For this Christmas Eve, I thought I would do a post on a couple of classic, red cabooses that have been made into the offices of the beautiful Osmosis Day Spa in Freestone, California. Osmosis is located in the tiny hamlet between Santa Rosa and Bodega Bay and features a Japanese-style retreat with bonsai, bamboo and Buddha. The spa offers massages, mud baths and their signature cedar enzyme bath.
Each of the recycled train cabooses are located in the backyard of the spa and hold storage areas and computer equipment. They are also nice places for the staff to hang out and have lunch. Over 25 years, the garden has grown up around each caboose, making them look as if they’ve sprouted out of the ground.
The Osmosis Spa is one of the greenest spas in the world. The spa recycles water from its own wetlands and uses the water for local irrigation. The spa is a founding member of the Green Spa Network and uses sustainable practices in its business.
Photos by Christina Nellemann
By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]
mud baths ok…..cedar enzyme bath ok ….recycled spa water …..huh… no thanks….I hope they dont recycle the water for the baths…..
looks like a nice place to go to
a little TLC is in order
Being someone that works on rail cars for a living I really hope they start to take better care of those cars. Cabooses are becoming exceedingly harder to find in certain areas and most are not suited for much anymore because they were neglected.
If the staff wants to keep hanging out in there they might want to put a little effort into the upkeep of the cabooses. Start with getting those damn vines away.
It appears some of the commenters are more interested in preserving the cabooses for collector value than enjoying them for their warmth and aging beauty. I think they are beautiful, vines and all. They may not last forever but they will be enjoyed and loved. If you want preserved cabooses, go to a railroad museum.
Benjamin, so can I assume you allow your home to submit to peeling paint, dry rot, invasive vines, and so on? When your roof begins to leak will you not repair or replace it?
If not preserve our homes are we then supposed to allow the slow destruction of our homes without the possibility of passing along the space to another generation?
Did I say restore the caboose? No I did not. Those beautiful vines(potato vine)are more than likely ripping it apart. Those wooden cars suffer a lot of damage from being in service to begin with, add in vines to pry apart the joinery, introduce more water and you’ll be left with nothing usable at all. If it is to be kept a viable tiny dwelling or “hang out” it should be kept up.
If more of those cars were kept up we wouldn’t need to go to a museum to see one.
Would love to see photos of the inside. i have always wanted to live in a railway car. I think it started when I first saw the movie Harold And Maud. I loved Maud’s railway car home.
What an interesting idea. It would be great to see the inside to see just what they did with it.
Is the plural of caboose, cabeese?
Those caboooses definitely need some work very soon. Wood sheath casbooses always needed more maintenance than the later all steel cars. And these cabeese pictured here are already a design that is rare. Please dont let them fall apart