It's hard to believe that it's been over 10 years since
The Not So Big House by Sarah Susanka first arrived on the scene. On the closing side of a decade filled with oversized homes, oversized rooms and oversized furniture,
The Not So Big House created a breath of fresh air for the building, architecture and design industry.
Susanka's newest not so big book is Not So Big Remodeling: Tailoring Your Home for the Way You Really Live. Based on the reviews, the book asks homeowners to consider how they live, what they need in terms of space, and teaches them how to renovate their existing spaces in an efficient, sustainable, and meaningful manner, paring down to the basics but not giving up on quality or good design practices. I'm looking forward to reading it in detail.
More and more of my clients are embracing sensible, scaled-down approaches to renovation and design.
On the same note, I always enjoy
Renovation Style magazine. The features consistently include reasonably scaled projects, straightforward design solutions, interesting materials, and well written articles.
When looking through magazines with clients to help them realize their design, style and color preferences, I'd have to say that Renovation Style is probably the one magazine that elicits the most responses from my clients. Renovation seems to embrace the same "build better, not bigger" philosophy that Sarah Susanka shared with us over a decade ago.