September 2010

Parikh, Anoop. Making the Most of Small Spaces. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1994. Print.

This was a wonderful book, with an eclectic mix of living spaces of all different types and decors.  My only complaint with the book is that it should be much longer – but I can’t fault an author who stops when they are done, rather than padding!

I enjoy the floor plans and comprehensive examinations of certain spaces – like a 310-sq-ft studio that still manages to fit a kitchen, bathroom with shower, and bedroom.  Parikh doesn’t feel the need to profile every space in the same depth, so these in-depth examples are interwoven with individual pictures illustrating concepts.

The chapters are on Basics, One-room Living, Kitchens, Living Rooms and Workspaces, and Bedrooms and Bathrooms.  I thought I might find a book from 1994 to be somewhat dated, but Parikh’s eye has picked out quirky rather than trendy spaces.  I will be looking at this book again.

Good index, but no suggested further reading.

Nagyszalanczy, Sandor. New Built-ins Idea Book. Newtown, CT: Taunton, 2005. Print.

I haven’t intentionally been on a run of Taunton books (and I haven’t been paid to review them, unfortunately!), but when you get into a topic like home-building they keep cropping up.  This is the first of their “Idea Book” series that I’ve read, and it is indeed a great big bunch of ideas for built-in furniture.

One of the suggestions that keeps cropping up in small-house discussions is the use of built-in furniture to save space.  Combine that with the idea of spaces doing double duty, and creating my own built-ins starts to sound like a good idea.  The book has sections on passages, kitchens and dining areas, bathrooms, living spaces, entertainment areas, bedrooms, kids’ rooms, workspaces, and utility areas.  I didn’t find the introductory chapter on planning to have any new ideas, but I borrowed the book to look at the pictures, and it’s worth it for those alone.  I sketched out a few ideas, and I’ll probably borrow this book again when I have a particular space I’m looking at working on.

Falk, Robert H., and Brad Guy. Unbuilding: Salvaging the Architectural Treasures of Unwanted Houses. Newtown, CT: Taunton, 2007. Print.

Another great Taunton press book.  The authors write passionately about the benefits of reusing not just fixtures and windows, but lumber and planks from old houses.  If a house isn’t important enough to be saved, they argue, at least all of it doesn’t have to go into a landfill site. By the end of the first chapter I was convinced that this was another item to add to my long list of things I want to do someday.

The rest of the book, fortunately for my husband, showed me just how much work is involved.  They talk about both “soft stripping” – taking just easily removed items like lighting and cabinets – and total teardowns.  Safety is a big concern that is comprehensively covered here.  They also stress logistics and being organized – down to the level of detail of where best to put your dumpster (not everything can be saved, of course, and the shingles are something that need to be disposed of early).  Sources of light (the power to the house must be turned off, and the hydro company needs to be involved), water, and toilet facilities have to be figured out.  There will be enough piles of materials that a city lot can’t hold everything until you’re done, so there has to be a steady stream of pick-ups.  One of the little details has stuck in my mind – every board that’s salvaged must be de-nailed, which means you will have a “de-nailing station” with at least two people manning it.  That’s a lot of hard work.

Between the chapters are profiles of “Unbuilding Pioneers”, people who have been salvaging for a while, and how they got started.  These are oddly not listed in the table of contents.

There’s an index and a list of websites, but not a bibliography – which probably reflects the fact that this book is unique.

Cruickshank, Tom, and de Visser, John. Old Ontario Houses: Traditions in Local Architecture. Richmond Hill, Ont.: Firefly, 2009. Print.

This is a beautiful book, well illustrated with large (filling most of a page each) colour photos by John de Visser.  Houses from all across Ontario are illustrated, with one from as far north as Thunder Bay.

The text is poorly filled, unfortunately.  There are a dozen places where line breaks occur unnecessarily.  This, however, is just an annoyance compared to the bigger problem, which is missing text.  When the text overflows the space available on a page, it just stops – mid-sentence – without any explanation or continuation.  I haven’t asked for the original edition from the library to see if this is a new problem with the 2009 edition.

This is an affectionate look at a hundred or so houses, without too much in the way of pretension – a log cabin is included, and an abandoned farmhouse.  Mostly they are not famous houses.  Only a few interiors are pictured.

