Tim Seggerman bought his Brooklyn home (Crown Heights) at an auction in 1987 for $140,000 (his down payment of $14,000 was his entire savings). It had been abandoned for 20 years and had holes in the roof, but Seggerman was trained as a builder and carpenter so he began working on it himself.
Over the past couple of decades, the home has grown with Seggerman's changing needs: a lofted bed became an indoor cabin for kids and when the nieces and nephews had grown, it became a lofted bed again; the bedroom was once divided to provide workspace for his ex-wife, but after the divorce, the wall came down; and a once-open corner office became a shuttered workspace and is now- in preparation for Seggerman's retirement- is morphing into an open movie library.
Seggerman is both architect and builder, as well as a master carpenter, and he's crafted all of the home's furniture, mostly out of scrap materials and local woods.
He believes in taking his time to build and that a home is never finished. It's an idea embraced by the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi: everything is impermanent, unfinished, and imperfect. In Seggerman's home cables and pipes are uncovered and molding has been removed to leave the caulk line visible.
- Website: timseggerman.com/timseggerman/...
- Facebook: / tim.seggerman
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