Category Archive

Homes & Tours

Take a close-up look at real Offbeat Homes of all shapes, sizes and flavors.

If Marie Antoinette had an Airstream trailer, it would look like this

Behold the home of Robin and John Brown! It’s a temporary home, but it’s a beaut.

Robin is a designer from San Antonio, Texas. She and her partner run their clothing business online, but take two trips a year — in the spring and the fall — when Magnolia Pearl heads to big shows. For this purpose, they’ve decked out an Airstream Land Yacht to roll in.

It is up and down, head to toe, glitzed OUT. This trailer has wooly rugs, fancy pants wallpaper, a full-size BATHTUB — it is in every way a rococo road spa.

My dream house: Snow White’s Los Angeles tiki-style bungalow

Can we take a minute to talk about our dream homes? I believe we all have (at least) one, right? You know, that one house that you always drive by on your way to work/the grocery store/your favorite vacation spot. That one house that you day dream about owning. You know… if you suddenly came into a million (or more) dollars. That house?

Well, torture upon tortures, my dream house is on the market right now. This is MY “that house”:

My hopelessly-hooked-on-Craigslist home tour

We moved in a month ago and have worked extremely hard to make it feel like a home. We are strong believers in “reduce, reuse and recycle” and try to apply it to our home as much as possible. We tend to shop at thrift stores and garage sales — and love a good Craigslist deal. Take a look around and I hope you find inspiration in what you see.

A Gaudi-inspired sparkly art nouveau summer house

This is the story of the Russian-style summer house I crafted in my backyard in Newcastle Upon Tyne. In ten months, and for less than £5,000, I took it from clay model a to stained-glassed, mosaiced den place to drink a Guiness whilst foxes run in the garden.

The Dungeons: my Professor Snape-inspired office

Eight years ago, I moved into my current home. That was when I began putting together my unusual office, a small space filled to bursting with books, curiosities and Professor Snape collectibles. It is also whimsically known as “the dungeons.”

I think of the room as a collage of sorts, a work of art, a sanctuary. I love arranging objects in an aesthetically pleasing manner, and finding ways to cram yet more of them in every nook and cranny. I love jars, and bugs, and memento mori… I love things that belong to a more genteel age: quills, ink wells, hourglasses, Oriental carpets.

I picked up and moved my house across town (and then I moved out)

I bought this house when I was 20 years old. I bought the home SEPARATE from the lot and I had it MOVED ACROSS TOWN. That was an experience in itself!

I worked and worked to gut and remodel it. I didn’t know what I was doing and many things were done incorrectly. When I moved in, after 2 years of working, I didn’t have trim or interior doors. My furniture was a cobbled mess of thrift store finds that I planned on SOMEDAY refinishing. And I was happy in my pile of a home!

Kitsch-stuffed and happy mix-matched island-color home

Welcome to the happy cottage of Flickr user devotedsatellite! She didn’t have time to give us a tour herself, but I couldn’t let this house go unnoticed. Luckily, it’s jam-packed with cool stuff to look at, and the photos mostly speak for themselves.

Remembering the convent: our 8-person intentional community on the south side of Chicago

Our home in the convent brought together eight people united by the desire to work for social justice. When I lived in this house we were all fresh out of college and ready to fight poverty, the education gap, global warming, and anything else that stood in our way. Almost all of the occupants still work in urban education and live lives to limit our ecological impact.

Everyone you live with has something to teach you. I learned how to cook for eight, how to container garden, how to make homemade cleaning supplies work, and how to love urban biking.