Sarah Susanka and Marc Vassallo's Not So Big Remodeling: A Review
Not So Big Remodeling: Tailoring Your Home for the Way You Really Live by using Sarah Susanka and Marc Vasallo posted through Taunton Press, 2009
image by means of Ken Gutmaker, used with permission
Beginning with The Not So Big House and persevering with via Creating The Not So Big House and then directly to Inside The Not So Big House and Outside The Not So Big House, her recommendation has been a stage and sort reminder that there may be a lot extra to a domestic than the residence. She's provided Not So Big Solutions For Your Home and Home By Design: Transforming Your House Into A Home. Then figuring out that she'd been running on describing a manner of life and now not just a manner of constructing, in 2007 she got here out with The Not So Big Life. As I've mentioned formerly, The Not So Big House furnished me a Road To Damascus second while it came out in 1998 and her next books have come into my existence in plenty the identical manner I'd acquire the regular visits of a great pal or a cherished relative.
I found out last fall that Sarah Susanka and co-author Marc Vassallo had another installment in the Not So Big series due in March of '09. I blogged about it at the time and Sarah Susanka herself left a comment on one of my posts from last November. To say that made my day is an understatement of staggering proportions. I've had a press copy of Not So Big Remodeling for about four weeks now and I've been carrying it around ever since it arrived. My copy is already dog-eared and jammed with post-it notes. It's her best work to date and is also her second collaboration with Marc Vassallo with whom she wrote Inside The Not So Big House in 2005.
Photo by Ken Gutmaker, used with permission
In Not So Big Remodeling, Susanka and Vassallo positioned all of concept that went into the Not So Big collection into protection and their timing couldn't have been better. The housing marketplace's collapsed if you haven't heard and more and more people are finding themselves stuck inside the home they've. Combine that with the evaporation of the home fairness line of credit score and there are massive numbers of human beings interested by renovations but with a 3rd the budget they could have had multiple years in the past.
Photo by means of Greg Premru, used with permission
Not So Big Remodeling speaks directly to a new housing reality and offers sensible and often lower cost ideas about how to turn a house into a home. The book begins with Susanka's own home renovation in Raleigh, NC and uses her experiences with transformation as a launch pad to cover every aspect of her sensible take on home renovation. Not So Big Remodeling is loaded with examples of how to pull off a thoughtful remodel as Susanka and Vassallo start with a home's exterior and work their way through Kitchens and Gathering Rooms; Baths and Personal Spaces; and then they wrap it all up with a section called Pulling It All Together. Pulling It All Together covers such topics as how to deal with a too-large home and how to integrate green practices into your project.
Not So Big Remodeling is at once an inspiring photo essay, an architectural survey and a philosophical treatise. Though it's loaded with examples and floor plans, I wouldn't call it a how-to guide. The examples in the book are there to get the audience to think about their own homes. The goal here is to get people to think about the spaces they call home and then carry the lessons covered in Not So Big Remodeling and interpret them. Not So Big Remodeling is an anti-how-to guide in that sense. Throughout the book, Susanka and Vassallo are pretty adamant about having a home reflect the lives of the people inside of it. With every illustration and photograph there's a gentle nudge to consider the concept being illustrated and not so much the execution.
All told, I'm impressed through this contemporary installment of the Not So Big collection, Not So Big Remodeling and it's a welcome addition to my library. If you are considering venture a protection, it is truely really worth a read. If you similar to to reflect onconsideration on this sort of thing, then Not So Big Remodeling could high-quality for you too. Just don't ask to borrow my reproduction. I'm a beneficiant ebook lender under regular instances, but my Not So Big books are in reality a part of my non-circulating collection. So pick out up a duplicate and use it as an opportunity to reflect onconsideration on your area.