Small Homes – the book

I’ve got pretty much all the pages laid out. Rick will be back from Hawaii next week and build the rest of the pages in InDesign. The book is looking better each week. Here’s a little hidden waterfront cottage (under construction) on Vancouver Island, BC (the shakes for the eaves were steamed and bent).

Material continues to come in for the book (400-1200 sq. ft. homes), and we’ll continue the book after its publication on theshelterblog, with a section titled “Small Homes.” Ongoing small homes.

My Next Book (?)

Adventures in Building – a 70-Year Odyssey

No kidding. I started at 12 years old, helping my dad build a house on his rice farm near Colusa, California. At 18 I got into the carpenters’ union in San Francisco and worked for a shipwright on the docks (SF was a port in those days!). At age 25 I started building and remodeling on a piece of land with 3 cottages in Mill Valley, California.

I never got the chance to work with a master carpenter or formally learn architecture, so I had a layman’s approach. Everything was new.

Right off, I liked the smell of lumber, and was fascinated with how things went together (still am). In about 12 buildings over the course of years, I personally went through post and beam, then polyhedral (domes), and finally stud frame construction techniques.

And all along, I shot pictures of buildings, collected books, and interviewed builders about all types of buildings and materials, and so far, have produced 6 highly graphic books on building.

Having this layman’s view means I can talk to inexperienced builders in understandable terms. Plus, all the travel and studying and interviews have given me a wealth of material of interest to experienced builders. We’re all interested in how things are put together. That’s what building is all about.

Música del día:

Etta James “Come Back Baby”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdFcg7zkhqM

Enough! I’m heading for the beach…

This unique building is weathering the years beautifully. It’s a masterpiece of building with natural materials. It’s documented on pages 66-69 of Builders of the Pacific Coast.

The crabs are hoppin,

Leaves are droppin,

and rain drops are starting to fall.

It looks like a monster crab season. Not only are there a lot of them, but they are both large and meaty. The sport fishermen have been hauling in limits (10 per person) for 2 weeks, and the commercial season started Friday…Leaves on trees finally dropping; we’ve got enough trees on our land that we have a local source for the compost pile. Nothing better than oak leaves in compost. Plus I’ve got a healthy population of hungry red worms transforming garbage into sweet-smelling black soil…And, after too much dry weather, we’re finally getting R-A-I-N! “GENTLE ISENTROPIC LIFT SHOULD PROVIDE SLIGHTLY GREATER PRECIPITATION VALUES ALONG THE COASTAL HILLS WITH EXPECTED TOTAL PRECIPITATION ALONG THE NORTH BAY HILLS AND BIG SUR RECEIVING 1.5 TO 2.0 INCHES. THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA MAY SEE 0.25 TO 0.50 INCHES OF TOTAL PRECIPITATION…Yahoo!…The air smells sweet right now with the first drops, with the real action to start this afternoon…If I don’t wimp out, I’m going to hike in the rain tonight along the coast…

Loop De Loop Mambo by The Robins on Grooveshark

I have an affection for this song. The first time I went to LA, 18 years old,  in my roommate’s Ford convertible, this was playing on the radio as we drove along the coast at Malibu at 5 AM. I’ve loved LA ever since.

A pretty complete list of connecting dome struts, both metal and wood. At left is the system developed by Bill Woods of Dyna Domes in Phoenix, Arizona in the mid-’60s.

Funny, they omitted what I think was the best wooden dome hub system, the pipe-section hubs and stainless steel strap tightened with a banding device. This was developed by Fletcher Pence in the Virgin Islands in the early ’60s and was strong and elegant. I saw it used by architect Jeffery Lindsay in L. A. and we used this system at Pacific High School for 10 wood-framed domes in the early ’70s. https://shltr.net/domeconnex

Sent us by Kevin Kelly