Speed Restrictions on Housing

Exit door of “Pipe Dreams” at Elefante, handcrafted home structures

I wish that I could claim that I thought of Slow Home first, what can I say?  I didn’t, but when I ran across the idea, I was like, “Well, yeeah.”  As a residential designer, who secretly (guess it’s no secret now) wants to design & build treehouses and garden rooms, I hope the Slow Home movement sweeps the nation.  I hope it brings a new era of building or deconstructing that encompasses environmental restorative design, reconnecting humans and nature, and is a celebration of the human spirit possessing both anima and animus traits.  That is all.

The 10 Steps to a Slow Home 

1. GO INDEPENDENT

Avoid homes by big developers and large production builders. They are designed for profit not people. Work with independent designers and building contractors instead.

2. GO LOCAL

Avoid home finishing products from big box retailers. The standardized solutions they provide cannot fit the unique conditions of your home. Use local retailers, craftspeople, and manufacturers to get a locally appropriate response and support your community.

3. GO GREEN

Stop the conversion of nature into sprawl. Don’t buy in a new suburb. The environmental cost can no longer be justified. Re-invest in existing communities and use sustainable materials and technologies to reduce your environmental footprint.

4. GO NEAR

Reduce your commute. Driving is a waste of time and the new roads and services required to support low density development is a big contributor to climate change. Live close to where you work and play.

5. GO SMALL

Avoid the real estate game of bigger is always better. A properly designed smaller home can feel larger AND work better than a poorly designed big one. Spend your money on quality instead of quantity.

6. GO OPEN

Stop living in houses filled with little rooms. They are dark, inefficient, and don’t fit the complexity of our daily lives. Live in a flexible and adaptive open plan living space with great light and a connection to outdoors.

7. GO SIMPLE

Don’t buy a home that has space you won’t use and things you don’t need. Good design can reduce the clutter and confusion in your life. Create a home that fits the way you really want to live.

8. GO MODERN

Avoid fake materials and the re-creation of false historical styles. They are like advertising images and have little real depth. Create a home in which character comes from the quality of space, natural light and the careful use of good, sustainable materials.

9. GO HEALTHY

Avoid living in a public health concern. Houses built with cheap materials off gas noxious chemicals. Suburbs promote obesity because driving is the only option. Use natural, healthy home materials and building techniques. Live where you can walk to shop, school and work.

10. GO FOR IT

Stop procrastinating. The most important, and difficult, step in the slow home process is the first one that you take. Get informed and then get involved with your home. Every change, no matter how small, is important.    

Treehouse as Studio

I started out during the design phase of my home, wanting to build an office/ studio/ guest cottage at the rear of my property. As it turned out, it wasn’t in the budget. This was probably a good thing because at the location where it was sited, I didn’t realize until after the lot was surveyed, there is a nice little grove of young live oaks amongst a thick bed of palmettos. Of course, now that my daughter is graduating and is soon to move on, building another structure just for guests seems silly and the home office still functions perfectly in the the third bedroom. Now I’ve decided if I still need some sort of studio to “get away” or create, I would like to build something open and treehouse-esque. Even though I don’t have any trees large enough to support a real treehouse, I was recently inspired by a childs playhouse nestled in a hardwood hammock that was sporting a bridge to a look-out. For all intents and purposes, it could be considered a treehouse. The treehouse concept is also fueled by a recent holiday gift, Treehouses of the World by Pete Nelson. Each of the treehouses featured in the book is truly spectacular in its own way. The one on the cover, the Redmond Treehouse is one of my favorite. It encompasses several trees that pop out at odd locations and the moss gives it the patina that is evidence that it has evolved over the last 20 years. If you’re engineeringly inclined, you’ll appreciate the design of a little device called the “GL”, which is used in modern treehouse construction as a support to anchor the beams of the treehouse to, so as to allow the tree mobility and growth. The GL hardware device can apparently support up to 9,000 lb.

Really, my intent was to post about ANOTHER idea for a studio, NOT the treehouse, but the treehouse is so organic and small and perfectly immersed in the natural environment, I couldn’t help myself. This other idea is not new, nor is it orginal and I found evidence of this right in my own hood.

The shipping container.

If someone would be interested, I’d love to design them a re-purposed shipping container studio/ house/ outbuilding/ whatever. As for my own purposes, I’d love to use the shipping container, though the problem is fitting it on my narrow lot and wedging it in the back without taking out the sparkleberry tree. The other issue is of course aesthetics, I much prefer the look of two containers together (double wide, if I may) as opposed to a single. I love the charming gable roof on these, though on mine, I would design a barrel roof made of corrugated metal set on some beefy 4″x8″ beams just for fun. The roof would span the double wide. Then I’d design a simple lean-to porch on the long side with again the corrugated (mini preferred) metal roof over 2X4 purlins over 2X6’s, no I’d use “L” channel to keep the profile miniscule, set atop a beam supported by (2) reused 12″ dia. piles. I’ll have to work on that in SketchUp so you get the idea.

If you’re interested in pre-fab design and other ideas that have been executed with the container bay, check out http://www.fabprefab.com/fabfiles/containerbayhome.htm.

I would love nothing more than if we could reduce our living square footage to fit in a couple shipping containers and a treehouse and simultaneously start to appreciate and cultivate creative solutions to our living structures.

Casa de Maraposa - House III

I’ve been meaning to continue my exploration of more examples of the “reduce-reuse-recycle” housing model and low and behold, my work was done for me.  If you recall, the first home I described is a home that will be reused and relocated on the property (still in a holding pattern, though DEP has granted a permit).  The second home was remodeled using recycled materials.  The Casa de Maraposa or house III is an example of building new using advanced wall systems, reducing square footage and incorporating green practices throughout.  This project is still on the boards.  My friend and client has written a great post on the project so I won’t spoil the fun, read all about it at his blog.

