can do just about anything I set my mind to!

There are a couple more pics under the cut, but I definitely recommend checking out Foster’s blog and the NY Times slideshow for lots more sweet photos of this DIY marvel!

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Love Cute? I Know Where to Find It.

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
By Christa Terry

The cute all apparently got sucked into Martha’s Vineyard, where there are more than 300 dainty rainbow-hued Victorian-style cottages with elaborate balconies, turrets, cornices, and gables with all manner of adorable details.

This is the Oak Bluffs neighborhood – formerly campgrounds for Methodist church group retreats, the houses themselves were built in the mid-1800s by members of the church community and to this day surround a open-sided wrought iron tabernacle that seats thousands.

Color abounds here, as do themed embellishments like balcony cut-outs shaped like everything from gingerbread men to grapes to Martha’s Vineyard itself. And the houses, of course, wear their colors and cut-outs with pride, sporting names like Sea Shrimp Cottage and Big Enuf.

The one downside to all the tooth-melting sweetness you’ll find in Martha’s Vineyard is that the gingerbread cottages are often (though not always) extremely close together. I’m talking about distances like six inches between exterior walls – you might as well be living in a townhouse.

Photos via: 1, 2, 3


Big, Bright, and Bold

Thursday, June 10th, 2010
By Christa Terry

My house is starting to look a little bit like Roma Interiors as photographed by Carlo Gianferro, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. His portrait series captures the inner lives of these super interesting people (who I’d occasionally see when I lived in Germany but never actually interacted with) by focusing on their homes… and what homes they are! Admittedly, some of them are a little busy for me, with too much “antique furniture, tapestries, paintings, religious images, china, staircases and mirrors” for my tastes, but you have to love the colors. That’s what I meant, of course, when I mentioned my own home. No tapestries there.

You can see more images from Gianferro’s portrait series at his web site, but I wanted to take a moment to share these because I am just in awe of the colors in these homes (and you have to see the one living room that contains very little furniture, but has an absolutely amazing hardwood floor).

How cool are those kitchens? Or the curving pink living room wall with the surprising insets of… stone? Bricks? And while I’m not a huge fan of tiger murals, I’m in awe of the frame paneling color choices! I’m not sure if it’s just the photo, but it looks like the ceiling yellow is lighter than the wall yellow, yum.


The Original $50 House, 35 years later

Monday, June 7th, 2010
By Christa Terry

You may not remember the name Mike Oehler, but if you around in the 70s or 80s you may have seen one of the houses he inspired. It was Oehler who built what is considered to be the first “underground house” in the U.S., and he sparked an interest in the concept of eco housing. Hi book, The $50 and Up Underground House Book sold almost 100,000 copies – not too shabby!

The structure in this – which I’ll say right now is very, very bad – video is the house Oehler wrote about in The $50 and Up Underground House Book, and while the property is home to six underground houses in total, this one was his primary residence for more than three decades. Oehler admits that using the word ‘underground’ in his book’s title was a mistake, and since the book was written, people have taken to calling this type of building is now known as “Earth sheltering.”

The benefits of earth sheltering are numerous. They include: taking advantage of the earth as a thermal mass, offering extra protection from the natural elements, energy savings, providing substantial privacy, efficient use of land in urban settings, shelters have low maintenance requirements, and earth sheltering commonly takes advantage of passive solar building design.


A Colorful Life

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010
By Christa Terry

Worried about what the neighbors will think because you’ve been thinking about painting the trim around your front door a sedate purple? Don’t. Your neighbors should just be happy you’re not taking it all the way, like uber-crafter Violette Clark, whose “spirit and artistic drive are completely uncontrollable” and who paints “whatever object falls beneath her gaze.” All right, so my chosen quotes make her sound a bit… wacky? But she’s really awesome, especially if a marker for awesomeness is doing whatever you want to do when it comes to your house and car.

Doing what you want to do – neighbors be damned – might even lead you down the path to a new life, as it did for Violette.

[She] always loved color, but she began saturating her home with it following the break-up of her marriage 14 years ago.

“When I went off and bought my own cottage, it was as if someone had given me a crayon and said I could do anything I wanted,” she says. “It was liberating. You don’t have to consider everybody else you live with.”

Embracing what she calls her “inner eccentric friend” has opened many doors for Clark.

Like creation a successful program of classes and workshopswriting a book… and generally getting famous within her chosen sphere. Pretty awesome to think that all that started with her painting her cottage’s doors!


Where I’d Rather Be

Friday, February 5th, 2010
By Christa Terry

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.

beach bungalows

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)


Drink Them Down, Stack Them Up

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
By Christa Terry

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 house, bottle houses

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.

bottle house, bottle houses

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 house, bottle houses

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)









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