I've lived on the California coast all my life, so I'm no stranger to homegrown architecture. I've driven by geodesic domes tucked into canyons and hiked past shack-like mini-mansions perched on empty hilltops. My encounters have always been brief, though, and, most importantly, from afar. As he did with 2004's Home Work, Lloyd Kahn takes us inside the structures many of us wouldn't and couldn't even stumble upon, let alone venture inside. In this case, we tour the coastal creations of more than a dozen builders dotting the edge of North America all the way up from Northern CA to British Columbia. Driftwood saunas and stairwells, wave-like green roofs, bright wide-eyed yurts, hand-carved pillars and more. A wonderful collection of imagination and possibility.

-- Steven Leckart

Builders of the Pacific Coast
Lloyd Kahn
2008, 256 pages
$18
Available from Amazon

Shelter Publications, Pacific Builders of the Pacific Coast homepage

My wife and I had some property, but not enough money to build a house without going into debt. We enjoyed staying in a cave B&B in France and love the Troglodyte dwellings in Trôo, France. After consulting several books, including one by Rob Roy, this book just made the most sense. The methods are so low tech, a bum could make himself a mansion. Other books get into engineering with concrete, steel, rebar, etc., which cost a fortune and don't necessarily function any better and, in some cases, maybe not as well. With this book and the videos, which are a must if you get serious, you really can build a home for the cost of a roll of plastic and a few other items, provided you do the labor by hand and scrounge materials.

Mike explains succinctly what took him years to figure out and you may might never discover otherwise: how to get in light from all four sides, how to protect untreated wood, how to connect the log post and beams together with pins made of low cost rebar, how to evenly compact the earth backfill by hand as to allow nature to finish the job (the backfill also functions as earthquake bracing keeping you tight under the surface rather than hinging at the point where the building meets the ground, a method similar to what Frank Lloyd did to prevent quake damage in Japan). Mike shows how to make a foyer or a gable to keep water flowing around the door opening rather than across it. Skylights are notorious for leaking, even on a conventional house. So Mike invented the "sun scoop," a method I used that allows natural light to shoot right through the full length of the underground complex at different times of the day and year depending on your design and desires. He also shows how to make clerestory windows to let light into the high side of the house through an uphill patio or a wraparound.

I was a bit skeptical at first. How could all of this work and be so cheap? This type of dwelling is not for everyone, but if you do it right it really does provide great shelter. There are engineering tables in the back of the book providing rule of thumb guides and safety information. It won't get you something that will pass a code inspection, but I'm of the opinion codes and building regulations are written in part to provide sales for corporations and taxes for the government. A friend of ours designed a small underground house. She wanted to go with engineers and permits. Last estimate: $1.5 million dollars. And she has yet to get it approved. Sadly, she will never build her dream. This book even has a chapter of strategies for getting around that. Keep in mind, too, this book is not a house plan. You learn how to build nearly any design you want. Just put the safe framing building blocks together in a design that suits you, keeping the important rules and directions in mind. After the basic structural requirements are met, the only limit is your imagination...

We started our house in 2002 and had a very crude shelter within a couple months. I framed in about 2,000 square feet, made about a thousand or so fairly comfortable, and continue to expand into it as we need it. We have a studio apartment area, a master bedroom and two bathrooms, as well as a porch area with a conversation pit, uphill patio, green house and shop. We have added a large garden to raise much of our own food, a carport, wood shed and two-story rammed earth, rock and salvaged boat dock and bridge timber garage. With natural earth temps around 50 at night, only a small fire in the wood stove is required to keep things warm. The roof is a garden. It feeds and shelters us and provides a park-like setting with flowers all around. There is no exterior painting required. Nothing to become an eyesore as the paint chips and deteriorates and the shingles rot off. Sure it takes maintenance and there are issues to deal with but if you build it, you will be intimate enough with it to know what to do.

My home is growing. It's alive. It changes with time and will be here as long as we want it. Or if we leave and no one cares for it, it will someday revert back to the earth from which it came, to be just another one of natures reclaimed gardens.

-- Glenn Kangiser

The $50 and Up Underground House Book
Mike Oehler
1981, 116 pages,
$20
Available from Amazon

More info and videos available from UnderGroundHousing

Sample Excerpts:

Related items previously reviewed on Cool Tools:

Handmade Houseboats

Will Your Home Survive?

