Those are nice looking houses, and certainly not ‘huge’.
However, even the smallest of them is 2-3x larger than the sizes mentioned here.
Our rowhouse is approximately 1600 square feet and if it had another bathroom, I could see a family of four living there comfortably.
For the most part, our furniture tends to be smaller than what you would buy for a McMansion. No big oversized and overstuffed pieces. It feels a lot more comfortable if you don’t have a lot of crap. We added in closet space and extra kitchen cabinets which helped us declutter and get rid of a few pieces of furniture. If you keep the furniture to what you really need and don’t accumulate too much stuff it will be very livable.
My condo is about 700 sq ft. Pretty big living room – enough for a 57" TV, two bedrooms, a kitchen and bath.
Of course I live alone. ::sob, shudder::
I would sell our 2500 sq ft house in a minute for something around 1000 sq ft if I didn’t hate moving so much. We comfortably lived in 1200 sq ft with 2 children before we moved here. The extra time it takes to clean all this and the tendency to acquire more crap makes my old home a time and money saver. It does make a difference how the space is arranged though. Small bedrooms are better than small living areas and we did have a large basement for storage.
I grew up in an approximately 1000 sq ft home with one bathroom and a family of 6. That’s what everyone had back then and we didn’t feel crowded. It’s kind of ridiculous that in this area starter homes now need to be around 3000 sq ft with more bathrooms than occupants. When a couple of kids are added people complain that they have no room.
BTW, our local IKEA has displays basically setting up entire houses/apts. in small areas. I think they range from about 600 sq. ft. to 300 sq. ft. 600 seems pretty nice the way they set it up…300 not so much.
Take my wife. Please.
We live in a 1200 ft[sup]2[/sup] farmhouse. She’s much more of a packrat than I am; our saving grace(s) are 3 outbuildings that absorb the overflow. She sews, and I’m a model railroader.
I have a large and involved daydream of being in the same property as a bachelor, and the house would be a very good place for a single person. I have no desire to ever live in a McMansion.
My two bedroom house in New Zealand is 78 square meters which is about 839 sq ft. Although it’s smaller than average in its neighborhood, I never thought of it as “ultra small”.
The three bedroom house I grew up in with my mum and dad and two siblings is probably about the same floor space. I don’t recall ever really feeling cramped.
I don’t see how some of those houses can classify as ‘not so big houses’? Some of them are pretty big…off course currently I live in a town in the UK where the majority of the houses are terraced places. My own house is just 9ft wide and 50ft deep on the groundfloor and only 30ft deep on the first floor.
Makes you wonder what King Louis XIV did with the Palace of Versailles…that was a bit more than 1000 sq. ft!
Woooooow, nine feet wide? Awesome. I suppose that the rooms are just in one long line, boxcar-style?
Our current house for two adults and two cats is a little over 1000 sq. ft. (1020, I think). We have a full basement, too (almost all houses here do). The house is nicely laid out and the space is used well - we have plenty of room here. I think buying only as much house as you need is a fantastic concept (and being realistic with what you need, not just what you want). When we go to buy another house next year, it will be around the same size.
If less than 1000 is a very small house, I guess ours is just small at 1020, but it doesn’t feel small to me at all. It feels just right. I have everything I need and more here. The only thing I don’t have is a garage or the yard to build a garage in, and that’s why we’re moving.
Sorry, I was looking at the “plans” section. This member architect has nice plans under 900 sq ft in the “cottage homes” section:
http://www.rosschapin.com/Plans/plans.html
Our last flat was (quick back-of-the-envelope calculation) about 900 square ft I think for (at the time) four of us - I didn’t feel at all squished, though my husband did. For two people I would find it quite roomy. We were certainly very comfy as a couple in our first house, which was around the same size.
Our current place is probably around 1800 for five people - I find it a little too much, in fact, and not all the space is well-used for our purposes. I suspect if I were designing an ideal five-person house I wouldn’t get much over 1500 square feet, and possibly less than that if it had a decent shed (sheds are great! For the first time in my life I’m living in a place with a lock-up garage and shelves ALL over the walls, and I could never go back)
I do know couples who live in similar-sized houses to us and I don’t totally “get” it - it would just depress me - all that cleaning! However, I’ve never been a homebody, so that may have something to do with it.
I live in a 624 square foot apartment that is laid out well and have plenty of room (of course, it’s just me…). The living room and kitchen are basically one room with different floor coverings and take up half the place. The bedroom and bathroom take up the other half. The large size of the bedroom allows me to utilize half of it as a studio, therefore I need only a one-bedroom unit. There are two closets and an 8’X6’ deck as well. Nice and cozy with plenty of room for my stuff.
If I were to build, I would likely go with something about the same size or not much bigger.
My house is 720 SF–it’s a converted garage/shop with no basement or attic. There are two people, two cats and a dog living here and it’s really not bad, spacewise. I’d like to add on a good sized, say 300 SF living room area, which would allow me to expand the bathroom and knock down all the existing interior walls that make it a bit crampy–it’s not really practical to divide this place up into two bedrooms. I’d also love to knock the ceiling through and sheetrock in the pitched roof to create an area where a loft bed could be feasibly built. The main wonderful thing about the house is that the kitchen is enormous, relative to the rest of it, which is perfect for me since we practically live in the kitchen anyway… The biggest downside is the spartan bathroom–no bathtub, just a shower stall. I’d like to fix that someday!
Ideally I’d take the existing living/bedroom space and make it into one big master suite, it would be about 375 SF on one end of the house. Then add on about 300 SF at the other end of the house for a living room with French doors leading out to the back yard. This would leave the kitchen and bath in the middle of the house and bump it all up to just about 1000 SF on a 5000 SF lot, which would be just right I think.
All I need is a buttload o’cash and I’m set! :smack:
Yeah, I was going to say - those are some pretty big houses, considering the title of the website! I was expecting sensible, compact houses - not house plans that still include an abundance of largely pointless rooms. (‘Parlour’? Seriously?)
Oh. Those are MUCH more sensible! Ta 
Sensibly-designed house plans for small blocks are so hard to find. In Australia, the trend is still towards two living areas and maybe a rumpus. WHYYYYYY? I hardly use the lounge room I have, for goodness’ sake. Most of the plans don’t really scale down well to remove the extra rooms, though, because they’re sort of placed smack-dab in the middle of other things. You’d end up re-drawing the entire thing from scratch to take out the superfluous rooms.
Sorry, I get agitated when I think on it too long. :smack:
heh, I was just thinking “welcome to my world.”
Basically, you adjust your ideas of how much you really need. And quite honestly, a lot of people have been confusing “need” and “want” for a very long time.
Seeing the hover-bubble (“very small” “less than 1000 sq.ft.”) I made a bet with myself:
- the OP is American,
- he’s shocked by the idea of a house so tiny.
So, excuse me while this European (current flat c. 500sq ft; owned flat c. 900 sq.ft; Mom’s flat c1200sq.ft plus 450ft terrace; many friends with 900sq.ft. detached houses or rowhouses) goes and pays herself that bet she won 
(if I was right I was getting me a soda, if I lost I’d be giving a certain amount of money away; soda time!)
Ah! I didn’t find my way there on first perusal. The home plans by the author of the book/website are quite a bit larger than these.