Lloyd House in April 2012

Lloyd House was the featured builder in Builders of the Pacific Coast. His skill and ingenuity and joy in building were stunning, as shown in more than a dozen homes in the book.

   Lloyd left his cliffside compound on the west coast of Vancouver Island a few years ago and converted a 1992 Econoline van into a 70 sq. ft. home and now lives on Hornby Island. There are photos of it by Michael McNamara in Tiny Homes.

   I dropped in on him as soon as I got to Hornby and on a grey, drizzly afternoon, we got reacquainted. I love the company of Lloyd and my friend Louie, both a few years older than me; we grew up in a different world. Did I want dinner. Well yeah-uh. We had chard soup and a big salad with greens from Barbara’s thriving greenhouse. 

The band of windows brings the outside in. It’s an exquisite space. 10′ × 7′ = 70 sq. ft.

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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