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for the love of clever design, global economic phenomena, the souls of dogs, and the courage of adopted children

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DIY prefab, baby

Our little family will be soon moving to our new house on E. Zia Road, and as commodious as it is, I don't have an office/studio space to work in. So for the time being, I'll be working in a provisional setup in the guest room while I complete the design for my new office space which will be a custom converted lean-to storage shed made by TuffShed (www.tuffshed.com). We researched a bunch of the new crop of ship-ready prefab modern buildings that are available, but honestly, they are all still too expensive. One criticism I have of most that I have seen is that the designs themselves are a little too precious, and do not lend themselves to the DIY "modder" (someone who has a circular saw, a drill, some paint brushes, but not much more...like me). There is nothing inherently wrong with 2x4's and plywood, and these mundane materials can become something pretty special in the right plucky hands (like mine).

The first design I am working on (seen here) is a combination storage shed and office space, made from a single 12'x32' Tuffshed. These were drawn using Adobe Illustrator, which is the poor man's AutoCad. One of the ideas we have is to create interior walls from the backyard fence which we are planning to replace with a different design. This size Tuffshed will probably cost about $11,000 with a few options like barn doors, 2x2 windows, vents, etc., whereas many if not all of the fancy-pants modern prefab buildings we've seen start at $30,000 and that's without shipping, siteprep, and assembly labor (which probably doubles the price, depending on locale). Tuffsheds are manufactured only an hour away from Santa Fe, and are shipped on a flatbed and assembled on site in an afternoon by 3 Tuffshed tuffguys - all included in the one price. I reckon I'll spend another $2,000 on the interior, another $2,000 on electrical and networking, and about 100 hours of my time, so we'll have a 384sf building for about $15,000, and a fun summer project to boot. Should be completed by late summer, and I'll be sure to post progress images.

Entries in Kids (1)

The Making of a Future Shopaholic

I blog a fair amount about the problems of consumption, and have obviously taken a holier-than-thou critical stance on the subject. But in the spirit of full disclosure, I must confess to actually putting my 1.5 year old daughter Willow through a rigorous top-secret training program (not even my wife knows about it), conditioning her to excel and to potentially dominate the National Sport of America .... shopping.

First, I bought her a miniature shopping cart (it is vital to have the proper equipment in any competitive sport, as you know), and it's made of bonafide chrome-dipped steel (not the cheapo plastic kind, pfft), as to simulate the proper physical properties and driving dynamics of a real American shopping cart. Then I randomly distribute objects of [her] desire around the room (called the "Extreme Tactical Retail Simulation Environment") which has Elton John piped in to simulate Macy's, and time her with a stopwatch as she picks up items and places them in her scale shopping cart. Now, granted, she's not even two years old, but I am astonished at her natural spatial organization skills - she can arrange objects with a pretty reasonable degree of orientation optimization and weight distribution. Notice that she knows to place precious, delicate objects on the top (in this example, her pink blankie).

I am quite proud of the progress that my little Willow has made so far, but she has a long way to go. This week, we will work on proper acceleration and braking skills. I cannot wait until she's ready to do the obstacle course component of this training program.

Check out this recently de-classified video capturing Willow's already advanced positive mental attitude (necessary to find good deals), her revving wrists (she really cranks on that handle), pumping her arms to build strength and muscle memory, hip-spasm manoeuvre (good for body-checking opponents across produce aisles), demonstrating early weaving and ducking acumen, but most importantly, her "leavin' you in the dust, cuz I bought the *last* one" smirk.

Willow's going to dominate malls all over the country in short time. But remember, behind every great champion, there is an even greater...coach.

Posted on May 6, 2008 at 11:01PM by

Gong Szeto in Consumption, Kids |

2 Comments