Less is more

Smaller houses work best when needs overrule wants

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/JOHN SYKES JR. - Lyndsey Lewis Pardue built this mini-sized house and now lives there with her husband Tom. 110513
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/JOHN SYKES JR. - Lyndsey Lewis Pardue built this mini-sized house and now lives there with her husband Tom. 110513

Living large. For decades, it has been the goal of many Americans, built on the belief that bigger is better.

Young couples begin with “starter homes” and work their square footage up from there. As the family grows, the small car driven as a college student gets traded in for an SUV to tote the kids to all those activities. And while a pick-up truck is great, one with an extended cab is better.

Restaurants offer all-you-can-eat buffets, fast-food chains offer oversize burgers, and convenience stores serve up 64-ounce soft drinks.

But the tide of consumerism appears to be turning. Environmental consciousness is on the rise. Emphasis is shifting to recycling and reusing what we already have instead of making more. And when we do produce and consume, there’s an increased effort to do so on a more local level.

For many, the focus has moved from wants to needs.

The gaining popularity of this minimalist mentality can be seen in household items - decorative wall plaques or throw pillows proclaiming “Simplify your life, magnify your living” or “To have more, desire less.”

For some, this lifestyle is becoming a new way of life - from food, clothing and furniture to vehicles and housing.

Professional organizer Becca Clark, owner of Creative Convenience in Hot Springs, says nearly all of the clients she works with in central Arkansas are working to simplify and become more efficient and effective at home or work, with about 25 percent of them also downsizing their living spaces.

“A few contact me before making the move, which is a huge advantage since we can plan what items to take to live comfortably,” she says. “But most call after the move when they have trouble making it all fit and become overwhelmed by the process. The downsizing reality is sometimes less wonderful than the concept,” says Clark, who 10 years ago moved from a four-bedroom ranch-style house in the suburbs of Dallas to a 1,150-foot downtown loft condo.

Scott Stewart of Mountain View is making a living building houses for those who are choosing to live smaller.

Originally, he worked in his family’s lumber mill but about 15 years ago, the 40-year-old started a side business building small structures such as storage buildings and cabins.

“Back then, small houses weren’t in,” he says, “Instead, everyone was building these great big houses.”

He later began building tiny houses, and for the last four years, building them has become his sole profession through his Slabtown Customs.

He and a small crew work on two or three projects at a time. His most popular size house is 8 feet wide by 24 feet long but he also offers an 11-by-30-foot model. The houses, which are often placed in RV parks and use the same type of connections as an RV, can be put on wheels or placed more permanently on steel skids or 6-by-6-foot wooden timbers.

Stewart’s houses - which take a month to six weeks to build and cost from $10,000 to $30,000, with the most popular ones running about $20,000 - are customized for each client.

Who are buying these houses - young couples? Retired folks? Empty nesters?

“All of the above,” Stewart says. “One young couple who recently bought an 8-foot-by-24-foot house and put it on Lake Conway could have afforded a bigger house but instead chose to live with a minimalist approach.

“Another house I built [is] for a woman in Washington state who plans to gradually downsize from a 3, 000-square foot house to the one I built,” Stewart says. “The house measures 8-by-24 feet but it has a 6-foot porch on it, so the interior living space in it is really only 8-by-18 feet.”

About half of the tiny houses he builds are for customers out of state, ranging from the West coast to New England.

His advice for those considering drastically downsizing their dwellings?

“They should start out by using just a couple of the rooms in their current homes,” he suggests. “A lot of times my clients will say they have a 1,500- or 2,000-square-foot house but when they really started taking a look at the rooms they are actually using, they discover that they are really just using a portion of their homes.”

In late 2011, Lyndsey Lewis Pardue of Little Rock, a 32-year-old pharmacist at St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center, turned heads when she traded in her 2,000-square-foot house in Maumelle to build a small cottage in Little Rock’s Hillcrest neighborhood.

The small blue wood-frame house at Lee Avenue and Van Buren Street was completed in March 2012 and is approximately 700 square feet. During the construction, she began a blog, “Little House in Little Rock: Planning, Building and Living Small in the Modern World.” (littlehouselr.blogspot. com). There she wrote about the building process and continues to chronicle the adventures of living there with her black lab Annya and a trio of egg-producing Leghorn hens in the backyard.

