It's All In The Prespective

During the Victorian era, any house smaller than 2000 feet was called a "cottage."

My house would be a cottage.

It squeaks in at just barely over 2000 feet, but I don't think the three or four extra would have meant very much.

When I was designing our house, I used a lot of visual tricks to  make it look bigger on the outside. It is a very tall house, with a steeper roof than usual. I have a pseudo-wrap around porch on the front, which is deep and seats easily from both sides.

We also have a small back porch. It sits up on the second level (with a porch we don't use much right now underneath it).

All this makes the house look bigger than it really is.

On the inside, the foyer is two stories high. All the ceilings downstairs are nine feet high. The rooms (all four of them, if you don't count the half bath) are pretty big and flow into one another while remaining different rooms.

Some of Daughter's friends in the past thought we lived in a mansion. Some probably thought we were in a little house.

Daughter never chose friends because of their social or financial standing, even when she was old enough to understand what that meant. She's never cared, and good for her. One little friend who lived in a cramped house with her grandmother, asked as we pulled into the driveway how many families lived in our house.

I had a builder tell me about going with a friend to a house the friend was working on. They were taken to a huge room and left there for a few minutes. This guy saw what he thought was another room, and casually strolled into it. He said he couldn't figure out why they'd built it the way they had, as it was all rock, walls and floor, too.

Grinning, his friend told him to look up. He did, and he could see the sky.

He had walked into a fireplace. It was big enough to roast a whole cow in, and be able to walk around the spit.

You hear of wealthy people building these giant houses with more square feet than your local grocery store. My question is why?

They usually don't have family to fill it up.

It must be a hollow sounding house.

It seems houses are being built smaller as a rule, lately. I guess the economy dictates the size of the average guy's house.

I once built a house that was close to 4000 square feet. That house kept me instead of me keeping it. I always said I wanted the next house to be the right size, where every room was used.

That's what I have now.

And I wonder as I get older, is this house going to seem too big to manage someday?

Maybe. One never knows.