Hi guys. Welcome back to my channel.
A couple of weeks ago I was searching the internet for unique architecture and I
came across a man who's typically a boat designer and decided to build a house
like he would build a boat, but as you can see,
the structure behind me is not a boat, but it is a house.
It's also a replica of a Lunar Lander.
Needless to say, today's tour is extremely unique.
I can't wait for you to see the inside and meet the builder.
Without further ado, let's get started.
I'm Kurt Hughes and this is my Lunar Lander dwelling
I began building strange things most of my life when I was in high school.
I built a telescope in an observatory when I was 20 or 21 I built a
dome up in the mountains of Wenatchee. When I was in architecture school,
I started building my first boat and so when I was wondering what it would take
to build a house just like a boat, I had to dive in and start doing it.
I was always curious about the shape of the lunar Lander.
Usually an architect can look at any form and understand what's going on.
I would look at the lunar Lander and I had no idea what was going on.
I decided to build a lunar Lander as a getaway vacation home,
kind of like a fishing shack but high tech and the idea was just to have a place
to go away, be contemplative, and when I started doing that I thought,
why not do it like a boat using a modern composites and vacuum bagging and
modern materials.
It's suspended off the ground if you don't have to dig a foundation and that
both matches the lunar Lander, but also it's very light on the land.
It's kind of cool.
It's just when you lie in the bed and them several feet off the ground.
It's taken me about seven years to build this on weekends and of course in
the winter time you can't really build anything here,
but then seven years makes it seem like I'm done and I'm still puttering on
stuff.
I think one of my favorite things that happened to me when I was finishing it
here was a family came up here and a little boy ran up and he said,
what is it?
One of the rules I realize I didn't set out for this was I've got to be able to
look at it and go, damn, that's cool, and if I could do that.
That's the kind of things I'm looking for that keep me amused.
So this is my lunar Lander dwelling. Here's the inside, c'mon in,
and this is the main floor here.
Here's captain Nemos window where the dining table is the window is again,
I wanted to look like captain Nemos when doing 20,000 leagues under the sea and
this is a table from my first boat that I launched in 1979 and decided to
repurpose it here. Yeah,
these are actually the old buttons on the sailboat and the button turns on the
overhead light
and then there's the plywood epoxy seats.
That I wanted to make look slightly aerospace and there's the weather
center and this is the bathroom here.
so everything's rounded and epoxied and because of that it can get wet and
it won't distort it or get soggy or anything,
this light here and then that's for Cove light underneath.
And then inside here is the bathroom.
There's a Japanese toilet, the tank is intended to be installed in the wall
and I thought it looks so technical and look,
the tank is only a few inches thick.
There's a shower in there and that's particularly fun because you can look out
the window and see the river.
There's a opening vote window and the floor is all epoxy and it has glow powder
in it so that during the day it's absorbing sunlight or just light and a night
when you walk up here and no lights are on,
the whole floor is glowing like the Milky way. You built everything in here,
the doors, the seats, yeah. Although the metal work,
My brother did the dome He welded that together.
Yeah, I really wanted to sit here and look up and see the stars at night.
Okay,
here's one of the doors and unlike most doors it's made of a piece of the wall
so it has the same insulation value as the wall,
which is about five times better installation than a regular door and that
allowed me to do the airplane aerospace recessed handle like that and,
and this is kind of fun, it's a thumb print there. Now recognize
I had too much fun with it.
Kitchen has a carbon fiber, countertop,
it's electrical kitchens and everything's wired for a 110 or 210 where
it's needed. And then the sink has
colors indicating
the temperature of the water.
The water heater is electric and it's an on demand water heater so that if I'm
gone for a week or two weeks or a month,
it's not running up an electric bill and the place has a really good electric
bills in the middle of winter,
it's been about 25 a month with the temperature staying at 60 degrees.
This is actually a lunar Lander thing. If you look at any of the pictures of it,
those two triangle windows are one of the signatures and the others are just
kind of nautical looking.
But I wanted to be able to see the river from here with everything.
Extremely high quality plywood supporting a can lever out there.
And that's another sip panel for the floor.
And it's a great place to see it after sunset. Just look at the river.
So it's really a nice place.
Okay, so that's a can lever chips ladder and it doesn't touch the floor.
And originally my floor was on only going to be five feet down or something like
that and it was just going to be like a lounging pit.
But the building department said, no, you can't do that. You need seven feet.
So I extended the can lever and it's the longest ship's ladder I've ever
seen.
It's a two feet smaller on each side and let it sit there. And besides the bed,
they're basically closets,
I call them the bins work clothing or tools or things like that can be kept.
Yeah, here's some boat windows.
And I originally bought two or three of them at about $10 total. I thought,
I'll just find two or three more and I'll be good.
But it turned out those were the only two or three I ever found. Again,
at yard sales,
so I bought the remaining three for about a hundred dollars each and these were
um, airplane style,
put stuff on, it has Cove lights all underneath.
And these are kind of things that I learned being here that I would've never
thought about when I was just laying out the plans.
Steel stairs, steel legs,
but the rest of it is a composite sip panels with a high grade plywood on both
sides.
And then the formula foam in the middle and all glued together with epoxy and
fiberglass.
One of the things that keeps me amused and also keeps you from stumbling around
in the dark when I'm walking from the car is a glow in the dark pebbles here on
the walkway.
And at night they glow just enough so you could see where you're walking and it
looks kind of like a star field too. So again,
these are steel. My neighbor next door, it turned out he had a plasma cutter,
cute little details. I love that.
It's not touching the round. Yeah, suspended.
And there's no foundation which have blows my architect friends minds,
but that's because these pads,
it just sits on the surface of the earth and you can adjust the turnbuckles to
level it.
And so it could be really on any kind of terrain or even changing terrain or
even floats. It could be on the water with the float under each one,
it's about 2,500 pounds,
which is a fifth to a 10th of what typical tiny houses way.
This is the lower level hold down before the upper level was built.
And then I have the upper level hold downs,
which really do the heavy lifting and the winds off of them. Not often,
but occasionally get over a hundred miles an hour here.
And at least once we have pictures of, they blew a semi truck silver.
And so I want to make sure this all stays here. I did calculations,
it should do 88 miles per hour without hold downs, but, uh, uh,
that wasn't enough. This right here is the, uh,
water coming in, so it's very,
very insulated.
So the cold water can come in and this is a tool for the water shutoff in case
the water has to be shut off.
And then this sewer line runs down here out and into the,
uh, to the fragile wetlands septic system.
I started looking at,
at the lunar Lander and just 3D modeled it myself just to see how it was and
then change that around for things that could be useful.
And pretty much everybody that looks at it as is impressed, they just, uh, go,
wow. I never thought, I never saw one of these before.
My neighbor across the street looked at my drawings for the stairs and he
said, how are you going to get up there when you get old?
And he looked at me and he said, uh, you're not going to get old are you?
I will probably keep building and strange, isn't the idea, but,
but interesting things that solve new problems. I'll keep on doing that.
And even on this one,
I keep thinking of things to do it better or different ways.
A lot of times I'm sitting in it and looking around,
I will have this feeling like they let me stay here.
It's like the coolest place I've ever seen.
I hope you guys enjoyed this week's video and that maybe it brought you some
inspiration about what can actually be done with what we call home.
I'll see you in two weeks with a new video about tiny houses or travel,
but in the meantime,
make sure you subscribe and hit that bell so you get an alert.
When I put up a new video