Mongolian Cloudhouses

Last time I moved I threw out my back repositioning Grandma's china cabinet for the 10th time. My latest (and hopefully last) moving experience was a dream because of the Lay-It-Out furniture templates. These unique life-sized paper furniture templates are the shape of your bed, sofa, tables, chairs, rugs, billiard table. After trimming them to the appropriate size (measurements are in inches and centimeters), we placed them on the floor and -- as I was directed to the appropriate location -- continued moving them around with no effort. I had the whole house planned out before the moving truck arrived and it cost less than the physical therapy and pain killers I had to use before. They are a breeze to use. Measure, trim, position, then reposition and reposition and reposition again... You could buy a roll of something like cheap brown crate paper of course, but I liked that Lay-it-out was ready to go, sizes already measured, and in pretty colors. You can buy a "Total Home Package" or purchase smaller packages specific to the Living Room, Dining Room, Bedroom, Game room, Accessory Tables or Rugs packages. I purchased the whole house package and used most of the pieces, except the billiard table, which I kept pinned to the wall for two weeks as a piece of pop art.

-- Rick Sievering

Lay-It-Out
$15 - 40
Available from Lay-It-Out

Related items previously reviewed in Cool Tools:

Furniture Sliders

Forearm Forklift

At Work at Home: Design Ideas for Your Home Workplace

This website/service can save you ten thousand dollars or more when you buy a house in certain cities. It is an online real estate broker that rebates 2/3rds of the usual agent sales commission back to you. Since you are probably doing most of the hard work in research, looking, and evaluation while shopping for a house anyway, why pay a real estate agent? On the other hand, there's a lot of paperwork, regulations, and legal issues you really don't want to handle, and a qualified agent should. So this is how Redfin works.

Redfin has a great online real estate website which we quickly found is one of the easier ones to use, with nice virtual walk thrus of each home, and good comparison data for the neighborhood. (The site is a joy to navigate, and we'd use it even if we did not get a rebate.) Then you, in the role of buyer and self-agent, do all the footwork of finding, visiting the various homes, checking out the disclosures, etc., and finally choosing which property you want. You are your own real estate agent up to this point. When you are ready to make on offer on a home, you do so online via Redfin, completing the necessary forms on the web. Then a human Redfin employee will take you through the final paperwork and signatures, and eventually visit the house with you. At the close of the deal they will rebate 2/3rds of their buyer agent commission paid by the seller, or 2% of the sale price, which in some areas of the country will mean at least ten thousand dollars.

We used this recently to purchase a home in the Bay Area and saved $15,000 this way. That is, after we closed the deal at the agreed-to price with the seller, Redfin gave us a check for $15K, in effect reducing our cost of the house by 2%. In our book that was enough to make the deal work.

The current drawback? This service is only available in a few cities in California, Washington, and a very few east coast cities. I have no experience in using Redfin in selling a house, although they claim you can save a similar amount.

-- KK

Redfin

A couple of times in your life you may need to sell a house. If you do, try to remember the advice in this book. It could be worth several thousands of dollars for a few hours of your time. The message is simple: when it comes time to sell your home, strip it of all the things that make it a personalized home, and turn it into a bland product that can be personalized by someone else. This book, the best of about half a dozen on the same theme, provides simple ideas on how to reduce your home to a house. The same philosophy also applies to rental property.

-- KK

Home Staging: The Winning Way to Sell Your House For More Money
Barb Schwarz
2006, 212 pages
$14
Available from Amazon
Sample excerpts:

Staging is not decorating. Decorating means personalizing your space; staging is depersonalizing it. Staging is not about the ruffles you love or your favorite color rug. Staging is about getting a property sold. Decorating is optional. Staging is mandatory.

*

The way you live in your home and the way you sell your house are two different things. If you're one of those people who doesn't know what clean really is, ask a persnickety friend to come over and point out things that need attention.

*

My Staging mantra is "Less is more." You're selling your space, not your stuff. All those little tchotchkes? Pitch 'em, pack 'em, but whatever you do, put them away or out of sight.

With personalized clutter.

Staged, without personalized stuff.

In marketplace terms, your house is merchandise. In Hollywood terms, your house is the set. You're Staging it to look appealing, just like the set in a movie. Your favorite television show has a set you remember and connect with. Your house is a set too.

I have never made a yurt, but I'd like to. This book tells you how. It assumes you have more time than money.

A yurt is a temporary tent house. It's not really portable. The Mongolian version weighs 200 pounds -- strong wooden frame covered in thick felt. If you really want portable, get a modern dome tent. But if you want a compact summer house, a cabin, a seasonal shelter encased in the mythical round, then a yurt could be perfect since you can make one of these yourself, with the added bonus that you can move it if you have to.

This book is an update of a 1980s classic. It takes the hippie approach. The drawings are all you need. Their instructions are rough, approximate, but satisfyingly visual. The book is motivational simply by being clear and rustic. Precision is not required, craft-smarts are. It assumes you are a do-it-yourself person.

-- KK

Mongolian Cloud Houses : How to Make a Yurt and Live Comfortably
Dan Frank Kuehn
2006, 152 pages
$12
Available from Amazon

Sample excerpts:

Tipi vs. Ger

When nomads gather, the topic of tipi vs. ger/yurt may surface. It's a circular argument. Both are functional and beautiful; the pros and cons balance out. Choose the lodge that best fits your situation and personality.

