Building a House on Limited Means: Low-cost House-Building For People on a Budget Building a House on Limited MeansThe Elimination of all that is unnecessary to achieve a DreamBy Thomas J. Elpel We are very goal-oriented in Western culture, and we often count our successes by how much we accomplish. As a simple analogy, you might say that a western artist does sculpture with clay, assembling an entire work piece by piece, while an eastern artist does sculpture in stone, eliminating everything that is not part of the final goal. Our approach to achieving our dreams was more the eastern approach than the western one. I pretty much grew up in the pages of the old Mother Earth News magazine. In Zen it has been said that, "Reverence is the elimination of all that is unnecessary." Financing the Dream In high-school the teachers were always telling us that we had to study hard so that we could find good-paying careers as adults. Renee and I started dating during our senior year of high-school and were already drawing house plans by time we graduated in June of 1986.
Build a Home for $10,000 in 10 Days! For half a century, William Castle has been building bridges, cabins, and shanties of all shapes and sizes. His favorite projects are right in his own yard. Woodland areas such as that of his native Belmont, N.Y., often have an abundance of “junk” timber that has little commercial value because of its small diameter, twisted grain, or other imperfections. If You Build It … Thirty years ago “Pollywogg Hollër,” as Bill and Barb Castle call their 30 acres surrounded by forest, began as a project to bring the family together. At Barb’s insistence, Bill began taking time off, and over the course of three summers, they and their three teenage children built a 20-foot-by-30-foot log cabin in their back woods. Other than mortar, hardware and roofing, all the materials in that cabin came from the land. Castle has used cedar for roof shakes in the past, but sustainably harvested cedar is getting harder to find at any price. A Simpler Timber-framing Technique More Tips for the Technique
Affordable Portable Alternative Housing & Energy Systems Hawaii Owner-Built House, Cabin and Barn Kits from Shelter-Kit® Home DirtCheapBuilder.com The $300 House: Go, Go, Go! - Vijay Govindarajan by Vijay Govindarajan | 9:53 AM April 20, 2011 Editor’s note: This post was written with Christian Sarkar, a marketing consultant who also works on environmental issues. It is the last in a series on conceiving and building a $300 house. Today, we’re launching an Open Social Co-creation Contest, sponsored by Ingersoll Rand and hosted by Jovoto, asking everyone, from designers and architects, students and professionals, to submit their designs in an effort to find affordable housing solutions for the poorest of the poor. The mission? Design a simple dwelling that can be constructed for under $300 which keeps a family safe, allows them to sleep at night, and gives them both a home and a sense of dignity. Winners will be selected by the community and a panel of judges and will receive a scholarship to a June “prototyping workshop” led by COMMON, a social business incubator. At the end of the prototyping workshop, we hope to have a model or two to test in the field, as part of a pilot project.
Reader Story: How I Built My Own House — Without a Mortgage This guest post from Ian is part of the “reader stories” feature at Get Rich Slowly. It’s the extended version of the story he shared in his prize-winning entry to this year’s GRS video contest. Some reader stories contain general advice; others are examples of how a GRS reader achieved financial success — or failure. It dawned on me in college, having experienced several different summer jobs, that I really didn’t like being employed. Most of the financial advice out there is geared towards building up a big account to retire on. Ian’s prize-winning video contest entry Planning By “live off the grid”, I don’t mean abandoning all your possessions to live in a shack in the woods. Note: My decision to follow this path was not purely a financial one — I simply am happiest out in the boonies. The more I looked at the offgrid option, the more financial advantages I saw in it. Does this mean intentional poverty? At the same time, I started looking for affordable rural land.
Man Builds Fairy Tale Home for His Family – For Only £3,000 Simon Dale is a family man in Wales, the western part of Great Britain. His interest in self-sustainability and an ecological awareness led him to dig out and build his own home—one of the loveliest, warmest, most inviting dwellings you could ever imagine. And it cost him only £3,000, about $4,700 American dollars! Can you imagine a more charming entrance than this? Simon gives two reasons for building the home. The first elegant one, from his website, is: It’s fun. His second reason is a plea for sustainability, in which he states that “our supplies are dwindling and our planet is in ecological catastrophe”. Simon is also a photographer, and as you can see throughout this article, a talented one. The tools are fairly simple. The home is constructed from wood, stone, straw, and has a sod roof. Most amazingly, the home didn’t require years of training or experience. He was fortunate in obtaining the land for his home.