Would you ever?

I would not, could not, in a box.
I could not, would not, with a fox.

from Modani

More Not So Big Solutions For Your Home

Sarah Susanka sits in a place of honor in my personal pantheon. I'm not kidding when I credit her with the inspiration to embark on my career. She and Marc Vassallos released Not So Big Remodeling last year and I covered it pretty thoroughly here, here and here. That last here is an interview I did her last year. I'm not one for being star struck, but I lack words to describe the thrill it was to pick up the phone and call a woman who looms so large in my psyche.

So here we are a year later and Sarah has another new book. More Not So Big Solutions for Your Home hit the shelves last Tuesday, though I've had a review copy for about three weeks. The new book is a collection of articles she's written for Taunton Publishing's Inspired House and Fine Homebuilding.

A year ago, she and I had a wide-ranging conversation and we talked a lot about the state of housing in the US. I asked her what she though would be the fate of people who were currently stuck in poorly-built, soul-less McMansions now that the housing market had collapsed. She thought for a moment and said that how to "humanize" a McMansion was definitely a topic for another book

Well, that other book is here and in the course of More Not So Big Solutions' 154 pages, she offers guidance and advice on how to imply a ceiling in a room that's too tall, how to unify an interior with horizontal trim and where to put the TV among many other topics she covers in this wide-ranging and practical book.

She spends some chapters addressing how to design a kitchen island, a guest bedroom and a functional laundry room. She discusses how to pick wall colors, how to squeeze in a half bath and where to put the smoke detectors. Every point she makes is illustrated with Sarah's own renderings, some of which I'm re-printing here. What's not represented by a rendering is covered by the lush photography Taunton Press and the Not So Big books are famous for.

All of this advice is written in the calm, clear cadence she uses when she speaks. Everything, and I mean everything, is an opportunity in her world and that's an infectious perspective. You can see Sarah's entire collection of essays, books, videos, blogs and forums on the Not So Big House website.

If you're looking for some guidance on how to adjust the scale of your home or just some encouragement to make your home look like it's yours, More Not So Big Solutions for Your Home is a perfect addition to your library.

Life's too short for boring lawn chairs

Well there's no chance of boredom here.

This is a series of outdoor polystyrene chairs called The Queen of Love. They were designed by Graziano Moro and Renato Pigatti for SAW. They are designed in Biella, made in Bergamo and so far as I can tell, unavailable outside of Europe.

Pardon the bad pun but who's ready to go for Baroque this summer?

Scary bath tub!

THG gets a lot right. The sink I fell in love with yesterday is a case in point. But Lordie when they go off the tracks the go whole hog.

This is that same tub in white. It looks even worse, don't you think?

I love Canada

Talking to MrsBen in the comments earlier today has had me thinking about my early experiences with hand pumps and why I find the image of them so compelling. The answer goes back a few years.

In 1969, the nine members of my family piled into this station wagon and pulled a boat into the great land of the north.

We were in for an adventure, a cabin in the woods. A cabin in the woods on the shores of huge lake. I was four and although I don't remember the drive, I do remember being there for the first time.

I can't believe it, but I just found the driveway on Google Maps.




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In 1969, that was a dirt road and things like power and sewer lines were but a dim memory.

Every summer after that we'd pile into the station wagon and go back. We had no plumbing and no electricity but what we had was wilderness and each other. I don't have any interior shots of the cottage, but if I did, you'd see a kitchen sink with a hand pump. The water that came out of that pump was from the lake and was for washing only. Drinking water came from another pump about a hundred yards down a path into the woods.

These are my siblings and I on the beach of our lake in about 1971.

Even now, the region of Ontario where we'd go is remarkably isolated. And to us, living for a couple of weeks at a time without plumbing and electricity was a badge of honor. All credit goes to my Dad for that. From an early age we learned that not having modern conveniences wasn't really that big a deal and it made us appreciate them when we did get back to civilization.

This is my sister and my youngest brother after a big day spent trolling for northern pike and small mouth bass.

Being in another country at an early age taught us a thing or two about seeing the world as more than the small part of it we knew. As we got older we'd trek out of the bush for long enough to visit places like Ottawa, Toronto and Kingston and see first-hand that not all Canadians lived like the subsistence trappers we knew from the back country.

This is my Dad and youngest brother in 1969. The three boys on the end of the dock are my brothers Matt, Tom and me. I'm in the center.

Those early experiences embedded in me a profound respect for wilderness, for modern conveniences and above all for Canada. I can never thank my parents enough for introducing us to a world we could have never known otherwise.

The guy on the right in the previous photo is now the guy on the left in this one. The little guys surrounding him are three of his sons.

I don't think anybody thought about generational legacies when we piled into the car in 1969, but that's precisely what's happened. I don't think there's been a year since then that "our" lake wasn't swum in by someone who shares my last name. I haven't been back in years but hearing my nieces' and nephews' stories about their adventures and discoveries is an absolute thrill. It reminds me too that I need to go back.

This is my grandmother on a hike at some point in the '80s. She is in her own 80s at this point and though she didn't share our appreciation for the lack of electricity, she was always up for an adventure.

My siblings have families of their own now, and every one of my nieces and nephews has an indelible mark placed on them by that place and their marks match mine. It's good for the soul to know what it's like to pump water or to go to sleep to the sounds of the whip-poor-wills and loons or to catch and eat your own dinner.

So thank you Mom and Dad, thank you wilderness and last but not least, thank you Canada.

"Our" lake a couple of years ago.