Now here’s a novel notion: a church built out of beer cans.  Yep, that’s right.  A church. From beer cans.

Although it may sound like something straight from the mind of Homer Simpson, this is actually a true story of ecclesiastical architecture.

Having lost their main church building to developers, the parish of Colston Milton in Glasgow could soon boast Scotland’s first recycled place of worship, pending the results of a feasibility study.

Of course, the new church wouldn’t be made entirely from recycled alcohol receptacles, fabulous though that may be; there’ll be all sorts of other stuff used, from old tyres and windscreens to earth and wood.

But the specific idea of using beer cans, according to the parish’s Reverend Rowe, came from ‘a wonderful group of men and women who drink in the woods’.

That’s a very sweet euphemism for what we Glaswegians call ‘jakeys’.  The English definition, courtesy of the Urban Dictionary, is: ‘members of the street drinking fraternity’.

Yet praise where praise is due, as these wonderful winos have fully embraced the recycling concept and are regularly delivering their empties to the church hall for use in the project.

However, when the good Reverend revealed to the BBC that he hoped the locals  would help in the actual building of the new church, it gave me pause.

Heavy drinkers? Drunk construction? Brilliant!  This could unintentionally end up as Glasgow’s answer to the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

No, it’s not a regular blog posting (yet), but to be quite honest, with the amount of dubious data out there it easily could be.

The questionable claim that has caught my eye on this occasion comes courtesy of a survey into the saving habits of first-time buyers.

Finance site Fairinvestment.co.uk surveyed around 2,500 individuals and found that they put away around £139 a month, equating to £1,668 a year.

This, they pointed out, would be a mere dent when it comes to stumping up for a £26,127 deposit on your first home (average deposit of 15 per cent, average house price of £174,178).

So with all that scrimping and saving just how long would it take before the Holy Grail of property ownership was attained?

“15 Years!” screamed the headline, “15 Years for first-time buyers to save a 15 per cent mortgage deposit.”

That’s 15 years of saving at a consistent rate of £1,668 a year, obviously ignoring the pesky little matter of inflation and the unending variance in house prices – oh, and let’s not forget the see-sawing of mortgage rates and lending criteria…

You get my point.  Unfortunately, as dull as they may seem, all those variables added to the mix are important and have and will continue to have a massive effect on buyer affordability.

Of course it could well take fifteen years for a first-time buyer to save up to buy their first home, but it could easily be less if mortgage lenders start to relax their LTVs and fees a bit. Sure, it may look improbable right now, what with LIBOR going up again and banks collapsing and merging left and right.

But the point is it could still happen between now and 2023, as could any multitude of economic outcomes that could affect the housing market.

And let’s not forget that a saver’s personal circumstances are more than likely to change massively over this time. I for one have no intentions of remaining the sole contributor to my future mortgage over the next decade and a half, and I’m usually incredibly pessimistic in that department.

But with first-time buyers undoubtedly facing a real struggle at the moment to claw their way onto the ladder I think it’s important not to depress the situation further with misleading hysterical claims.

The advice for FTBs, however, remains the same wherever you look. Sit tight and save. After all, tomorrow is another day…

Amy Winehouse is reportedly saying No, no, no to London life and upping sticks to a sedate village in the Suffolk countryside.

Tired of the temptations of the Capital, and in a bid to get her life back on track, the singer is supposedly just days away from completing on the purchase of a seven-bed period farmhouse set in three acres of land.

There’s even a readymade recording studio in place, should all that fresh country air reawaken her creative senses, and she allegedly got the new pad for a song - £750,000, reduced from nearly a million.

The exact location of the house – and the village - is being kept under wraps but it’s believed to be close to the prison where her husband, Blake, will still have to live for the next few months until he’s released.

In the meantime, I have a great mental image of La Winehouse striding around village lanes dressed in tweed, headscarf and wellies, and thoroughly embracing her new incarnation as Lady of the Manor.

Encouragingly, the locals seem to have taken the news remarkably well, with a spokesperson insisting that not only will the pop star be given a warm welcome but that her privacy will be respected, too.

Hmmm.  I wonder whether or not Amy will be capable of displaying mutual respect? Somehow I doubt it; in fact, I reckon it won’t be long before the once sleepy village is party to some crazy nocturnal antics.

