A conversation with Sarah Susanka

I had a great telephone conversation with Sarah Susanka yesterday. I've been writing about the new book she wrote with Marc Vasallo, Not So Big Remodeling: Tailoring Your Home for the Way You Really Live, quite a bit these last few weeks, and I finished up that phone call even more convinced that Susanka's onto something important.

Susanka grew up in England, in a village in Kent. At the age of 14 her family moved to Los Angeles and the resulting culture shock planted the seed that would become The Not So Big House years later. The years passed, she went to school and became an architect. She soon found herself as an architect with a bustling practice. After 15 years of that, she realized that she had something to say and she started to write.

Separating Susanka from the ideas she gets across in her books isn't possible and to point that out, when she realized that she wanted to write she found herself with a schedule so full that at first she thought she didn't have time. Never one to accept excuses, she made time for herself the only way she knew how. She scheduled herself onto her own calendar. Instead of seeing clients at the appointed hour, she set aside the time for herself to write. In treating her Sarah's Writing Time with the same gravity she'd treat an appointment with a client, she wrote without a specific goal in mind, but what that scheduled writing time yielded evolved into 1998's best seller The Not So Big House.

In her latest book, Not So Big Remodeling: Tailoring Your Home for the Way You Really Live she touches on this theme again in the chapter 17, A Place of Your Own. Setting aside A Place Of Your Own, or Poyo in a living space makes practices like writing or meditating more possible than they would be otherwise. The ideas she espouses, like the Poyo, are not about square feet or size. Instead, they are about intention and scale. Human beings are social animals, that's abundantly clear. But people need a place to retreat and think just as much as they need to be surrounded by the others who share their lives. Why not create yourself a nook in which to be quiet when you're planning a space? Why not indeed? And why does this sound so revolutionary when someone does?

I asked her where she thinks the current housing market situation will lead us as a culture. She answered that she "suspects that the situation today will affect us for the next few decades. That effect is bigger than the housing market, and people are beginning to consider what matters. Instead of focusing on the next best thing or house, people are beginning to look at what they already have. There's a regrouping going on as people begin to see their homes not so much as an asset to be traded, but rather a place to settle. As people see their homes as a place to live more than as an investment, priorities will begin to change." She sees a lot more remodeling happening and she sees builders beginning to build smaller and better-designed homes. "There will be less emphasis on square feet and more emphasis on quality," she predicts.

And for people currently stuck in poorly-designed and scaled homes built during the boom years, she offers a salve in the form of chapter 20, Too Bigness. Vaulted ceilings and wide open floor plans sound great as ideas, but as executions they are notoriously wanting. Chapter 20 is a terrific primer in space planning for these too large proportions and it's brimming with ideas that will help anybody wrestle some of these unwieldy floor plans back into something resembling a human scale. 

But chapter 20, like that chapters in all of her books, isn't about instruction. The Not So Big books aren't how to manuals and that's the root of their appeal to me. Sarah Susanka is a visionary and her books lay out a philosophy of home. These books are bigger than square feet or vaulted ceilings. They take a step back and take a meta view of what the nature of a home is. The chapters and exercises in her books are there to get you thinking. "I'm an interpreter and not a creator" she used to tell her clients and there's a lot of that sentiment that comes through in her work today.

The only people who really matter when it comes to how to use a space are the people who live in it. It's my job as a designer to listen to those people and guide them to a place where their lives are enhanced, where they can feel truly comfortable and at home. A home is the background for the main act, life. All too often, those roles get reversed and I for one take great comfort that someone like Sarah Susanka is saying things like this in the public square. A house is about who lives in it, it's not about Jonathan Adler or Kelly Wearstler or Todd Oldham or even Sarah Susanka or Paul Anater.

I asked her what words of advice she had for people dealing with deflating home values and she responded that "people should stop thinking about now." By that she meant that it's easy to lose sight of a future when now looks so bleak. "Prices will rise again eventually, and people with underwater mortgages today won't be underwater forever. If you can hold on, then hold on."