In the introduction they define the style of “Ontario farmhouse”; a one-and-a-half storey house with a gable peak over a central front door, and a symmetrical arrangement of windows.  However, in the glossary they refer to it as an “Ontario Cottage”.  The glossary and line drawings of styles are the weakest part of the book, but there is a reasonably extensive suggested bibliography.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1552094995.01._SX140_SY225_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Love, Patricia, and Steven Stosny. How to Improve Your Marriage without Talking about It: Finding Love beyond Words. New York: Broadway, 2007. Print.

This is the first book I’m reviewing without having it in front of me.  I almost used that as an excuse to skip it, but really, I’m not sure I would have more to say even if I could refer to it.

It really quite confused me.  It was so harsh on the typical woman’s approach of talking everything out, that I found myself tongue-tied every time I tried to speak to my husband.  The material presented about how women are primarily motivated by fear, and men by shame, didn’t match anything I’d heard or read before.  I realize this doesn’t mean that it’s wrong, and I can’t point to my own marriage to say it’s false, but it was disconcerting.

Their point about men’s wives providing the meaning in their life was particularly hard to take.  Surely my husband wouldn’t be aimless without me?

All in all, the book made me quite uncomfortable.  There are exercises, but some of them are silly, and most of them are “one size fits all” with no way to modify them for a particular couple’s needs.  I can’t say that I wouldn’t recommend it, because it might be just what a particular person or marriage needs… but I would certainly recommend getting it out of the library rather than buying it.

Perry, Laurie. Home Is Where the Wine Is. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 2009. Print.

Laurie Perry is better known as “Crazy Aunt Purl”, the blogger who started writing about her life in January 2005, and somehow turned into an internet phenomenon – among us knitters, anyway.  I actually didn’t start reading until the summer of 2009, but I obsessively went back to the very beginning and read her whole blog in order.  At the time she was a newly-divorced 30-something with four cats and a new knitting hobby, and freely admitted that blogging was a cheap form of therapy for her.  Many of her enthusiasms – her knitting and cats, obviously, but also exercise and de-cluttering – are enthusiasms of mine as well.

Her first book, loosely based on the blog, was called “Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair”.  This is the sequel, picking up where that book left off.  She is mostly over her divorce, and includes three chapters about dating – always problematic in this age of dating websites, but even more so since she innocently started blogging under her real name, so all her neuroses and late-night ill-advised posts are freely available to any man who googles her name.  She sets up the book as a list of new year’s resolutions, and tracks her progress (or lack thereof) against them.

I loved her first book as I love the blog, and I love this book too.  Not only does Perry write from the heart, she writes well.  I find her incredibly funny, and found myself laughing until tears came to my eyes while reading this.  I’m not sure that everybody would find her as hilarious, but I definitely think she’s worth a try, especially if you love knitting, cats, or wine.

Haun, Larry. The Basics of Carpentry. Newtown, CT: Taunton, 1998. Print.

I LOVED this book.  By the time I was half-way through I felt like I knew Haun, thanks to his conversational writing tone.  By the end I felt as if I’d framed a house with him, with the benefit of his hints, tips, and humour all the way.  I know Taunton Press mostly for their magazines (“Threads” and “Fine Homebuilding”), and their books don’t disappoint either.  The photos and hand-drawn diagrams are all clear and illustrative.

There is only one chapter on finish carpentry, so Haun’s bias as a framing carpenter shows.  However, the book is worth reading if you are planning to frame any structure, even a garden shed – just the info on plumbing and straightening walls (when I thought they were done!) would save anyone time and grief when it comes time to start framing the roof.

I wanted to learn about how to frame floor joists, walls, second stories and roofs; and this book told me a lot of what I needed to know.  There aren’t a lot of alternative techniques discussed, but for a solid walk-through of Western stick-built framing, this is it.

Susanka, Sarah, and Kira Obolensky. The Not so Big House: a Blueprint for the Way We Really Live. Newtown, CT: Taunton, 1998. Print.

This is the seminal work that started the small house movement, so it was necessary for me to revisit it.  I think I even own a copy of the book, but it was in the attic, so I found it easier to get this off the shelf at the library.  (Some irony there?).

The real irony, 12 years after the book was published, is that the houses really aren’t small.  She urges people to build 2,000 square foot houses rather than 3,000 ones, putting the extra money into better design and finishes.  Since I’m currently living in a 1,500 square foot house and planning to move to one that’s only 1,000, I wondered how well her ideas would translate.

