A not so big house in Midtown

Home and Garden

A not so small house

The exterior brick had been painted gray. "Lots of rags, gallons of paint stripper, and hundreds of masks later, we had the paint off the brick. There is one place where we left the paint. That's called a "witness", to let future homeowners know what's been done to the house," says Young.

They enlarged the kitchen by removing the wall that separated the old kitchen from a small back porch, and carefully planned the design. "It was important to us that it feel like a kitchen from the time the house was built, so we copied the existing cabinetry in the butler's pantry," says Lavandier.

Tall ceilings allow for lots of storage areas, some of which requires the use of a stepstool.

It took 15 days to renovate the bath with a reconditioned pedestal sink, salvaged medicine cabinet, cast iron tub, new subway tile and period lighting were installed and the couple moved in.

The Midtown Craftsman has two-bedrooms and one-bath.

The couple added bookshelves on either side of the living room fireplace, reproducing a typical Craftsman detail, and adding more storage in the bargain.

A final project was a garden shed designed and built by Young in the Craftsman style.

The kitchen's 9-ft ceilings make for lots of storage options. Running storage all the way up to the ceiling and reconfiguring shelving to be more useful takes advantage of every inch of space.

One of the keys to living well in a small space is using every room. "We eat breakfast in the breakfast room and dinner in the dining room. And we live in the living room," Young laughs. "We use our rooms for their intended purposes and there's none of that only using a room for special occasions."

The most dramatic change was recreating the original front porch. The porch had been turned into a sunroom. Guided by photos of the house before its 1970s renovation, they were able to return the porch to its original use and look.

Doug Young and Jessica Lavandier spent three years renovating this 1924 Craftsman bungalow in Midtown Atlanta.

Young and Lavandier with their daughter Emma feel the small house fits their family. "You probably couldn't build a house this small because of the price of land," Young says.

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The exterior brick had been painted gray. "Lots of rags, gallons of paint stripper, and hundreds of masks later, we had the paint off the brick. There is one place where we left the paint. That's called a "witness", to let future homeowners know what's been done to the house," says Young.

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