Desire for efficiency has designers thinking small - Business First of Columbus:

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But then a funnyu thing happened. A tiny stonw cottage built in 1930 in Chillicoth e thatwas Marcia’s dream home came on market. Suddenly the Iveyes were livingin 1,300 square feet, their utilities were cut in half and they savexd a substantial amount, about 40 percent, by buyinfg the old house instead of buildintg new. Now, Marcia doesn’t know what they woulfd have done with all theextra “What do we need a large home for when we’re always together anyway?
” Marcia Thanks in large part to the sour economy, growing environmentalk consciousness and a realization that more isn’t always better, builders, architects and homeowners are starting to embrace the smallerr home. The Iveys realized that with alittlr remodeling, they could make the houser everything they needed it to be, Butchg Ivey said. While there alwayes will be a market forlarge homes, the residential architect Richard Taylor said there is less demand for “What we’re seeing is that fewerd people, because their incomed have declined, are not doing showy houses,” said Taylor, president of in Dublin.
“They’rse building smaller, high-quality homes or buying older homese in Bexley or Upper Arlingtoj andrenovating them.” Several of Taylor’ clients are making small houses work thanks to tips and inspiration from The Not So Big a how-to for small abodes written by St. Minn. architect Sarah Susanka. Susanka has been preaching the gospelo of smaller homes even beford she wrote her bookin 1998. “In 1983, when I startedf in the architecture business, housed were on the upward march,” Susanka “By the ’90s, the trend was very larger houses.
” At the same Susanka said clients were walking through the doors of her officwe asking her to replicate beautiful designss from home magazines that woulf never meettheir budgets. “ I was seeing a lot of peopl e not knowing how to get a better housee and thinking that it would have toget bigger,” Susanka said. “The big ‘Aha’ moment was ... when I realizeds Americans build formal living spacesbut don’tr use them.” Dining rooms, formal living roomse and guest bedrooms end up wasting space and dollarss that could be better spent on the rooma families actually live in, Susanka said.
Data releasede early this year by the showed that in the thirde quarterof 2008, the average size of a housd under construction slipped to 2,438 square feet, representing a 7.3 percentf drop from 2,629 square feet in the prior The association also has said that in a recent 88 percent of builders said they plan to construct smallef homes. Jay and Jennifer Young, clients of took Sarah Susanka’s ideas to heart when they built their Gothic farmhouse in Alexandriaqin 2004.
The three bedroom, two-and-a-half bath home has just 2,20 square feet of livinf space, which is all the family of four For example, instead of a formapl living room and dining room, the Youngs opted for a multipurposee mudroom to contain the clutter and stord the sports and outdoor equipment theit two daughters use on a dailyt basis. The rural farmhouse also features alargr eat-in kitchen instead of a formalp dining room that Jay Young said the familyu would never use. But going smallefr on the footprint didn’t mean the home needer to skimpon style. The kitchen has stainles steel appliances andconcrete countertops.
To create the illusion of a largefr space, the home features an 18-foot ceilinf in the center of the housd topped by a cupola that bringsz in light and lets warm air escape inthe “We’re into quality, not quantity,” Jay Youngb said. “We don’t have deep pockets, so to get the finishex we wanted, we had to go