Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I have a lot I'd like to someday build on; it's a narrow 40 foot, urban lot. It's surrounded by existing homes, so it would be a challenge to get a lot of house built on this small lot. So I'm always looking for ideas.
Sacramento has made it difficult to build an in-fill house. Not only do they want fee after fee after fee, but they have now mandated that every house has at least a one-car garage built on the property along with the house. Unless there is an alley, this pretty much means that you have to get a house, and a garage, built as one unit. Try that on a 40 foot lot with five foot spaces on each side. This means you need to get a 10 foot wide garage as part of the 30 foot wide unit. This has led to some very funny looking homes in the city. What you see from the street is a huge garage with a few windows on the second or third unit that is the living section, hanging on like an afterthought. I've lived downtown, and had no trouble parking on the street, but the city makes that a non-starter.
Anyway, this book offers a partial solution. There are indeed some 20 and 30 foot-wide homes in the book. In fact there are a couple that are even narrower. Very unusual. But, like so many other books, their definition of 'narrow' isn't my definition of narrow. For example, they think a 50 foot wide home is narrow. With setbacks of five feet on either side of the lot, that means your lot must be at least 60 foot wide. That's unusual, at least in Sacramento. A standard city lot here is 50X100.
The designs are fine, and they include some examples of 'small' homes that have actually been built, which is reassuring. Just don't expect some budget homes that will sit on your truly narrow lot, and will have a garage and will not be 2600 square feet (too big and too expensive on a narrow lot).
Four stars. If they included more budget homes that would really fit on a city lot, I'd bump that up to four-and-a-half stars; hint, hint.
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Smart Design series volume focusing on designs and ideas for challenging properties
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