Artist J. Peachy is embarking on his most ambitious project to date: Trading his talents for a three-bedroom home.
It's a tall order but Peachy already owns the land in Anmore's Countryside Village and proudly holds the blueprints for the quarter-million-dollar, three-level home he plans to share with his parents and brother.
All he needs are parts and labour.
Much like former Port Moody resident Kyle MacDonald of One Red Paperclip fame, who bartered his way up from a paperclip to a house in Saskatchewan and with whom Peachy has been consulting, Peachy is confident he can trade his way to his eco-friendly dream home within one year.
"The bartering is really an art project in itself," Peachy told The Tri-City News last week.
He plans to use as much reclaimed, recycled or donated building materials as possible, winding up with what he hopes will be a sustainable, eco-friendly piece of inhabitable art, complete with a personal studio and public gallery.
So far, the Anmore artist and environmentalist has traded a painting and some film-editing know-how for a two-person kayak, which he is now in the process of trading with his landlady for her kitchen fixtures, fridge, stove and dishwasher to furnish his new home.
He also traded one of his paintings for a sailboat, sight-unseen, that is still docked somewhere in Mission.
But Peachy's first big trading goal is to get himself a pickup truck and a storage shed so he can begin collecting materials at the building site.
It's a process that is being documented by fellow Port Moody artist and director of the Life Network's Weird Homes series, Eva Wunderman.
She told The Tri-City News she plans to film Peachy and two other Canadians attempting similar feats of money-free upward mobility (one is trying to trade up from a camera to an electric sports car, she said).
"I was interested in the concept because it has to do with sustainability and not throwing things away," Wunderman said, "especially in [Peachy's] case because he's building a house while reducing the amount of waste that goes to a landfill and reusing things he can trade."
Wunderman said she has seen bartering explode in popularity recently, especially in Europe, with the rise of eco-consciousness and the downturn in the economy.
That environmental angle has also caught the attention of SwapSity, a Toronto based e-business designed to connect barterers across the country.
Peachy's barter home is the featured project on SwapSity's website, calling it "The Great Barter Build" and advertising Peachy's transferrable services in things like media and marketing solutions, carpooling between the Tri-Cities and Vancouver, a private face-painting party, original art, a ride to a campsite and even something called "karaoke sidekick."
"If you want to go to karaoke but your friends don't want to, I'll be your harmonic and lyrical support," Peachy explained. "We even have the speakers and stuff like that so if someone wants to do YouTube karaoke at their house in private, I'll come out and sing and encourage them."
Wunderman said she is not only confident that Peachy will be able to achieve his goal of bartering and borrowing his way to a house but, she said, with any luck, the whole adventure could be on TV by the fall of 2012.
