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Incredible shrinking houses
Itty-bitty abodes quietly come back into vogue as the era of McMansions shows signs of peaking.
from the April 20, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
"What we've noticed is that as we're building a few down there, the number of phone calls to [our] stores increases threefold," says Jennifer Wilson, a Lowe's spokeswoman. Lowe's declines to release numbers, but Ms. Wilson says requests for $2 plan books have come from every state and "probably almost every continent but Antarctica."
Ms. Cusato, too, was surprised that her design would provoke such interest. "A lot of people instantly came to us and said, 'Wow, it's perfect. I've got an elderly parent,' " she says. "[We had] people saying 'I want to downsize, I don't want a huge house,' [and] people looking for affordable housing. Then there's the vacation side of it."
Some see Cusato's success as a sign of broadening acceptance of small homes.
"Jay Shafer [of Tumbleweed Tiny House Co.] may be the famous one for being at an extreme – under 80 square feet – so he gets on Oprah," says David Harned, a tiny-house devotee who runs the genre-celebrating website tinyhouses.net from his 1,200-square foot home in Kalamazoo, Mich. "[But] I think Ms. Cusato is the first to reach a broad audience with a genuinely small design that won't create a generation of claustrophobes."
Mr. Harned sees the pull of tiny houses as being as strong as that of tiny, efficient cars – an attraction that's intellectually appealing but that can represent a major life change. Full-time use often calls for support systems – communities with shared common spaces. The current "green building" trend and architects like Ross Chapin – who favors a dozen or so small homes arrayed around garden space – have boosted the number of small alternatives
Small-house building represents an art, Harned maintains. "It has to be true to [its chosen] style, and the proportions have to be just right or it kind of looks silly, and like an outbuilding more than a tempting place to go and investigate."
Here in Eureka Springs, woodworker and teacher Doug Stowe ripped old boards lengthwise to achieve proper scale with the siding on the 200-square foot getaway he built on a limestone ledge just up the hill from his unassuming main house.
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