A few weeks ago we got a spiral bound little book showing construction of a cabin in the woods. Maximillian Godino dedicated the book to Shelter Publications, saying he was influenced to build his cabin by our books Shelter and Home Work. He milled all the wood on the land and used old windows and ship’s portholes for light, and built it on weekends with hand tools and a chainsaw. I wrote today thanking him for the book, and he sent me a return email, which included the below:
Since I was a little kid growing up in a house made of railroad ties on Tennessee Valley Road in Mill Valley I have thumbed the pages of Shelter. Before my dad died he presented me with the well worn copy you see here and it has given me tremendous satisfaction to be able to construct something inspired to a great extent by your research and photos.
Shelter, circa 1973
About Lloyd Kahn
Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the
Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include
Shelter,
Shelter II (1978),
Home Work (2004),
Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008),
Tiny Homes (2012), and
Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:
exactly what my copy looks like!