Master builder Vin Jon Gorman’s colorful, exquisitely crafted small home in progress. (See pp. 204–205, Builders of the Pacific Coast for his eucalyptus pod–shaped redwood sauna).
This is Sneak Preview #13 from our forthcoming book, Small Homes, to be published in spring, 2017.
The Building of the Cabin took 41 days. This included preparing the site for a foundation, building the timber framework, cordwooding the walls, and insulating and preparing the roof for earth, but did not include plumbing or electricity. While we built the cabin, we lived in a tent with our sons, then aged seven and five. Our days of building started at dawn and usually didn’t finish until 10 or 11 at night. We had no power or water on site; not only did this impact our building methods (everything mixed by hand, water brought to the site in drums), it also meant cold turkey from electricity for the kids.
My name is Pete Robey and my wife Blythe and I live in Tasmania. The little island attached to the bottom of Australia. Thought I would share with you that our house is the first approved cordwood home in Australia. It is currently featured in Australia’s Owner Builder magazine. You can get a link here at the bottom of the page: www.thehousethatworkedout.com
I bought your 3 books: Shelter, Builders of the Pacific Coast, and Home Work early on before we had even confirmed style. The Baird House from page 28–31 of Builders of the Pacific Coast just grabbed me. Thanks Mike Baird and to you too Lloyd (House) for this inspiration. We designed our home with the same ideal: every room and every area of the home can pretty much engage with every other area of the home. The village TeePee idea. We have a massive 4 ft. diameter, 2 ft. long tree holding up the earth roof and our 2nd story doesn’t go all the way to the middle so we have plenty of space. We don’t have stairs, preferring to use a gym rope as exercise — see this post from our blog: www.thehousethatworkedout.com/…
Catch you later.
–Pete
From www.lloydkahn.com/…
Built by Bruno Atkey in Tofino, Vancouver Island, BC, Canada, in the ’70s, and towed 26 miles to Hot Springs Cove, where Norma Bailey ran a “…great floating store selling emergency supplies, esoteric items, and Wild Coast history books,” according to Godfrey Stephens, who just sent this photo.
From www.lloydkahn.com/…
Kitchen in Guner Tautrim’s wooden home on California coast
Interior woods were all milled on site and include a floor of black walnut, kitchen cabinets of silky oak and black acacia, wainscoting of red gum eucalyptus, red ironbark eucalyptus, and yellow acacia; as well as kitchen counters made from large slabs of swamp eucalyptus…
This is Sneak Preview #11 from our forthcoming book, Small Homes, to be published in spring, 2017.
Renée’s kitchen built of driftwood, Northern California, 1970s
Photo by Lloyd Kahn
From our Tumblr
Scarf joint in barn on Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Photo by Lloyd Kahn
From our Tumblr
A kitchen on Lasqueti Island built by an old carpenter named John. The whole house is very original — many curved doors.
This is Jay’s cabin, on a little island near Seattle, it’s like a hobbit house — buried under the dirt with a large south window. He lives on this land with his sons. Beautiful garden, see view. Secret place the civilization with Barbie concrete homes are being built around the land.
This is our funny USA building in Humboldt County. Menthé and I built it in about 10 days.
We used old first-growth cedar for the frame and old yellow shakes for the roof. The timber is a mix between French and American techniques; the low wall in shingles and the high wall in colombage. The roof is curved like the “Philibert Delorme roof”; we didn’t use a lot of wood to make the curve because we screwed the inside of the plank on to the top of the curve, a cheap beautiful technique.
The upper little roof is where you can watch from the bedroom mezzanine — just for fun. The gypsy Dodge does not have a motor, so it needs to be moved with a tractor on the property. It’s a friend’s bedroom, 6 ft. high!!!!!!
This is my friend Travis in Olympia. He made this trailer for $7,000. He lives in it full time so he can move it when he wants. He is an excellent wood carver as well as a metalworker.
Our French carpenter friends Yogan and Menthé spent several months last summer, hitchhiking up and down the Northwest Pacific Coast and trading their carpentry skill for room and board.
When they left, they visited us here and we downloaded about 1,000 of their photos. They’d had a great trip.
They wrote: “The U.S.A. is incredible, so much imagination. It was a perfect trip for me. Thank you Lloyd, I wanted to meet the amazing builders of the pacific coast. Your book Builders of the Pacific Coast was my motivation for my trip to the West Coast.”
I picked out a few photos and Yogan has written these captions. We’ll post them one at a time.
The Leviathan Studio on Lasqueti Island. Mark is a contemporary dancer who built this studio by himself. He used trees from his 12½-acre property. The south side was made with used windows; the floor is yellow cedar. The roof is green: he used EPDM roofing. It’s built it for dance workshops during the warm season. The architecture is inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci.
Photo by Lloyd Kahn
Kate Todd’s handmade home near Point Arena, Mendocino County, California. Kate was featured in Home Work.
From our Tumblr
Deek’s Brockton, MA Hands‑On Tiny House Building Workshop 2016! Our workshops are fully hands-on, taught by a duo who have hosted and designed for HGTV and The DIY Network, have been featured in the New York Times, and are so fun and eclectic, that we have many people who have attended these workshops two, three, and even four times!
FEBRUARY 5-6-7, 2016, Brockton, MA (25 min. from Boston)
Well, its pretty thrilling that a museum that I hold in high esteem, and one that is gorgeous, has asked us to host a Hands‑On Tiny House Building Workshop! Naturally we said yes! This time around, we have more space than we know what to do with, all indoors (don’t worry, you won’t freeze to death!), and we’ll be tackling two, if not three, tiny cabin and shelter projects — all roping in the know-how you need to build a tiny house, shed, tree house, cabin, or funkified fort!
More info at relaxshacks.blogspot.com/…
From our Tumblr
Photo by Lloyd Kahn
During my bookstore tour in Oregon in June, I took a few days off to drive around in the Willamette Valley (south of Portland) to hunt for barns. It’s a beautiful area, kind of like a mini-Sacramento Valley — flat, rich farmland, abundant water, with steep mountain ranges on 3 sides. I spotted this barn with it’s gracefully curved roof and did my usual trespassing to shoot the exterior.
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