Now, many lighthouses have fallen into disrepair and the lights staffed throughout American history by the Coast Guard are crumbling into the sea. In 2000, Congress enacted the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act, putting some 200 American lighthouses up for adoption.

Lighthouse conversions are still a romantic notion, but the need to repair or retrofit many of the unique buildings in disuse has limited the transfer so far to only 76 of the lights. Most are made into residential conversions.

Lighthouse conversion, make offer

Photo-by-Daily-Caller

The Frankfort North Breakwater Lighthouse is a great buy for those who love doing laundry naturally and for its winding staircase. It comes with a great vista of Lake Michigan. You may want to order a new set of storm windows.

Amazing house exteriors on Lake Superior

Photo by Michigan Light House

Built in 1896, the Big Bay Light Point, a seven-bedroom complex on 33 acres in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, was turned into a bed and breakfast in the 1980s. It originally cost $25,000 to construct the light and compound. While not part of the Coast Guard surplus, it is for private sale now with a $999k asking price. Pretty sweet spot, isn’t it?

Light housekeeping required

Photo by NJ Star Ledger

For those who prefer the Jersey Shore, the Romer Shoal Light Station is located just north of Sandy Hook. Be warned: it needs some work. The tower is said to be rusting and the windows are broken. You should fit the place with thermal windows before you move in. Under  the Coast Guard terms, the lighthouse is “made available at no cost to eligible entities defined as Federal agencies, state and local agencies, non-profit corporations, educational agencies, or community development organizations for educational, park, recreational, cultural or historic preservation purposes.“ Read more about it at Lighthouse Friends.

And honey, I’ll leave a light on for you.

Uptown pets only need apply

Photo by Carole Milker

According to contest sponsors, designer Frank Lindemann’s “Brown Tubes” pictured above is the “Waldorf Astoria of feral cat shelters”. Minutes after it was positioned outdoors, it was filled with meowing strays. Read more about the contest at The Architectural Record.

Pre-fab architecture for tabby

Photo by Gulf Coast Pet Supplies

Feral cat aid societies across the country want you to be considerate of less fortunate scamps this winter. If your conscious calls, you can buy a pre-fab kitty condo for the winter. This heated K&H Outdoor Thermo-Kitty Camper sells for $44.14.

Ugly is Eden to a mouser

Photo by Alley Cat

Your cat shelter need not be a glam product. Ally Cat Allies is a national stray animal advocacy organization that has posted detailed instructions for building your own insulated kitty shelter out of plywood and a roll of insulation. You can do it yourself or hire a contractor.

Cathouse on a hot tin roof

Photo by Cozy Winters

Feeling particularly generous? For $99 you can buy this portable heated shelter from Cozy Winters that uses a 20-watt dispersion heater operated by a thermostat. It’s a pad that’s just large enough to heat the undercarriage of your guest.

Bed and breakfast

Photo by North Jersey.com

Perhaps this is your preferred way of helping out. However, cat hoarders can really strain the budget in the winter. In New Jersey recently, Parsippany officials busted a woman who had 32 cats in a one-bedroom apartment. The cats, officials say, were breeding. Duh!

Dr. Becker blames the cat’s counter-top mountaineering as part of the animal’s predatory disposition to seek high ground. Perhaps, the doctor added, it was the homeowner’s fault for leaving water trickling from the tap, storing food in open containers or by not providing an adequate climbing roost for tabby.

Decorating disasters

Photo by Leather Revive

Practically everyone who has owned a cat knows that even if you have a nifty, carpeted climbing tree, kitty may still prefer to attach itself to the side of a beloved piece of furniture and turn it into a fez tassel. What’s a homeowner to do, encase a favorite chair in vinyl siding?

Pets and furniture aids

Photo by Drs. Foster and Smith

Before you introduce your lil’ kitty to the neighbor’s pit bull, consider cat-training products like the Scat Mat, a $70 water-resistant pad that emits unpleasant but harmless electrostatic charges to any intruder. Of course, you’ll have to turn it off before Aunt Gertie plops down for the afternoon soaps. Get all the details from Doctors Foster and Smith.

But wait, there’s more!

Photo by Drs. Foster and Smith

Doctors Foster and Smith also retail the Sofa Scram mat that keeps Fluffy off of your favorite napping chariot. The battery-powered sofa mat ($30) emits a nasty alarm that sends kitty racing for a dark corner under your bed.

You tattle tale, you

Photo by SafeHome Products

The Tattle Tale Vibration System runs on a 9V battery. You set the device on your kitchen counter, your couch, or your unstable atomic stockpile, and it emits a loud alarm when disturbed by a furry paw. Either the cat scampers, or you do, alerted to its presence in your personal Area 51. Check it out at Safe Home Products.

Beat decorating stress

Photo by Kitten Cannon

If all else fails,  release any residual feline resentments with a visit to Kitten Cannon. Then find your cat under the bed and cuddle with it on an approved piece of furniture.

