Building a House in Big Sur, 1967 — for $8,000

Total cost for materials: $8000 (($78,000 in 2026 dollars)

Our landlords’ house was up at the top of the property, where you can see the trees at far upper left. The garden was on raised beds below the house. The shakes were handsplit from downfall redwood logs.

I built this house in 1967–’68 at Burns Creek in Big Sur, California (about two miles north of Esalen). It was on a 40 acre piece of land owned by Boris and Filipa Veren (whose home was at top left where you see the trees). We signed an agreement (drawn up by my friend, lawyer Tony Serra) whereby I could build a house on their land in exchange for my wife Sarah running Boris’ Craft and Hobby Book Service, a mail order operation, when the Verens traveled.

Details for Builders The 14 posts were 12-foot-long 6″ by 12″ double-track railroad ties on 8′ centers. The girders, as well as the rafters were 30-foot-long, 2-by-14’s that had been salvaged by Cleveland Wreckers from an old horse stable built in gold rush days in San Francisco.

The foundation was a grade beam with concrete delivered (40 miles down the coast) from Pacific Grove,. At 14 spots on the foundation, I enlarged the footing and left 4 pieces of steel rebar sticking up.

After it cured, I placed Sonotubes over each pad, mixed and poured the cylindrical columns (wheel-barrowing wet concrete I made with the family concrete mixer). Steel brackets embedded in the columns secured the posts and girders as shown below.

Here you see the use of the 30’ 2-by-14’s for both rafters and floor girders.

Exterior sheathing was lumber from a farm labor camp I tore down in Salinas, and the shakes (on top of the sheathing) were split (with a froe) from deadfall trees I found in Palo Colorado Canyon. I used studs in between the posts.

Roof decking and flooring were 2-by-6 Monterey Pine T&G from Carmel Valley.

For shear panels (diagonal bracing) on one 8-foot-wide section of each of the 4 walls, I used ⅝″ plywood nailed 2″ on centers around the edges and 6″ o.c. on the interior studs. I used annular grooved nails, way stronger than smooth nails.

It took me about a year. I did all the carpentry, plumbing, and wiring. It was a very simple house, a big shed really, and the carpentry was — ahem, less than exquisite — but it got a roof over our heads.

Total materials costs were $8,000 (about $80,000 in 2026 dollars). Talk about affordable housing!

On this wall I used the 2-by-14s as horizontal sheathing. The house had a lot of windows on this side facing east for the morning sunrise.

In those days, due to my discovery of the Platonic solids while building domes, I was fairly obsessed with the strength of triangles.

I developed a water supply by building a little dam in a spring above the house, and running 600′ of plastic pipe down the hillside. I started some small-scale farming and we had a big garden. I would pick up fish guts in a 50-gallon drum on the Monterey wharf (in our 1960 VW van) on our weekly shopping trips into town.

There were a few things about it that didn’t exactly fit the building codes, so once when the building inspector came, I put on a Jimi Hendrix record loud when I saw him pull up:

You know you’re a cute little heartbreaker …foxey lady…

…and he was so rattled that he didn’t notice the non-compliances.

This was when Barbara Spring lived in the house. She was a fairly well-known artist who did life-size wooden sculptures (horses and humans). I left her the table, made out of the 2-by-14s and with legs that are two sections of a 16-by-16 redwood bridge timber.

When I decided to leave Big Sur (and embarked on a 5-year period of building geodesic domes), I sold the house to the owners of the land for $11,000.

Item of interest: Barbara Spring, an artist who bought the house from the land owners in the early ’70s, was a friend of the architect Phillip Johnson (post-modern architect known for his Glass House, and co-designer — with Mies van der Rohe — of the Seagram Building in NYC, etc.). Johnson and his partner David Whitney were looking for a house to buy in Big Sur and when they came to visit Barbara on a rainy day (with the Ashley Automatic wood stove warming the house), Phillip told her this was the kind of place he would love to find.

Post note: Philip and David eventually bought a beautiful light-filled cottage overlooking the ocean, but it was heartening that he dug the soul, if not the fine carpentry of my house.

Barbara told me a number of times that she loved the house.

The present owners (Barbara’s daughter and husband) also cherish the house. I visit once in a while, camp out next to a studio on the land, and use the pool. (And sneak into Esalen Hot Springs at night — heh heh — under cover of darkness.)

This pool was in the creek below the property,. No chlorine, kept clean with running creek water. Every night after work I’d walk down to the pool, bow (Japanese oiji style, but with hands in prayer position under chin) to the family of redwoods behind the pool, then in the four directions, and dive in. What a way to end the day — hey, it was the ‘60s!