They had another plan that seems to now be missing, [and they have changed the website, not sure i like the change]
I love them, and if I were not handicapped I could live in one[I cant manage stairs or ladders] if I were single. I can not see how mrAru and I oculd live in one, we have too much stuff.
Now if I got all 5000 of our books digitized into ebooks, and we had a workshop garage it might be manageable - BUT the kitchens are so micro it is hard to do the from-scratch cooking that some of our meals take [I dont care who you are, you can not properlly roll out a pie crust on an 18 inch by 24 inch swatch of countertop…and making the dough for a strudel, forget it.]
Under 1000 Sq. ft. is certainly not ultra-small. It certainly isn’t large either. My house is 1340 sq ft, and it’s got 3 BR, 1.5 bath, a large family room, large kitchen, separate dining room and living room. Plenty of space for us right now, though when child #2 comes along I’ll likely move to something closer to 2000 sq. ft.
Before buying this house, I was in a 950 sq. ft., 2 BR apartment, and while it wasn’t huge, it had plenty of living space for my wife and me.
It all depends on how it is laid out. Ours is 800 sq feet, and laid out so crappily it is damned near unlivable with more than 2 people in it. It has 2 bedrooms, NO closets. The master bedroom is 9x11 feet and the other is 9 by 9 feet. The only space that one would normally consider a dining nook, is where the front door comes into the house. We are getting ready to knock out the wall between the 2 sleeping holes to make an actual bedroom with a closet, and gut the other end of the house, move the front door from the skinny end of the house to the front face of the house and make a 15x20 eat in country style kitchen. Thank goodness we have turned the top floor of the barn into a bedroom so we have some place for the roomie we kicked out of the microbedroom so we could gut it=)
I live in Chicago, but I work in Kansas City. My brother and I converted his basement into an apartment for me. It is completely unlike any basement apartment we’ve ever seen. For one, it’s completely dry. We dug a “French Tile” drain system around the entire perimeter, linked to a dual sump pump system with battery backup. It’s so reliable that we put in carpet and pad. The bathroom has a heated floor. We replaced the whole furnace/AC system and there are no “mystery lumps” in the living room area - the ceiling is full height everywhere.
But the real jewel is the kitchen. We managed to tuck a full kitchen into one corner, backing up to the furnace and stairs.
Middle of rough carpentryThe fridge is flush with the finished wall. It pulls out for access to all the mechanicals of the house - water heater, plumbing stack, cable, networking, back of washer/drying stack, etc. You can see the furnace behind the stove.
We actually cut the stair stringers to fit the fridge and drawers under the stairs. Don’t worry, we know what we were doing, and the stairs are stronger than when we started. Most counters are far deeper than they actually need because of the depth of the stove. We managed to find a bar sink that was shallow but had a hole for a garbage disposal. The silver duct in the upper right of the picture is an external vent for the stove hood.
Finished kitchen today. I cook here every day. The tiny sink pretty much ensures that dishes can’t pile up.
A friend who is married to an architect saw my kitchen and asked me if I could re-design his mother’s kitchen!
The bottom line for me is that I have too much stuff. I am currently living in an apartment that is about 1100 sq. ft. and much of my stuff is in boxes and storage.
Previously, I lived in a house that was just under 2500 sq. ft. A little big for one person, I admit but I had it nicely furnished and was able to accommodate guests. I like having space and I like having a place for all my ‘stuff’.
I daydream about building a really well thought out small house all the time. As long as you have enough storage and it is layed out properly, 800 - 1000 Sq. feet can seem quite large.
Right now I live in about 1600 sq. feet. I am sure most people would consider our house small, but it is the biggest place I have ever lived in. It is also the most cluttered disorganzied mess. The house is almost 100 years old and they just didn’t have any sort of storage back then.
The hubby owned a mobile home when I met him (840 sq. feet), and I lived with him there for a couple years. We had so much more room, and storage there, somehow. It even had two full bathrooms! Mobile home designers really take every square inch into consideration, to maximize the space.
I watch a lot of “House Hunter’s” and other such shows, and it drives me insane when a family of 2 or 3 has another child and immediately has to move from a 2400 sq. foot home to a 3400 sq. foot one! So silly to me. Sure our son has taken over our house and it is a mess, but that is our fault. We don’t need 1000 sq. feet for each child.
My parents house is over 150 years old, and about 1200 Sq. feet. There were 8 of us in it. And…it only had 3 bedrooms, and NO bathroom! Yup you read that right. And no, I am not Amish.
**It has a bathroom now. After all 6 kids were grown and out of the house my dad finally decided to add one. :smack: **
Mr. Wonderland and I are currently house hunting and we’re focused on houses built between 1900 and 1950 so they all tend to be pretty small - between 600 and 1000 square feet.
Really, it seems like tonnes of space to us - particularly if the place has a yard and a basement - more than enough room.
That’s about the size of the house I grew up in, altho we did have a sorta-finished basement. Seven of us lived there. When I was a young teen, my folks took down the wall between the kitchen and dining room to make one large, much more user-friendly space. The biggest hassle, apart from having to share a room with my sister, was limited storage space. Then again, it was built in 1951, and people didn’t seem to own as much crap back then.
I think small houses are a great idea, especially as starter homes or retirement homes. I’ve never understood people who buy their “dream home” after the kids are gone - who wants to spend their golden years maintaining a huge house?? I also don’t understand huge bedrooms - as long as there’s space for a bed and a couple of dressers, it’s plenty big for me. We had one house where the master bedroom was 14 X 25 - bigger than my first studio apartment!! Most of the room was empty space that I had to vacuum. It made no sense to me to have a room that large for sleeping.
Wow, that’s a very stylish home! I aspire to that kind of look.
Currently my theme is apparently ‘small house; huge clutter’. I hope to transmute that to 'small house; stylish and streamlined’ in the coming months. We’re planning a huge purge of all unnecessaries.
I had forgotten my home of my childhood - three bedrooms, one full bath (no shower, no other bathrooms, no flush toilet - we had a tank for water, an outhouse, and a slop pail in the bathroom) for seven people (five kids and two parents). I would guess it was about 1000 sq. ft. Wow - I had almost forgotten about how small that was. We had three kids in one room and two in the other. When I got my own room at 13, it was heaven. Heaven, I tell you! Maybe that’s why my small house feels fine to me - it’s all relative.
For those of you who need bigger houses because of your stuff - have you ever considered having less stuff?
