One of my favorite inspiration books is "the barefoot home" by Marc Vassallo.
Most of the building in our area has become putting the suburbia mansion on the lake up north. We are looking to revert back to a cottage - bucking against the current trend and what all the realtors say we need to build. This is the book that gave me permission to have a very casual home with simple trim and concrete floors.
Here's how Marc's "what makes a home barefoot" is represented in our design:
One of my favorite rooms from the book:
Kitchen with open shelving to display our pottery dishes, published by architect Jo Landefeld
Most of the building in our area has become putting the suburbia mansion on the lake up north. We are looking to revert back to a cottage - bucking against the current trend and what all the realtors say we need to build. This is the book that gave me permission to have a very casual home with simple trim and concrete floors.
Here's how Marc's "what makes a home barefoot" is represented in our design:
- Informality - No formal spaces - including formal entry. Furnishings will be largely the comfortable items we have already - those with meaning, history, and beauty.
- Openness - The floor plan is very open. We have eliminated doors and walls where possible. We will use every room every day.
- Light - The home was designed around light - both for solar energy and views of the lake.
- Indoor-Outdoor Connection - Designed to have a porch that runs the length of the house, we anticipate most of our time will be spent "near-outdoors" with just a barrier between us and those annoying mosquitoes.
We plan to enjoy summers at the lake and live up to Marc's barefoot manifesto:
- kick off your shoes, relax, take it easy, get comfortable in your everyday home
- open up, feel the breezy blowing through your house, pad around in your uncluttered house, cook and eat and live in one big space, sleep peacefully with doors thrown open to the garden.
- embrace the sun, make your windows and doors really big, let sunlight pour in, curl up in a window seat, catch the view from a sun-drenched veranda
- live outside as well as in, open whole walls to the outdoors, cook and eat on the patio, make a nap on the porch,
- adopt a barefoot state of mind, use every room in the house every day, simplify, live outside when you can, bring the outside feeling inside when you can't, never forget how good it feels to have sand between your toes
Kitchen with open shelving to display our pottery dishes, published by architect Jo Landefeld
I also love the breakfast nook on the porch of the Grass Farm - but sadly there's no public post of the image.