The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

The entire apartment, which can’t be more than fifteen feet by fifteen, is visible from the front door: the makeshift sofa, the kitchen, the workshop, the “bedroom.” In fact, Dick Donovan’s apartment, where he’s lived since August, more closely resembles a fort. “On the second morning I lived here,” he recalls, “I fried eggs from bed and ate them in bed. And I thought either I am in heaven or I am in danger.” Indeed, the bed abuts a tiny gas stove. He’s mounted a tall window screen between the two, which acts as a grease shield and also keeps his blankets from catching fire.

There’s a genuine artfulness to Donovan’s space. Not only is he a charcoal artist, a master Etch-A-Sketcher, and a collector of found art, but he built nearly every structure in the apartment by hand, including his platform bed, the clothes rail above it, and a swivel counter in the kitchen. He did this without making a single cut to the wood he retrieved from alleys and trash bins. All of his work is unique, some might even say Seussian. “I always deviate from my plans,” he explains. When not running deliveries for Leaning Tower of Pizza, he’s taking classes in carpentry. Donovan recently acquired a fixer-upper houseboat that’s anchored on the Mississippi. “It’s all I can think about now,” he says. “I’ve been building forts since I was a kid, starting with cushions and evolving into elaborate snow forts. That’s my fort on the river.”

The aspects of the apartment Donovan didn’t build, he modified. The small refrigerator is mod-podged with old sewing patterns, as are patches above the door and fireplace. Yes, this tiny nook has a fireplace, in which he has placed a plug-in pile of fake logs. Some of the walls are framed with wooden yardsticks; all are painted, at least partly, ochre yellow, Donovan’s favorite color for walls. Sticking with the warm palette, his curtains are orange. His sofa is covered with a red blanket. “I like sunset colors,” he says. “Mellow tones. I find them relaxing.”

A computer used to hang over the bed from chains, but as winter dragged on and his “life force drained,” he had to take it down. “The thought that it might fall on me was giving me insomnia,” says Donovan, who holds a psychology degree from the University of Minnesota. “Maybe this summer, I’ll put it back up.” Most of his other electronics are old and formerly discarded. They include a four-track recorder that “may work,” a turntable from a grade-school AV department, and a microwave that he says weighs as much as two air conditioners. “It’s so preposterous—it must have come from the Chernobyl cafeteria.” His most prized appliance by far is a screw gun. “If I was stuck on a desert island and could have only one thing, it would be a screw gun.” After a pause, he adds, “and a lot of batteries.”—Jennifer Vogel