Cohousing-L Mailing List: ceiling heights (was RE: [C-L]_ very small/ compact housing)

[Jenny Williams (jlgw]

On a related note, I'd like people's input on ceiling height.  We're
desgining and building our house at Manzanita Village in Prescott, AZ,
and we have been planning 8' ceilings throughout.  Everyone is telling
me that we'll regret it.  With 8' ceilings, though, we will manage a
~6-7' high attic, which we could finish at a later date for a cozy spot.
We have height restrictions for building, so we can't go above that
limit.  If we even change our regular floors to 9' ceilings, that
changes the attic to 5-6', harder to do anything with.  Do you all feel
it's worth the trade off, to have higher ceilings but an unusable attic
space (for anything other than plain storage)?  Our house will be about
2200SF on two floors (not counting said attic).  On the upper level, we
will have a fairly open area for kitchen, eating area, and living room.
We plan on doing ceiling height changes, with some soffits in certain
areas, to break up the 8' ceiling.  Ideas?

I welcome all input.  Thanks!

jenny williams

-----Original Message-----
From: Hyghroad [at] aol.com [mailto:Hyghroad [at] aol.com] 
Sent: Saturday, February 04, 2006 6:45 AM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ very small/ compact housing


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. 
> 


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