Make space for your life

by Carol Venolia and Kelly Lerner, excerpted and adapted from Natural Remodeling for the Not-So-Green House: Bringing Your Home into Harmony with Nature (Lark Books, 2006).

For most people, remodeling means building an addition; if the current spaces aren't working for them, they assume that more space is the answer. But more space means more construction cost, more material resources used, more house to clean and maintain, and more energy required for heating, cooling, and lighting. By reorganizing and rearranging the spaces you have—or just changing the way you use space—you can often solve your problems with less expense, fewer headaches, and less consumption of natural resources. Just avoiding or minimizing the need for an addition is one of the greenest things you can do.

More Space or Better Space?

Many houses have plenty of floor area, but because the rooms don't relate to each other well or match the family's activities, much of the space is wasted. Making space is about designing around the activities that you and your family enjoy. A redesign of your existing house can make the floor area you have more functional and comfortable. After all, what is comfort but the ability to move through your day with ease, able to wake in pleasant surroundings, bathe with bliss, find your keys and sort the mail, cook meals with pans and food within reach, gaze out into the garden, chat with friends, relax in a cozy space at the end of the day, and sleep in a quiet, secure area? Making space is about evaluating your home, your climate and site, what you love, and what you need, then massaging the space so that it works for you. Only consider building an addition after you've been creative with what's already there.

Start by evaluating how you use your house now: Where are the problem areas? What works well? What rooms are seldom used and why? Ask yourself, "What would it take for me to use all of these rooms every day?" If a public room can't be seen from the main gathering area, you probably won't use it much. Often all it takes is moving a doorway, opening up a wall between a kitchen and living room, or installing French doors to a garden patio. Seldom-used rooms can do double duty, increasing their usefulness. For example, with a little good storage, such as built-in bookcases and drawers, a formal dining room can host guests at holidays and also serve for daily after-school study or weekly bill-paying.

Remodel to Fit You

"Doing more with less" really does mean more: more ease, more comfort, more vitality, more joy, more of the authentic you. Close your eyes and imagine the most beautiful place you've ever been in. What elements made you feel most comfortable? Was it the color of the walls, the warmth of sun on your cheeks, the dappled light, the soft cushion, or the spectacular view? How can you translate and replicate those elements in your home?

For example, perhaps you feel most "at home" hiking in the mountains—the feel of organic duff below your feet, dappled sunlight through the trees, framed "zen" views of distant peaks, textures of rough basalt or granite, the trees just budding out. Distill this experience into elements in your home: wood chip paths through your garden, light filtered through a vine-covered trellis, a small window to a stunning view, a bathtub surrounded by rough-hewn stone, a special tree just outside the kitchen window. Your home can be the place that grounds you, the place where you nourish your physical and spiritual health by reconnecting with the primal cycles of the natural world and everything else you hold dear.

Expressing your personal style doesn't preclude functionality. In fact, uniqueness and functionality support each other. Spaces designed to fit your everyday life—how you sleep, play, cook, eat, bath, pay bills, and socialize—allow you to surround yourself with the things you love while eliminating the unnecessary. A family room that fits your family's activities can be both smaller and more enjoyable. A kitchen with storage well-matched to the way you shop and cook is more comfortable and works better. The best personal solutions are universal.

Craft a Successful Kitchen-Family Room Relationship

Many older homes were designed for the lifestyles of a previous age, when wives stayed home during the day doing housework and preparing food. Kitchens in these homes are often isolated from the main living spaces and too cramped for modern appliances. As times have changed, with both parents and children away from the house most of the day, the family craves the comfort and togetherness of preparing and eating food together at the end of day. In more modern houses, the kitchen has expanded into one big "great room" that accommodates dining, socializing, and food prep but the competing needs of the various spaces often make great rooms chaotic.

While neither isolated kitchens nor open great rooms work well, partial openness can be the key. Raised countertops can screen the kitchen mess from view and provide an informal eating bar. Regular-height counters and islands define spaces and double the workspace because helpers can work from both sides. Upper cabinets add an extra layer of separation—but hang them high enough to see underneath. Built-in eating spaces between the kitchen and family room strengthen both rooms by preserving each one's independence while linking it with an eating space.

Bring in More Light

Humans love light. Rooms with poor natural lighting often aren't well used because they feel cramped and uninviting. Rather than adding floor space, consider adding sunlight to your rooms to make them more alluring. There are many ways to bring light to dark space:

• Reflect light from an existing opening farther into the space by painting the opposite and/or adjacent wall and ceiling a light, reflective color. Extending the jambs of a window with built-in bookcases will also reflect light into the room and give you extra storage and maybe even a window seat.

