For a few years now, I’ve been following Gabrielle on Instagram. Among other things, she does these wonderful whimsical paintings of small homes.
Another of the many great videos by Kirsten Dirksen of faircompanies.com. I really recommend taking a look at her work!
Brad Lancaster’s home is featured on pp. 186-189 of Small Homes.
Colliding Rivers near Glide, Oregon, where Little River and the North Umpqua River meet head-on. There’s a photo on the bridge where I was standing showing the confluence looking like a maelstrom in the winter, with water up over the bridge (covering all the rocks you see here!). I went swimming a little downriver, it was co-o-ld, but refreshing on a hot day.
Birdhouse at Bellknap Hot Springs, on the Mckenzie River in central Oregon.
Cost $8 for an hour to use the facilities, mainly a large pool with temperature of 95-100F. A lovely place. The temp. of water coming from the springs is about 190F.
I’m trying to contact the guy who makes these, to get a few for our collection of mini houses.
Ricky B, who does antique and vintage car restorations in Prineville, Oregon, has created a miniature ghost town. as shown in these 3 photos.
It’s a uniquely delightful place. Everything Ricky does, both autos and vintage building, is remarkable.
Norman’s Mom “…wouldn’t even harm a fly.”
Ricky has at least 30 cars, all immaculately detailed. Most are standard models, but this is a wicked hot rod, I believe a 1951 Mercury, chopped and channelled to perfection.
On the road southeast, from Burns to Jordan Valley, Oregon
I’m frustrated by having such a dorky layout, due to Blogger.com parameters. I don’t have the skills (coding) or time to make these posts look other than awkward. So, for a while (until I can get my layouts together), it’ll have to be the singer, not the song…
Our new book Small Homes: The Right Size is now available at independent bookstores, and Amazon — as well as from us: www.shelterpub.com/building/small-homes
Shameless Commerce Dept. This is, I think, the best building book we’ve ever done. (Yes, I’m sure I’ve said this before, but it keeps reoccurring to me.) Shelter is everyone’s favorite; it captured the times, it inspired thousands of homes. Builders of the Pacific Coast is in some ways, my best book. It’s an odyssey of discovery where the reader rides shotgun with me over a 2-year period. Cohesive and focused.
BUT Small Homes is so useful to so many people in this era of astronomical home prices and rents, that I think it’s hugely important. It offers alternatives to people looking for rentals on Craigslist or homes on Zillow. Here are 65 very different homes, of different materials, in different parts of the world. The idea, as with all our building books is to use your hands to create your own shelter.
Two things I’ve discovered about this book (after seeing the finished product):
We got the proofs back last week, and I almost cried when I went through it page by page. Sounds dumb, I know, but it was overwhelming to see all the pages, in collated order, full size, 4-color for the first time — after a couple of years working on it. I’d only seen rather low-quality, reduced size printouts up until now. And you know what, it’s ahem, a beautiful book.
People, home builders from all walks of life, a great variety of designs, materials, locales. It may very well be the most useful book we’ve ever done. Tiny homes are great for some people, but too small for most. Here are 65 or so homes in all, a cornucopia of ideas for people who can’t afford high rents and bank mortgages, and want to build or remodel (or contract out) their own homes.
Check out the “sneak previews” on TheShelterBlog:
https://www.theshelterblog.com/?s=sneak+preview
Book due out April, 2017. More details to follow here.
Rick and I are in the final stages of preparing Small Homes for the printers. We changed the cover from an earlier version, which showed a small turn-of-the-century home in Santa Cruz (in this revised cover, it’s the middle image in the left hand column), because a single image didn’t seem to represent the diversity of images (120 or so small homes) in the book. Hence the collage.
Below are two alternatives, the same except for the background color. In the one with the red, it’s similar-looking to Home Work, Builders of the Pacific Coast, and Tiny Homes on the Move. Some of our savvy book friends think it’s too similar, and that another color would distinguish it from the other books. Hence the other with the dark green background.
Comments, please. Which do you like? Do you see any problem in this cover being similar to our other books?
Stop and go traffic so got out camera. This is a driveby.
We are doing layout of our next book, Small Homes, right now, and we’d like to get more people living in cities, large and small towns, and—yes—suburbs to contribute. Whereas the paradigm for owner builders in the ’60s and ’70s was a home in the country, it makes a lot of sense these days to fix up small, modest homes in populated areas. Relatively quick, often more economical than starting on a bare piece of land.
Please contact me if you or someone you know is living in a small dwelling of any kind in cities or towns, and which is unique, creative, inspiring, aesthetic, etc.: lloyd@shelterpub.com
