Latest / Repcolite Home Improvement Show / The Man Who Built Fairy-Tale Houses: Earl Young and the Charlevoix Mushroom Houses

Transcript

The Man Who Built Fairy-Tale Houses: Earl Young and the Charlevoix Mushroom Houses · Repcolite Home Improvement Show

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, thanks for tuning in. You're listening to Home
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: in Progress by Repco Like Paint sponsored by Benjamin Moore.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: And I had a funny moment driving to work the
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: other day and I kind of felt like I had
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: a split personality disorder. And I'm kind of just teasing,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: but I really don't know how else to describe it.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Here's what happened. My roof is leaking in three spots. Okay,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I'm on it. I've got estimates to get it fixed,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: trying to get the money together. Blah blah blah. That's
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: going on. Then this past week, I went to start
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: up my sprinklers, you know, for the first time this year,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: and I find out the pumps deceased. Now, I assumed
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I was going to just get a new pump for
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: a couple hundred bucks and we'd be good. But then
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: I researched how much it was going to cost, and
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: I was literally blown away by the expense of a
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: new pump. So all of that's going on, Okay. Then
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: the other day I'm driving to work and it's raining
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: like crazy. I can barely see the road, and inside
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: part of me is so pumped, you know, so relieved,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: so happy, so pumped. Get it. The yard dying, the
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: flowers were dying, and now they're getting a ton of rain.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: But then, as I'm thinking that, I started talking to
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: myself and another part of me said, yeah, that's great,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: but think about all the water coming in the attic.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: You know, you're so worried about your yard and your plants,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: but the attic's probably filling up with water right now.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: And when that part of my brain spoke, I literally
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: answered and said, whoa, that's crazy talk. Come on, it's
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: never leaked badly enough to cause problems. Why would it
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: start now, You're just trying to scare us and freak
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: us out. And that's when it hit me. I was
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: literally arguing with two parts of my own brain. So
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I'm not really sure what that means. And it honestly
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: sounds even worse now that I called it out and
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: said it out loud. So I'm gonna leave it right
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: there and just jump into the show. And let's start
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: by talking about a town up north in Charlevoi. If
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: you're not familiar, Charlevoi is north of Traverse City on
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: US thirty one. Okay, it's a resort town, you know,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: really picturesque. It's situated on an isthmus between Lake Michigan
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: and Lake Charlevoi. Yeah, and isthmus. I don't have any
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: idea that I'm pronouncing that correctly. I think I'm over
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: emphasizing the in that imus isthmus. It's a narrow strip
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: of land bordered on two sides by water. So look
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: at what we've learned just today. So far, we're already
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: learning geography and stuff like that. All right, So that's Charlevoy.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Let's just move on. It's a beautiful area. It's only
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: a day trip away if you're located in West Michigan,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: and if you go to Charlevoi, you're gonna see something
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: or you can see something that's entirely unique to Charlevoy.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Mushroom houses. Have you heard of these before? Charlott Boy's
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: mushroom houses. They've got curved stone walls, roofs that roll
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: and swoop all over the place. They completely look like
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: something out of a fairy tale. They are crazy cool.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: They've earned a few nicknames over the years, mushroom houses.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: I've already given you that one, hobbit houses, gnome houses,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: flintstone houses, fairy tale houses, on and on and on.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: They're crazy unique, and they're the creation of a single
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: guy for the most part, except for maybe a couple No, no, no,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: they're they're the creation of this guy. A couple of
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: copies happened later, and we'll talk about that. They're not
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: even really copies. We'll talk about that later, but they're
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: really the creation of a single guy. His name is
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Earl Young. Was Earl Young, and he really should be
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: considered the patron saying of anybody who's been told that
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: they're doing this or that the wrong way, that you
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: can't do it that way, that's wrong. This guy, he's
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: your guy. He's your patron saint. And before I get
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: too far into this, because we're going to talk about him,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: his inspiration behind them, you know how they came about.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: There's a just really fun story here. But before I
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: get too far into it, if you're able to pull
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: out your little computer, your phone, you know, if you're driving,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: this is not for you to do. This is not
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: homework for you. But if you are capable, we're all capable.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: If you're able to safely do this, Google Charlevoi mushroom houses,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: and that's going to give you an idea what I'm
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: talking about, and it's going to help a lot if
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: you can't google them to get a picture of them
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: and see what they look like. Let me try to
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: describe them so you've got something in your mind as
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: I talk. All right, they're just so unique, you've got
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: to have at least a visual of them. So picture
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: a storybook cottage, you know, just your classic storybook cottage.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Picture that, and then cross it with a Hobbit house
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: or what you might think of as a gnome house.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: You know, make it crazy, low stone walls, all kinds
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: of curves, you know, put a heavy cedar shaped roof
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: over top, and make sure that the roof isn't smooth
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: and flat. It swoops all over the place. It bends
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: and it droops. Imagine it almost like a floppy hat
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: that sits on top of the stone house. The houses
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: are rounded, they're earth their lopsided, and they're lapsided on purpose.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: They're completely unlike the straight line houses that were used
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: to seeing. All right, that's a mushroom house, or as
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: the designer would prefer, that's an Earl Young house. Now
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: let's talk about how they came about. So let's start
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: with Earl Young. He was born in Mancellona, Michigan, in
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: eighteen eighty nine, and his family moved to Charlevoi when
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: he was eleven. Now his mom and dad they owned
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: an insurance company and they worked at that, you know,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: making their living. But they also had some you know,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: marital distress, marital struggles. So they were working on their marriage,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: trying to save that in the midst of everything. Now,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: in the end, they weren't able to put things together