Bohemian Bungalow - House II

Revisiting the past briefly, this is an oldie but a goodie.

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 The down and dirty:

• 800 sq.ft. beach house, built in the late 60’s
• basically destroyed from the inside out by termites
• 5 contractors looked at this project with no takers
• purchased the home at tax appraised value with cash

The renovation:

• $10,000 in materials which included: wood, drywall, wiring, plumbing, concrete, discounted metal roof, new misordered windows from building supply, paint and a LOT of caulk
• scavenged materials: solid mahogany doors from old restaurant, bricks and 5-panel wood doors from 1800’s house, oven and cabinets from street collection, misc. wood, insulation, appliances, plumbing fixtures from nearby house destroyed by tornado
• labor supplied by a close friend, daughter and self.

Where we lived during renovation: backyard, in a 1969 AirStream

Timeframe: approx. 6 months

Appraisal before renovation: $15,000

Appraisal after renovation: $55,000

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This story really begins with a charming red 1963 Dodge Dart convertible with rusted out floor boards and a fuel filter that needed continual cleaning.  I was working with a local architect and making about $12/ hr at the time, and my b.f. thought it imperitive that I buy this car, being that it was the ULTIMATE beach vehicle.  So, I did, for $1,500 that I really didn’t have.  Oh, we sure enjoyed that car though.  Several months after the car purchase, a tornado came barrelling down our street and took out about 10 houses, including a friends house, the Skrabalak’s.  Heh.

I decided it might be a smart idea to purchase one of the newly cleared tornado lots, build a new house then tear down our termite buffet.  The lot I wanted was $18,000 and I needed 10% down.  BTW, this was one of those lots within 1,000 ft. of the gulf.  I put the car up for sale, sold it for the same price as I purchased it, saved $300 and had my $1,800 to put down on the lot, which I promptly did.  After 3 months of trying to convince a bank (any bank) that I was a good risk for a construction loan to no avail, I gave up.  Realizing that I could no longer pay on the lot AND fix up my current abode, I opted to sell the lot and purchase an Air Stream.  I made a tidy profit of $5,000 (funny, right?) and promptly rolled 3 grand into the 24′ trailer, which I figured I would live in while I built a new house.  Still unable to get a construction loan with my salary, I decided I would do the next best thing when you have good credit…apply for every credit card on the planet and take out all cash advances possible.  This provided the $10,000 as noted above.

Oh, I almost forgot.  You’re probably wondering why I didn’t just get a home equity loan.  That’s because the house was in such disrepair it was uninsureable, hence unmortgageable.  Also, it was financially impossible to rent another home and simultaneously fix up my tear-down house.

Having the credit cards and cash in hand, we went about fixing up the house.  First it was jacked up (the roof was sagging about 6″), gutted and all the extraneous rotten additions were removed.  Then each exterior wall was rebuilt, one at a time.  New windows and doors, plumbing and wiring followed.  The floor was a peeling mess of poly-faux terrazo, which we recovered with 1.5″ of fresh concrete.  Then the new roof went on, followed by all the interior finishes, drywall, trim, paint, fixtures, etc.  It was a tremendous amount of labor that was being performed under a time crunch.  It was impairative to be complete before hurricane season due to the fact that insurance companies don’t write policies during that time.

It all came together about a week before June 1.  We completed the house renovation, the insurance company did an inspection and wrote me a policy.  With policy in hand,  I was able to go to my local credit union and apply for a home equity loan.  They gave me $20,000 to do home improvements (after the fact), which I in turn, used to pay off my credit cards used during renovation, as well as a few other debts.  I had about $2,000 remaining which I treated myself and family to a 3 month backpacking trip to Alaska.  This story continues but I’ll leave you here for now.  And that is just the beginning of how a 1963 Dodge Dart convertible transformed into a house.

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First, the DEP’s Blessing - House I

This is a post that actually goes along with an article written for Topsail-Island about the 3R’s - reduce, reuse, and recycle.  In the article I write about how the 3R’s also apply to our homes.  Simply stated: reduce living square footage, reuse your existing home, and build with recycled materials.  Over the next several months (however long construction lasts) I’m going to document the transformation of a few homes that are prime examples of the 3R’s put into action.    Exciting, right?

The first home is a residence on the beach.  This property has been in the family (not my family, if you’re wondering) for many years and has been passed down to the children.  Originally constructed in the 1980’s, this home has endured many storms and was fairly protected due to its modest size and location behind several dunes.  Over the years, the dunes have washed away and the gulf has crept a little closer.  During hurricane Ivan, beach erosion washed away the homes seaward facing porch, though no structural damage was done to the main house.  For the most part, the house has been rendered useless.  The owners, through much agonizing, have decided to keep the house intact and relocate it northward about 65′.  Since the storms, the DEP has relocated the CCCL closer to their northern property line essentially decreasing the square footage needed to build another home.  I know, you’re probably saying, “If I only had such problems.”

Back to the house.  The first step was to have updated CAD drawings of the existing structure drawn (me! me! pick me!).  Those drawings were then given to the structural engineer to redesign the piling and girder foundation.  In the meantime, geotechnical engineers stepped in to collect boring samples to determine the depth of the new pilings. A new topographic survey is ordered and all of this data is given to the structural engineer so he can work his magic.  He generates new drawings combining all of this information including the new building location, fill if needed, dune walkover location, piling depth and turtle lighting.  These drawings have been submitted to the DEP and now we wait for their approval and a permit.  That’s just the beginning.  We still need to get a county building permit, which can’t happen until we have the DEP permit.  The owners still need to settle on the piling company and a contractor that will pull the permits and rebuild the lost porch.  So that’s where we are on that house.  Patiently waiting.