Homes made out of weird materials. Grain silos are changed into an 1,800-square-foot dwelling with unique bragging rights. See dumpster ‘luxury’…
Homes produced from wacky materials
Bedtime stories the evil witch from Hansel and Gretel lived in a gingerbread cottage with window panes of sugar and a candy studded roof. And a classic lady considering the variety of children she didn’t know very well what to perform lived in a very shoe.
In real life, the number of choices are equally as wacky, from paper houses to converted grain bins to homes made from a muddy mixture called “cob.” These architectural oddities — homes built away from recycled junk, gussied up dumpsters, or grounded airplanes — provide fodder for future fairy tales, or no less than late-night shows on HGTV.
In the Hamptons, a resort area usually associated with oceanfront mega mansions, abandoned steel shipping containers are now being employed to construct a 2,000-square-foot beach house having a deck plus a small pool. Andrew Anderson, the builder and who owns beachboxit.com, says turning the containers in to a home may ultimately help the planet.
“It’s the means to take the products and let them have a second life,” Anderson says. “You weld them together and tack them on the foundation.” With loads of glass plus an exposed corrugated ceiling inside the upper container plus an exposed corrugated wall in a very lower crate, the shipping container beach house will likely be listed this spring for near $1.4 million.
Here are five houses made from your most unconventional materials:
Fancy Fuselage
Where: All Over
Made From: Old Airplanes
Fancy Fuselage made from vintage Boeing 727's interior is adorned with teak paneling from cockpit to tail
Once they’ve made their last landings, Boeing 727s and Douglas DC-8s, don’t always get put in the marketplace to pasture around the retirement tarmac. If not separated for parts and scrap, the occasional airplane, wings clipped, gets transformed right into a sealed, sturdily built fuselage-style private home. Corporate jets already outfitted with designer bedrooms, comfy leather sofas, media rooms and bars, might just require seat belts removed.
Dumpster Home
Where: Berkeley, California
Made From: Dumpster
Dumpster Home - Extreme compromises include a toilet lid that doubles as a bed cushion
“A nice little home out of an garbage can.” That’s how artist Gregory Kloehn of Berkeley, CA describes, in the YouTube.com interview by Kim Aronson, the dumpster he made in to a “luxury” compact home for urban living. The “elite waste” quarters boast stainless steel appliances, gas stove, hardwood floors, a toilet, storage and sleeping areas as well as a barbecue outside. At night its two front windows roll down in to the elite dumpster for privacy.
Junk Castle
Where: Pullman, Washington
Made From: Car Parts, Sheet Metal, Car Windows
Junk Castle - Building on a budget: this scrap-metal home cost less than $500 to build.
Many folks have junk drawers. Victor Moore, an art form teacher, had a junk house. Set on a hilltop with lookouts produced from car windows and also the glass from washing machine doors, the 1960s Junk Castle is filled with all of sorts of, well, junk, from his workshop. The exterior walls certainly are a mélange of old auto body parts, recycled sheet metal and household appliance parts.
Cob House
Where: Rutledge, Missouri
Made From: Sand, Clay, Straw
Cob House - The 370-square-foot cottage took nine months to build
To build his snail-shaped “cob house,” Brian “Ziggy” Liliola used 219 batches of cob, a wet blend of straw, clay and sand. He find the rustic building material used on 500-year-old thatched cottages in England, as a result of “how creative you can be” and “the flexibility and affordable and sustainable benefit” of building with local materials.
Converted Silos And Grain Bins
Where: The Midwest
Made From: Converted Silos, Grain Bins
Converted Silos And Grain Bins - Two grain silos were combined to create a unique 1,800 square-foot home
Silos and grain bins aren’t simply for missiles or soybeans anymore. Structurally sound, ready made which has a roof, round walls and a concrete floor loaded with interior space, the often abandoned, recyclable steel structures are typically changed into homes which are fire and termite resistant, weather proof and efficient. For larger lodgings, they might be placed side-by-side or stacked on top of each other. Even Rapunzel might disappointed her hair in these multi-story circular dwellings. After all, it’s like living inside a metal turret.
(Marcelle Sussman Fischler – Forbes.com)