dream houses
Tim Van de Velde
French by Design recently featured Veerle Wenes‘ unique home in Belgium that serves as both residence and gallery. We recommend taking the full tour for the wealth of design ideas the images hold. Take this foyer, for example, with unique, diy-able peg hooks that run horizontally and vertically, not to mention the swell two-legged plywood desk affixed to the wall, the rough brick-and-concrete floor, and sheetrock walls brought right down to the floor and unfinished by the usual molding.
We also like the the sheetrock ledge in the bedroom that that acts both as a headboard and as a display for beautiful and/or usefulobjects, set against a slate-colored wall. read more…
03.13.13 |
comments |
in cool spaces, dream houses, elements, inside |
oldworldgrange.tumblr.com
Of the many inspired DIY ideas to be found in the rustic Sunset House we posted previously is a beautiful and rather startling floor made of wood “bricks”. We’d never thought of simply cutting the ends off wood planks to make wood bricks. Industrious owners Lilah and Nick made a pattern of the wood bricks, end-cuts-up, above, and then grouted it with cement, which makes some bricks darker, while others take on a muted silvery sheen. read more…
02.12.13 |
comments (8) |
in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, diy, dream houses, floors, outside, reclaim, resources |
Over our many years of traveling to West Virginia, we’ve admired a number of eccentric, cozy dwellings, including a school bus with a giant stone hearth built onto it, nestled by a river. But this shack we spotted at Cabin Porn incites serious envy.
A couple named Lilah and Nick built the Sunset House using lumber from a barn on their property which was cut and milled from the land by the previous owner many years ago. All the windows are reclaimed from junkyards over their history of thrifting together. read more…
02.12.13 |
comments (2) |
in before + after, cheap + great, cool spaces, d-i-y, diy, dream houses, materials, outside, reclaim |
photo via hno (henk nouwens) flickr
Holton Rower spotted this amazing image on henk nouwens flickr. It is titled ‘The Cantilevered Void House’ and accompanied by these words:
“Standing immobile throughout the day, these vivid objects, with their fantastic shadows on the wall behind them shifting and elongating hour by hour with the sun’s rotation, exuded a kind of darkness for all their color.” Cantilevered structures self-supported over the void. From: The Gormenghast Novels
.
Who knows what the story is, whether the house is real or fake? Is it a fantastical image from The Gormenghast Novels? Comments on the flickr page yielded no info but lead us to a tove of images at The Cantilever Project, which got us thinking about cantilevers: A projecting structure, such as a beam, that is supported at one end and carries a load at the other end or along its length.
We’re smitten with this simple cantilever plywood chair (tiny angle braces clearly showing…could we diy this?) read more…
01.22.13 |
comments |
in buildings, dream houses, elements, furniture, outside, principles |
We love checking in to Cabin Porn a site which provides “inspiration for your quiet place somewhere”, which right now, is in our heads.
Recently, we became smitten with this hut overlooking Lake Bonney in the southeast of South Australia. All we know is that “it was built over 5 years with salvaged materials”; no other details were given. So we looked close at what those salvaged materials might be: we saw corrugated aluminum, windows, concrete blocks, reclaimed timber, a door, some sort of thin modern glass, driftwood…
Inspired, inspiring. A place to think…
Related posts: house tour: laura handler’s montana log cabin
cabin porn fave of the day: garden cottage, netherlands
‘tiny homes: simple shelter’
favorite escapist blog: cabin porn
the unexpected stylishness of walls of stacked logs
10.10.12 |
comments (2) |
in buildings, dream houses, inspiration blogs + sites, materials, outside, reimagine, repurpose |
This Vancouver house carved out of stumps in the early 1900′s is our idea of swell, the perfect eccentric, elemental, minimalist retreat:
“…3 rooms.The lower stump on right was the kitchen, the lower part of the highter stump on the left was the living room. The bedroom, doorless, was reached by a ladder removed in daytime to the kitchen…”
It reminds us a favorite young adult novel we’ve read a million times: read more…
08.31.12 |
comments (3) |
in buildings, cool spaces, dream houses, inspiration books + zines, outside, sightings |
handlernyc.com
Intrigued by a brief mention on her website of her renovated log cabin in Montana, we wrote designer Laura Handler to ask if we could see some pictures of the place. We not only got pictures with charming, haiku-like notations, but the wonderful story behind the cabin:
Fourteen years ago, my mother died and left me a Toyota Corolla with 15 thousand miles on it, and I decided to learn how to drive. As soon as I got my license, I took off a year to drive across the country. By the end of my voyage, I had bought a log cabin and 20 acres in Pray, Montana. No one was more surprised than I.
