Small Open House

Small size is a key aspect of a 'green' home. Building a small home is crucial for minimizing resource use. A small house minimizes use of energy resources and construction materials in its making, and it uses less energy and materials in maintenance and renovation works compared to a large house. A small house also minimizes resources needed for furniture since there is less to furnish. It minimizes use of energy resources since there is less space to heat and cool, to keep lighted and electrified. Also, other resources are minimized, such as water and detergents, since less cleaning is necessary. Furthermore, an open floor plan house reduces material resources even more by eliminating extra walls, doors and system components. Instead of needing three radiators for three rooms, you can get by with one or two bigger ones.

The trick is to make a small house that meets one's needs and is comfortable. Good house design is required to accomplish this. I applied a large number of 'small house' design principles. One of the most important principles is to create multifunctional rooms, rooms capable of satisfying several needs. I did this in my house in a number of ways. First, hallways tend to be an inefficient use of space since their only function is to provide a passage way from one room to another. Good design can situate rooms such that hallways are either eliminated or greatly reduced; furthermore, the passage way function can be fulfilled by other rooms. In my house, hallway space is next to nil. The rooms have been located so as to minimize passage way needs. And the main kitchen-dining-living room open area fulfills most of the passage way needs. The living room also acts as a place for reading, study, conversation, watching movies and listening to music; it's north wall has a large built-in library; it houses the electrical cabinet that contains all of the home's safety switches, system meters, power center, inverter, etc.; and it contains the masonry stove, the main backup heating system. The kitchen is for food and kitchen appliance storage, cooking, cleaning, and clothes washing; it contains the recycling center; and the kitchen island acts as a handy place to eat a quick snack. The dining room has a large table for eating, but it is also used for studying/research, for sewing work, for fixing small objects, and for other handcrafts; it contains an old Singer wood and steel foot-powered sewing machine and will also in future have a corner china cabinet. The bathrooms, besides acting simply as such, act as storage rooms for all type of bathroom supplies and other odds and ends. The master bedroom has a small library in one corner of the room and a built-in closet. And the other bedrooms also have multiple functions. The roof acts as a terrace with several important functions, and the crawl spaces act as waste storage and house important system components. The sunroom will act as an outdoor living space, will be for solar cooking, will house some plants and one of my dogs, and will store some firewood, as well as performing its primary functions of harnessing solar heat and acting as an air-lock for the house entrances.

One has to use furniture that makes best use of the limited space. Corners of rooms are usually inadequately used because of inappropriate furniture, so this room space goes underutilized. Corner furniture is very appropriate. In my home I have special corner shelves next to both house entrances. In my bedroom I have wooden corner shelving that acts as a library. I plan to build a special corner china cabinet for the dining room and other wooden corner furniture. Beds also need to use space efficiently. Either a normal bed with special sliding boxes underneath (which I currently use) or a special bed with built-in drawers/cabinets (which I plan to build) can be used to take advantage of the ususally wasted space underneath. In guest bedrooms and the living room, sofa-beds allow the room to be primarily used for a specific purpose, such as a movie room, and then quickly made into a bedroom - both of my guest bedrooms have sofa-beds. Raised beds that have a table underneath also make very good use of space. Built-in cabinets/shelves/closets usually make better use of space because they are specifically built to fit that unique space, take advantage of existing structural elements, and usually reach from the floor all the way to the ceiling. I use floor-to-ceiling built-in shelves and closets in the entrance, living room, bedroom, and bathroom. There are a wide variety of furniture designs that make efficient, multifunctional use of space.

A number of things can help a small house appear much larger than it actually is, making it more pleasant to live in. Coloring schemes are important. Light-colored rooms, especially white, visually appear larger than darker colored rooms. A white ceiling appears much higher than a dark colored ceiling. Most of the walls, ceilings and floors in my house are some tone of white. Light-colored furniture helps to make the room appear uncluttered, and therefore larger. All of my bathroom and kitchen furniture is white with light grey countertops. My living room sofa pieces are a light blue and white. And the guest bedroom sofa-beds are light-colored. Living room curtains are also very light in color. Mirrors are especially good at making a room appear visually larger than it is, and I exploit this fact by using extra large mirrors in my bathrooms. I also plan to put large mirrors next to the two entrances, one on the west and the other on the east wall directly facing each other, which will create the unique visual effect of a long never-ending room. Shiny light-colored glazed ceramic tiling mixes the effects of light colors and mirrors. My bathrooms use a lot of shiny glazed white wall tiles and floor tiles. Very thin furniture and furniture with glass also help to make furniture pieces look small and thereby make the room look larger. The corner shelves next to the entrance doors are made of thin black metal legs and glass shelves, which makes them both stand out and yet be inconspicuous. The living room coffee table is also made of thin black steel and glass, making the center of the room seem much larger. I currently have a medium-sized dining room table with a varnished pine wood top and white-painted wooden legs; the relative thinness of the top and legs and their light color make the room seem quite large. However, I plan to build a much bigger dining room table out of pine wood which I will paint a darker color, but I will make the top and legs relatively thin and most of the top surface will be glass. This should give the same effect as the black steel and glass corner shelves - to stand out without looking massive. I also plan to build a corner china cabinet for the dining room made of wood and glass.

An open floor plan makes the interior seem larger than it is. A large open space that incorporates a number of 'rooms', just as my entrance-living room-kitchen-dining room-hallways space does, makes each individual 'room' seem much larger than it is because the boundaries of each room are nebulous. The more and the farther the eye can see, the bigger the space one is in feels. From where I am writing this, on my living room sofa, I can see all of the entrance, the two tiny hallways, most of the dining room, much of the kitchen, and, with the doors open, a little of one bedroom and much of the guest bathroom. My eye can take in over half of the house, and I feel like my living room is huge. Another thing that enables the eye to see more and farther is lots of big windows. Big windows that allow one to look out and see the landscape give one the impression that the room they are in and the landscape they are looking at are connected. This makes the room feel larger than it is. The south half of my house, with the main living areas, has seven large windows that create a clear impression that this living space is an interface between the outside and the inside.

Lastly, a small house should take advantage of the exterior. Exterior spaces can be conditioned in one way or another to be usable in appropriate weather. This increases the number of 'rooms' of the house, making it bigger without making it bigger. In my house, the roof terrace will be a large living space for reading, napping, studying, listening to music or watching movies, playing games, etc. And this living space is the size of the house! The future sunroom, while not exactly being the exterior will not quite be the interior either, will act as another small living room and kitchen. Some fifteen meters from the house in the center of a clump of trees I have an arrangement of wood and steel garden furniture, a small coffee table with two small chairs and one small bench, next to a hammock and a outdoor garden recliner; this set up acts as a pleasant outdoor living room that my wife and I take advantage of frequently, especially when we have guests and the weather is nice (which is most of the year here in central Spain). There are many ways to use the outside just like the inside.