Ryan Anderson of RAD Furniture designed the stools as well as the table and benches on the pool deck.

Any combination of dining tables, desks, coffee tables, credenzas, standing desks, and more, are possible. And of course, the wood can be easily painted for a more colorful design.

Tanya, Chris, Jackson, and Zeke spend much of their day outside.

SWENYO and Uyeda are raising $20,000 on Kickstarter to pay for the production tools that would make the UX4 system possible. A pledge of just $45 will get you one UX4 Bracket Kit—future retail value: $75—that includes four brackets and all the necessary hardware and instructions. Bigger packages include more goodies, like other furniture from SWENYO and brackets in more colors!

Most furniture is expensive and inflexible, but the UX4 is a simple, economical, DIY system that aims to fix that.

The UX4's only custom element—powder-coated steel brackets, seen here in white—easily connect standard 2x4's to any flat wood surface. Simple screws hold everything in place.

In the living room, spare Scandinavian design takes center stage. Hans Wegner’s Wishbone chairs surround an Essay dining table by Cecilie Manz for Fritz Hansen; a mostly wood palette is enhanced by slate-gray brick around the fireplace. The paper lanterns throughout the home are a mixture of classics by Isamu Noguchi alongside those picked up in Japan and France.

DIY Furniture 2, a follow-up to DIY Furniture, showcases how to make unique designer furniture using readily available materials commonly found at the local hardware store. Picture courtesy of Laurence King Publishing.

Built-ins reduce the need for furniture.

At the client’s request the kitchen contains neither upper cabinets (Shino can’t reach them) nor an oven (they only used the old one once—to reheat a pizza). A modular Roche Bobois Mah Jong sofa adds a decorative flourish to the living area while maintaining as low a profile as the traditional Japanese furniture.

Yang Yeo and his girlfriend Ching Ian relax on the back stoop of their renovated and radically updated Singapore shophouse—an archetypal building type in this busy port city. “Shophouses brought back memories of our childhood,” says Yeo.

The projects in Stuart's DIY Furniture 2 range from novice to experienced and each design features diagrams with short, easy-to-follow instructions on how to build the piece. Picture courtesy of Laurence King Publishing.

The beanbag chairs and outdoor sofa and chairs are from West Elm and the Case Study Museum Bench is from Modernica.

Sultan of Sit Even if your carpentry skills peaked in eighth-grade woodshop, reclaimed lumber and a bit of sweat can stand you in good stead when it comes to outdoor furniture. Whitlock created a ruggedly beautiful bench (below) from scratch. He bought a chunk of trestle lumber at a local salvage yard and lag-bolted four Ikea Sultan stainless steel bed legs to its base. “It took me two hours, including lumberyard drive time,” he says. “I spent $70 total.” ikea.com

Two San Francisco art and travel addicts overhauled a loft—and customized a pair of shipping containers—to accommodate their collection and reflect their passions.

To highlight the existing architecture of the home, Hill retained the dark polish of the casement windows, which she finds enhances period details instead of undermining them. In the rear sunroom, the vintage Case Study furniture pieces with Plexiglas bases are from Metro Retro in Houston. A Bourgie lamp by Kartell is atop an old marble end table by Knoll, and the Gan kilim rug pictures a branch motif echoed in the kitchen and breakfast room.

Builder Ross Percival helped finesse the finely tuned detailing that separates the internal slope from the rock outside (opposite). The Pedro wire stool is by Craig Bond for Candywhistle.

Alex enjoys a sun-filled breakfast at the built-in dining table and bench, one of many space-saving designs.

A Bright Idea After build-out, the family realized they needed a light for their dining room. Tanya and Jackson took to their storage container, where they found fake flower branches they had bought at Ace Hardware, and paired them with a crumpled string of old Christmas lights. “We plugged it in and that was that,” says Tanya.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, food scraps and yard waste make up 20 percent of what we throw away. Composting organic materials keeps them out of the landfill, which cuts down on greenhouse gases, and enriches the soil. To compost at home, make a pile in your backyard, or introduce an indoor bin for throwaways like apple peels and eggshells.

The back patio is bordered by boulders picked up on the Gambys' land. Tanya says that particular design element will be repeated in the next home they build: "We've actually unearthed one the size of a minivan that we're going to use in the bigger house."

Though only two feet deep, the Ikea cabinet Azevedo bought for the guest bath didn’t quite fit, so she sliced off eight inches with a table saw. “It might be unorthodox, but it was just easier, faster, and cheaper to do it myself,” says the former furniture designer.

Simple utilitarianism at its finest: Takagi's Simple Machines series of stools, benches, and tables in white oak.

A departure from the mod-meets-baroque dining room, Turin’s breakfast area is far more sedate. She and her daughter, Helena, have a chat at a Progetto 1 table by Monica Armani for B&B Italia surrounded by four Lia chairs by Roberto Barbieri for Zanotta. The painting behind Helena is by Ricci Albenda.

DIY Synth Kit by Technology Will Save Us, $40 at techwillsaveus.com Technology Will Save Us makes even the most technical doodads simple to assemble. Their DIY Synth Kit is no different, teaching the joys of electronic music by empowering users to build their own instrument from scratch.

Grace Hawthorne of Paper Punk led a weekend-long interactive exhibit in which attendees used pieces from her Urban Fold Kit to build a giant, paper metropolis.

Seven smart ways to update your floors without replacing them, via the Huffington Post.

In the living and dining area of Jean Risom's Block Island family retreat, mostly vintage Risom furnishings share space with a few new additions, the view facing north is framed by the wall of glass. Photo by: Floto + Warner

The home’s original living and dining rooms were updated with custom cabinetry and new fir floors. The living room sofa, coffee table, and lounge chair are from Blu Dot.

It’s a good idea to read reviews about specific pieces before buying them, which can help prepare you for the unexpected.

In a small seating area at the base of a two-story tower, Oslo chairs and sofas by Anderssen& Voll are paired with Around tables by Thomas Bentzen, all from Muuto. The lamp from Svenskt Tenn was designed by Josef Frank in 1938.

The living room features two side chairs and an end table by Edward Wormley for Dunbar and a bronze screen designed by Harold Balazs.

Those hammers and saws built a home for the family’s chickens, watched over by Apolo among outdoor furniture by Richard Schultz.

Custom-designed furniture outfits the interior of a bunker-turned-vacation retreat in the Netherlands.

Much of the 1950s and '60s furniture collection comes from Denmark, the Czech Republic, Poland and the Netherlands.