Author Sheri Koones Discusses Benefits of Smaller Houses and Prefab Construction

The average single-family home in the United States is just under 2,500 square feet, but on the South Fork, homes that are more than double that size are almost run-of-the-mill.

It’s hard to imagine convincing many builders and homebuyers here that it’s possible and desirable to live large in a modestly sized house, but that’s just what author Sheri Koones demonstrates in her latest book, “Bigger Than Tiny, Smaller Than Average.” Each of the homes she features is less than 2,000 square feet, but nothing about them feels small.

Koones will discuss efficient homes and sustainable building practices on Friday, November 11, at Lambert’s Cove, a new house in East Hampton by Yankee Barn Homes, a New Hampshire-based builder of post-and-beam houses.

“This is my 10th book,” Koones said during an interview last Friday from her home in Greenwich, Connecticut. “All of the houses that I’ve written about in the last several years have all been very energy efficient, sustainable. A lot of the people can build big houses. They choose to build small houses because they just don’t want to spend money on energy. They’re concerned about the environment and in a lot of cases, it’s just a couple with two children, and they don’t need that much space.”

Koones came to learn the challenges of building and living in a large home when she had a house built in Greenwich in 1999.

“There were lots of issues that I came across,” she recalled. “I had been living in the city so I didn’t know very much about home construction. So I decided that when I got finished, I would write a book for all those people who could find some of those pitfalls that I did.”

She wrote her first book, “From Sand Castles to Dream Houses: A Planner for Building or Remodeling Your Home,” and thought it would be one and done. She intended to go back to her career in the fashion industry. However, she got a call from another publisher who offered her a contract for two more books on home construction.

In Koones’s research for her second book, what she found most fascinating was prefab construction, she said, so she wrote her third book about modular mansions. She said everyone who heard she was writing about prefab houses assumed she was writing about “little tacky houses,” but she showed the most beautiful houses in her book.

“There’s a misconception about what prefab is,” Koones said. “There’s modular, there’s structural insulated panels, there’s panelized systems. There’s all different types of prefab.”

She said she realized along the way that there are much better ways to build houses that are more efficient and sustainable, requiring less energy.

And then when she downsized from the 6,800-square-foot home she had built to a 1,700-square foot condominium, she realized she had everything she needed and was quite comfortable and her expenses were much less. Her work in maintaining the house was also greatly reduced, she noted, and she thought it was a great way to live.

“I started writing about smaller houses,” she said. “I wrote a book called ‘Downsize: Living Large in a Small House,’ with really fantastic small houses.”

She’s not referring to “tiny houses,” which are often on wheels, not code compliant and not connected to the power grid or water supply.

“They’re great for the people that want to build that way, but for most people that are concerned about hurricanes and earthquakes and tough weather conditions, that’s not the best option,” Koones said.

The houses in her books are large enough for a family to live in comfortably; it’s just that they are no larger than they need to be.

Modern construction methods allow for small houses to feel big, Koones pointed out. The houses can have big open spaces that are suited to entertaining and provide more flexibility. For example, she explained how Yankee Barn Homes builds a house.

“What they do is a timber-frame house with a panelized system, and the panelized system, it’s kind of like a jigsaw puzzle that you put together parts and they fit together. So it’s very energy efficient,” she said.

The homes have terrific insulation, and the buyers can decide how much of the timber frame they would like to see exposed or not, she said.

“It’s also a great way to build because with that timber frame you can have a lot of larger open spaces,” she said, while typical construction requires two-by-fours every so often.

“People are very interested in this type of construction,” Koones said of prefab, smaller homes. “There are millennials who are graduating from school with massive loans. They can’t afford to spend huge amounts on houses. They’re getting married later. They’re having fewer children, and they’re much more interested in activities such as bicycling and skiing and so forth. And they don’t want to be spending their weekends maintaining their house.”

And today’s baby boomers are often selling the houses where they raised their children and still want to have a lovely house, so many are building smaller houses that are more efficient, she noted. “They also don’t want to spend more money on energy, and they’re concerned about the environment,” she said. “So a lot of the people in my books are either boomers or young people or people with young families, and they’re more interested in activities than collecting stuff.”

Architects are becoming much more attuned to what people need and how people live their lives, she said.

And for couples who downsized but still want their children to be able to come visit, there can be flex spaces, such as an office/hobby room that doubles as a spare bedroom, she said.

Koones also points to accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, as another great option for homeowners. They can build an ADU for their adult children to live in, and then when their kids get married and have kids, they can swap: The grandparents will live in the ADU and age in place while their children and grandchildren live in the house.

Though ADUs serve a utilitarian purpose, they don’t have to be boring or uncomfortable.

“I have ADUs in all of my recent books, and they’re beautiful and really interesting,” Koones said. “A lot of them are along the same lines as what the house looks like.”

She said California, Washington and Texas have all had success adding ADUs and noted that ADUs actually started in Vancouver, Canada, as laneway houses in converted garages.

She also sees ADUs as a benefit to the Hamptons.

“A lot of people would agree that it’s better to have these ADUs that sort of fit in with the architecture of the area than to have all these multifamily places and large complexes,” Koones said.

Sheri Koones will appear at “Conversations & Connections” hosted by Yankee Barn Homes at Lambert’s Cove in East Hampton on Friday, November 11, from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. For more information, visit go.yankeebarnhomes.com/hamptons-event.