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: and the marriage ended in divorce. And I only mention
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: that because that stressful home, you know, that stressful home
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: life that Earl Young lived through, that played a big
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: role in the formation of you know builder Earl who
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: comes about later, right, See. To get away from the
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: stress of what's going on in the home, he spent
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: a lot of time just walking around outside, you know,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: living outside, you know, walking the shores of a lake,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Michigan beach near his home. You know there's a beach
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: out there. Because he's on an isthmus. There's water everywhere
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: around him. It's not an island, it's an isthmus. I've
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: learned a new word, and I'm not gonna let it
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: go anyway. He could get to water wherever he went, basically,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: and a lot of the beaches out there covered with stones.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: So he's out there walking, he sees all these stones.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: He loves falls in love with stones, you know, stones
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: in all the colors, in all the shapes. It was
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: almost like magic to him. You know, it sounds crazy,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: but he loved him, loved them, loved him, loved him.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: He was fascinated with their look. But more than that,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: it was like they spoke to him of what they
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: could become. All right, you know, how they could fit together,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: to become something like a building or a chimney or
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: a fence. He loved the stones connect to the earth,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: to the water, to the landscape. And he later, you know,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: in later years, came to describe them as almost having personalities.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Now I'm not saying he was nuts. He knew that
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: sounded crazy. He wasn't saying they talked to him. I
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: don't think that's where he was going. But they did
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: talk to him. And way, you know, he would see
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: these rocks and he'd let them speak to him about
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: where they should be used, you know, what they wanted
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: to be. Now that sounds a little crazy, but I
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: think think you can get it anyway, I'm kind of
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: getting ahead of myself. The guy loved rocks. Let's just
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: leave it at that guy loved rocks. He loves stones
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: in a way, deeper, way, way more profound way than
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: most of us love rocks and stones. Okay, that's all
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: you really need to know now. Because of this love
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: of stones and rocks, and because of his love of
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: building things, when he grows up, he heads to the
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: U of M, you know, to study architecture. So he
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: heads off to college, gets there, starts his classes. He's
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: all pumped up. You know, he's gonna be the next
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: big thing. Maybe, maybe that's what he's thinking. I don't know.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: I'm filling in the gaps. I'm free wheeling here. But
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: I do know that once he gets there and starts
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: these classes, he doesn't like the architecture program. You know,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: it's just too much Victorian stuff, too much Greek this
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: and Roman that. Earle didn't want to talk about that
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: kind of architecture. You know, he had different ideas for
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: what buildings could or should look like. So he quits
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: after just a year. You know, he quits all of that,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: and yeah, this is all bunk. I'm not gonna do
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: this anymore. And he goes back home and he starts
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: working in the family business, selling insurance with his mom.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: He also got into real estate. He did some bakery
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: adjacent type things. He did a lot of different things.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: He was like a did I don't even know. I
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: was gonna say a renaissance man, but I would have
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: to look up what exactly that means, and I don't
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: want to just throw terms and titles around. He kind
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: of did bakery stuff. He sold real estate, well, you know,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: I think he sold real estate for like sixty years.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: So even he's building houses, he's selling real estates, real estate,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: and he you know, sold insurance. Okay, so he's doing
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: all of that. But deep down, you know, Earl inside,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: you know, the spirit of Earl really wants to build
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: homes and structures and stuff like that. It's calling him,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: and so he decides, you know what, I'm gonna jump
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: in and I'm gonna build something. I'm gonna build a house,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: even though I'm not an architect, you know, even though
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm gonna build
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: a house, even though I don't have what you might
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: call the proper or maybe even you know, possibly the
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: necessary skills. I don't have those things. I've got a dream,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: I've got a vision, and I'm driven to succeed, so
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it, you know. So he jumps in.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: I found a great article that referred maybe this will
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: give you just a just a snippet of a picture
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: of Earl Young. You know who he is and what
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: drove him. I found a great article that referred to
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: him as five foot one, five foot one. The other
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: places site of foot three. Either way, I toe word
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: over him, so you know that should tell you something.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: So five foot one, five foot three. They described him
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: like that, But he was also charismatic and egotistical and
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: innovative and utterly utterly driven. You know. Basically, early Young
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: thought he could do whatever he set his mind to,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: and he was out there to prove it, you know,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: and the force of his personality, you know, made him succeed.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: So anyway, he decides, I don't want to just do
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: insurance and real estate and bake goods or whatever else
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: I was doing. I want to build things. So he
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: jumps in and he builds his first home in nineteen eighteen.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Between nineteen eighteen and nineteen twenty one. He builds a
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: home for him and his family, and he's got a
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: wife at this point, and he decides, let's just build
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: a house for me. This is the only house that
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: he built that actually uses blueprints, and I'll explain how
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: we worked around that later. It's really worth haying and
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: around for so only house that he's built that uses blueprints,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: because he partnered with an established architect, because he knew
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: that he didn't really know enough yet to do this
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: on his own. He needed help, so he partners with
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: this guy. They drop blueprints, they build this house, this
