Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: very small/ compact housing

[Hyghroad (Hyghroad]

My family of four is about to move into our 1200+- sq.ft. townhouse (plus 
full unfinished basement) at Common Pastures in Charlotte, VT. One of the last 
design changes made was to get rid of a cathedral ceiling living room, to add a 
floor and add space on the second floor. I feel this is one of the best 
decisions we've made. In a small house, catherdal ceilings seem to be an 
unnecessary 
luxury, and I can just imagine all of heat that would have been trapped up 
there in the winter.

Two other things that, in my opinion, make small houses more livable

1) lots of windows

2) vaulted ceilings on second floor.

Space/storage is always an issue is small homes. For us (we are coming from 
an even smaller house) it has been a great incentive to reduce our consumption.

Kelly Devine
Common Pastures
aka Champlain Valley Cohousing
Charlotte, Vermont
http://www.champlainvalleycohousing.org
802-425-5030
hyghroad [at] aol.com

In a message dated 2/3/2006 2:58:25 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
pnichols [at] indigoarch.com writes:


> We are family of four living in a 3-bedroom unit at Muir Commons. The 
> house,
> at 1,170 sq ft, has some inherent space inefficiencies that bother me, like
> a big u-shaped windowless stair cavity in the center of the house. It also
> has some nice touches, like 10-foot ceilings in the living/ dining room.
> Private garage/ utility space is non-existent. If we had some private
> utility space combined with a more efficient layout, then that would
> probably keep many folks here from remodeling or at least thinking about
> remodeling when they could be thinking more pleasant, less expensive
> thoughts. 
>