Building (355)

Located on Powell Lake, BC

… Our cabin is small (20′ × 21′), but complete. The downstairs has two bedrooms, one of which we use for storage and a bathtub. The main downstairs is a great room design including kitchen, dining, and living areas. The large upstairs loft is our bedroom. It’s plenty of space, especially since we have the whole outdoors at our doorstep. The main float is 40′ × 40′ and we have additional floats for a variety of purposes: a dock, a floating woodshed and my floating vegetable garden…

• From our book Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter

This tiny house is a true head-turner. Made from natural, eco-friendly materials and built by Tofino couple Alan and Venita entirely as a DIY project, this impressive home is filled with very clever design elements.

The exterior is clad in a mixture of weatherboards and cedar shingles which give the home a warm cabin aesthetic. Fortunately, the couple were able to find an ideal parking spot for the tiny house which had existing hook-ups for power, water and sewage already in place for RV parking.

As we step inside this home it’s hard not to be impressed by the simple, yet beautiful and functional design. The house feels open and light, while all the timber used brings an undeniable warmth to the space. Wherever possible, this home has used natural, non-toxic materials, including natural oils and finishes and sheep’s wool insulation to keep the tiny house nice and warm in the winter…

• From www.livingbiginatinyhouse.com/…

There is something about the idea of a treehouse that truly captures the imagination. For builders, it’s a licence to let their creativity run wild and construct something which is playful and adventurous. For years now the team at Nelson Treehouse and Supply (better known as the Treehouse Masters from their hit TV show) have been doing just that. This week we were fortunate enough to be able to visit one of their latest projects in Seattle, Washington.

The treehouse is accessed by a rustic set of stairs which wrap around the trunk of the tree and curve down to the ground below.

The exterior of the treehouse is exquisitely finished, with spectacular yellow cedar shingles. A large porch area provides plenty of space to relax, entertain and enjoy being up amongst the trees…

• From www.livingbiginatinyhouse.com/…

…Alan did everything himself: carpentry, plumbing, wiring (solar electricity and hydro), and developed his own water supply. He drives a tractor, maintains several miles of roads, makes beer and wine, and raises pigs and ducks. A lot of people have started homesteads since the 60’s, but seldom have they got as far along as this…

• From our book, Builders of the Pacific Coast

On my way to see Foster Huntington in Washington this morning, crossing the Columbia River on Highway 5, I spotted this floating community.

Some quick Google research:

The Portland region has more floating homes than Seattle or San Francisco. Hayden Island alone has four moorages for floating homes, including West Hayden Island Moorage, with 57 floating homes, on the far west side, Jantzen Beach Moorage, Inc, the largest with 176 floating homes (south of Home Depot), Island Cove Floating Homes with 55 units (just west of Lotus Isle Park), and Tomahawk Island Floating Homes with some 72 community members…

• www.hayden-island.com/…

Kitchen, dinning, and living room.

…Lobelia is the name of our 864-square-foot, two-bedroom, straw bale home. Named after a native wildflower, Lobelia was built with many reclaimed materials, including all framing lumber, most doors and windows, and even the kitchen cabinet.

The straw bale exterior walls are protected by earthen plaster inside and out. Outside, the hip roof and wood shingle skirt, made from pallet wood scraps, along with a coat or two or raw linseed oil help protect the exterior plaster from the elements…

• From our latest book Small Homes: The Right Size.

The wilderness seaside cabin is 43 miles from the nearest road and is on the westernmost point of land on the ocean side of Vancouver Island. It is 20′ × 24′ and framed entirely from beach wood. All the wall and roof sheathing boards are split from cedar on the site, as is the roofing, which is 3′ long. It was built 1987.

• Bruno is featured in our book Builders of the Pacific Coast.

I finished building this sauna in June 2017 with some help from a few friends. All the wood is reclaimed apart from a a few lengths of dimensional timber. The round larch posts are leftovers from previous jobs.The floor, roof planks, internal and external cladding, benches, rafters, tie beams, wall plates, fascia boards, and even the door are made with reclaimed scaffold planks (96 of them!) that I bought from a scaffolding company. The banister and spindles are off-cuts from a job I did many years ago.

Only new items are the (old-looking) hinges, the insulation (aluminum-polyester blanket), the thermometer/hydrometer, and some stained glass. The wood burner was beautifully crafted from an old gas bottle by Ed Osborne from Parp Industrie in Devon.

The dragon heads up in the fascia boards have hollow eyes with embedded red stained glass. When the late evening sun hits the back of them, they shine and make the dragons look alive. Totally unnecessary detail but it really puts a smile on people’s face the first time they see it…

The platform is 3.9m long by 2.2m wide and the interior is 2.6m by 1.8m. It accommodates 7 people in comfort or up to 11 if they are very friendly…

I call the style “Euro folk fusion”. It’s based on the very rich (although a bit forgotten) European wooden building tradition. It’s one part traditional Finnish sauna, a Norwegian wood cabin, a Slovakian log cabin, a Spanish horreo from Asturias region and a splash of Swiss alpine chalet.

All the materials including wood burner, stainless steel flue, glass, screws, hinges, insulation, and timber cost me just over £1000.

–Jesus Sierra
www.sierraecocarpentry.com

• Two of Jesus Sierra’s creations are featured in our new book Small Homes: The Right Size.