Customer Reviews

Small Homes: Design Ideas for Great American Houses (Great Houses)

5 star:		(0)
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3 star:		(2)
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Typical of the books publisher by Taunton, this is a well produced work -- nicely arranged, good photos, and with about the right amount of verbiage for each house. My less than five star rating is because I personally didn't find most of the houses to be that interesting design-wise (you may, 'look inside'), and I also thought too many of the house were either too big (several in the 2300-2400 sq. ft. size, which I don't consider 'small') or too expensive due to site conditions, materials or whatever. It not too hard to build a nice small home if you've actually got the budget for a much larger, more traditional house. I enjoyed the book, it's just not one of my favorites. A side note, all of the houses have been featured in Fine Homebuilding Magazine previously.

This book continues the series and sticks to the established formula: articles featured in Fine Homebuilding and written by the homeowners. The houses themselves often follow a formula: nothing ordinary, or novelty for its own sake. There are many examples of extreme creativity unconstrained by common sense, but, then again, such things make for interesting reading. As long as *I* don't have to have a plywood floor in my house :-)

This version of the Good Life is remarkably consistent from article to article, and you may grow a little tired of people bragging about the features of their house that are "for entertaining". But, if you don't mind sorting the wheat from the chaff, there are also lots of attractive homes, offering an alternative to standard housing development fare.