The straightforwardness of the tipi, its pyramidal shape, the feeling of infinity inside looking up at the apex of the cone, make this Native American design a masterpiece. Because of the slope of the roof, the tipi can shed rain and handle a snow load better than a yurt.

On the other hand, the basket-like frame of the ger culminates at the smokehole, the crown, the tono. A low ceiling makes it easy to heat and the short poles fit on or in most vehicles. The straight wall of the yurt give you as much head space as floor space, unlike the tipi.

As some kind of comparison, this drawing shows outlines of an 18-foot tipi and a 13-foot yurt, both using the same amount of cover material (33 yards, 6 feet wide).

The Icebox tool lets you build an igloo out of any type snow. I made 4 igloos last winter - all with different types of snow: one with heavy, wet, "packing" snow, two with new powder, and one with "sugar snow" - ice crystals that pour like white sugar. No problems. But this is definitely not a kid's toy. You need to shovel snow fairly high -- the 8 foot diameter igloos that I've made stand about 8 feet tall when completed. It took me (and a helper), approximately 4 hours to build each igloo. The whole igloo is free standing. The post device is used during construction to assure a circular igloo and to properly position the blocks. It works fine, although I did need to take my gloves off to extend and shorten the pole. The only difficulty that I've had is properly angling the first course of blocks -- if you don't get the box lined up properly, you have difficulty aligning the second course of blocks.

I'm not into winter camping but the system does fold up and pack. It weighs two kilos. The guy that introduced me to the Icebox has used it for camping in the Adirondack mountains. The igloos are really quiet inside, and noticeably warmer than being outside. If you want to make igloos, this is an awesome cool (no pun intended) tool.

-- Tom Connors

Icebox
$180
Includes tutorial video
Available from
Grand Shelters

Imagine you were about to build your own home, perhaps with your own hands, and you wanted a few ideas of what others have done, so you set out around the world for 40 years visiting unusual homes, snapping pictures, making notes, and gathering evidence of homes that serve as a personal extension of the people living in them -- the kind of home that is most satisfying both for the owner and for their guests -- the kind of home you want.

You don't have to do that now because Lloyd Kahn has done it for you. For far less in cost, and probably with far more effectiveness, Lloyd has collected homes that work for people. He has crammed a life-time of photos, notes, and insights into this amazing catalog, overflowing with wild, zany, practical ideas, hard-won evidence of successful homes in all cultures, chock-full of amazing glimpse of genius homes, owner-built glories, unique, one-of-a-kind, offbeat, think-different homes, mindful places, sketches of long-gone shelters, bits of building wisdom, and actual how-to-advice, all offered visually, in vast color plates, at a modest price for such an intense and dense tome. The entire aim of this book is to expand your notion of what your own house could be. It works.

At least once in their life everyone should make their own shelter. This is the book I would hand to them.

Here is how I think Homework compares with the other inspirational home books I have recommended here: Architecuture Without Architects is timeless, Built by Hand is global, Home Work is contemporary and personal.

Just build it.

-- KK

Home Work
By Lloyd Khan; 2004, 256 pages
$18
Amazon

Shelter Publications, Home Work homepage

Excerpts:

The yurt shown here is Bill's home in the Maine woods. It is 54' (eaves) in diameter and was designed so it could be built over a period of several years and still provide shelter during the process. It is a tri-centric, or three-ring yurt with 2700 sq. ft. of floor space. You can first build the 16' inner core as a room to move into. In the second stage, you can build the large sheltering roof over a gravel pad, allowing the major cost, floor construction, to be delayed. In the meantime you have a spacious area under roof that can be used for a workshop, greenhouse, garage, or for play.

Reception room of Save the Children Office Building, frescoed lime plaster [over straw bale] walls. Blue color comes from azul anil , a blue pigment commonly found in the Dulcerias or candy stores.

The "honey house" by builders Kaki Hunter and Doni Kiffmeyer in Moab, Utah. This dome/vaulted structure was constructed from earth-filled sandbags and plastered with earth and lime plasters.

Oh, it's an ancient yearning. I lived on a houseboat once; you definitely need more than a log raft. But you don't need a million dollars more. The techniques here rely on modern materials (barrels and composting toilets), and cover all aspects of building and maintaining a floating cottage, mindful of the constant threat that constant water presents. In my experience, however, the main hurdle is not construction, but finding a place to dock. If you have a location, you can build it.

