The best dry toilet ever

September 8, 2015

Composting, Design, Humanure, Water Conservation

We are fortunate to have talented friends all around us, because they are a never-ending source of inspiration.

Case in point: Our friend, Gloria, needed a toilet for her off-grid compound. She asked our mutual friend, Daniel, to make her one. Daniel is a gifted maker– all his creations seem to have an inherent grace about them. Using the classic text, The Humanure Handbook, as a resource, he built her the most beautiful dry toilet system I’ve ever seen.

See more pics of this system and read Daniel’s story on his book-as-a-blog, The Cabin Dweller’s Texbook.

Also, we interviewed Daniel earlier this year for Root Simple Podcast #044.

A Neoclassical Native Bee House

Mr. Homegrown

September 4, 2015

Animals, Bees, Design, Garden Design, Gardening

3 Comments

Inspired by the LA Natural History Museum’s bee houses on poles, I dashed off my own version in Sketchup. It’s an homage to Ian Hamilton Finlay.

Kelly is supportive but skeptical. I’m hoping it can be a part of the reboot of our front yard, which we’re about to embark on. The plan is to remove unsuccessful plants and make the space more welcoming to wildlife. More on that in later posts.

055 Guerilla Furniture Design

Mr. Homegrown

July 29, 2015

Design, Podcasts

2 Comments

My guest this week is designer, craftsman, carpenter and educator Will Holman. Will is the author of Guerilla Furniture Design and many how-to articles for magazines and web sites. During the podcast we discuss:

Arcosonti
Rural Studio
Making furniture out of cardboard
Frank Gehry’s cardboard furniture and Shigeru Ban’s cardboard architecture
Holman’s Instructables projects
Guerilla Design principles: Honesty, utility, economy and beauty
Ikea hacking
Open Works – the makerspace Will is helping build in Baltimore
Opendesk
Will’s website Objectguerilla.com

If you want to leave a question for the Root Simple Podcast please call (213) 537-2591 or send an email to [email protected]. You can subscribe to our podcast in the iTunes store and on Stitcher. The theme music is by Dr. Frankenstein. A downloadable version of this podcast is here.

054 Digital Design Tools on the Homestead

Mr. Homegrown

July 22, 2015

Design, Podcasts

1 Comment

Our topic this week is using digital design tools such as Sketchup to conceptualize and build simple projects around your house or apartment. Our guest is designer John Zapf, proprietor of Zapf Architectural Renderings and the genius behind our chicken run. During the podcast we discuss:

Why you should draw up plans before you build something
Architectural Graphics Standards
Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) technology
John’s Cat Bed 7 (pictured above)
Using pen and paper
Making physical models
Architectural scale and rulers
Cinema 4-D
Sketchup (a free and simple 3-D tool)
Rhino
Adobe Illustrator
Thingiverse
3-D Printing
Low-tech CNC using just a video projector and your computer
MoI Moment of Inspiration
How to learn good design

Restoring a Built-in Ironing Board

Mr. Homegrown

July 17, 2015

Design

27 Comments

If the original inhabitants of our old house found themselves teleported to the present, I imagine the first question they’d ask is why people go out in public wearing (me included) what to 1920s sensibilities would seem like baggy and wrinkled pajamas. The presence of a built-in ironing board in our kitchen indicates the centrality of ironing and a commitment to well pressed shirts and dresses back in the 1920s. If I were an archeologist, I’d be tempted to call these 1920s folks an “iron age” people.

But then this happened:

Apparently, in the 1960s there was just too much strenuous “action” to bother with ironing. Around this time or at some later date, the previous inhabitants of our house converted the ironing board into an awkward spice rack. I guess all the “action” required seasoning.

Restoring the ironing board was one of the first things I did when we moved into this house back in 1998. I just looked at some pictures of built-in ironing boards in an old copy of the Sears Home Catalog, cut out a piece of MDF and covered it in ironing board material. I attached a dowel to the back of the board that slides in a track in the lower portion of the cabinet. But somehow the commitment to iron-worthy fashion did not follow.

On my bucket list is a much overdue attempt to dress better. Our neighborhood produces eccentrics such as the late Silver Lake Walker and Five Dollar Guy so I could dress like a 1920s monopoly man and nobody would notice. Just another aging hipster! But I need not push this fashion thoughtstyling into self parody. Perhaps some moderate ironing and a commitment to looking just a bit better would suffice.

Do you use an ironing board? How often?

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