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: first house for Earl Young and his family, and you know,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: he moves in, but he's never really satisfied with it.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: It's just not exactly what his vision was, you know,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: it's just not quite right. And after this first experience,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: he decided, you know what, I need to work alone.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm the guy. I've got the answers. I
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: don't need to be hampered, you know, by other people's
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: ideas or the limitations that other people impose by saying
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: things had to be done this way or that way,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: that that's how building works, and you can't do it
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: the way he wanted to do it, Let's do it
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: this way. He didn't want any of that. He wanted
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: to do his own thing and his vision of what
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: his own thing was going to look like. How did
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: he get to that, Well, we're gonna get to where
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: it came from. How he pulled everything together. It's some
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: really crazy stories about Rocks, what he did when he
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: found him. You're gonna love that. I love that. And
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: then also, like I said, the blueprint thing, he never
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: used blueprints. You're gonna love how he worked around that.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: But we're gonna do all of that right after. This
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: home in progress is brought to you by Repcolite Paints
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: and Benjamin Moore. You know, people often think of paint
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: as just another line item on the project's supply list.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: But here's the thing. Everything you do, every hour of prep,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: every stroke of the brush, all comes down to the
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: quality of the paint. The paint is the project. Make
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: sure it's the best. Gnome Houses, Hobbit Houses, the Mushroom
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Houses of Charlet Boy, Michigan. Have you heard about them.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: We've been talking about these houses and they are if
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: you look at them, they are straight out of a
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: fairy tale. You're listening to Home in Progress by Repcolllite
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Paints sponsored by Benjamin Moore, and last segment, I introduced
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: you to Early Young, a guy who grew up in Charlevoi.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: He was born in eighteen eighty nine, so that gives
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: you a time frame. Grew up in Charlevoi, Michigan. He
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: loved long walks on the beach, loved spending time in nature,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: and he developed an incredibly complex relationship with the rocks
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: and the boulders that he encountered in the landscape that
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: he traveled through. Anyway, last segment we talked about how
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: he started building these mushroom houses and how he did
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: that without any real formal training, just kind of jumped
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: in and did it. You know, he just knew that
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: he wanted to build houses that were completely different from
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: anything else that he'd seen, and he decided to do
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: it alone. He built his first house with the help
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: of an architect, and then he decided to just go
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: it on his own because working with others just didn't
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: work for Earl. You know, other people had too many ideas,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: too many ideas that conflicted with his vision. And let's
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: get to his vision, because I think that it's really
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: important to identify where this vision came from. And when
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: you look at it, there are a lot of different
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: aspects of life that inspired, you know, Earl Young to
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: come up with this vision. But I'm going to only
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: focus on three of them, you know, because I think
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: these are the three main ones, three main sources of
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: inspiration that led him to build these remarkable structures. First off,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: he was inspired by Frank Loyd Wright's philosophy. He never
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: studied under Frankloyd right, I don't believe he ever met
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Frank Loyd Wright, but he was inspired by Frank Loyd
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Wright's philosophy that a building should belong to its site
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: instead of just being plopped on it. It has to
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: grow out of that site in a sense, and Earl
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Young took that philosophy probably even further than Wright did.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: And that's why his houses look incredibly organic. They literally
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: look like they grew up out of the earth, like
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: they're a living thing that just kind of grew up
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: out of the spot, and amongst the trees and the
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: landscaping all around them, they just look like they grew
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: out of that spot. So he really was inspired by
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Frank Lloyd Writes philosophy there. A second thing that inspired him,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: basically was rebellion, you know, against the architectural styles that
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: he was inundated with at the u of M. You know,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: we talked about it in the last segment, but when
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: he went to school, he did a year of school
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: at u of M for architecture, but he bailed on
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: it because everything in that class, it was all Greek
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: columns and Roman stuff and Victorian stuff. He basically felt
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: it was a duplication, you know, of dead styles, lots
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: of symmetry, lots of perfect lines. It was boring right
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: to early young It was tired. It had been done before.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: So he rebelled against that. And that's partly why his
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: houses lean into their lopsided, uneven shapes that really don't
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: reflect any given style. That's part of the reason. The
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: third inspiration, and i'll if we want to talk about
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: why his houses are lopsided and how they lean into
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: that shape. This third inspiration, this is probably the most
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: important thing. It was his fascination with the rocks and
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: the boulders and the stones that made up the landscape
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: around him. Right we talked about that, but in the lakes,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: on the beaches, in the woods, in the quarries all
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: around him, you know, where he's grown up, all of
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: those stones, with all of the different shapes and the
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: colors and all of the history of these stones. You know,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: he's looking at these stones and he's thinking about how
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: old they are, how ancient they are. There's history. These
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: stones have been there long before he was, and long
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: after he was, they'll still be here doing their thing.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: All of that intrigued him and it shaped his ideas,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: and it literally shaped the houses that he built, you know,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: because he didn't work from blueprints and from a plan
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: per se. He found the boulders first and let them speak,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: and then he constructed the house around all of that. Okay,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: And I mentioned earlier he only used blueprints on his
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: first house, and that was because he worked with an
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: established architect. I told you it was really fun what
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: he did instead of using blueprints. Do you know what
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: he did instead of using blueprints? Do you have a guess?
