The Clubhouse Builder

Build Your Own Shelter!

2012-02-17T07:59:00.000-08:00

I want to be this guy when I turn 80!

(Picture courtesy Lloyd Kahn from "Homework, Handbuilt Shelter", Shelter Publications, 2004)

Kids (and grownups) build clubhouses and playhouses because they must - building one's own shelter is still hardwired in our brains.

Men and women have built houses for themselves and their families since we moved out of caves, and they still do in many cultures. But in "developed countries" like ours we all grew up and became dependent on buying contractor-built housing along with the 30-year debt to pay for it.

But a few people have held on to their dreams of independence and built their own homes, often with recycled materials, and with their own souls imbedded within! The Counterculture movement of the 1960s and '70s inspired a wave of alternative architecture, often in conflict with local building codes and their enforcers. If more frustrated shelter-builders today knew they could build their own, the world might be better off.

Lloyd Kahn has edited many fine books on home-built shelter, beginning with Shelter in 1973, Homework, Handbuilt Shelter in 2004, and 30 other related titles. His newest book, Tiny Homes, Simple Shelter (2012) is a must-read for anyone thinking of building their own humble abode. Lloyd has preserved the many stories of owner-builders all over the world with this and his many other gold-mines of inspiration.

To see the books mentioned above and others offered by Shelter Publications, go to their website: http://www.shelterpub.com/.

To see Lloyd's blog, click this: http://lloydkahn-ongoing.blogspot.com/

Happy building!

Clubhouses are for Grownups Too!

2011-11-19T18:52:00.000-08:00

If you built a clubhouse when you were a kid, you can do it again! A small hideaway in your back yard can be built for very little cash, especially if you consider using recycled windows, doors and perhaps siding and flooring. If it is 10 by 12 feet (120 square feet) or less on the ground, you can probably (but not always) build it without a building permit.

Clubhouse from the air, 1963

2011-07-25T07:11:00.000-07:00

In January, 1963, we had some high tides and the beach had washed out, so Sunset Beach and Surfside were in the news. One morning an airplane flew over our neighborhood and took this photo:

See the surf!
See the houses hanging over the surf!
See the Pacific Coast Highway behind the houses.
In between is our neighborhood, my whole world for a while.

Click on the picture to make it bigger...

If you look just across the street (to the right) from the water tower, you'll see a fenced yard with a car in it. Next to the car is a little gray box-- our new clubhouse built against the fence. It was probably a school day otherwise we'd be playing there, or else watching the waves hitting the houses!

After a Summer of Adventures, Another Clubhouse

2011-06-29T10:26:00.000-07:00

Eventually we built our clubhouse, but not on schedule - it went unpainted until the next year...

When school started again, we settled into the routine of classes but continued to hang out together after school, usually at Kathy's house. One day we wandered out to a fenced-in back lot that was full of lumber and wood scraps. Kathy's parents used the lot to store leftover materials from a large addition they recently built for their growing family. The yard was a weedy mess but we decided it was a perfect place for a new clubhouse!

The best location was a spot next to the fence, where no lumber was stored, but where a huge pile of cut-off blocks and scraps of wood had been tossed during the construction. We spent a Saturday clearing it all out, and we saved a few usable boards that weren't yet termite-eaten! We had a clubhouse site!

So every day I went back there after school, and with Kathy or Chris we started building. As the construction progressed, I drew the schedule-of-progress, above, and another after-the-fact plan, below.

The parents whose yard we used let us build our new clubhouse against their fence,

the line at left, which saved us a lot of wood.

Some of the stored lumber, none of which we were allowed to use, can be seen on the right.

However, I couldn't help assembling some iron sewer pipe pieces

and then including them in the plan!

Summer Expeditions

2011-06-19T19:33:00.000-07:00

After the clubhouse was trashed, Chris and I teamed up with the girls who threw the rocks that day. We'd actually known each other for a while so why not? It turned out that the four of us were good at organizing day-long expeditions. We packed lunches and a first aid kit, and were drawn to forbidden or not-for-children destinations, and there were plenty of them.

Our parents routinely told us to "go outside and play!" right after breakfast and were content if we remained outside until dark as long as we let them know where we were...and we took a few liberties on that one. For instance if we told them we were going on a hike to Tin Can Beach, we neglected to add that we would be taking a detour to the old World War II gun emplacements nearby. Tin Can Beach, a mile away toward Huntington Beach, was two miles of open sand littered with old bottles and rusted cans from years of people camping and squatting there in tents or cardboard shacks, sometimes all year! Now it is known as Bolsa Chica State Beach - all cleaned up and mostly parking-lots. About a half mile inland was a fenced-off group of abandoned concrete bunkers, tunnels and gun turrets (no guns) that the Army installed to defend against Japanese warships. That was our real destination!