I wanted the perfect “weekend” getaway from New York City where – excepting for a few years in Milan – I had lived for my entire adult life.
Its resulting design has evolved – as I have – to become an stew of indigenous influences, incongruous cultures, and things that I love.
Inspired by Donald Judd’s Chinati Foundation that I visited on my drive, I added a austere and minimalist 1000 square foot cedar plank deck to the cabin.I cut through the log walls in the bedroom and studio, and added large sliding glass doors to the deck. I had all of the old wall to wall carpeting and linoleum ripped up, the particle board subflooring sanded smooth, and the entire floor epoxied bright white.
It feels more like a log apartment than a cabin. Or a log loft. A Gloft?
Handler’s notations, room-by-room, give an idea of her sensibility, process, and resourcefulness: read more…
07.16.12 |
comments (4) |
in cool spaces, dream houses, inside, outside, paths + processes, people |
-
photo: northfielder via flickr
Having no hidden rooms in our apartments, we have written a number of posts mulling ways to make an “instant”, impermanent guest room in our space. They are usually along the lines of something a kid would make, since secretly, we love the feeling of forts, teepees, treehouses. We are always on the lookout for materials with which we might quickly rig such a private space in our big open room, to enclose a guest bed, be a meditation room, a hideout.
So we were smitten when we read about Fort Magic
, a kit full of PVC pipes and connecters and clips with which you can make Tinkertoy-like structures to attach sheets or fabrics. Designed for kids but it see,s perfectly suits our adult fantasies. read more…
06.22.12 |
comments (2) |
in copy this!, d-i-y, dream houses, gifts, kids, materials, outside, projects + play, resources, rooms, strategies, tools |
pedro guerrero
Sleep doctors say that it’s important to wind down before going to sleep: no TV or computer that activates the brain, no magazines full of dire ‘reality’. Read fiction to get your mind in a quieter zone…
My solution is, often, to look at picture books of interiors, houses, furniture design: an adult version of a bedtime story. I’ve gathered a pile of favorites over the years that, like a kid, I never seem to tire of. They relax my mind, and seem to activate some dreamy center.
One of my favorites is Calder at Home: The Joyous Environment of Alexander Calder by Pedro Guerrero. read more…
06.06.12 |
comments (4) |
in art, cool spaces, dream houses, inspiration, inspiration books + zines, paths + processes, people, rooms |
photo: Beatriz da Costa
After photographer Beatrice da Costa sent us her virtual flowers in an email, we went poking around her website. There we found a trove of images of interiors, each, though uncaptioned and mysterious, holding some cool and inspiring idea, like the extraordinary choice of wall colors, above.
We are smitten with this corrugated tin ceiling… read more…
04.12.12 |
comments |
in cool spaces, dream houses, inside, inspiration blogs + sites, people, rooms |
(Video link here.) This morning, we found several emails from readers alerting us to this video that is flying around the internet like wildfire. It’s about 9-year-old Caine who devised an elaborate arcade out of cardboard, great quantities of packing tape, plastic toys – whatever he could find – over the course of a summer vacation hanging around his dad’s used auto parts store. You can read the backstory here.
Though for us a bit too long and treacly toward the end, it is really worth checking out the first 6 or so minutes to witness the work of a truly inventive mind, and BIG spirit, who made a great deal out of what was at hand. ”No” does not appear to be in his kid’s vocabulary.
One of the best lines is from Caine’s dad, when his son said he wanted to buy a claw machine: “Why don’t you just build it?”… a perfect question. So Caine did.
We can only imagine what a kid like Caine might grow up to be, and do.
Related posts: chris hackett’s brooklyn ‘obtainium’ mine
are you a ‘garage’ inventor?
five futuristic inventions at work now, full of crazy hope
“can do” (maira kalman)
tinkering schools for kids and adults
04.12.12 |
comments (2) |
in dream houses, kids, materials, paths + processes, people, projects + play, video |
by Lloyd Kahn, a book of the possibilities for small space living of all kinds, from Colin Doane’s sauna, above, in Queen Charlotte Islands with green whale jawbones lashed to the front rafters to this spectacular little cabin in Montana’s mountains… 