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: You know, maybe some of you know. If you know,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: don't spoil it for the rest of the people you
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: know around you, but just make a guess. If you
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: don't know, what do you think he did? What would
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: you do if he didn't have access to blueprints, you know,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: what would you do? Well, I'd maybe sketch it out
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: on paper something like that. Apparently paper wasn't available to
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: mister Earl Young. He he was more gritty, he was
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: more more mother nature son. I guess we would say.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: He literally would get the builders together on the site
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: and he'd clean a little spot on the ground, a
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: nice little dirt spot, and then he'd get a stick
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: and he'd draw in the dirt and show them what
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: he wanted done. You know it basically like he's crafting
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: a football play at recess in elementary school. That's how
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: he's drawing the buildings. He's drawn him in dirt, showing
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: the workers and then saying there you go, yeah, I
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: just build that, you know, that's what I'm thinking. Fortunately,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: when he got married his wife, Irene, she was an
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: art teacher and an artist, and as the later years happened,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: she would basically sketch out designs based on what Earl
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: was describing, and that gave the workmen something a little
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: more concrete to work with than Earl's scratches in the dirt.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: But anyway, the point is he started with the rocks, right.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: He let the rocks talk to him and he let
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: them influence the final design, and that was unheard of.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: You know, everyone else was forcing building materials to match
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: a layout that they had primary, you know, first and foremost,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: this is what it's going to look like. Let's make
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: the building materials fit that. Earle Mister Young found these
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: building materials and said, yeah, let's build around that. And
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: that's why these houses are as strangely intriguing and inviting
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: as they are. They're so organic because they're literally built
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: around the organic shapes. The apes define the whole building,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: the whole layout. All right, those rocks, those boulders, I
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: want to talk about them because there's a really fun
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: story with his whole collection of them and how he
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: collected them. But we're gonna get to that right after.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: This home in progress is brought to you by Repcolite
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Paints and Benjamin Moore. Think about it. You spend hours prepping, sandy, taping,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: and then finally painting. Don't throw all that work away
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: with an inferior product. The paint isn't just another supply.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: The paint is the project. Make sure it's the best rocks, boulders,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: and Earl Young. That's what we're talking about the mushroom
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: houses of Charlevoi on Home in Progress by Repcolite Paints
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: sponsored by Benjamin Moore. And last segment, I talked about
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: how Early Young, the designer of Charlevoye's mushroom houses. How
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Early Young had a fascination for stones and boulders and rocks,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: a fascination beyond the normal fascination that people have with
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: rocks and boulders and stones. All Right, it was deeper
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: saying it was a problem that he had had issues,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: but it was deeper than I was going to say.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: A normal person, a regular person's fascination with these things.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: And we talked about that. We talked about how these
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: rocks and boulders shaped his structures. You know, he didn't
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: just design houses and then make the rocks and boulders fit.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: He found the rocks and boulders first and then built
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: around them. And what I want to talk about briefly
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: is just how he gathered those rocks. Because I think
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: this is such a great story and it reminds me
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: of me, which is probably why I think it's so great.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: It reminds me of little Dan. See, when I was
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: a kid, my main go to toy was g I Joe. Okay,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: I grew up in the eighties. I had you know,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: there was Gi Joe, and there was what were the
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: other big ones, Transformers and Masters of the Universe. Masters
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: of the Universe. There's a movie right now reminds me
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: of my childhood. But Gi Joe, that was my jam.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: You know, that's what I cared about. That's what I liked.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: And I had tons of the little figures, tons and tons.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: At one point, I had everyone that was released. I
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: had as many of the vehicles as I could imagine,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: as I could snag. But really I focused on the
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: figures for sure, and I've still got them. You know,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: they're all in immaculate condition because I was. I was
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: meticulous even back then as a child, and all these
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: figures they're in immaculate condition. They're over forty years old.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Amazing collection. I've done an amazing job giving myself a
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: lot of kude. I was here, not the point, we
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: can move on. When I would go shopping when I
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: was little, you know, anytime i'd go to the store,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: you know, mom goes to get groceries, I'd wander off
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: to the toy department to scope out the Gijo figures
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: and I'd go through the rack looking for ones that
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: I didn't have, and if I found one, it was
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: always rare because I had most of them. But when
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: I found one that was hard to find or hard
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: to come by, if I didn't have the money for it,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: and I knew there was no way I could finagle
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: the money out a mom, I would do something that
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: I'm not terribly proud of, but I would hide that sucker.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: I'd take it and I'd stuff it somewhere. You know,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: I'd hide it behind, you know, other toys that were
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: loser toys that nobody was ever going to buy, and
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: I was sure nobody would uncover this secret hidden toy there.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: And sometimes I'd hide them in other places. I don't
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: believe I was ever successful at hiding them and then,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: you know, being able to go back and get them,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: because that was my plan. You know, once I had
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: the money, I was going to go back to the
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: store and find this hidden, hidden treasure that I'd stuffed away.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: I don't think that part of her worked. That would
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: have made for an even better story, but that's what
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: I did. I did that. I'm not proud of it.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: I confess it. I'm sorry department store workers who are
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: now probably in you know, assisted living situations. You know,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: maybe you're gasping right now because you finally figured out
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: who this person was, who you know tormented you all
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: those years ago. It was me. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: That's all I can do. Anyway, Let's get back to
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: our story. The hero of the story that I'm telling today,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Earl Young, the designer of the Mushroom houses. He did
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: the exact same thing with rocks. I love that, and
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: it gets even better than you're probably thinking. You know,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: he'd be touring around hunting, you know, rocks and stones
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that. But I'm not talking about pocket
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: sized stuff. I'm talking about boulders, you know, huge gigantic things.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: He would find them all over northern Michigan. And if
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: he found one that he loved, you know, I love
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: this rock. I love this boulder. It's a nice boulder.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: I want that boulder. But if he didn't have a
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: house for it, you know, he didn't know where he
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: was going to use it. He hid it. He absolutely
