House kits

A house kit is one answer if you have more time than money. For the price of a good down payment you could have the whole house. Kind of reminds me of the old paint by numbers. Whatever happened to all those pictures? There must have been millions of them, but I've never seen a single one at garage sales or flea markets. I know the ones I painted got thrown away, so I guess that answers my question.

Well, anyway FirstDay Cottages seems like a nice company if you live in the northeast; they charge for delivery if you live more than 100 miles from their place in New Hampshire.

This site talks about the horrors of log cabin kits, so if you've been looking at those log cabin magazines better check them out. They say you can build a good log cabin house for less than $10,000.

House as fortress

This house is not exactly owner-built, but if you have been following any of the peak oil scenarios, you will be interested in the security features of this house. Some of them could be incorporated into an owner-built house such as the safe room and the fail-safe water source.

I wonder though, since money was not a consideration, why they did not put in a masonry fireplace. They would only have to fire it up once every few days to heat the place. Maybe because it was originally planned to be a summer home. Did I say I love masonry fireplaces?

Had a house

Pop's Mexican Rustic  
As you probably know, in Miami Cubans predominate, but there are also people from many other Spanish speaking countries. The other Latins have a nickname for the first generation Cubans, the "tuvos" or the used to haves, because they are always talking about what they used to have in Cuba. Well, I'm going to talk about what I used to have in Colombia. I had a house full of beautiful Spanish Colonial furniture.

I found a place that sells just about the same kind of furniture except they call it Mexican Rustic . Actually, mine was a little more rustic, because it didn't have glass in the hutch doors.

I love this kind of furniture, and I like solid wood furniture, which is hard to find here in the U.S. for any reasonable price. When I build my house, I hope to have some of this furniture in it.

Who needs trees? Cold-hardy bamboo

An alternative plan to build the $50 house. Normally you need trees. But how about if you planted bamboo on your 5 acres. In 3 to 5 years you have bamboo big enough to harvest. Some bamboo is stronger than wood. There are bamboos that grow in cold climates. Check out the Amercan Bamboo Society.

In any case I would grow some for privacy.

Do you really need more house than this?

The word cozy comes to mind. For one or two people this could be just right, and the price is right too--less than the cost of most SUV's. Here is an article that might make you change your mind regarding how big a house you think you need.

If you decide it is too small, you could always give it to a kid to use as a dollhouse.

Update: Here are some inside pictures.

Waxed corrugated bale house

I used to work for a wastepaper exporter, and I know that waxed corrugated is almost impossible to recycle. Sometimes wastepaper packers have to pay to have it hauled away, so, yes, a waxed corrugated bale house could be very economical. On the other hand those high density bales weigh more than half a ton, so you would have to use some heavy duty equipment to build a wall. Also there is the problem with odor. Wax corrugated is used for packing fish poultry, meat and some vegetables so they can be packed with ice, and consequently it smells. I suppose you would want to put some kind of plaster on the inside anyway, so maybe the smell would not go through that.

$50.00 House

Anyone can afford a house according to this book. If I ever get five acres of land somewhere, I can always build a house like this provided there is timber on the land. It sounds entirely feasible.

Would have to make sure there was no flooding in the area. But I would use tubular skylights, and combined with the ideas that Mr. Oehler has for natural lighting, it would scarcely seem like it was underground.