The most effective way to save on home construction cost, on the expense of heating and cooling a home and on torture from the tax collector is to build the smallest house that you can be comfortable in. During our recent building boom, everyone wanted big-volume McMansions. It wasn’t cool to build less than five bedrooms, fewer than three parking spaces in the garage, lower than ten-foot high ceilings and dens and kitchens that are not huge enough to shock friends and neighbors.
And, why not? Money was cheap and available everywhere. If you missed all the daily calls from mortgage brokers, you could just fill out applications online. Why not build too much? Every penny put into a home would be paid back by inflation year in and year out. Right?
All right, I guess not. But, it’s very different now. Everyone knows better. That means the “too-much” era is over. Many people are starting to think that it won’t be cool to pay the heating, cooling and tax bills on those behemoths. They are looking to build much smaller, much simpler homes.
The Country Home Journal will continue to feature home plans and building kits in sensible sizes. Some that we’ve reviewed already are tiny by anyone’s standards. I was putting together a list of my favorite web sites for tiny home plans, building kits and prefabs when my friend Dave Noffsinger ( Cherokee Cabin Company ) told me about the Tiny House Blog. Kent Griswold writes about all aspects of tiny home building and living. He’s already put together great lists of design resources, so I’ll just recommend that you go there. Check out the “Links” and “Plans” sections and then enjoy reading his informative articles. Judging by the enthusiastic response Griswold is getting from his readers, I’ll bet that the world will go on without Mini Mansions.
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