From Chris McClellan:
“…the treehouse SunRay built in Portland in a 300 year old fir tree in the middle of a suburb. When one of the neighbors complained and brought out the building inspector he apparently fell in love with it because he told them to take the stairs down and put up a ladder so it wouldn’t be a deck because he had no authority over treehouses that weren’t decks with stairs.”
Chris’ website: https://www.industrialrustic.com/nb/
“ISRAEL PROULX
Origin: Quebec, Canada. Raised in Chicoutimi, Israel grew up with a singer-songwriter father and a harmonica-playing grandfather, and influenced by Western singer Marcel Martel. When he was five, his grandmother gave him an Elvis Presley record, and he listened to Jailhouse Rock for hours on end. Proulx took up the piano, learning to play the boogie woogie.…” https://www.montrealjazzfest.com/artists/artist.aspx?id=7521
Another song: https://myspace.com/israelproulx/music/songs
“That almost impossibly tiny house in Toronto…has found a buyer after just three weeks on the market, though it sold for well below asking price.
The property at 30 Hanson St. on the east side of Toronto’s inner city got a lot of publicity on real estate sites and blogs as an example of just how tight the city’s housing market has become.
So tight, in fact, that a house the size of a typical backyard tool shed went on the market for $229,000, enough money to buy a large suburban home in some Canadian cities.
But it sold this week for $165,000, the National Post reports, a good 28 per cent below asking price.…”
Click here.
“If you want to travel through a country on a budget and still sleep in a dry place while it rains, a small camper is perfect. However, I wanted to have a fuel efficient car that could be used as well on a daily basis. I decided to go for a used white Renault Kangoo 1.5dci mini van. It’s highly fuel efficient (5.2l/100km – 45.2mpg / effective range around 1000km – 621 miles), pleasant to drive and if you take the seats out it is an astonishingly big transporter for sport or daily use.
I planned everything to be modular:
While camping you take the back seats out and are left with two seats and a camping mobile.
You can leave the back seats in the car and install the kitchen box and you have your kitchen with you if you want to go climbing with your friends.
Or you take both boxes out and your car is a normal mini van again.
The main goal was to build a small camper that is very fast and easy to put into a sleeping position.”
Click here.
From Anonymous
On my way north up the coast from Santa Cruz a few weeks ago, a full house of windsurfers at Waddell Creek. This would look best as a 3-4′ mural. One of the many limitations of electronic as compared to the real thing. Sigh. Some day I’ll do an exhibit of panoramas, grande size. I have tons…
From Mike W
Tiny homes are the rage now. Tons of media on the subject. From which we, of course, benefit with our book Tiny Homes (50,000+ copies sold in last year.)
But you know what? Much more realistic for someone who can’t fit into 3-400 sq.ft. of living space, or who doesn’t have a piece of land, and who has a full-time job, are the small fixer-uppers in not-so-stylish towns. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, forget SF, Berkeley, Alameda, Mill Valley, Sausalito, Palo Alto or even San Mateo, but check out Richmond, Hayward, El Cerrito, San Leandro—towns that are either rundown, but improving, or towns that are not hip and don’t have B&Bs listed in Lonely Planet books.
There are 1000s and 1000s of little houses in towns that are not of the hip- or destination-persuasion , with backyards and neighborhoods that may be on an uptick. The crack houses have gone. The meth dealers have moved elsewhere. Home prices are WAY lower than the sought-after areas.
Just sayin…
Photo by Tom Raftery
This is one of many great photos on Treehugger’s Photo Pool:
If you don’t already know about it, TreeHugger is a great website/blog.
18 years ago a slight lapse in concentration crushed Pascale’s dreams of surfing. With the help of a family friend and a roll of duct tape, she can now call herself a surfer.
https://mpora.com/videos/AAdif7to116i
-Mike W