Sat, Aug 30, 2008
 The living room features tea-stained concrete floors covered in satin acrylic sealer. The couple used 15 pounds of tea leaves to stain the floor.
photos by dean knuth / Arizona Daily Star
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DRIVERS Health Care ADMINISTRATOR General Wasatch Property Management Maintenance Tech General Independent Fire & Safety Fire Suppression Systems inspector General Dismas Charities Security Monitor Trades/Construction Osmose Utilites Foremen Sales and Marketing Electric Supply, Inc Outside Sales at HomeArtists in residenceCouple have crafted a world of surprises inside 750-square-foot stucco home
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.24.2006
By Gillian Drummond
Special to the Arizona Daily Star
Comic-book superheroes, 1950s retro, modern-art masters and junk-shop finds: They all come together in a tiny Midtown house that's full of surprises.
From the outside, the place is no great shakes. A small stucco building with a carport, it sits at the back of a lot, one that was split so the owners could rent out the existing house.
But as you walk across the paint-splattered carport floor, it's the first sign that — inside — you're going to get something far more colorful than you expect.
Tim Diggles, an artist with his own picture-framing and -hanging business, and Mary Smith, a former photo stylist who now teaches yoga, have spent their careers poring over artistic and stylistic detail. So when it came to their house, they were just as meticulous.
But they're also self-professed "pack rats" who like to scour junk shops and are loath to throw anything away.
So their first challenge when they built the house was to squeeze themselves, their possessions and their art into just 750 square feet of living space.
Diggles spends much of his time in the attached garage that he turned into his studio, which is almost the same size as the living space. Here, he builds, designs and stores equipment for his business, Cavanagh Art Installation.
But the living quarters — with an eat-in kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, office and living room — are an extension of his passion for art. The walls display his own metal and pop art sculptures, while room and closet doors are dedicated to some of his favorite modern masters.
On each side of four doors he has replicated works by the likes of Joan Miró, Keith Haring and Piet Mondrian, turning them into large canvases all of their own.
Some would call it plagiarism; Diggles calls it practical.
"I'm not reselling them, and I could never afford a Miró. I always admired these big, huge abstract paintings, but I don't have a big enough house for them," he says.
The bathroom floor is a tribute to artist Jackson Pollock, with white and black acrylic paint splattered then sealed on top of the raw beige concrete.
The rest of the scored concrete floors, which extend throughout the house, involved another experiment altogether. A contractor gave the couple the idea of staining them with tea, which they did without any instruction — just 15 pounds of tea leaves and some buckets. (See sidebar.)
Diggles, 54, and Smith, 49, spend half their year in Portland, Ore., where they also have a house. To achieve their dream of bi-city living, they had to build the Tucson home as cheaply as possible.
Diggles spent $80,000 on the project and devoted nine months to it, completing it in 2003. He contracted out the plumbing, electrical, drywall and stucco work and, with the help of friends, he did the rest himself.
In the kitchen, the couple had custom cabinets built out of maple and sheet metal by A Mountain Custom Woodworks. Costs stayed low with plywood backings on the doors, fixed shelves in the cupboards and a laminate countertop. Diggles says the $3,000 bill was a fraction of what he was quoted by other companies.
Its busy floor aside, the bathroom is an exercise in clean, basic and modern lines, with black and white tile, black and white painted walls, white fittings (most of them from Benjamin Supply) and a pair of waist-high basins.
Diggles chose to keep the home's air vents exposed to add to the industrial feel of the place, create more space and eliminate the costs of dropping down a ceiling.
Throughout the bedroom and living room, pop art, bright colors and retro collectors' pieces abound, from a "lightning bolt" headboard (one of Diggles' first pieces of art) to a bubblegum-pink standing hair dryer, which he converted into a lamp, and Batman throws and pillows.
Most people who've caught the self-build bug want to do it over again. But for Diggles, once was enough.
The house building was a full-time effort, of which he says candidly: "What I learned in the end is that I never want to do it again. I don't think my back could survive it. I'm looking at dying in this house."
● Contact freelance reporter Gillian Drummond at GCDrummond@aol.com.
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