This One's Juusst Right

In the first two years of our married life, we lived in a one-bedroom bachelor-pad trailer house. We had to put the crib for baby #1 in the dining room, and by time I was expecting baby #2, we knew we had to make some more room.

Since the trailer was well built and included copper wiring, we decided to add on more space to it. And since it contained a perfectly good kitchen and bathroom, which are normally the most expensive rooms, we decided to primarily add space. I designed a brand-new outside of the house that completely enclosed the trailer house. The new space included a great room, a dining room, an extra bedroom and bath, office, and a screened-in back porch. We turned the old living room into a master bedroom, and I discovered a shower stall behind the paneling at the back of the fancy bar in the corner we didn't use. The previous owner had taken out an existing bathroom and enlarged the living room, so it was easy to convert it back into a small bathroom for our master bedroom.

We opened up an eighteen foot span in the side of the trailer adjacent to the great room we'd added on. The living room ceilings were 16' high with huge wooden beams and clerestory windows. Our builder, Pete Gonzales, kept telling me he wasn't a mason, but he built the most beautiful fireplace I've ever seen. I designed it as a right-angled triangle that stood between the dining and living rooms. It went all the way to the ceiling, creating rock walls on the back two sides. People who weren't familiar with our previous abode had no idea a trailer house was anywhere near our new-looking home.

We had more than doubled the size of our modest home, and it more than doubled the workload, too. I loved our newish home, but it soon turned into a huge source of frustration for me because I hadn't developed good habits when it came to keeping it clean and uncluttered. I never considered that when I was having so much fun designing it.

The new addition after we took the trailer house out; 

I'm sure I broke every architecture rule in the book, but we loved our house

Seventeen years later, we took the trailer house part out and built a new kitchen, dining room, master bedroom, bedroom, two bathrooms with walk-in closets, a large utility room, front porch, and carport. That added on another thousand square feet. I loved this house, too, but keeping it clean was still such a chore.

In the last remodeling effort, I used tin buckets to make the three porch lights to run along the long front porch; I punched different designs in each one of them and mounted them with  inexpensive ceramic light fixtures inside.

I now live in a house that's thirteen hundred square feet smaller than that last house I designed, and this one is a perfect fit. When the bigger house took most of the day to clean, it takes less than three hours to clean this one top to bottom. And I can do all the floors-- vacuum, steam-mop, and wax in an hour! I don't dread housework anymore. I have to say that it makes a world of difference to have the right tools, too, and the most expensive isn't necessarily the best.

Our front porch

My parents and I combined two households to move in together, so we both had to get rid of a lot of stuff. And the only problem we've struggled with is keeping the clutter at bay. One of the handiest features about this property has been the attic above the garage, which we use regularly.

Sometimes our eyes get bigger than our common sense when it comes to buying or building a house. Space is nice, but we also need to consider the cost of running and maintaining a larger place. And if we haven't acquired good cleaning habits in a smaller home, they don't magically appear when moving into a larger one. So when planning to upsize, plan on adjusting to the upsized workload, too. Develop those good habits beforehand, and maintaining your bigger house won't turn into a millstone around your neck.