Great advice and if I may add on my own, the ideas and philosophy espoused in the Not So Big books were never more needed or appealing than they are today. If you're interested in any of these ideas, I encourage you to go to Sarah's website, Not So Big. On Not So Big you'll be able to see the show houses she designs as well as participate in discussion forums, buy house plans and even find an architect or designer. While you're there too, you'll notice that Not So Big isn't a style or a trend so much as it is a mindset. A mindset where quality means more than quantity. "Not So Big is completely present," she says "and not an attempt to recreate anything from the past." As an idea, it takes inspiration from and connects to yesterday but it doesn't dwell there. Life moves and changes, but the human need to to live in homes conducive to the business of living never changes. Sarah Susanka's onto something I tell you, she's on to something.

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 Sarah Susanka and Marc Vasallo published by Taunton Press, 2009

In the late '90s a new voice emerged to counter the rising tide of the More is Better school of home construction. That voice belonged to Sarah Susanka and through eight books, that voice has remained consistent and calm as it stated again and again that more isn't better, better is better. 

photo by Ken Gutmaker, used with permission

Beginning with The Not So Big House and continuing through Creating The Not So Big House and then on to Inside The Not So Big House and Outside The Not So Big House, her advice has been a level and kind reminder that there's much more to a home than the house. She's offered Not So Big Solutions For Your Home and Home By Design: Transforming Your House Into A Home. Then realizing that she'd been working on describing a way of life and not just a way of building, in 2007 she came out with The Not So Big Life. As I've mentioned previously, The Not So Big House provided me a Road To Damascus moment when it came out in 1998 and her subsequent books have come into my life in much the same way I'd receive the regular visits of a good friend 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 put all of thought that went into the Not So Big series into renovation and their timing couldn't have been better. The housing market's collapsed if you haven't heard and more and more people are finding themselves stuck in the home they have. Combine that with the evaporation of the home equity line of credit and there are large numbers of people interested in renovations but with a third the budget they would have had a couple of years ago.

Photo by 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 by this latest installment of the Not So Big series, Not So Big Remodeling and it's a welcome addition to my library. If you're considering undertaking a renovation, it's definitely worth a read. If you just like to think about this sort of thing, then Not So Big Remodeling would great for you too. Just don't ask to borrow my copy. I'm a generous book lender under ordinary circumstances, but my Not So Big books are definitely part of my non-circulating collection. So pick up a copy and use it as an opportunity to think about your space.

This is how a renovation should be done

The great and powerful Victoria ran a great post on the blog Design Ties yesterday and I feel compelled to draw more attention to it.

Victoria is an interior designer in Vancouver and her friend Kelly is an interior designer in Ottawa. Together, they write a blog called Design Ties. Between the two of them, that blog is always filled with interesting photos of the projects they work on in their respective practices and neither of them are shy about using their own homes to illustrate a point.

Yesterday, Victoria wrote a post about the floor plan changes she and her husband made in their current home and I was struck by how simple and elegant their solution to an intersecting archway was. Stroll over to Victoria's post on Design Ties and read her frame by frame description.

In rearranging the floor plan of their first floor, they had three rooms that led into one another and in order to open up the rooms, they decided to construct two intersecting door ways. So rather than leaving them as squared off shapes, they looked to the cove ceiling in their existing living room and interpreted the shape. The result is two shouldered flat arches that could stop traffic they're so beautiful. This was a brilliant idea that in the big scheme of things didn't add a whole lot to the scope of their project. But what it did was honor the architecture of their home and it made this renovation uniquely theirs.

It's the perfect tie-in to Sarah Susanka and Marc Vassallo's new book, Not So Big Remodeling: Tailoring Your Home for the Way You Really Live. I'll be writing more about Not So Big Remodeling this week, but if the kind of detail that this intersecting archway represents interests you, then you really ought to check out Not So Big Remodeling. Susanka's entire carer is dedicated to making homes more thoughtful and human-scaled places. Victoria and her husband's renovated home announces pretty clearly that they thought about what they were doing and that they cared about the results they achieved.

