Small Houses

I should have paid more attention to this as I built my home! Next home I build will be smaller, greener. This book helps you design a small home that feels big and live-able.

My wife and i were looking for a new house to accomodate us and our son. We went to a number of open houses of typical contractor built houses and only got sick. The houses were big, inefficient and ill-designed. They lacked character and imagination. Therefore, we are now considering designing and building a house. This book, with its numerous examples of small, well-designed houses, is both helping us find features and designs we like and providing us with inspiration. The houses in this book have character. The book is well-illustrated. My only critique of this book is that it does not always provide square footage and cost per square foot as Taunton's annual house edition does.

This book is compilation of articles from the magazine. There are 37 different projects covering a wide variety of styles and locations of houses. The articles are often written by the owner / designer and are quite thorough. Many include presentation style: sections, details, and floor plans.I found this book to be very interesting to read. There is a lot of content for the size and price of the book. The articles are all from the early 80's to early 90's. Which makes me look forward to the next edition.Anybody interested in purchasing, renovating, or designing a small house will definitely like this book.