• Borrow light from another room. Opening rooms to each other by removing or punching through a wall provides both light and an extended visual range. Well-sealed interior windows or glass blocks can allow two spaces to share light without compromising acoustic privacy.

• Add a window or glazed door. Windows placed high in a wall throw light deep into the room.

• Add a skylight to a room where wall space is at a premium or in an attic where windows aren't an option.

Build In Furniture

Built-ins simplify rooms and increase their usability by eliminating the need for additional furniture. They can also divide rooms and provide storage at the same time. Here are some good ways to use built-ins to make your space live larger:

• Bookcases are great for adding thickness and display space to existing walls. Half-height bookshelves can replace interior walls, providing both functional separation and visual connection between rooms.

• Built-in seating eliminates the need for a sofa and chairs, and can even function as a sleeping place for guests. Flip-top storage extends its functionality. With a flat place to lean back against, a window seat is often the most sought-after place in the house, whether for reading or napping in the sun.

• Dining nooks with built-in tables and seating allow the table to be closer to the wall, saving valuable floor space.

• Built-in work surfaces and bookshelves are often the only furniture needed in a home office.

• Lofts in rooms with high ceilings can double the available square footage and provide good spaces for working, meditation, or sleeping.

• Built-in cabinets used as room dividers take up a little more space than a stud wall, but they give back a lot more in functionality, while stud walls give little.

Add Flexibility

You can extend the usefulness of your present spaces by designing them to adjust for different functions at different times of day. Creating convenient or movable storage for different activities is often the key to multi-use rooms.

• Movable cabinets or bookcases can act as room dividers for some activities, then be rolled against the wall to accommodate functions that require more space

• A kitchen island on wheels can roll away for flexible floor space, roll on out to the garden for outdoor cooking

• An interior or exterior wall can slide into place to hide a home office or a kitchen for more formal meals

• Murphy beds change a den, office, or family room into a guest room quickly.

Change Interior Walls and Traffic Patterns for Shelter and Openness

To be most comfortable, public rooms need a balance of the openness that facilitates social contact and the separation that allows conversations and activities to flow uninterrupted. You can differentiate spaces without walling them off by using changes in ceiling height, lowered beams, columns, built-in furniture, or even changes in flooring to signal the end of one room and the beginning of the next. Rooms that are sheltered on three sides, with circulation or openness on the fourth side, provide both the sense of refuge and the outward view that we all crave. At a minimum, each activity center should be protected by walls, built-ins, or furniture on two sides.

Go Up Or Down

An attic or basement may be the perfect place for an office, guest bedroom, master suite, or meditation room. If you're finishing out your attic or basement, you'll face these common design challenges:

• Access: Adding stairs can gobble up space, but they can often be accommodated by giving up a closet or one side of a larger room.

• Insulation and Moisture Control: Attics and basements present special challenges when it comes to controlling heat and moisture. Be sure to get professional input to avoid creating problems.

• Structure: For an attic, ceiling joists or roof framing may need to be reinforced Consult with an architect or structural engineer to evaluate your current structure.

• Indoor Air Quality: Consult a professional to avoid problems from combustion appliances, radon, mold, rodent excreta, and poor ventilation.

Go Outdoors

Outdoor rooms are the best way to add living space without the high cost of weatherproof, insulated construction. They not only add seasonal living space, they can be coupled with new windows and doors to add visual space to existing interior rooms. A gated entry courtyard, trellis, or porch can add gracious, welcoming charm to a plain house by making an arrival feel like a journey through many well-crafted spaces. Sunrooms are a special type of addition that can add improve your passive solar heating while adding floor space. In cold climates, design the sunspace to be sealed off from the house at night to minimize heat loss through all that glass. Avoid overheating by including adequate summer shading and thermal mass, such as concrete or masonry, to store solar warmth by day and release it at night.

Less is More

Smaller needn't feel like less; good design, not square footage, is what makes a space feel ample. When you keep your floor area modest, you may free up money to pay for the energy-efficiency upgrades, personalized details and high-quality materials that personalize a house and give it soul. You're remaking your house into a personal haven that will sustain your spirit. Value quality over quantity, comfort over volume, elegant functionality over impersonal square footage, and a relationship with the sun, wind, and web of life over isolation.