Bravo, bravo, bravo and bravo I say again. Structurally, this hallway of the intersecting archways is a winner and of that there can be no doubt. But the real thrill comes in when she added the paint colors she did. I'm out of superlatives. Really.

Reader Question: New lighting in my kitchen?

Help! I just discovered your blog and love it! Thank you for sharing. What brought me here: I am in the early stages of a budget kitchen remodel. I live in a 1963 Royal Barry Wills Cape that was designed to look much older. There are black latches on the interior doors, not knobs, old fashioned windows, etc. My kitchen needed some updating, but I want to keep the cottage style. My kitchen is small --it's a wide galley with seven foot high ceilings.

I'm planning to replace the '70s tile floor with oak hardwood. I'm going to hire a professional to paint the cabinetry Benjamin Moore White dove. I'm going to replace the cabinetry hardware, replace the Formica counters and put in a bead board ceiling.

What ceiling light should I use and what counter material do you recommend? I love this Schoolhouse light for over the sink and I like soapstone counters but I'm concerned about sopastone's scratching and upkeep.

Thanks for the questions and I'd be glad to weigh in on both of them. Before I do though, if you're in a Royal Barry Wills Cape Cod home, you really ought to check out Gina Milne's Willow Decor. Gina lives in a Royal Barry Wills home and knows more about that architecture than anyone I know.

You want to light that room with a combination of recessed lights for ambient light and then a pendant over the sink and under cabinet lights for task lighting. Despite the fact that your ceilings are rather low, you want to go with recessed lights. Use three- or four-inch cans and use more of them than you think you should.

Put all of your lights on dimmers so you can control the light levels in that room based on what your needs are. Do not use a central, ceiling mounted light fixture. All you'll get is glare, something you want to avoid, avoid, avoid. Think about the work areas that will be in your new kitchen and place your cans accordingly. A mistake a lot of people make is to stick with a geometric layout for recessed lights without regard to how that lighting has to be used.

Hang an interesting pendant light in the appropriate scale over the sink. It will add task lighting and at the same time become a focal point in your renovated kitchen. Use xenon box lights for under cabinet light like this:

Have them put on dimmers too. Don't use puck lights because you'll end up with a row of spot lights. Kitchens should be lit evenly to avoid glare and shadows.

But more than any other advice I can give about lighting a kitchen, the best advice I can give is to go to an independent lighting store and talk to a lighting designer. Lighting design is a profession for a reason and no home center or website can give you the same kind of service and advice as an actual, flesh and blood lighting pro. Let a lighting designer put together a lighting plan for you and then let him or her supply your lights. It will be money well spent.

Now, so far as soapstone on your counters, I say go for it. The neutral color of soapstone will allow you to do anything you want to color-wise in that kitchen and it's entirely appropriate for a '60s-era Cape Cod home. While it's true that soapstone is soft and it can be scratched, it really has no maintenance or upkeep issues. Soapstone is completely non-reactive so you can't stain it and it's also non-porous. It gets used in chemistry labs for a very good reason. I have never met someone who has soapstone counters who didn't also love them.

Often times, people wipe down their soapstone counters with mineral oil but that mineral oil is not making the counter water proof or sealing it in any way. Rather, mineral oil sits on the surface of the stone and oxidizes, making the stone appear to be darker. I wrote a defense of soapstone back in October and you can jump to it here: Please Pass the Soapstone.

So my advice is go to a lighting designer to get a layout for a lighting plan and then say yes to soapstone.

And one last nugget of neighborly advice because I just can't help myself. Purge the clutter. Get rid of all of the stuff on your counters except for one or two things that you use every day. If you want to display something, hang it on a wall. If it won't hang on a wall get it out of your kitchen. Nothing makes a small kitchen look even smaller more than clutter. Good luck!

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This is a fun new Internet thing

And yet another cool way to plug my contest. May I present an original production of The Guy in the Uninspired Kitchen. Just like Barbra did with Yentl; I wrote it, directed it, produced it and a cartoon version of me starred in it. However, I'm sad to report that my stirring cover of Papa Can You Hear Me ended up on the cutting room floor.