What drew her to build the tiny house? Pardue was going through a divorce and decided to stop, take stock of her life and determine what was really important to her, to reconsider the way she’d been living, spending and wasting.

“I decided I wanted a home that needed less care and cleaning, I wanted to live in town, I wanted a place for a garden, and a yard for my dog,” she says.

A National Public Radio segment she heard on KUARFM, 89.1, about Tumbleweed Tiny Homes’ small house plans piqued her interest in what has become known as the “tiny house movement.”

“For me, it made sense to downsize,” Pardue says. “I was tired of spending all my time working to pay for all these things - a nice traditional house in Maumelle, two nice cars, and a country club membership - that I didn’t even really care about.”

On her blog in a post from August 2011, she refers to her decision as a “pilgrimage toward simplicity.”

So she bought a vacant lot for $55,000, plans for a house titled “Whidbey” from Tumbleweed, and hired Jennifer and Bret Franks of Bret Franks Construction in Little Rock to build it. Including landscaping and sidewalks, the entire project (excluding the cost of the land) was about $150,000, she says.

Some alterations her builders made to the plans include removing a wall between the 7-by-7-foot kitchen and the 15-by-9-foot living room, adding a built-in corner banquette to the dining area, narrowing the door frame between the foyer and living area to allow for a wall on which to place a television, expanding the back master bedroom to equal the width of the house, and adding custom shelving to all closets.

Planning the details of the space down to inches took time and a lot of forethought, says Jennifer Franks.

“With the level of detail we were working with, the greatest challenge we faced was trying to explain the concept to the subcontractors,” Franks says.

She sees a return in the popularity of smaller houses.

“If you think back, years ago there were a lot of smaller homes like this one,” she says. “That was when we only had the amount of space we needed. Since then, our society has lost sight of that but I think it now is swinging back that way again.”

Franks adds that younger generations of homeowners want high-end products in their homes and are willing to have smaller houses to afford them; choosing quality above quantity.

In building her house, Pardue used salvaged materials whenever possible, using scraps from other projects including leftover granite from a friend’s office remodeling job for the kitchen counters and antique bead board her stepfather found in a rental house; other supplies from The Habitat for Humanity Restore in North Little Rock, a thrift store featuring building materials, among other things; and antique and resale shops. She also had her house Energy Star certified.

While her house was being built, she set about whittling down her possessions by half or more, considering what she had, why she had it and whether or not she really needed it.

“Now my house is a constant reminder to strive for balance,” she writes on her blog, adding, “A physical mission statement.”

Her family’s and friends’ reactions?

“At first people were a little concerned because what I was doing was really atypical, they were afraid I was going through a midlife crisis or not being responsible,” she says. “But once I showed them my plans, my parents got real excited.”

In early November, Pardue and her then-boyfriend Tom Pardue, a pharmacy technician with Baptist Health Home Infusion, wed.

What did he bring with him when he moved in? Mainly his clothes and his kitchen items.

“I was living in a small apartment so I didn’t have a lot to begin with,” he says, adding that he has never been one to really collect a lot of stuff. “And I wasn’t crazy about the furniture I had so I just donated it.”

The pair have formed Little House Little Rock LLC, bought a lot on A Street and are planning to put a couple of tiny houses there to be used as rental property.

“Getting a traditional mortgage for a smaller house is tricky because there are no [comparable-size houses nearby],” Pardue explains. “We hope that by doing this it will help and open up [the lending/mortgage market for small houses].”

Her house also includes a one-car garage with storage space for her lawn mower, bicycle and tools, as well as a loft above one end of the garage to add more space. Other features are a patio and a chicken coop.

What will they do should another bird - namely the stork - ever drop in on them?

“If that should happen we have a front room that’s a second bedroom that could be used as a nursery,” Pardue says.

After all, the couple did manage to host 150 guests at their pint-size house for their recent wedding.

HomeStyle, Pages 37 on 12/28/2013

Upcoming Events