DIY | Home Design Find - Part 2

Home Design Find

Hemp Makes a Lovely Design/Build Home

The first house in the US to be built from a completely new concrete-like mix that incorporates industrial hemp is Anthony Brenner’s own house in Ashville, North Carolina, and built by his own company, Push Design, as a demonstration of breathable building construction. The house was relatively more energy-efficient and economical to build due to [...]

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Turn Your Foreclosed Swimming Pool into a Permaculture Fish Farm

Like many foreclosed properties in the state, this one in Mesa, Arizona, had an abandoned swimming pool. The enormous expense of keeping a swimming pool running was just no longer sustainable for the sellers. But rather than spend thousands to fix the pool, the two young homeowners who bought the home decided to transform the [...]

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When You Don’t Have Room on Your Roof for Solar Panels

So you want to add solar to your home. Good for you! But, problem. It is rare that a roof seems made for solar, like this one. More often, a person winds up in a home that just does not have a solar-friendly roof. It’s too small, or it’s too steep, or it faces the [...]

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Sliding Bookcase makes 3 Rooms From 1

The need to make a very innovative use of space in a very, very, tiny Paris attic apartment led to this innovative hiding bed by French interior designer Paul Coudamy. Actually, the bed itself does not slide out (luckily, as this is a double bed). It is the bookcase concealing the bed that does all [...]

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Straw Building Blocks Make Warm Sustainable Homes

I’ve covered other straw bale construction techniques here before. This machine for tying straw into tubes on the field to build with, and these prefabbed walls of straw from a British company that stuffs straw into prefabbed wall-sized units near the farm… …but these are the first straw bale building blocks I’ve seen. What a [...]

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