Overall, I found this book to be highly readable-I read the entire thing in less than two days. This book helped explain why we were more drawn to this older home and, for me, validated our choice. We chose, not the biggest or newest house we could afford with our budget, but an older home that was far above the other houses in terms of sheer personality and charm.
Since my husband and I are currently in the process of buying a new home, I found this book particularly pertinent-more importantly, for me, this helped me be more confident about our final choice. I did find that many of the interiors are much richer than I will probably ever be able to afford (and not all of them quite to my taste), but I think her basic principle-that we should make our homes into the kind of spaces we want to be in-rings true and is a refreshing contrast from the trend of ever bigger and more spacious (and often character-less) new homes. I don't think she's arguing that everyone should build this size-in fact, she repeatedly emphasizes that the size and nature of the home should be in line with what the homeowners are financially capable of (and in fact, the homes in the book range from 800 sq feet on up). Some of the critiques I've seen leveled against this book are that 3000 sq feet is not a "not-so-big" house-but in fairness to Susanka, she's arguing that, if you can afford to build 6000 sq feet, you might consider building half that size and putting the remaining budget money in the kind of details (built ins, etc.) that make a house a livable home. In other words, we may find it worthwhile to spend more time, money, and effort on certain parts of the home than on others and we may be able to find ways to incorporate multiple activities into a single space by the way we design the space itself.
I also particularly enjoyed her assertion that we should think about the ways that we use space-where do we spend most of our time? What activities do we do in those spaces?-and compose our homes inline with that thinking. square footage), and that we ought to build (or remodel) homes that reflect our actual lifestyles. I really enjoyed the basic premise of this book: that we should focus more on the quality of our homes than on the quantity (i.e.
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