We walked the length of Sunset Beach, then wandered up to and easily under the barbed wire to find a natural wonderland of grassy fields, old eucalyptus trees and singing meadowlarks, and then the bunkers. We had heard they were very dark inside so we brought flashlights and made our way through the tunnels. All we found was grafitti and trash, but it was like another world - and creeeeeepy!

Satisfied, but still nervous, we made our way back to Tin Can Beach and ate our lunch!

We conquor the bunker!

Chris and I Start Building

2011-06-09T07:22:00.000-07:00

In 1959 I was 11 years old and decided I wanted a real clubhouse made out of wood. My friend Chris did too and we spent several weeks building this one, our first sucess, at least for a while. I borrowed some tools from my mom and neighbors gave us the fence and the white cabinet doors that made up some of our walls. The rest of the wood we hauled in on our wagons. Chris and I also found lots of stuff in the alleys to furnish it, including an old car seat for a couch, a teapot and a mantel clock. I drew the plan below after we had been in it a while.

Since we built it on a vacant lot, it soon became a target of other kids in the neighborhood. Some girls we knew did NOT like the "No Girls Allowed" sign we put up by the door, and they attacked us with rocks one day until we promised to take it down! One day I noticed that the old clock I'd found looked a little funny, and when I picked it up it crumbled into pieces. Later, a kid named Brian cheerfully admitted he blew it up with a cherry bomb, then put it back together! A few weeks later Chris and I found the clubhouse totally wrecked, by a certain gang of 3 boys who lived several blocks away... To be continued.

Inspiration

2010-12-11T17:02:00.000-08:00

I think I was about 8 or 9 when I first heard of 'clubhouses'. About that time my mom told me about her brother, Uncle Frank, who, at about age 13, built himself a shack across the street from their house in Providence, Rhode Island. He even buried an electrical cable under the street and practically lived out there to avoid his three sisters and their strict mother.

Then I found "Billy's Clubhouse" by Marion Holland in the school library. Billy managed to get his friends to help him build a clubhouse in trade for membership status. At home I read "Little Lulu" comic books, in which her sort-of friend Tubby had his own clubhouse with a tiny crawl-through door.

I was hooked! There was something awesome about these real and fictional kids having their own place, that they built themselves, into which they could go and shut out the world and its annoyances! I didn't know how they built their clubhouses but I wanted to do it!

My passion about building

2010-12-08T07:00:00.000-08:00

Kids are forgetting how to use their hands to create things. They are losing touch with nature, self-reliance and resourcefulness. They are seldom given the chance to futz around with some wood and maybe build a hideout they can call their own. Instead they are encouraged to attend supervised after-school activities, play organized sports all summer, or simply stay indoors where they can be safe. They are growing up in an increasingly indoor and supervised world, spending ever more time with ever more pervasive electronic devices. And many kids are also becoming dangerously overweight from lack of exercise.

There!

This is why I feel I should write this blog, and a book on this very subject!

I'll start with my own story about growing up in Southern California in the 1950s and early '60s. To keep me out of trouble, my mom encouraged me to draw pictures by bringing home old menus from her restaurant job to draw on the back of, and to build things by giving me cut-off 2 by 4 blocks from construction sites to build with. By age eleven I was ready to attempt a clubhouse!

This Blog is About How To Build Your Own Clubhouse

2010-12-04T17:30:00.000-08:00

My first Clubhouse, 1959

Hi. My name is Lee Mothes. I enjoy building. Learning to build clubhouses without the help of adults was my biggest accomplishment as a kid.

I've been an artist most of my life, and for many years a freelance carpenter, house-painter and remodeler. I built five clubhouses as a kid, and then a couple of cabins, some room additions and one house (so far). I studied architecture at California Polytechnic College in 1968, but dropped out in 1969....for many reasons. The biggest reason was that I enjoyed building small spaces, such as cabins, cozy room additions, guest cottages, and very small houses. I couldn't see myself designing hospitals!

I've been writing a book I've titled, "The Clubhouse Book, The Joy of Building Your Own Shelter". I'll share parts of it in upcoming posts and also post my own comments about building your own shelter, a skill I believe is becoming lost in this age of specialization. ("Oh, Honey, you can't do that...I'll call a builder!)