Heck, for a year she even used it as a home office.
Petalek, a business analyst with the federal government, is one of many buyers snapping up small downtown condos faster than they can be built. Even out in the 'burbs, there's a new market for Lilliputian (at least by McMansion standards) singles.
"I have to limit my purchases," admits Petalek, adding that "the closet is still a bit of a problem." And clutter is a no-go in her Spire, one of the pint-sized models in Urban Capital Property Group's development. "If you leave stuff out, it's obviously messy."
Products, including a closet system and under-the-bed hideaway baskets, help Petalek keep the space tidy. And although few retailers carried it when she moved into her condo in 2003, she says the sleek contemporary furniture demanded by mini-condos is now easier to find.
None of these tricks of the trade would help if her one-bedroom condo weren't well-designed. Nine-foot ceilings, an open-concept kitchen/living room/dining area, generous windows, and a sweeping balcony breathe light and space into the urban home in the sky. Neutral-shaded walls decorated with mirrors and large paintings push the space outward, while stainless-steel appliances and dark cabinetry add drama.
"All my friends are trying to get me to move to (the suburbs)," says Petalek, but she delights in avoiding "all that business" of snow shovelling and grass cutting.
And while she couldn't host a 30-person party in her place, she revels in the fact that her life is lived in "a five-block radius: You go out and play; you go to work, you go home and rest."
Petalek paid an affordable $150,000 when she bought her condo in 2001. Paying relatively little for all that a downtown location offers is one of the big draws of small condos, especially for young professionals.
Baby-boomer couples selling off the family ranch for a hip spot downtown usually go for bigger living spaces. After all, why blow 30 years of marriage by being constantly face-to-face with your beloved?
No figures are available on the number of small condos across Canada, but a glance around Ottawa finds plenty, especially in buildings under construction.
"The growth is for small types of dwellings," says Sandra Perez, senior marketing analyst for the Ottawa region of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. As evidence, she points to the 40-per-cent leap in condo construction forecast for Ottawa this year over last year. Half of that will be downtown, where high land costs favour plenty of small units.
By contrast, single-family home starts in the region are expected to drop seven per cent from 2007 levels. Trends are similar in Toronto, says Perez.
Across Canada, meanwhile, CMHC reports that single-family homes in cities of more than 10,000 people dipped to 52 per cent of the construction market last year from 61 per cent in 2002. A blend of town and row homes, apartments and condos has picked up the slack.
"Things are changing, people are downsizing," says Maureen O'Connell, who sold out half the units in a downtown Ottawa condo in an astonishing four days earlier this year. The small condos, like the tiny, perfect Vancouver -- 468 square feet, $196,900 -- went first. "A lot of people don't even buy the parking," adds O'Connell.
Making small spaces work requires, well, work. For the buyer, says O'Connell, it means thinking smart, like the condo owner who attached an industrial arm to her plasma television so she could swing it around from the living room to watch it in bed. Bingo. Space saved in the bedroom.
For the designer, it means "everything is tight, scaled-down," says Ottawa architect Barry Hobin. His projects have included small condos, including a 463-square-foot model.
"The focus is on things like sliding panels instead of swinging doors, having integrated cabinetry in the kitchen," says Hobin. "The first thing is making them as bright as possible, and the space needs to be big enough to flow. One thing you lose is your flexibility: You have to prejudge where everything is going to go, what length of wall you can put a bed on."
A buyer of a pocket-sized condo almost needs an interior designer, he says, adding that "in a small place, there's no room to be quirky."
And while slimming down usually means greening up, no one mentions the environmental advantages of living more compactly. Cost and convenience seem to be the driving forces behind the growth of small.
In more crowded cities including London, England, micro-homes are popping. These wee places -- featured in magazines, including Dwell and touted by reduced living advocates, including Jay Shafer, co-founder of the Small House Society -- are as small as 96 square feet. They perch everywhere from rooftops to microscopic vacant lots, and they toe the small-is-better line, if perhaps a little literally, of downscale boosters like writer/architect Sarah Susanka, author of The Not So Big House.
There is also shrinkage, if not miniaturization, going on in Canadian suburbs.
Mattamy Homes, for example, has included a three-bedroom, 1,279-square-foot Ashford model. The home combines functionality with less space by doing away with a formal dining room but including a kitchen with an eating area that flows into a great room.
Starting at $234,900, the Ashford fulfils the observation by Frank Cairo, Mattamy's vice-president of land development for Ottawa, that increased land prices are forcing developers to downscale houses if they want to meet the still-healthy hunger for singles.