No room at home to work? No room for a kitchen? No room for Great Aunt Ethel to stay?

No problem, thanks to the slightly odd, very Japanese and super space efficient creations of Architect Toshihiko Suzuki and his ‘Architectural Furniture’.

His three designs, a foldaway office, kitchen and guest room offer a neat solution to limited space, or as the website suggests in charming Engrish: “We positions the infill as an immediate adaptive method to fit changes”. But of course. Confused? Watch the video:

And before you start lamenting that this is just one more in a long line of design prototypes, all nice and shiny on screen but sadly absent in the real world… Stop. Right. Now.

Because the Foldaway Office is on Amazon, you lucky people! Although it is only available in Japan, it’s 800,000 Yen, and the translatorbot seems to think it’s a collapsed frog…

Student landlords take note – buy a brace of these and you could increase your student-per-room ratio tenfold!

[via: Treehugger]

It seems like Halloween may have come early given the ghostly goings-on at one Nottinghamshire mansion.

Now I doubt I’ll be saying this too often, but surely you’ve got to pity the poor millionaire who bought the 52-room pile (for a cool £3.6 million) in the belief he’d be breaking a sweat in the exclusive gym, enjoying the delights of a private cinema and sharing the 17 bedrooms with just his wife and four kids.

But apparently some unwelcome guests (of the spectral variety) weren’t too keen when it came to the new inhabitants, as they terrorised Anwar Rashid and his family for the eight months they managed to stick it out at Clifton Hall.

From eerie voices, to shapeshifting phantoms taking the form of their children, when the distraught family discovered spots of blood on their baby’s blanket they knew it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.

Mr Rashid told The Independent: “That was the day my wife said she’d had enough. We didn’t stay that night. It was the last straw, we felt they had come to attack us. It was really emotional.”

And who were they gonna call? Er- the bank it would seem. They did try some ghostbusters first though, in the form of the Ashfield Paranormal Investigation Network, who agreed that the mansion- which dates back to the Norman conquest- was indeed creepy and haunted.

But Mr Rashid felt that the only way out of the nightmare scenario was to stop paying the mortgage. That was back in January.

It’s now September and the bank has evidently taken the hint and repossessed – oh the irony!- the paranormal property. Knight Frank has been given the job of marketing it.

Good luck with selling that on. Of course, there’s still the ghost of a chance some ghoul-loving moneybags will take on the haunted house. And in the current climate what better ammunition for driving a bargain?

Have you ever fallen victim to things that go bump in the night? Would you willingly move into a property already occupied by some spooky spirits? Would it make a difference if they were friendly (like Casper) or the price was too good to resist? Let us know what you think.

The witty Royals of Rent blog reveals that negotiators at Falcon and Foxglove (Burnley) have taken to burying statues of St Joseph in the gardens of properties they’re trying to sell.

St Joseph? Despite many years enduring the tender ministrations of Sisters of Mercy, Christian Brothers, Jesuits and Dominicans, this is a new one on me.

But a quick Google of St Joseph does indeed reveal that he’s the patron saint of carpentry, property and home sales (he’s also the man to get in touch with if you want an easy death, but let’s move quickly on…)

There’s quite a little cottage industry out there on the interweb flogging St Joseph home sale kits to the devout and the desperate – take your pick from:

The Catholic Company: St Joseph Home Sale Kit

St Joseph Statue

Or my own particular favorite:

Discount Catholic Products: Home Help Kits

Once you have your statue, you bury yer man in the garden (upside down according to some), say a quick prayer, and stand well back to avoid being trampled by the stampede of heaven-sent buyers …

But does it work? Howard Baker of Falcon & Foxglove told Estate Agent Today: “Very few houses were selling and we just thought it was worth a try.

“When the first house sold within four days I thought it was a coincidence, but the second sale happened only days later, followed by the third shortly afterwards.

“We are always looking for new ways of marketing properties and making them more saleable, so we are willing to try anything that helps to sell houses.”

Woooh! Spooky!

If this really does work we could have a whole new way of selling houses … caveat emptor be damned, caveat atheist more like….

But what I really want to know is this: why, oh why, didn’t someone tell the DCLG about St Joseph before they went to all the trouble of introducing Home Information Packs … they could have introdcued Heavenly Information Packs instead.

