The not so big house

We’ve written about how we’re building this house on a budget and how Good House Cheap House helped us see that we could build a great house for not too much money.

Another book that was very helpful to us was The Not So Big House by Sarah Susanka.

Susanka is an architect who believes that the large homes being built today place too much emphasis on square footage rather than on current lifestyles. How many people really need a formal living room or a formal dining room that gets used maybe once or twice a year? We certainly don’t.

Susanka features homes that are well under 2,500 s.f. and a couple that are even around 1,000 s.f. That may seem small, but the book tells you how to give the illusion of space, and how, with storage, lighting, and furniture arrangement, a smaller home can be comfortably livable.

Even before we knew about the Not So Big House movement, we were fans of that smaller homes, having owned one larger home that mostly collected clutter and then subsequently moving into a smaller house that doesn’t allow for clutter to accumulate. (Or, when it invariably does, doesn’t allow for the clutter to co-exist peacefully with me.)

Susanka has a Not So Big House website, which is a helpful resource for anyone interested in learning more.

Image courtesy of Amazon.com.

Good house, cheap house

One of the books that inspired this house project and really helped us think creatively was Good House Cheap House by Kira Obolensky.

Rarely do good and cheap go together, but this book shows you how you can have both at the same time. Obolensky says you don’t have to be a millionaire to live in a home that’s special. The unique homes featured in the book helped Pete and me brainstorm a lot of fun ideas when we were designing our house.

For example, one thing we’ve seen done a lot in modern design is using basic Ikea cabinets in the kitchen, but jazzing them up with great counters. Or, using simple materials in interesting ways, such as corrugated galvanized steel in unexpected locations. At one point we considered using it as our house siding, but we eventually opted to use it on the roof and on the front porch.

Most important, Good House made it clear that it is possible to build an amazing house on a tight budget. When we were first researching construction costs, we were seeing numbers like $200/square foot or $250/s.f. or [gulp] even $300 or more per square foot. There was no way we were going to build a house with those numbers — we were hoping for around $150/s.f. or less and it appears that we’ll hit that, even considering the cost of the land.

Obolensky used to have a website that I would love to direct you to, but it seems to have disappeared, so my idea of showing you some of the homes in the book that influenced us is not going to work the way I’d hoped. If you go to this Amazon.com link, you’ll see under the photo of the book a link to search inside the book. Around the fourth page, it starts to get interesting and you can see one of the kitchens that influenced me when I was planning the new kitchen.

This wasn’t the only book that influenced our thinking. Coming soon is The Not So Big House, which also helped us with our plans.