Another house from throwaways

Here are two grandmothers building a house from an old trailer and papercrete on a sloping lot. I've seen trailers and modular houses on craigslist for free, so you would only have the cost of hauling it to your site. But then you would have the basic plumbing and electricity already installed. That's not a bad idea. You could live in it while you're building the outer shell. Just cover up that awful tinny trailer look. I think I would still want to do slipform stone walls and maybe build the masonry fireplace into the hill.

Straw bale house

I hadn't done a post on straw bale houses, because they don't appeal to me that much. Unless I lived next to a farm where they baled straw, the expense of hawling them would not be worth it. The bale walls take up a lot of space, and moisture could be a problem unless you lived in a dry climate. This site, Balewatch, has everything imaginable about straw bale houses. Some nice house plans. Be sure and check out the Q and A.

Another round house in Wales

I generally don't like round houses, but this is another Welsh home that is especially cozy. And the building method I could really relate to:

"Lift logs, prop up, nail together and continue until no longer wobbly."

Straw bale was used to infill between the log posts. I wonder how hard it would be to use slipformed stone instead.

They did most of the building while living in a tent with a baby and a toddler. Now that's the real thing.

Homeless housing-I could do that

I've been kind of losing the dream lately. But I definitely could do this. This group makes micro houses for the homeless. It costs less than $1000, probably a lot less if you scrounged up materials (It's amazing what they throw away at construction sites.) These guys even tell you how to make a stove out of metal buckets. The pictures are not very instructive, but they have lists of materials that they use.