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| Age 18, sitting on the porch of my summer home in the mountains :). I built it from cardboard, black plastic, screen, and concrete blocks. |
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When I was 18, I built a cardboard house in the Smoky Mountains and lived there for an entire summer while I worked as a portrait artist at a tourist attraction. At the time, it was a practical solution to my need for cheap housing. There simply wasn't an affordable place to rent and I was determined to be independent that summer and not ask for money from my family. At that age, my desire for independence was strong.
My house was built from cardboard and other materials salvaged from dumpsters. I had to buy some new items: nails, black plastic, plywood, and screening. A few details about the actual construction of my house can be found by scrolling down this page.
I had a wonderful summer, enjoying wild adventures with the critters who tried to move in with me. Until I found their nest beneath my house, I never realized that there are scorpions in east Tennessee. I'd never seen a wolf spider either, but there were plenty of those hopping around at night. Sometimes I would hear roars in the woods that could only have been a bobcat, or (yikes) a black bear. A neighbor's rooster tried to peck a hole in my walls and nearly succeeded. But, in general, I felt secure in my little mansion.
Amazingly, the cardboard construction held up very well through torrential rain and hail. After a storm, all I had to do was tack my "roof" (a blue tarpaulin) back onto the rafters. It was a snug home. With some reluctance, I dismantled it after my summer was over. But, for all these years, it has lived on in my dreams.
My children loved to tell their friends, "My mom used to live in a cardboard house." Nobody can believe it, especially after they meet me. And so, due to the continued interest in my little adventure, I have created a character who built a place like this in my work-in-progress novel, A Cardboard House. The novel's setting is present-day, in the fictional town of Moody Hollow, Tennessee, and (fortunately, or unfortunately) none of the events actually occurred in my real life. However, writing the novel gave me the chance to recall a lot of details about the strangely durable and delightful home that I created during my eighteenth summer.
An inspiration, both then and now, was Walden, written by Henry David Thoreau in 1845. Here is a favorite quote: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
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Constructing the cardboard house…
As I recall, I did a lot of late night raids of various dumpsters in Knoxville, Tennessee. The best cardboard for the job was in dumpsters behind stores that sold large appliances such as stoves and refrigerators. The cardboard used to ship appliances was thick, and the sheets were very large once they were unfolded and made flat. I already had a utility knife, which I had been using to cut mats for my watercolor paintings, but I wore it out (along with several fresh blades) during the construction of my house.
After collecting all the cardboard for the walls and roof, I decided how large the house would be—eight feet by twelve feet. That was the size of three sheets of plywood laid side by side. Today, the plywood would be the most expensive item on the list. Back then, it was still a lot of money for a poor college student, but I managed okay. I can’t recall for sure, but I believe that I bought the thinnest plywood that they sold, and therefore the cheapest...either 1/4 or 3/8 thickness.
The walls and roof were constructed of 2 by 4 studs ripped in half to make 2 by 2’s. The lumber company ripped them for me for free. The bottom half of each wall was covered in cardboard; the top half was covered in wire mesh screening. I bought a roll of black plastic to cover the bottom walls for waterproofing purposes. I already had a good staple gun and hammer, which I had been using all year to create canvases for my oil paintings. I hammered roofing nails to attach the cardboard to the 2 by 2’s, and then used staples to attach the black plastic which covered the cardboard.
The roof was made of more 2 x 2's and thick cardboard. It had to have a slight pitch. I bought a large blue fiberglass tarpaulin to cover the cardboard roof. This proved to be a smart move because there were so many thunderstorms and hailstorms that summer.
The screen door was donated by a friend, and I believe that some of the concrete blocks were also donated. I had so many leftover blocks that I made a small front porch. You can see me sitting on my "porch" in one of the photos.
As for decorating the interior, that was another fun project. I tie-dyed old cotton sheets to make curtains for all the windows. Every time it rained, the curtains would get wet, but they dried quickly because it was summertime. For my bed, I took straw and old sheets and created a lumpy, old-fashioned, straw mattress. I also placed a sleeping bag on top of the mattress, for comfort as well as warmth. Nights were chilly in the mountains. A few posters finished my décor. And that was it…my simple, but wonderful house!
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