-- KK

Handmade Houseboats:Independent Living Afloat
Russell Conder
1992, 230 pages
$15
McGraw-Hill
800-822-8158
Amazon

Excerpts:

Are You Crazy?
This book is about how to build your own houseboat, and thereby sidestep the twin ogres of twentieth-century survival: mortgages and landlords. If you can hold these pages open, dear reader, then you have the manual dexterity to hold a hammer. If you can do that, then armed with this book and a smidgen of imagination, and at least a little gumption, you can build your own floating home, and be comfortably ensconced inside it, within a few weeks.

*

Steel barrels are the cheapest option; however, they will eventually rust away. Where wind and water meet, there is enough readily replaced oxygen being thrown promiscuously about to equip the intensive-care unit of any hospital. Oxygen is one of the most corrosive elements known, and it will attack steel houseboat barrels with glee. Not only do the drums deteriorate, but flakes of rust fall into the mud and sand, poisoning the benign environment where minuscule creepy-crawlies used to live, before the kamikaze debris started to rain down. If you have acquired a houseboat with steel drums, they'll undoubtedly need replacing soon. If you are building a new house and choose steel for reasons of economy, you are simply putting off the painful necessity of opening your wallet and buying plastic barrels, which will last as long as the houseboat does.

*

*

Ordinary plastic barrels are readily found, and they are strong and durable. Due to their rounded shape, they will support the weight of a house, on the shore or afloat. The plastic barrel compresses as load is applied; that is, it transfers the load away along its curve, rather than attempting to support the weight in one place and then breaking, like a flat surface will. All a plastic barrel requires in the way of consideration is that it be placed out of, or protected from, the direct rays of the sun: Ultraviolet light will eventually weaken the material and cause it to become brittle. This should not be a problem with houseboats, for the barrels are place underneath the raft, in the shade.

*

Houseboats can be designed to float in as little as 6 inches of water, so finding a suitable site should not be a problem.

*

Enclosed is a photo of my little 18'x7' houseboat. Designed by William Atkin in the 1940s, she was built in 1985 by David Scarborough of Rock Hall Boats: cedar-planked, fiberglassed to the waterline, canvas-covered plywood deck, plywood house, powered by a 9.9 outboard. I had her built as a weekend retreat, but before completion, I had a stroke. When I recovered enough to live alone, I moved to the St. Johns River in Florida and have lived aboard since 1987. (Beats living in a nursing home.)

Step-by-step instructions for making scores of stylized ornamental bamboo fences. From Japan where they take this art seriously. Bamboo can grow anywhere most trees grow and is ideally suited to fence making.

-- KK

Building Bamboo Fences
Isao Yoshikawa
1999, 142 pages
$14
Graphic-sha Publishing Co.
Distributed by Kodansha International
Amazon

Excerpt:

The granddaddy of all books about hand-built homes is the legendary Architecture Without Architects. Forty years in print, it continues to inspire architects, despite its title. Savor it slowly as a black and white poem on what a house might be if you had two thousand years to refine it. These shelters have visible souls. They honor your hands and mind. I consider this small book to hold essential wisdom that no high-schooler should graduate without encountering.

-- KK

Architecture Without Architects
A short introduction to non-pedigreed architecture
Bernard Rudofsky
1964, 128 pages
$22
Amazon

Without qualification, this is the greatest account of vernacular architecture, indigenous shelter, and traditional folk-built home images ever published. And it won't likely be surpassed, since fanatical photographer Yoshio Komatsu spent 25 years traveling the globe to document the full jaw-dropping variety of shelter on earth. He's been EVERYWHERE. I can't think of a remote region of Asia, Africa, South American and Europe that he missed; most of the styles are new and stimulating to me, and I've been around. While Architecture Without Architects (see above) hints dreamily at this diversity, Built By Hand completes the thought by explicitly celebrating this abundance in vivid in-your-face technicolor. It's in a different league from all previous vernacular architecture books. This one is a stupendous 480-page cornucopic tome overflowing with 700 photographs, and thousands of details, hopes, and design ideas. Totally breathtaking, totally awesome! If this doesn't get you to grab a hammer, nothing will.

-- KK
(Recommended and suggested by Lloyd Kahn)

Moula, Cameroon. Arched earthen doorway.

Sumba, Indonesia. Four main posts provide the structural support in this building, and bamboo is used for everything else. Symbolically, the tall section of the roof is for God, the middle space for man, and the ground level for animals.

Built By Hand
Vernacular buildings around the world
Steen, Steen, and Komatsu
2004, 480 pages
$32
Amazon

Of all the books championing tiny houses, this tiny one is my favorite. Each very tiny house -- or should we say each shack and shed -- is photographed and sufficiently rendered in orthogonal view that one could construct it, or at least borrow designs from it. Less is more. This teeny book is, as they say, huge.

-- KK

(Left) George Bernard Shaw's Writing Hut; 8' x 8' -- 64 square feet

The Tiny Book of Tiny Houses
Les Walker
1993, 95 pages
$11
Amazon