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: hid it. How do you hide a boulder? You ask,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: I'm so glad you did. He would bury them in
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: the woods or wherever he would find them. And sometimes
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: he would even sink them in Lake Michigan. I mean that.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: I think that that out tops me hiding Gi Joe's
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: in this toy store, sinking boulders in Lake Michigan so
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: that you can retrieve them later. And he did retrieve
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: them later. That's the even better part of this story.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: You know, he didn't want anybody else to find him.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: He wanted to know that he was the only one.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: He'd keep this, you know, this record in his brain
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: about what he had hidden all over the place. Maybe
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: he had treasure maps. I don't know, but he had
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: this map in his brain at least of all these
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: different rocks, what they look like, where he might use them.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: And when he'd come across the project and he would realize, oh,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: I know the exact stone that's perfect for that, he
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: would know where it was and then he would go
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: and he would extract it and bring it back. And
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: when I say extract it, think about that. He was
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: born in eighteen eighty eight nine. I think, if I
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: remember right, he built his first house in nineteen eighteen
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: and nineteen twenty one. He's building through the years but
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: he doesn't have fancy excavation you know, tools and things,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: you know that are going to make it easy to
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: haul a multi ton stone out of the lake. You know,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: he had to be seriously committed. Maybe he should have
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: been committed. No, I don't want to say that because
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: that's not fair to him. I don't think he was
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: nuts at all. I think he just loved his art
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: and he was willing to really sweat and really bleed
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: for his art. But he would come back to these stones,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: to these hidden stones, and he would extract them and
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: haul them with teams of workhorses. It's really mind blowing
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: how he did it. It's kind of to me like
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: it's on par not exactly on par, it's similar. It's
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: adjacent in a way to the whole pyramid thing. You know,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: how did they do that? Was it Aliens? I don't
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: think it was Aliens With Earl Young. It was just
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: this five foot one, five foot three guy with a
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: spine of iron or steel and just oh man, a
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: will to match and a bunch of horses. And he
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: would get these stones out and he'd bring them back
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: and he'd use them on whatever house. I just love
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: that hiding rocks and stones and boulders. I think that's absolutely,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, to me, one of my favorite things I've
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: stumbled across in a long time. All Right, So we've
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: got all of that going on. That's what he's doing
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: to build these houses incredibly unique stones. He's letting the
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: stones tell the story, letting the stones shape the houses.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: One last thing I want to mention as I'm talking
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: about these mushroom houses, these gnome houses, these hobbit houses,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: these early young houses in charle Boy, one last thing
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: I want to mention is the fireplaces. You know, there's
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: a million other things I could talk about. I've got
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: limited time, but I do want to hit these fireplaces
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: before I wrap this particular part of the topic up.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: He treated fireplaces like the heart of the house. They
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: weren't just a feature in an early young house. They
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: were the heart, the beating heart of the house, and
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: in many cases the fireplace would shape the entire design,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: and so they were hugely important in that regard. But
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: also they were built with huge stones and boulders. You know,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: most fireplaces are built from lots of small stones and
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. Earl Young's signature move was one enormous
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: boulder as the centerpiece. Now, a famous one if you
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: want to look it up, is the weather Vane Restaurant's
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: fireplace in Charlet Boy. Of course it's in Charleboy, the
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: weather Vane Restaurant. They have a fireplace that's made of
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: a single nine ton boulder, and Earl Young saved that
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: exact boulder. I don't know where he hid that one.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: I have no idea where that one was hidden, but
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: he saved it for twenty six years before he found
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: the exact perfect spot for it. And the first time
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: they said it, the floor sank under the weight and
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: they had to redo all those supports and stuff like that,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: basically pull off an engineering stunt to make it work.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: And he did again, all of that before hydraulic loaders existed. Right,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: He's moving these things with horses and chains and an
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: occasion crane and just sheer willpower. So fireplaces, big signature move,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: big signature part of these mushroom houses, all right, Earl Young.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: He kept designing and building well into his eighties. His
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: last completed design is the Castle House, and it was
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: built between nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy three, when he
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: was in his early eighties. All told, he left Charlevoid
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: with roughly thirty structures. There's always a little bit of
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: variance here when people count them, but it's commonly counted
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: as about twenty six to twenty eight homes and then
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: three or four commercial buildings. Each one, you know, more
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: or less looks less like it was built on the
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: land and more like it just kind of grew there.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: You got to check these out. By the end of
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: his life, he was legally blind, but he was still designing,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: and he was doing it by touch. You know. He'd
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: have workers describe the stonework, you know, describe what they
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: were seeing. Then he'd run his hands over the boulders
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: to decide whether the boulder matched the and it was
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: literally right for this situation, all by feel. He died
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five, and the last thinking did this
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: last project that he worked on was placing a single
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: boulder to mark the neighborhood entrance. And so basically he
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: ended the way he started, setting a rock just so
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: in the exact perfect spot. Earl Young. As we wrap
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: all this up, a few things. First off, no one's
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: ever really copied him. His style pretty much starts and
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: stops with him. There is one kind of exception, his
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: daughter Virginia, she built a few houses like this later,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: but that was more you know, family carrying on the
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: work than somebody duplicating his style. All right, so that's interesting.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: But here's what I think is the really cool thing,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: super cool thing. It's one of the reasons I'm talking
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: about it. You can go see them today. They're literally
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: just a few hours away from those of us in
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: West Michigan. So go online and you can find locations
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: and houses to drive by. Big thing though, member, these
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: are personal residences, you know, their private properties. So don't
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: go peaking in windows. That's not gonna end. Well, you're
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: not gonna have a good road trip. You're gonna see
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: a lot. Well, I don't know how much you'll see.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: You'll see the back of a police cruiser, you know,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: if you've never been in one, you know, maybe that's
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: the way to go. You can see the Charlevoi jail.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Get that you know firsthand experience there. But don't go
