Shelter II back in print

By Lloyd Kahn on October 14, 2010

We published Shelter II in 1978, 5 years after Shelter. At the time I felt that I’d misled people with the Domebooks, then shown them a great variety of ways to build in Shelter, and now it was time to show step-by-step design and construction of a small house. That’s at the heart of Shelter II: a condensed 24-page instruction manual for the novice builder for building a stud-frame home: foundation, floor, wall and roof framing; roofing, windows, doors, interior finish, as well as plumbing and electrical work. Much of this applies also to cob, straw bale, etc. buildings, because just about every home needs a wood-framed roof.

There’s also a lot on indigenous builders all over the world and on techniques and designs of past years; the rehabbing of abandoned buildings in cities; and my diatribe against the then-planned “space colonies.”

Shelter was a hard act to follow. Shelter II has no color pages, and it doesn’t have the irreverent joy of Shelter. But it’s a solid book, with construction details our other books don’t have, and we’re glad to have it back in print.

https://www.shelterpub.com/_sh2/sh2_book.html

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:
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5 Responses to Shelter II back in print

  1. I placed a copy of Shelter II in my cart on amazon last evening. It was the only shelter publication I did not have and am very much looking fwd to seeing it.

    Now when will Tiny Houses be available? No pressure of course! 🙂

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  2. I've received my copy of Shelter II already! I pre-ordered it from Amazon. I have Shelter and HomeWork, and I love both of them. Shelter II rounds out the collection. Shelter II doesn't have color pages, but then again Shelter doesn't have many either. Shelter II does have Mongolian yurts and gypsy vans as well as many other indigenous shelters, and it has lots of building information. I'm thrilled to have another Shelter Publication to enjoy. Thank you!

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  4. My pleasure, Lloyd. The review is now up on Amazon. Thank you for all of the hard work you have put into your books (I'm sure that's an understatement – ha!). They truly are inspiring. Next on my list is Builders of the Pacific Coast and then Tiny Houses, of course.

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