Living In Small Spaces

This is a wonderful book. I bought it over a year ago when I first purchased a condo, and have referred to it many times since. The pictures are helpful, and the principals discussed assist in original planning. A must-read for anyone with a small home, or anyone who wants to use any amount of space efficiently.

When I bought LIVING IN SMALL SPACES by Lorrie Mack I thought I would discover clever ways to store "stuff" in small spaces. The cover says Mack is a journalist and stylist, but she must be a designer too, or know one since LIVING is a design book. Anyone interested in developing these ideas better be prepared to lay out cash and/or engage in hard work. For example, Mack shows a clever way to add storage in an antique armoire by installing hanging wire baskets on the undersides of the shelves. Assuming you want to make permanent holes in the shelves of a very old piece, you will have to purchase the hardware (probably not terribly expensive, but finding wire baskets that exactly fit the undersides of the shelves in your piece may be time-consuming) and drill holes for the hardware while standing on your head if the shelves are fixed.The book contains a number of beautiful illustrations of out-of-the-ordinary kitchens designed around very esoteric architectural elements. Some of the kitchens are located in older housing where oddball elements are the norm. Other kitchens have been specially built in newer housing or heavily renovated housing. There are shelves over the stoves and up the walls behind the sink or under the sink when a window has been installed the full length of the wall behind the sink.Oddly, there are some scenes in this mostly photo-journal that seem to come from large ornate homes. Picture the secret pantry for glassware hidden on either side of a bowed-Palladian window looking out on what can only be described as a garden at the Cloisters in NYC. The room is round, and the walls consist of a series of cupboards hidden in the paneling. Mack shares ideas galore for lightening a room. Knock a hole in the roof and create a skylight where before only a low ceiling hang. Or better yet, take out the entire apex of the roof of a long narrow hall and turn it into a workshop or office with natural lighting. Knocking holes in the roof and walls does not help with storage, but it sure lets the light in.One section of the book is dedicated to living in one room. Mack shares a number of ideas for dividing a room into separate spaces to create the sensation of multiple rooms. These single rooms divided into many spaces are tastefully decorated with a designer's expensive touch.This is a beautiful book and if you're clever you can probably find ways to copy some of the ideas without breaking the bank. I think the biggest contribution the book makes is to "free up" one's thinking about how things "ought" to look.

This book is extremely well written and is fraught with color photographs that complement its informative content. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone seeking practical ideas for maximizing space in confined living areas, although readers in the United States may find some information superfluous, as the text hails from England (for example, references to kitchen appliances and the list of suppliers at the end of the book are likely not to be useful). But this is an admittedly minor quibble.Specific techniques are offered in order to "trick the eye", such as "raising" a low ceiling by painting the walls slightly darker than the ceiling, or adding a mirror to make a small room seem large. This last suggestion may seem obvious to some readers, but other, felicitous ideas abound in the book, such as this sage remark: "Reject the tyranny of the three-seat sofa in favour of the much more useful and flexible two-seater design: the larger version is seldom used by more than two in any case, as most people like the security of a corner and comfort of an arm." (Anyone who has been sandwiched in the uncomfortable middle of a three-seater couch will certainly agree, but who would have actually thought of writing such a thing!) Maintaining a constant decorating scheme throughout a small apartment is yet another of the many tips that this book has to offer. The book concludes with several designs for furniture items, such as a coffee table that doubles as a storage unit or a chopping board that conceals a slotted knife rack.With many decorating and how-to books on the market that are filled with photographs, but which leave the reader yearning for practical advice, Living in Small Spaces is a welcome addition to the bookshelf (BIG or small!) of the most discriminating reader in need of maximizing even the smallest living space. Kudos to the author!