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: peeking in houses or peaking in the windows. You know,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: don't go walking through the rooms and stuff like that.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: But you can drive by them and see them. But
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: after saying all of that, there are some exceptions, you know,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: where you literally can go in and experience them. First off,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: the weather Vane Restaurant. I mentioned that it's the one
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: with a big fireplace, the big boulder for a fireplace.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: You can go in, you can go there eat. It's
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: a restaurant, you know. You just go in and do
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: what you do at a restaurant. Use the restroom if
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: you want, You can, you know, or order whatever you want, salads,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: They've got everything. I don't know why I'm talking about that.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: My mind wanders the weather Vane Restaurant. You can check
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: that out online at Weathervane Restaurant dot com. You can
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: even check out the menu, see if they've got stuff
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: you'd like for sure. Look at the pictures. It's beautiful. Secondly,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: you can literally stay in one of these mushroom houses.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: I think from what I was gathering, there's a number
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: of them that can be rented out on like Airbnb
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: or Verbo or something like that. But I know for
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: sure one you know one for sure you can rent
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: and it's Earl Young's personal home. It's on Airbnb. Just
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: just go to Airbnb and search out mushroom houses in
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: charlet Boy and you'll find it all right there you
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: go something uniquely Michigan and maybe something you didn't know
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: about before. And it's cool because the guy who built
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: all of these everything we've been talking about, did it
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: without a degree, He did it without training, He did
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: it by going against a lot of different rules. And
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: what I want to talk about next in the last
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: segment is how we take some of what he did
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: and apply it to our own homes. You know, how
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: can we draw inspiration from him and apply it in
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: a practical way in our own design in basically the
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: work that we do in our homes. I'm going to
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: get to all of that right after this. You're listening
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: to Home in Progress, where the projects are real, the mistakes,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: they're educational, sometimes painful, mostly educational. And the only thing
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: more stubborn than that old wallpaper on your bathroom wall
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: is your determination to get it fixed. Probably sponsored by
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Repcolite Paints and Benjamin Moore Paint with a purpose, people
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: who care and everything you need to get the job
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: done right. And we're back. You're listening to Home in
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Progress by Repcolite Paint, sponsored by Benjamin Moore and for
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: the last few segments. We've been up in Charlevoi, Michigan,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: with Earl Young and his mushroom houses, and we talked
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: about who he was, how he built these things with
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: no degree, no training, no blueprints, even just a headful
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: of rocks. And I mean that in the nicest way possible,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: a head full of rocks and a will of iron.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: And that's a fun story on its own, but I
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: didn't want to leave it there because, honestly, the more
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: I dug into this guy, the more I realized he
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: wasn't just building weird houses, really cool houses up north.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: He was living out a whole bunch of ideas about
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: how to make a space feel like yours. And those
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: ideas don't just apply to a stone cottage in Charlevoi.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: They apply to your own house, to my house, to
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: the place you're sitting in right now. So that's what
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: I want to do with this last segment. And I
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: may not have time to get all of this on air,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: I will get all of it in the podcast. So
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: go find Home in Progress as a podcast and you
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: can catch all of this segment. There's a lot of
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: good points, a lot of practical stuff here that you
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: can use. But That's what I'm going to do in
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: this last segment, and I want to be upfront about
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: how this is going to go. It's not a step one,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: step two, step three kind of thing. You know, follow
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: this and your house is perfect. That's not what I'm
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: after at all. I'm not building a system here. It's
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: more like, here are five or six random things that
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: we can steal from Early Young and then put to
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: work in our homes today. You know, some of them
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: might click for you, might make sense, some might not.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Grab the ones that do and work with them, all right,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: Let's start with the one that I think is the strongest,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: and it's really really personal for me. Earl Young he
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: found stones that really spoke to him, right, and then
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: he built homes around those stones when he had to.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: He even hid them, right, we talked about that. He
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: buried him, he sank them in the lake. He did
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: whatever he had to do so he'd be able to
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: use them when he found the right spot for him. Basically,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: he knew the importance of it. When a piece, when
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: a rock, when a stone, when a boulder spoke to him,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: and he let that piece guide him. Now, every now
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: and then we find something when we're out and about,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: you know, hitting the antique malls, the flea markets, the
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: whatever's wherever you go, garage sales, you name it. Every
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: now and then we're out there and something speaks to us.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: We find something, or it finds us, you know, whatever
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: it is. It's a piece of art, it's a piece
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: of furniture, a rug, whatever it is. We find this
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: thing or it finds us, like I said, and we're
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: stunn to buy it. You've been there, right, You've just
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: looked at this thing and thought that this is amazing.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: I love this thing. It's just captured my interest. You know.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: It grabs us in ways that a lot of other
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: things don't. You know. We walk by tons of stuff
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: on a regular basis in shops and in stores and
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: all of that. But every now and then something just
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: stops us and we stand there and look at it.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: It's like lightning when that happens. And sometimes I've personally
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: done this. We let those things go, and we let
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: them go, you know, because I don't have a place
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: for it. I don't know where i'd use this. I
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: don't have a place for it, so you let it go.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many times I've done that
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: and then I regret it later, almost instantly, and then
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: I rush back to the store and I find that
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: it's gone. So don't don't do that, you know, take
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: a tip from Earl Young. When something strikes you like that,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: in a deep emotional, personal way, secure it. You know,
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: if you don't have a place for it yet, wait,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: you'll find a place for it. Sometimes you may even
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: design an entire room around it. And I told you
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: at the beginning, this was a really personal point for me.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: And here's where I could really make that personal connection.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: You know, I have a bust of Cleopatra. I didn't
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: get those words up fast enough, and I feel like
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: they're questionable words. It's like a statue thing, a bust
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: of Cleopatra. And it makes no sense right for this
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: to be in a home like mine, you know, a
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: little brick ranch. Why would I have this? Makes no sense?
