The Anti-Deliverance

Normally when you picture a 140 square foot shack in the West Virginia wilderness, images of oil-drum liquor stills, year-round yard sales and barefoot 25-year-old grandmothers chained to woodburning stoves come to mind (being born and raised in Appalachia, I'm allowed to say these horrible things).

Architect Jeffrey Broadhurst's interpretation is thankfully a bit different. His shack features board-and-batten siding and a standing-seam, terne-coated steel roof atop a wood platform. Oil lamp light, woodburning heat, and a hand-powered, gravity-fed plumbing system keep things simple and honest. A garage door completely opens one side of the structure, allowing unobstructed views of the hills below.

Seeing that something so simple and beautiful can be done with off-the-shelf materials is dangerous, my wife is going to want an explanation of why her husband is suddenly buying wilderness land and building sheds like an obsessed alternate-dimensional version of the unabomber with good taste.