Why did it have to be snakes?

Despite the kind offers from her children, Mom does NOT want to hold the baby milk snake.

Treehouse Taste Test

Since we're trying out different options for when we do this in WV, we went with two different rain screen applications:







Still have some work to do, but getting there...

Modern Treehouse Test Drive

So we're giving the LostRiverModern treehouse a dry run here in our full-time backyard:


We're working with three trees as our supports, which lends itself nicely to a modern shape, and to a fun triangular pitched roof.

Hard to keep kids off as you build...

Probably a little overbuilt, and it'll be a pain to take apart if our landlord makes us dismantle it before we move on to greener pastures.

The floor is 7/8" BC board (sometimes called project board), which has a nice smooth finish and is plenty sturdy. Most of my power tools are out in WV (including my jig saw), which meant some tricky and not-recommended improvisation with an old skil saw to shape the floor around the trees...

The plan is to use 1x2 slats in a rain-screen application for the walls, and to screen it in (mosquitoes are tough in these parts). About $350 in lumber and misc. materials. I fastened the beams with 1/2 x 6" lag screws. Not much to it after that. Framed the floor, roof and ladder; the roof will be corrugated plastic. Should finish today or tomorrow...

Michael says it's "awesome."

My kind of DIY

If I were building a modern home for us to live in, I would definitely be looking hard at these. Get the satisfaction of building Ikea cabinets yourself but with gorgeous exposed stained 7-ply instead of fiberboard...

Wanna go halfsies?

I don't think I could ever live in the desert, but I'd love to have a west coast version of LostRiverModern and man do I wish it could be this:




With apologies to all the wonderful prefab designs out there, this very first version of the Marmol Radziner entry into the prefab world still blows me away. Dwell has detailed the home and the process here. And if anybody out there wants to help me scrape together $1.2mm...

Guest Book

I've been toying with asking guests to send us any fun pics of their trips for me to post over here - kind of like outsourcing my blogging responsibilities. I haven't followed up on it yet, but here are some guests' own blogs where visits to (or hopes to visit) LostRiverModern have been memorialized:

Simplesong

ThreePotatoFour

and more from TPF

Sweaty Guinea Pig (these guys put our kitchen through its paces)

The Mark Pike

Samantha Hahn

Something's Hiding in Here

In the Press

So we've had a very positive response to our little fifteen minutes of fame in Dwell (though for my money, the pictures are much more fun than the article).




And while we don't yet have a "Press" link on the real site for the house, we should. So I'm going to aggregate all the press we've had in this post, and eventually migrate it over to LostRiverModern. We've been very fortunate to have some wonderful sites write up little bits on our place and owe a big THANKS to everyone who has been nice enough to point people our way, including:

• Jetson Green
• Materialicious
• Modern Capital
• Modern House Magazine
• Prefabcosm
  
• Prairie Mod
  
• My Ninja Please
• The Good Human
  
• Washington Spaces
• Design Sponge
• Busyboo

I'm sure most of you have already visited these sites, but if you haven't head over and check them out. Great reading for anybody interested in a modern aesthetic...

Bus Shed

We had a contractor out to at the house this week to talk about landscaping and that's what he called my wood shed. He said you see sheds like ours at the end of driveways in WV for kids to use while they wait for the bus for school in the morning (or to hide from the school bus in the morning). With all this wood in it, I think it's actually starting to look like a wood shed.

I wish I could say I filled it myself. But I'd been going at the giant log pile out there an hour or two at a time and not making much progress (enough to keep guests with wood for fires, but barely). So I broke down and hired someone local to have a go at it. He's making better progress than I was (and for $400 for what it already about 3 cords of wood, I think it is money well spent).

Yes, I like birds...

I am so building one of these (after the downstairs deck, the landscaping, the basement closets, the treehouse...):

Speaking of birds...

I hung this out at the house last week:



Sarah got it for me for Christmas from Nova68.

Stimulus

DWR is having their fifteenth (since I started counting) "once-in-a-lifetime" sale, which ends tonight. Seem to be some good deals, but too rich for my blood, with the exception of this:

Looking for ideas

I've got about 200 sf of 3"x6' bamboo floor boards left over and I'm brainstorming ideas for what to do. I am dream-sketching a treehouse for the boys and wonder how the bamboo would do outside. Anyone know? How bout as a rainscreen on a treehouse like this:


(That's the model for our treehouse at the moment - we're reaching for the stars...)

So will bamboo swell/contract enough left out in the elements to cause a problem on a rainscreen? I'd rip it lengthwise into 1" wide planks, then fasten to furring strips. Will it pop the screws?

Other ideas for the bamboo: a table top (maybe a coffee table?), shelves for the downstairs closets, a bench...

So many blogs to read

Looking around for modern landscaping ideas and stumbled across PLASOLUX, a pretty fun modern-everything blog. Since I seem to be getting the blogging itch again, I think it's about time to update my blog roll and highlight some of the regular sites I've been visiting...

Spring

Michael and I have both been a bit sick, and we thought he had strep, so even though he was feeling better we thought we should keep him home from school. And since the weather was supposed to be great, we headed out to the house. Hung a swing we'd picked up from Ikea, met with a couple of different landscaper options, and talked through some details about the next projects on tap. But mostly just enjoyed the warmth...