Minto Group Inc., meanwhile, has introduced the Anderson, a three-bedroom, 1,365-square-foot home at $243,400. Buyers, says Minto's marketing director Catherine Shea, tend to be first-timers or people trading up from a terrace or townhome.
That's a dramatic shift from the early 1980s, when we got hooked big-time on big living spaces.
Prior to that, houses had been mostly modest. At the minute end of the scale, tens of thousands of bungalows, some as small as 500 square feet, were built by the federal government's Wartime Housing Ltd. during the 1940s for labourers and Second World War veterans across the country.
By 1950, North American homes were averaging about 900 square feet.
Suburban development flourished in the 1950s and '60s, with developers building slews of suburban singles, many of them in the 1,200-square-foot range.
Through the 1970s and '80s, says Hobin, real estate increasingly became "the embodiment of wealth collection and the dominance of baby boomers. The house became a vehicle for playing. People were saying, 'Why not have some fun with it?' It's also true that we're a consumer-oriented society -- status and all that other crap."
Hence the current crop of sprawling homes that owners adore and many others scorn as wasteful and ostentatious.
No Canadian figures are available, but according to the U.S. National Association of Home Builders the average American home is now over 2,400 square feet -- double what it was 50 years ago when families were larger. Observers agree Canadian houses have kept pace.
In addition to whatever bragging rights even a 2,400-square-foot-home confers, there are practical reasons for avoiding small. Because many costs -- a garage door, for example, or a staircase -- are the same for a small or bigger home, economies of scale kick in, and developers wind up charging more per square foot for a small home to realize a profit. As well, jumping from $250,000 to $270,000 to gain a few hundred square feet won't boost your mortgage by all that much.
No wonder Hobin hasn't designed a 1,200- or 1,400-square-foot home in two decades.
But like many couples who downsize after the children are grown, Diane and George Hanson traded a large home for a smaller home.
The Ottawa retirees sold their 1,800-square-foot home and, seven years ago, moved into a 1,335-square-foot Tartan Homes bungalow.
"All our children were married and we wanted to downsize," says Diane Hanson. "It's a lot easier to look after. There's a smaller lawn to cut. You don't collect so much junk; you have to have everything in its place."
The Hansons have turned one of the two bedrooms into a den and finished part of the basement, providing a little more elbow room when their children, their spouses and grandchildren descend.
An open-concept design, a half-wall between the living and dining rooms, and other features give the home an open feeling.
While George says there's "nothing too much" he misses about their big home, his wife does long for the good old spacious days when the whole family piles in at Christmas.
And she still remembers watching the new house being built. "I thought, 'Oh, gosh, it's so small. We'll never be happy here.'"
Is she? "Oh, yes!"
-- Canwest News Service
The smallest of the small: tiny homes
They're not for everyone, but teeny-tiny homes have their advocates.
Owners praise them for all sorts of reasons: Low building and maintenance costs; reduced environmental footprint; the close family interaction that's often missing in large dwellings where people go their separate ways. Here are some examples:
JoT Homes. Ranging from 128 to 1,500 square feet, these homes feature movable interior partitions and passive solar design. Cost: roughly $100 a square foot. See them at jothouse.com.
Jay Shafer's house. The co-founder of the Small House Society lives in a 96-square-foot home in Sebastopol, Calif. Resembling a caboose, the Lusby includes a fireplace, double-burner cooktop and two-person sleeping loft. The house sells for US$46,997. See it and others at tumbleweedhouses.com.
Sarah Susanka. Architect and author (The Not So Big House and others) Susanka offers house plans based on her philosophy of quality over quantity. While there is a plan for a 1,225-square-foot, one-person cabin -- and not a very attractive one at that -- most of the designs weigh in at 1,700-plus square feet. Go to notsobighouse.com.
The Boxhome (prototype). This two-storey, metal-clad home is the work of Norwegian architect Sami Rintala. Featured in the March issue of Dwell magazine, it's all of 205 square feet, and its darkly stained cypress interior looks gloomy. One participant in the project claims that an opening day party for 20 didn't feel crowded. See it at dwell.com/homes/new/15042286.html.
London coach house. An ultra-efficient former coach house in London, England, this 648-square-foot spot is big enough for a neatness-obsessed couple. The makeover -- at a jaw-dropping $400,000 -- included the kind of innovative storage solutions and minimalist design essential to small-scale living. See it at dwell.com/homes/new/15081121.html.
-- Patrick Langston
