Not So Big Solutions for Your Home |  | Author: Sarah Susanka
Publisher: Taunton Press
List Price: $22.95
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Rating:  20 reviews
Media: Paperback
Edition: illustrated edition
Pages: 160
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 8.4 x 0.5
ISBN: 1561586137
Dewey Decimal Number: 728.370222
EAN: 9781561586134
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
"Do more with less space" is the key concept of this down-to-earth design guide for both new home builders and remodelers. Not So Big Solutions for Your Home provides simplified design principles in jargon-free language for the nonprofessional contemplating a residential building project. Architect and author Sarah Susanka, well-known for 1998's The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live, offers advice on how to redefine space to create happier living areas that function more efficiently. For example, analyzing the family's television habits and planning set placement in advance may avert future squabbles and smooth out daily living. Thinking of each exterior door as the location of a sequence of common events (such as hauling in the groceries or taking off muddy boots) will help the planner create a neater entryway adapted to the family's specific needs. Throughout, plentiful drawings and photos illustrate simple solutions to such common problems as unused living rooms, dark bedrooms, and crowded kitchens. Readers seeking to remodel on a budget will be heartened by Susanka's contention that it is often best to stay within existing walls and avoid building out. All in all, the book provides a lot of theoretical food for thought for lay people preparing to begin the daunting task of either building a new home or remodeling an old one. --Judy Fireman
Product Description
Sarah Susanka's Not So Big Solutions for Your Home explores practical design ideas that can transform any house into a great house that looks, works and feels right for the owner. Sarah Susanka, whose previous best-selling books showed homeowners how to appreciate and create a house that is beautiful, visually expansive and reflective of how families really live, now offers readers practical, everyday design ideas on everything from selecting a site for a new home to designing a mail-sorting space. 30 color photographs, along with over 150 drawings from Sarah Susanka's own sketchbook, illustrate practical home design ideas for everyday living. Not So Big Solutions for Your Home is a compilation of over 30 columns written by Sarah Susanka for Fine Homebuilding magazine.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
 Susanka's writing is as good or better than her architecture September 10, 2002
Christopher M Vaughan (Federal Way, WA United States)
48 out of 51 found this review helpful
Once again, Sarah Susanka has taken some pretty basic conceptual problems in home design and explained various solutions to them that are eye-opening to say the least. While this book is a compendium of her "Drawing Board" articles out of Fine Homebuilding Magaine, it gives the reader a real sense of what they can do either through new construction or remodeling to improve their lifestyles as well as their homes.
Bravo, keep on writing Sarah.
Useful Information from a Pioneering Voice November 21, 2003
Roger C. Parker (Dover, NH)
27 out of 28 found this review helpful
Within a very short time, Sarah Susanka has had a profound impact on the way families approach the design of their home. Eschewing the "bigger is better" model that drives the profits of developers and mass production builders, Sarah Susanka has introduced a new vocablary of user-centered design that focuses on the details that make for a pleaant living experience. Her "smaller is better" philosophy is based on often overlooked details like window size, providing built-in spaces for daily activities, creating "comfort zones" by varying ceiling heights and room lighting, and a myriad of other simple-in-themselves, but major-in-their-impact details. Not So Big Solutions for Your Home should be considered required reading for you if you're remodeling or building a house you want to be comfortable in.
A great idea book October 26, 2002
29 out of 32 found this review helpful
If you liked Sarah Susanka's other books, you will love this one. It has specific ideas on designing rooms for the way people live, such as placement of TVs in a home and setting up a place to sort mail. For everyone who has always wanted a window seat, the book addresses design considerations. I will definitely read through this book a couple more times before my house is built.
Bigger is not always better...quality counts! January 8, 2004
houseinprogress (Chicago, IL)
20 out of 21 found this review helpful
Our guiding philosophy and inspiration. An engaging and intelligent defense of building (and renovating) smarter, not bigger. Sarah Susanke has made a career of promoting traditional design principles in a way that speaks to modern situations (many of us can't afford new, huge houses) and responds to the "McMansions" craze that continues to sweep the US. She has a wonderful sense of how to maximize space for personal use. She advocates for built-in furniture, design built around daily activities, and open light-filled design. She had us at "Most architects are afraid to say...'You don't need an addition, you need a cleaning service." She doesn't want to clean out your bank account. She wants you to make the most of what you have...and if you follow her ideas, you will.
Very helpful August 7, 2004
Island Girl (Barbados)
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
I found this book to be very insightful for me as a new homebuilder. While the book is a collection of magazine articles that Susanka has written in the past, they contain ideas that are refreshing and useful. I have a new direction in the way I think about the design of my house, and I can appreciate the value of maximising space, as well as building the house to suit my particular lifestyle. i would recommend this for any potential homebuilder, or renovator.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
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