Hell’s own kitchen

Photo by Chris Brady

Hell’s Kitchen owned the notoriety of tolerating such ugly gang activity in the 1950s that it became a model neighborhood for Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. The Street says the name arose following a dialogue between New York cops, one of whom said that place was hell itself. The other officer said hell was mild when compared to the neighborhood, and dubbed it Hell’s Kitchen. The area has been gentrified, but the row-house architecture here can’t compare with the stunning preservation of the Brooklyn brownstones.

How did you get the smut eye?

Photo by Deep Fried Kudzu

I lived in Alabama, but never made it over to Smuteye over in Bullock County. The official Smuteye website claims the name came from practice of the town’s “men folk”, who stood around an open fire in winter, downing moonshine. Their wives–shockingly enough–would guess what they had been doing from the layer of fresh smut on their faces. The local architecture: shot-gun style homes.

Town of happy endings

Photo by Tim Kiser

This typical Midwest architecture doesn’t suggest anything out of the ordinary about the Minnesota town of Climax, population 264. The town was named after a popular 19^th Century chewing tobacco, Climax Cut Plug. So quit your grinning.

Make no Buttz about it

Photo by Ponderings over the Pond

Miss the turn to Hope and you end up in Buttzville. Turns out the local architecture looks a lot like it does in the rest of rural New Jersey. But before you go getting ideas, the village of 4,387 people was named after founder Michael Robert Buttz, a grist mill operator. No doubt, the town name sparks considerable low country humor. The town is just a shout away from the Pequest River, which makes the terrain here strictly bottom county.

Man-cave or kitchen?

Photo by Remodeling Your Kitchen

In this case, the kitchen cabinets weren’t even swapped out. Certainly a cabinet refacing effort was in order if you were going all dark. The “after” kitchen looks just a little dreary to me.

Backsplash for the design challenged

Photo by Susan Jablon Mosaics

Susan Jacobs Mosaics does attractive tile work, but I’m not convinced the backsplash here does more than upset my equilibrium. It looks like your television screen when the satellite goes out. I would count this project among some of the obvious remodeling mistakes I’ve seen on the web.

Before & after success

Photo by Singer Construction

Singer Construction nailed the dismount on this kitchen makeover. Before the company got its hands on it, this kitchen looked like the inoculation center at my veterinarian’s office. The company, located in California’s Orange County, says it can complete a kitchen remodel in seven days. Wonder how long this one took them.

Do-it-yourselfer Triumph

Photo by That Really Frosts Me

Blogger Kerri earns the right to crow following this make-over she completed on this nauseating kitchen in her Texas home. She and her husband re-hung the cabinets and added crown molding. Read more about the project at her blog, That Really Frosts Me.

Amazing Grace

Photo by Design Sponge

Grace Bonney has captured some clever makeovers at her Design Sponge blog. Have a gander. I trust her. The site announces that it won’t accept free samples, products or compensation for its editorial efforts.

Historical house at hysterical prices

Photo by New York Times

You want Colonial Revival, we have your Colonial Revival right here in North Druid Hills outside Atlanta. This home of an Iranian-American residential developer has been downsized from 16,500-square-feet to a mere 12,000 to encourage sale. So far, no takers at $4,250,000. Read the details at The New York Times.

Almost unique, and it can be yours

Photo by WUSA

Virginia’s WUSA reports another White House replica is for sale in McLean, not far from the original you-know-what. The six bedroom, 2.5 bath home was designed by an anonymous Vietnamese engineer to reflect his love for the country that took him in as a war refugee. Asking price is $4.6 million, a steal since you won’t have to pay for Secret Service protection.

Hybrid homestead

Photo by Gisela Gilbert,Long & Foster Real Estate

Yahoo reports that this Maryland home in Charles County is also ready for sale. Renovations have grafted the familiar columns to a 1905 home. The interior has well-matched finish carpentry to suit the era, but the home hasn’t moved in 18 months, listed at $995,000.

Sized for immediate sale

Photo by Woman's Day

Can’t cough up the dough for a full-sized replica? You can always plunk down $499 for the White House Dog House found on EBAY.

The official resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in February 2013 will be in the doghouse anyway.

Not all the new homes and commercial buildings are boiler-plated, functional post-Mao boxes. Have a look at what’s going on in unique Chinese architecture.

Green designs for 45 million passengers

Photo by Arup

Shaped like an airliner, the Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport Terminal 3 was designed to cut traditional energy costs by a fourth. It will be the first National Green Building Star Label certified airport terminal in China, according to sustainable architect-engineering firm Arup.

Unique house at heaven’s door

Photo by Dornob

Lixiaodong Atelier designed this reflection-pond home that sits at foot of the Yulong Snow Mountain in southwestern China. The house has a breath-taking traditional simplicity about it. Every room is oriented to view the mountain. Read more about it at Dornob.

He said, she said

Photo by Inman

Designs for the $125 million Comics and Animation Museum planned for 111 miles southwest of Shanghai incorporate playful interlocking “word balloons” in keeping with the comic theme.  The designer is MVRDV of the Netherlands. You can view an animation of the proposed structure at You Bent My Wookie.

