These two young artists quit their jobs to build this glass house for $500
By Ilyce R. Glink | Spaces – 8 hours ago
Nick Olson and Lilah Horwitz. (Photos by Jordan Wayne Long)
Building the home was “scary and hard,” Horwitz said. “Looking at it now, it’s just totally insane. It’s huge. …
“The house is an experience at night,” Nick Olson said. “The fireflies start at the ground and merge to the stars …Plenty
of natural sunlight isn't an unusual quality of a dream home. But what
about a home built completely of glass so the light would never be
hidden? For a pair of young artists, a beautiful sunset and a thoughtful
conversation led to the construction of a breathtaking retreat in
mountainous West Virginia.
Photographer Nick Olson, 27, who works with old-fashioned labor-intensive photographic processes, and designer Lilah Horwitz, 23, who makes "site-specific clothing," met at an artist’s residency in Pennsylvania. Early on in their relationship, Olson invited Horwitz to join him on a trip to his family’s property in southern West Virginia. One evening, the two went on a walk in the woods that resulted in an artistic vision.
As the sun sank behind a hill, the couple began talking about how
amazing the light appeared at that moment. What if, they pondered, there
could be a living space where light changed based on the time of day?“Light is so different in the morning, at noon and at dusk. We wanted to somehow build a house so that change happened in our living space,” Olson said. “It’s about being closer to living with the elements.”
Both Olson and Horwitz had summer plans to work at their current jobs, but agreed they had suddenly discovered a project worth pursuing.
In what Olson calls a “spur-of-the-moment decision,” the new couple quit their jobs, rented a U-Haul and began driving state to state to find the right windows for a home made completely of glass.
The couple's unique cabin was featured in "Half Cut Tea," a Web video series that explores artists and their works. (Their episode is at the bottom of this blog post.) Olson is friends with one of the series creators, Jordan Wayne Long, a performance artist originally from Bald Knob, Arkansas, who interviewed the couple and showcased their home.
Most of the windows the couple
collected were found or scavenged, Olson said. Some were purchased, but
not many. The first the couple found was in a big stack of old windows
at an abandoned barn in Pennsylvania. Horwitz describes finding that window as “serendipitous.”
When they had collected enough
glass, the two began constructing the home on the family land near New
River Gorge National River park. The closest town to the property is
Hinton, West Virginia, Olson said.
The building process was sometimes frustrating, Horwitz said. The two
built the entire structure themselves – their only audience was the
occasional curious deer, rabbit or fox. The home’s front window wall is
about 16 feet high, but the base of the structure is another 4 feet off
the ground, Horwitz said.“It was just the two of us trying to put up these gigantic posts. It was scary and hard,” she said. “Looking at it now, it’s just totally insane. It’s huge. I realize now that’s what makes it so amazing.”
Olson credits an artistic vision and frugality with the success of the home. While living on a diet of rice and beans, the two used nails, wood and anything salvageable from an old barn on the property to piece their enormous structure together. They estimate they spent $500 in total on the project.
“Even the roofing we took from the abandoned barn,” Olson said. “We were able to make it a reality because we are first artists and creators. We had to be resourceful to do it cheaply.”
After months of work, the home was completed in December. On what was once a pile of old windows and a patch of wooded land stood a beautiful glass building. Though there is no plumbing or electricity, the two artists said they enjoy the space as an escape.
Horwitz described her favorite time of day inside the home as the “nighttime sun” – just as dusk falls.
“That’s when everything inside is on fire,” she said.
Olson said he’s awestruck after the sun goes down.
“The house is an experience at night,” Olson said. “The fireflies start at the ground and merge to the stars up above. It’s really like you’re sleeping under the stars.”
Someday Olson and Horwitz hope to build onto the home and add an outdoor kitchen, solar power and a wood-burning stove, they said. But for now, the Milwaukee-based couple said, they’ll enjoy the home as a picturesque retreat.
Ilyce Glink is an award-winning, nationally syndicated real estate columnist, blogger and radio talk show host, and managing editor of the Equifax Finance Blog. Follow her on Twitter @Glink.
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http://homes.yahoo.com/blogs/spaces/young-couple-quit-jobs-build-glass-house-500-204553074.html
This was a lot more common to do something like this in the 1960s and 1970s and into the 1980s. I think it was because building materials and land was much cheaper relative to land and building material prices now generally speaking. Buying 2 1/2 acres for $8000 or 10,000 or even $5000 was an easier thing to do in the country. At 5000 or 8000 there likely wouldn't be power available for the land but today with wells or springs and solar power this becomes less of a problem for people. So then if one used recycled building materials to some degree salvaged from a house or barn or building being torn down (usually you have to do the tearing down to get the wood for free) this could still be done today as long as county or city building inspectors approved the wood for building a new structure and you had your building inspected with permits at every stage so they wouldn't make you tear it down when it was finished or before.
From 1980 and 1981 I worked with my father, wife, children and a few friends and built an A Frame (so it would shed the 7 feet of snow we got at a time then without collapsing the roof) on Mt. Shasta at about 4000 feet in altitude then. We were 10 miles from the nearest Gas Station and 3 miles from the nearest paved road without electricity unless it was a gas powered generator. However, we had a spring that ran most of the year and sometimes all year depending upon the year. We had a beautiful view of mt. Shasta and we home schooled our kids there for 4 or 5 years until the oldest was 12. It was one of the most amazing times of my life.
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