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: But when I saw it, I loved it. And I
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: don't know why I loved it, but I loved it.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: I'd never seen anything like it. I think I've talked
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: about it on the show before. I'm sure I have
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: it spoke to me, and so I snagged it. I
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: don't normally do that, but I snagged it. It was
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: a little more expensive than I normally would have paid,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: but for some reason, I needed it. I had to
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: have it. I loved it, and I bought it. I
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: had no idea what I was going to do with it,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: and so I bring it home, and like I said,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: I had no idea what to do with it, so
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: it just kind of sits there, you know, out of
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: the way. It's not on display anywhere. It's just kind
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: of tucked away. I ended up using it at Repcolite
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: for some events because there was no use for it
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: at home, so we used it at some events. And
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, I'm working in my living
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: room a few years back, and I realized I could
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: set that bust of Cleopatra on the armoire that holds
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: the TV, you know, And I did that, and it
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: kind of looked a little bit weird there. I thought,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: maybe I'm you know, maybe I'm doing something crazy. But
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: then I thought, it just needs things around it. So
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: I filled the space around it with brass candlesticks, no candles,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: just empty candlesticks, all different kinds, and basically from there,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: that thing took over the whole room. The whole space
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: started to revolve around it. And I spent months and
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: months and months hunting for unique candlesticks and Egyptian you know,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: pieces that didn't feel too faky or too silly. I'm
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: looking for all these things. I found some really, really
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: great stuff. You know, it wasn't easy to come by,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: but when I found it, oh man, was it fun
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: and was it cool. My favorite piece that I added
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: was an Art Nouveau painting of Cleopatra by a Michigan artist.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: It's on a tattered old canvas. You know, it's flaking,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: the pain is flaking in places, but it's big. It's
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: like three foot by three foot, and it sets the
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: whole tone for the room. And I absolutely love that room.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: I don't care if anybody else on this planet hates
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: that room. I love it. And it all started because
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: I snagged a Cleopatra bust that made no sense, but
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: that spoke to me. So all that to say, don't
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: let something wonderful go by when it speaks to you.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: Snag it. You'll find a use for it later, all right.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Another idea decorate for yourself, not for resale, not for
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: the neighbors, not for the internet. You know, this is
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Earl's rebellion. We talked about that in the first segment.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: He refused other people's rules and the limits that they
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: tried to put on them. What I'm trying to say
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: here is, if you're not selling your house right now,
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: and you're not thinking that that's coming up in the
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: next little bit, just let go of the idea that
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: you need to design for somebody else as tastes. You know,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: don't avoid colors that you love because you're afraid your
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: sisters are going to think you're nuts. Kind of bend there,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: don't do that. Don't skip out on furniture or art
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: that you love because you think people on Facebook are
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: going to hate it. I don't know how many of
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: us do that, but I know from talking to people
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: in the paint store that there's enough of us that
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: really are influenced very heavily by what we think other
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: people are going to feel and say about our spaces.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: You know, we're worried about looking dumb or silly with
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: our design. But here's the thing. Blindly following other people's
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: ideas that's really boring. And our homes should reflect us.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: They shouldn't reflect you know, somebody else's tastes or something
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: like that. It's your home. You spend the time in there,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: you know, not other people. Let your ideas fill your space.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: That's something else to think about. Another idea. Work with
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: your homes quirks instead of fighting them. I didn't talk
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: about it, but Earle wouldn't cut down trees, you know,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: on certain lots, so we ended up building around them.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: You know, the house belonged to its spot. It kind
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: of sometimes worked around trees that were there, so that
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: weird nook that you've got, that slope ceiling that you
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: don't like, you know, the awkward angle over here, the
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: window in the wrong place, whatever. Quit fighting it, maybe,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe that's a way to go. Quit fighting it.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: The features that people spend real money to fix, often
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: they could be the exact thing that gives the room,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: you know, incredible character if you just leaned into it,
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: you know, So work around the quirks. The way Earl
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: built around a boulder or around a tree. Just think
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: about that. Another thing. Earl treated the fireplace as like
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: the heart of the house, the beating heart of the house,
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: and he let the fireplace shape the whole design. What
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: do we do with that. Well, every room needs, you know,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: something like that, not not necessarily a fireplace, but you know,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: a beating heart, the heart of the room, you know,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: a focal point that the eyelands on that everything else orbits.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: When a room feels restless and you can't say why,
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: you can't quite put your finger on it, it's usually
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: because there's no heart, no center. So maybe find something
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: whatever that is. It could be art, it could be
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: a bold chair, it could be a view, you know,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: an amazing view out a window. You know, whatever it is, picket,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: commit to it and then arrange everything in service of it,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: all right, So that's an idea. Another one that you
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: can consider is play the long game. You know, a
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: home is always in progress. Earl saved one boulder for
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: the weather Vane restaurant. He saved this one boulder for
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: twenty six years, waiting for the right spot. He found
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: it and it was perfect, But he knew it's a
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: long game. You know, it's always something in process. Everything
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: is preceding and progressing. So resist the urge to finish
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: a room in one weekend with a matching set of
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: things from one store. You know, the best rooms get
