As the saying goes, if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. While that may not be entirely true—skilled tradesmen, architects, and designers are all worth their salt—what you discover along your own road to good design may surprise you. Necessity, it seems, is the mother of ingenuity. Read on for this year’s most impressive DIY hacks.
"We built a great gabion wall behind our fireplace," says Nathalie, who built this cabin with her husband, Greg, for next to nothing. "The gravel came from our front driveway. Greg hated it, so we raked it up, took it down, and put it into the wall."
"All the built-in furniture from the bunk room to the main living area to the bedroom upstairs is salvaged from home demolitions in Portland," says Ty, who renovated this cabin on the Oregon coast with his family. "So it’s all hundred-plus-year-old lumber."
In Ecuador, Diego Sayago and Tatiana Salas converted a 1993 Chevy van into a live/work space on wheels. Inside, plywood joinery conceals a portable table for eating and working, a bed for two people, a kitchenette, and ample storage space. The interior is designed to be flexible enough to adapt to different everyday situations, solving the basic needs of living.
In turning her parents’ garage into an ADU, Monica and her partner donated much of their furniture, but she also deconstructed pieces they already had to adapt for the new space: Ikea bed slats make up the guardrail for the loft, for instance.
Husos Architects reused everyday household objects—such as funnels, mop drainers, and citrus juicers—to convert the apartment into a vibrant kaleidoscope of color. "We used these objects to create a new, transformable landscape, amplified in different ways through the gloss and transparency of the silver-colored curtains," say García and Barajas.
At his Brooklyn apartment, Joshua Skirtich rigged a hanging closet for $45, using a kayak holder and PVC pipe. The system went through a couple of iterations, and there is a "hole graveyard" on the ceiling, he says, along with a stray pulley left over from an earlier version. "I like seeing the progress," says Joshua, who streamlined his wardrobe so it would fit in his new closet.
Joshua Woodsman designed his own shipping container tiny home with flexibility in mind, creating a folding desk and bed. "I imagined how I could spend days in this space. I started to think about foldable furniture and the storage wall, which are space savers, he says. "Also, it’s necessary to think about the utility of everything you put inside—to try and make the space as open as possible, without things you don’t need to use every day."
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