Not So Big Solutions for Your Home

I found this book to be very insightful for me as a new homebuilder. While the book is a collection of magazine articles that Susanka has written in the past, they contain ideas that are refreshing and useful. I have a new direction in the way I think about the design of my house, and I can appreciate the value of maximising space, as well as building the house to suit my particular lifestyle. i would recommend this for any potential homebuilder, or renovator.

Our guiding philosophy and inspiration. An engaging and intelligent defense of building (and renovating) smarter, not bigger. Sarah Susanke has made a career of promoting traditional design principles in a way that speaks to modern situations (many of us can't afford new, huge houses) and responds to the "McMansions" craze that continues to sweep the US. She has a wonderful sense of how to maximize space for personal use. She advocates for built-in furniture, design built around daily activities, and open light-filled design. She had us at "Most architects are afraid to say...'You don't need an addition, you need a cleaning service." She doesn't want to clean out your bank account. She wants you to make the most of what you have...and if you follow her ideas, you will.

Within a very short time, Sarah Susanka has had a profound impact on the way families approach the design of their home. Eschewing the "bigger is better" model that drives the profits of developers and mass production builders, Sarah Susanka has introduced a new vocablary of user-centered design that focuses on the details that make for a pleaant living experience. Her "smaller is better" philosophy is based on often overlooked details like window size, providing built-in spaces for daily activities, creating "comfort zones" by varying ceiling heights and room lighting, and a myriad of other simple-in-themselves, but major-in-their-impact details.Not So Big Solutions for Your Home should be considered required reading for you if you're remodeling or building a house you want to be comfortable in.

Once again, Sarah Susanka has taken some pretty basic conceptual problems in home design and explained various solutions to them that are eye-opening to say the least. While this book is a compendium of her "Drawing Board" articles out of Fine Homebuilding Magaine, it gives the reader a real sense of what they can do either through new construction or remodeling to improve their lifestyles as well as their homes.Bravo, keep on writing Sarah.