They’re playing our song

Photo by Inman

The Piano House completed in 2007 in Anhui province has gotten a lot of press, but deserves another look. The Huainan Fangkai Decoration Project worked with Hefey University of Technology to build the black piano and clear violin that rests against it. The house serves as a practice facility and doubles as a concert hall. See additional photos at the Homedit blog.

This week, Forbes Magazine listed the nation’s cities with the filthiest air quality and, no surprise, seven of the ten worst are  in California. Here’s what lung cancer looks like:

Exray by Prep for MD

Forbes writer Christopher Helman crunched data from The American Lung Association’s State of the Air 2011 report to find that Bakersfield has 60 days a year of air ten times worse than the lowest acceptable levels of polluted, breathable air.

Bakersfield, America’s Mordor

Photo by Forbes

Just north of Los Angeles in California’s San Joaquin Valley, Bakersfield is home to 800,000 residents who inhale the worst year-round particulate pollution level in the nation and second-worst ozone pollution levels. Simply disgusting.

Consistently grotesque

Photo by Furman University

Just over the hills from Bakersfield lies the greater Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside metropolitan area, ranked second-worst in the nation for year-round particulate pollution and tops in ozone pollution. Why 17.8 million people continue to live there is a mystery to me. Many Angelinos flocked south to the beach-side communities in San Diego for relief, but now that metro area ranks 9^th on the Forbes list.

Pass the oxygen mask

Photo by Eco Trees

Visalia-Porterville, Calif. ranks third on the top-20 list, treating its 430,000 residents to the third-worst ozone pollution levels in the country. The City of Visalia touts the place as the “Crown Jewel of the San Joaquin Valley” and a place that “draws visitors from metropolitan areas with its picturesque communities and stunning landscapes against the backdrop of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.” Good luck seeing them.

An ugly, far-from-green environment

Photo by SF Gate

Fresno’s 1.1 million residents choke down the fourth-worst air in the nation, according to Forbes, where the skies combine traffic pollution with agricultural waste products that are leeching into the atmosphere from America’s Breadbasket. The San Francisco Chronicle reminds us that when Congress passed Clean Air Act Amendments 20 years ago, it promised to deliver across the nation Federal mandated levels for ozone pollution by November 2010. How’s that going, by the way?

Simply Capitol!

Photo by Sacramento Environmental Solutions

Sacramento rounds out California cities in the top-ten. It’s a state-house community where 2.4 million people wheeze away as their elected officials gaze out their windows at the nation’s 5th-worst levels of ozone pollution. Don’t forget sunscreen and a hat when you go calling!

In the face of losing so much of the natural world to development, it’s delightful to see that grown-ups with childlike wonder are building green structures again in the trees. Today’s treehouses for adults are still made of recycled wood, just like ones of yore.

Ten-story architecture with its own story

Photo by Oddity Central

It took Horace Burgess 14 years for to build his wood Minister’s House in Crossville, Tenn. A landscape architect, Burgess pounded some 258,000 nails into timber to complete the 97-feet-tall treehouse. Burgess claims he heard a message from heaven that if he started the project, there would be plenty of wood for the job. The place receives 500 visitors each week, according to Oddity Central.

Swiss chalet style, eco-friendly design

Photo by Treehouse Workshop

Seattle’s Treehouse Workshop built this home from salvaged Madrona wood and re-claimed leaded glass windows on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. It comes with running water, electricity, and sleeping accommodations for four.

Grow your own arboreal support

Photo by Treehouses.com

The Out’n'About Treehouse Treesort is a lofty stay-and-play adult tree-house built by Oregon’s Michael Garnier. Garnier, owner and designer, has created the Garnier Limb support system that helps trees grow around support brackets to provide a natural backbone. Read more about the Treesort, Garnier, and his Treehouse Institute of Arts and Culture in Takilma, Ore.

Interiors from Hobbitville

Photo by Treehouse Workshop

The Treehouse Workshop team designs and builds as many as 15 unique homes in the trees a year. It employs wood from old houses and materials from salvaged building products in Seattle. There’s a cool roundup of contemporary treehouses at Yahoo Real Estate.

And yes, I still want one of my own to live above it all.

Avert ugly kinder-kindling

Photo by Care2

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) warns that “candlelit jack-o’-lanterns should be kept away from landings and doorsteps where costumes could brush against the flame.”  Poor porch and step lighting can contribute to injurious falls by unsuspecting, excited kids. The CPSC recommends you use battery-operated flameless candles in jack-o’-lanterns.

Kids and cutlery don’t mix

Photo by Cohesive Pieces

Sure, it’s fun to get the kids armed to the teeth with serrated blades and carving knives and let them butcher the pumpkins. But it’s much less fun to take a child (along with their severed thumb in a towel) to the emergency room. Let the little ones draw a face on the squash and then YOU handle the carving.

Halloween designs that kill

Photo by Flickriver

Sure, this crunch-o-witch looks fabulous by day. By night, imagine a wind-aided falling broomstick that impales itself into a crowd of children on your lawn. Break out the attorney retainer. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) strongly suggests that for safety’s sake, you roll up your garden hoses, sweep wet leaves from your walks and driveways, and put all your barking and biting pets indoors for the night.

Photo by Leon County