The answer seems to be “not very”, at least in my case – but part of that is the evolution of thinking over the past decade.  The idea that a formal living and dining room are necessary seems to have mostly fallen by the wayside for my circle of friends, largely due to Susanka’s influence herself.  I certainly know people who have bought huge houses in Mississauga or Scarborough with an eat-in kitchen AND dining room, and living room AND rec room.  But, I know more people who are buying 700 square foot condos right on Bloor Street and using every inch of their space well.

Either way I slice it, though, this book remains an inspiration.  The beautiful colour photos show houses with rich woodwork and thoughtful detailing.  The principles of “shelter around activity” and diagonal views are not as obvious as items or spaces that do double duty, and it showed me how those principles are working (or usually not working) in my home now.

Possibly my favourite pictures are the ones of sculptor Henry Moore’s kitchen in a London studio (pages 60 and 91); tucked under the stairs, it has lots of drawers and cabinets and looks so inviting, either for entertaining or a quiet individual meal.

There is a decent index and a better bibliography.

Salomon, Shay, and Nigel Valdez. Little House on a Small Planet: Simple Homes, Cozy Retreats, and Energy Efficient Possibilities. Guilford, CT: Lyons, 2006. Print.

This is a great book – exactly what I was looking for at this point in time.  The first part of the book is an impassioned plea for smaller houses, talking about American excess and the subtle as well as obvious problems with it.  I had to skim parts of this because I am already convinced that smaller houses are better, and it was painful to read about the problems that the American Dream is causing, both socially as well as environmentally.

The meat of the book, however, is in the middle sections, where a wide variety of homes are examined in detail.  A few statistics are given on each one – usually who built it and when, the area in square feet, the number of occupants, the location, and the costs – both to build it initially and the monthly utility costs.  There are usually enough pictures to get a good idea of the interior of the house, and often floor plans and site plans.  A full-colour section in the middle pulls out common themes found in the houses, such as storage and lofts, and provides lots of colour photos of innovative ways to use that idea.

Houses range from a 220 square foot cottage (augmented with a 352 sq. ft. art studio) to a 9,500 square foot house built in 1908 that now houses 16 people in a co-operative lifestyle.  There is a cob house, and a round house, and several Canadian examples mixed in with the American houses. There is a house in Colombia and one in Thailand, along with a discussion of how space is used in other countries (but there are no Japanese examples here).  The notion of “house” is even allowed to include Dufferin Grove Park, a Toronto park around Garrison Creek.  The emphasis in that essay is on community involvement and indeed, community-run parks.

I particularly like the fact that Salomon hasn’t felt confined by a structure of discussing individual houses; they are grouped together according to three major themes (reduce, rethink, and relax),  with plenty of digressions to talk about related topics such as the banking industry.

There are copious end notes detailing Salomon’s impressive research – although strong opinions are expressed, they are backed up by facts and studies.  There is a good glossary and index, but no further reading suggested.

My only quibble is that not all the books illustrated on the cover are discussed inside – I looked in vain for the cute little yellow gable-end house.

Blumenson, John. Ontario Architecture: a Guide to Styles and Building Terms, 1784 to the Present. [Canada]: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1990. Print.

I happened upon this book at the local library, hoping that it would answer for me a question I’ve had for a while about houses I think of as a peculiarly Ontario type – a one-and-a-half storey house with a steep gable over the front door.  This book is subtitled “A Guide to Styles and Building Terms 1784 to the present”, and it does indeed cover a huge range of styles of houses and other buildings.

There are tons of black-and-white photos throughout the book, which means that each of the 27 identified styles can be illustrated by half-a-dozen or buildings – useful for beginners like me who don’t necessarily see which elements of a single example are the keys to the style.  Well-known buildings have been excluded, and I enjoyed the emphasis on buildings that I could imagine owning and living in, rather than museum pieces.

An interesting highlight for me was recognizing my old high school.  I suspect that most Ontarians will have the same jolt of recognition – plenty of houses from all kinds of towns are pictured, from Leamington to Maitland to Sault Ste. Marie.  There are also a few quirky buildings such as gas stations and a water-treatment plant, providing variety from houses and public buildings.

Most houses pictured are in good repair, so there was little of the flinching that I feel when I see an old house that appears to have fallen on hard times.  When a house shows a mish-mash of styles, such as Neoclassical door in an otherwise Gothic Revival house, the author seems to delight in how builders of yore put together elements they liked, rather than deploring the lack of purity of style.

The index is comprehensive and there is a three-page bibliography for further reading.