Building (356)

Hi,

I found your blog whilst looking at images for vardos on Google where I was seeking ideas and inspiration for my project. I’m based in Wales in the UK.

I have always fancied building one and decided to do it as a retirement project. I was lucky enough to find the basic structure on eBay, it was originally constructed by a blacksmith as a travelling workshop.

It was an unfitted shell on a twin-axle trailer, I picked it up at the beginning of the month and am making progress towards fitting it out. Whilst I like the traditional look, I wanted something less fussy.

So far I have painted the interior, made and fitted a rear window; although this mounts on the hinges for the original steel shutters so these can be replaced for security if left parked up for any length of time, I am part-way through making a similar one for the door.

Traditionally the bed goes sideways across the rear, so I have followed this and constructed a simple bed which pulls out to double width or slides back to make more space; there is space for storage beneath.
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Driftwood shelter built with creative lashing; included in the recent Driftwood Shelters exhibition. Photo by Lloyd Kahn

• shelterpub.tumblr.com

It is a fair bet that when Tom ­Dennis’s great-great-great grand­father took up his pastoral ­selection in Victoria’s Western ­District in 1840 he ­initially lived in a tiny hand-built house.

There’s no sign of it now: the former 4000 ha [15.5 square miles] Tarndwarncoort estate where the famed Polwarth sheep was bred, and where the Dennis family still lives, near ­Birregurra, has at its heart a magnificent bluestone mansion dating back to Cornish ancestor Alexander’s later years…

• www.theaustralian.com.au/…

We’ll be selling our books at The Maker Faire in San Mateo, Calif., in May, and we decided to build a model tiny home for display. Our friend Tom agreed to make the model. It turned out that he got into it and spent over a month (not full time) on the project. He said he could have built the full-size building in the same amount of time. It’s put together with glue. Window shutters and doors open on hinges.

The full size building is 10′ × 16′, scale here is 1 inch = 1 foot, so this is 10″ wide, 16″ long. Single wall construction (no studs).

Materials:

Siding: redwood; bats: oak
Shakes: cedar
Ridge beam and shutters: redwood
Door: walnut
Door and window trim: oak

It’s a little beauty.

• www.lloydkahn.com/…

Lloyd Kahn splitting shakes with a froe from redwood logs salvaged from a Northern California beach in the early ’70s. Photo by Billy Cummings

• shelterpub.tumblr.com/…

There is a festival of architecture in Scotland now, sponsored by the Fife Contemporary Arts Center. It’s called “Shelters,” and features an entire room exhibiting our work, with photo and page blowups, and our building books on tables (above). It’s open now at the Kircaldy Galleries (Kircaldy is about 12 miles north of Edinburgh, on the east coast of Scotland) and runs through June 5, 2016.

I’ll be doing a slide show presentation on May 10th, at Kircaldy Galleries, titled “50 Years of Natural Building,” chronicling our building books from Shelter in 1973 up to the present.

• www.lloydkahn.com/…
• Kircaldy Galleries