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: layered over the years, piece by piece, with a few
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: gaps left on purpose. You know, a room that's fifty
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: percent or sixty percent you and forty percent or whatever
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: still searching, beats one that's one hundred percent catalog. You know,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: live with the blank while, live with the empty shelf,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: or put some filler things on there until the right
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: perfect piece shows up. But resist the urge to feel
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: like you've finished it, that you're done, and now it's
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: time to relax. Let it keep growing, you know, organically,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: Let it morph and evolve based on who you are
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: and how your family and your life and your personality
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: is evolving. That's a space you're going to want to
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: spend time in. That's a space that's really really interesting
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: to hang out in. Let's see here another idea, build
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: a sense of place in your home. You know what
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: I'm getting at here is Earl used the literal you know,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: landscape around him, not not just building around the landscape,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: but he used the materials, you know, from the landscape
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: around a Michigan boulders, off the beach, stone, from the
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: quarry down the road. He used all of those things.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: So bring in materials and objects maybe that actually come
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: from somewhere you know, near you, or mean something to you,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: you know, not just something that fits the design. And
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: this goes back. It kind of is married to the
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: whole Cleopatra thing I talked about. But find things that
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: speak to you that matter, not just that that fill
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: the gap color wise or you know, texture wise, but
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: something where the piece itself has value. Look for those things.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: You know, real wood stone, you know, real plants, regional art,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: you know, a piece from a trip or or you know,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: maybe a local maker, something like that. When everything that
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: you've got is mass produced, a house feels you know,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: it can feel like a hotel, It can feel very
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: you know, cookie cutter, but a handful of things in
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: the room with roots really make it feel like yours.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: You know. Another way to think about this is something
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm sure other people call it. For me,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: I think about it as the search, you know, the
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: value of the search. You know. I go looking. We
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: hit a lot of antique places and a lot of
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: you know, flea marketing places, and we find things for
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: our home to use as decor that really aren't decor.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: You know, this really technically wasn't created to be decor.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: It's just items that at one point in history had
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: very practical uses. But the search, you know, trying to find,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: you know, just the right thing, and just pouring over
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: shelves that normally you would walk past because you know
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: there's nothing there that you would put, you know, on
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: a shelf, and yet all of a sudden, behind everything
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: you find this whatever it is, some funky players that
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: looks unlike any other players you've ever seen, and it's
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: really really interesting and you realize it's perfect for that
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: shelf or whatever. The fun of that whole process, it's
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: like a quest that you were on and you found,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: you know, the holy Grail of items or whatever you
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: want to call it, and you brought it home and
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: it becomes a story that, whether you tell it or
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: or not, it's something that you live out and every
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: time you see that piece, you remember the search that
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: brought you to it. The piece has value way beyond
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: just what it does. But for me, stay away, or
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: at least make sure that you're not just filling your
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: space with stuff that you're getting from you know, a
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: mass produced, just a department store kind of thing. Find
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: those unique items, bring them in, make sure they've got value,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: not value meaning you know, that's primarily what you're looking for.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: Is meaning last one that I've got kind of a bonus.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Trust your own eye and what I'm getting at here,
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: or basically, I think the better way to say it
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: would be trust your instincts. You know. By the end
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: of his life, Earle, we talked about it. He was
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: legally blind and he's still designing, and he's doing it
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: by running his hands over the stone to decide if
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: it's right, all by feel. You know, his instincts were
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: that good he could tell, you know, and he trusted
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: him even though he didn't have the eyesight to back
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: it up and to prove it to himself. Trusts to
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: his own instincts. Trust your instincts, you know, over outside validation.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: If it feels right to you, if it feels right
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: in your space, it is right. Go with it. All right,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: that's it. I'm gonna let this mushroom house thing go.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: I thought it was so crazy interesting. Hopefully you enjoyed
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: the deep dive. If you like things like this, you know,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: conversations like this and just talking about our homes and
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: making our homes what we want them to be, and
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: you know, better places to spend time in make sure
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: you're subscribing to Home and Progress. So I've got man,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: I don't know how many episodes we've got now this
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: is episode four sixty three, so I do know how
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: many four hundred and sixty two other episodes that you
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: can check out by all means, dig into them and
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: see what you find. There's a lot of good stuff
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: out there. I've got a number of different co hosts
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: through the years, a couple of them maybe three technically
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: three co hosts through the years kind of colors the
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: show differently, So go and check that out. But for
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: right now, I'm going to sign off for the and
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: call it good. I hope all of you have a
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: great weekend. Again, subscribe to the podcast. If you're not,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: If you would be willing to leave us review a review,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: a good review. If you're only inclined to leave a
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: bad review, go find another podcast somewhere and you leave
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: it right there. But if you feel like you'd like
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: to leave a good one, it really helps other people
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: find our show, So that'd be great anyway, have a
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: great rest of the week for Home in Progress. I'm
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: Dan Hansen. See you next time.