For kayaking instructor and boatbuilder Brian Schulz, it all began with a brass sink at a local recycling center. He then wandered around looking for other materials for the better part of an hour, aware, as he writes on his site, that if he took it home he "would have to build a home for it." A year-and-a-half and $11K later, Schulz was putting the finishing touches on the found-material woodland abode he calls the Japanese Forest House. The trappings of the classic DIY cottage origin story are all there—the serendipitous beginning, the money saved, and the far more valuable experience of creating it—but rarely is it pulled off with such panache.
Schulz ended up doing a fair bit of traveling to nab all the materials he needed, offering to haul away trees downed in storms and floating in flood waters. His favorite things about working with found materials, in no particular order: "You meet people, you discover new places, you have adventures, you learn things, AND, you come home with beams, windows, doors, and shingles." Though Schulz claims the project will never truly be complete, he does plan on adding adding a stone-weighted shingled roof above the porch, as well as a traditional Japanse torii (the iconic red archway often found at the entrance of a Shinto shrine) and shoji (those sliding paper window screens).
Opting for minimal decoration, Schulz also made little-to-no-effort to hide the beams, screws, and bolts holding his cottage together, in an attempt to keep the project "architecturally honest." See for yourself below:
· Man Builds Home for $11,000 Using Local Found Materials [My Modern Met]
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