For many of us, beer is its own reward.

But one man looked into the bottom of his can and found a home, or at least plenty of decorations for his Houston house -- and he's being celebrated for it.

John Milkovisch, who died in the 1980s, really loved his hops. We mean really. His son says he never had less than eight or ten cases stacked up in the garage, and that he would frequently clean out the local grocery store's suds. Over 20 years, he emptied more than 50,000 cans of brew, thousands of which he flattened and turned into patterns for his family's home.

The "Beer Can House" has now been christened a public folk-art monument.

"Most people who take the lead in doing something truly innovative are considered a little bit crazy," Houston Mayor Bill White is quoted as saying at a dedication ceremony. White also praised Milkovisch's "hard work of generating all those beer cans."

Renovations to the house to turn it into a museum cost $400,000 and took seven years.

Question raised: If we drink so many beers we can build a house, can we just tell everyone who calls us "lazy slackers" that we're artists?

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