We like clever designs at FindaProperty. And we like smart, green ideas.  So when a marriage of the two comes to our attention, we like to share the joy.

Therefore, it is with great pleasure that we bring to your attention the Can Can Chair, a regal looking affair (albeit toytown-sized) that is made entirely from recycled drinks cans.

pic: Treehugger

Okay, so we admit that the fuchsia hue and celestial winged pattern might not be to everyone’s taste.

And it doesn’t look like the most comfortable piece of furniture ever made although it’d probably do your posture the world of good.

But given that its designer was Laurence Llewelyn–Bowen, the foppish, long-haired fellow from Changing Rooms, maybe we should just be grateful that it doesn’t come in a garish shade of purple.

Flamboyant Laurence, who was responsible for some of the most outlandish makeovers seen on the TV series – and the ensuing anguish – seems to have left controversy behind with this nifty idea which demonstrates how recycling and design can work together.

Even better, come next year when vivid pink thrones will be soooo last year, the chair can be melted down and used to create something completely new. Clever, huh?

Laurence’s recycled chair will be auctioned off later in the year with all proceeds going to charity.

Consider this. It’s 1952. You live in Boswell, British Columbia, and you’ve spent 35 years working as a mortician in the local funeral parlour.

Now it’s time to retire. But how are you going to make the most of your twilight years?

David H. Brown could have spent them trout fishing in the local lakes, but instead he decided to wander around western Canada collecting empty embalming fluid bottles from his friends in the funeral business.

Empty embalming fluid bottles? Yes. You read that right. And when he’d collected half a million of the square-shaped bottles, he used them to build himself a house. As you do.

The end result - a bizarre crennelated retreat – is certainly impressive, not least when you consider that this kind of thing was probably enough to get you sectioned back in the 1950s.

Brown, as far as we know, managed to escape the attentions of the local nurse Ratched, and left to his own devices he built something that’s half eco-home, half macabre artistic installation.

Sharks in tanks? Earthships? Mr Brown, a true pioneer, got there long before Damien Hirst and Mike Reynolds, and for that we salute him.

The house is still a private residence, but according to that great gazetteer of stateside weirdness, RoadsideAmerica.com, it’s open to the public in the summer.

If I ever make it to BC I’ll be sure to pay a visit … as an added bonus, the world’s largest standing cuckoo clock is just down the road in Kimberley.  It features “Happy Hans,” who yodels enthusiastically every hour.

A house made from embalming fluid bottles and Bavarian timepieces that yodel: now that’s what I call perfect holiday happiness.

More here: Ecofriend

I read that Gatwick Airport is up for sale, a snip at £1.8billion. It’s certainly not your average ‘property for sale’, but its particulars are impressive:

(original photos: johnsto and stormo66)

“There’s a curious truth in architecture that the worse the conditions of the project, the more beautiful the solution.”

So mused Kevin McCloud about this beleaguered project in Cheltenham when Grand Designs featured it back in January.

But I think Kev may have been having a bit of an off day. The house, built in defiance of 90 planning objections from the neighbours (90! what chance a cup of sugar?) wasn’t one of my favorite GD efforts.

Why? Well, let’s put it this way, if I had £350k to spend on my dream home I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t dig a big hole in my back garden and construct half of my living spaces in the new subterranean basement.

Don’t get me wrong – the house does have windows. It’s just that quite a few of them are in the roof. Or overlooking an underground internal courtyard.

This, I’ll grant you, is a very clever way to maximize the light … but I think I’d find it all a tad claustrophobic. I like to be able to look out on the blue yonder without having to lie on my back.

There are, I’m sure, plenty who’ll disagree with me - and if you’re one of them (or even if you’re not), listen up because the place could be yours for just £25.

Undaunted by the credit crunch, the couple behind the controversial project – which, in its defence, is massively eco-friendly and quite beautifully finished – have also come up with a suitably unconventional way to sell it.

Enter their prize draw for just £25 and you could win the whole kit and caboodle, including some pretty cool furniture, high-tech gadgetry and, for reasons even The Kev couldn’t quite figure out, three ovens.

The odds, apparently, are 46,000-1, which are certainly better than the lottery. So despite my reservations, I’ll definitely be having a flutter. And if I win, who knows, I might even have a change of heart and learn to love it too.

Buy a ticket for the prize draw at Win The Cheltenham House.