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Making due is one of those things most of us don’t think about much, given our society’s affluence and excess.  When we do think about using items we already have, it tends to come from a concern about the environment, instead of finding a way to create what we want and need with limited resources.

I was reminded of this after a family member sent a picture she took in Africa—the building was modest, but bright colors and decorations made from old soda cans made it beautiful. And over the years, people have been using bottles and cans they already have to create what they need, whether that’s construction, decoration, or something that manages to become both.

Bottle as Building Material

Since the early 1900s, people have been building with bottles, using them just like bricks bound together into structures with mortar. According to agilitynut.com, the earliest bottle house was constructed in 1902 by William F. Peck in the mining town of Tonopah, NV. Since saloons were some of the first commercial structures in mining camps like Tonopah, empty bottles were plentiful, and bottle houses were born.

While that house was torn down in the 1980s, you can check out a bottle house that currently serves as a store at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, CA. Though you probably shouldn’t leave your empties behind, even there.

Bottle Bricks

Upping the bottle building ante, in the early 1960s, Alfred Heineken of Heineken Beer visited the Caribbean where he noticed that not only was there was an excess of old bottles littering the beaches, but there was also a shortage of affordable building materials. As a result, he hoped to solve with both problems and asked Dutch Architect John Habracken to design a “brick that holds beer”—the “WOBO” (world bottle).

According to Inhabitat, the bottles were designed to interlock and came in two sizes, and while 100,000 of them were produced in 1963, only a small shed on Heineken’s estate and a wall at the Heineken Museum in Amsterdam were ever built with them, and the brewery stopped supporting the project.

It was a brilliant idea, and surprising that this failed—after all, what’s more perfect for a frat house than a beer bottle house? Time to teach those boys some building skills and get these bottles off the ground and out of the trash.

I recently had a roofing contractor suggest that because I was considering painting my house a dark blue, that I may want to consider blue shingles. Blue. Shingles. On my roof.

Really?

Blue?

And okay, speaking of blue, I once also tiled my kitchen counters in a 2″ blue tile– which looked fabulous, by the way, and just like the Arts & Crafts style I was going for. In the process, however, the contractor who was working on my house at the time suggested that I use a rounded black tile on the lip instead. Blue tile on the top, black tile on the side… no other black in the house mind you, just on the lip, because that’s what he’d seen on special at the Big Box store.

I suggested he remove himself from making any more design decisions about my house and did the lip in matching blue tile, as it should be. But I’m thinking that people who are stressed out with the house building process occasionally listen to people who are best suited for building houses and not picking out paint colors. Which in turn led me to question, how do those truly hideous houses come into existence.

1.) You listened to a contractor who thinks they are a designer. I mean, they build houses all the time so they must know what they are talking about. Right. Right?

You, my friend, are sentenced to the blue roof for 30 to life for that decision. Good luck to you.

2.) You think you are a designer, or know you are not a designer and are just testing out “being creative”. The truth is, there is nothing creative about painting your house purple and orange. You are not on to the next big thing. Its just that no one else does it because it looks horrible.

This isn’t an accidental ugly. This definitely qualifies as an on purpose, and if you live here, you have to take full credit for it.

Side note: These are definitely people who thought they were being creative and failed, as evidenced by the house number placement. I think there is an equal chance that the house number is 5625, or 5265. Not creative. Not functional. Just no.

3.) You just don’t know any better. That color looked so fresh and beachy on the two-inch square paint swatch…

I sympathize. Really, I do. I’ve been stressing over roof colors, trim colors, siding colors, what to color and what not to color, and the end result is anyone’s guess. Here’s the good news for those of you us that just don’t know any better… paint can be painted over.

Bad news… roof shingles can not.