A lakeside wooded cottage! Sounds very nice...is it for weekend/vacation use or every day? Do you plan to have people out to visit at the lake? My SIL used to have a lake place and it was too small. She ended up selling it and getting a bigger place further from the lake, but now she doesn't have as many visitors.

I like rooms that live small but are flexible enough to expand when needed. A dining table with leaves that can extend into another area. Or a living room with space for extra chairs to be brought in.

And don't forget outdoor living! Porches are a great way to get extra space (especially screened) without the expense of finished rooms. Hope that helps :)

May I suggest that you check out a book from the library by Sarah Susanka entitled, Creating the Not So Big House. The next to the last chapter is titled, Creating the Dream House. In 1999, Sarah's architectural firm designed a 2100 sq. ft. dream house for LIFE Magazine. This house was built in Minnesota for a hypothetical family of four in two versions, a scaled down version and a more expensive version, using the same basic floor plan. She discusses what was done, construction and design-wise, to reduce cost but provide a distinctive look and deceptive space-enlarging features. Some examples are as follows:
1. Standard materials were used inside and out in the less expensive version. To quote the author, "Interest and spatial variety were introduced with color and lowered soffits--elements that are relatively inexpensive but have significant impact." The house really does look architecturally interesting, not like a cheap track home.
2. There are almost no walls downstairs, mainly support columns, to open up the downstairs.
3. The front door is exactly opposite the back door, thus visually extending the sight lines. One is also able to see diagonally across the downstairs.
4. The more corners a house has, the more expensive it is to build. The foundation of the main portion of the cheaper home has four corners, a connecting section to the garage, and the attached garage.
I really learned a lot from just this one chapter.

As far as what personally has worked for me, here is some feedback. When our two sons were growing up, our home was 1900 sq. ft. with no basement but some storage space in the attic. The size worked fine for us as a family and as empty nesters. As a widow, I down sized to a 1475 sq. ft. patio home and would not want to go smaller. Both homes were one story (I hate stairs), contemporary, had vaulted ceilings, and very open floor plans, and rooms serving multiple purposes. For example, none of the bedrooms in either house had typical bedroom furniture. For example, the master bathrooms in both homes have been large and had built-ins for storing all clothes so that the master bedroom serves more as a sitting room. The master in my current home has a hide-a-bed sofa. I sleep in the small bedroom across the hall. The bifold doors were removed from the closet in that small room so that I have my computer, file cabinet, and built-in desk in that alcove so that it also functions as an office during the day. As Sarah Susanka advocates, both of my homes were selected on purpose to be somewhat smaller so that the funds were available to have a more interesting house architecturally and in the interior design.

Hi Lavender - in the medium term it will be a weekend and summer vacation home. In the longer term (say 12-14 years, when our kids are in university) DH and I will likely live there most of the year, keeping a condo or town home in the city.

We will entertain a great deal, and I'm trying to make as flexible a floor plan as possible as you suggest. For example, the LR and DR flow into each other. If we need to sit more in either room we can "spread out" as needed. The bedrooms will be tiny, and two will be filled with bunk beds for maximum kid sleeping spots.

Outdoor space is critical, we will have deck (probably screened as the house is in a heavily wooded area, lots of bugs to deal with) as well as a dock and secondary deck near the lake. In summer half the time will be spent outside swimming and kayaking, canoeing, in fall lots of hiking & boating, in winter snow shoeing and skating on the lake. So It is definitely a home focussed on the outdoors.

Texasgal, thanks for your post and book recommendation. I will look for Susanka's book. We are definitely building smaller than we would ideally want (I'd like about 1,100 sq feet on the ground floor, another 600 in the walk out I think), specifically so that we can get what we want design wise. We love modernist design and are working with an architect to build something quite special I think. For those who appreciate modern design I think it will be a very interesting architectural space. But it will be an expensive build and we need to make it as small as possible for financial reasons, but also because I think most people can happily live in much smaller spaces than they think they need. And that is the challenge we are grappling with, trying to resist the urge to make it "just a little bigger".

Our family home is about 2200 or 2300 sq feet I think (no basement). Large for an urban home, medium size generally I guess. It certainly isn't huge, but quite a bit bigger than what we are building now.

I would make the bedrooms bigger...especially yours. If you're planning to retire there at some point, you'll want a little more space. For now, it can be a place to read a book and hide from the kids and their friends :)

The living/dining room combination sounds great...is your kitchen big enough for people to 'help'? My SIL had a tiny kitchen and it was almost impossible to reach the fridge and get food, when the family was all visiting.

Also, the screened porch will be great...but what about fall? Do you have a fireplace on the porch or some way to keep it warmer in the evening? I've seen some beautiful screened decks and porches (in magazines) with fireplaces...especially in NC.

I've found 500 sq ft per person living there most of the time is a nice comfortable size. For our family 1000sq ft apt worked fine with it was just DH and I. Then, we bought a house (1500sq ft); had 1 kid and that was fine. 2 kids pushed us past our limit.

My brother is in 2500 sq ft with 3 kids. That is just right. Any smaller would be too small.

If you live in a nice year round climate, you can go smaller, because outdoor space can be real living space. Here, we don't have nice year round weather, and really only spend a couple weeks outside all day long.

I have to put in to make it ADA, all the way. I have a friend that lives out in the PNW. They have a cabin in the mountains and it is the only place that her mother can comfortably visit because of access. The in town home has steps that her DM can't navigate.

My sister lives in an older home built around 1915, here in Iowa, and it is on the smallish side. But doesn't feel small because the rooms are big, and the doors are big, and the windows are big, and the one hall is big. It is only a 2 bedroom, with an extra room she uses as a closet. Has a sun porch too. Kitchen of course is small and awkward, really a one butt kitchen.

We had a 900 sq foot rental one time, no basement, no garage, no outside storage. It would have been just fine for the four of us if we weren't in transition and had all the stuff from an 1800 sq ft house in there. The girls' bedroom could have been a bit bigger for full time living, but for a vacation house it would have been perfect.

our first house was 800 square feet. The living room had to be used also as a dining room. By judicious selection of furniture that could be used in multiple ways and by thinking through the functions each room would be called to serve, I was also able to use the house as a daycare and had 7 or more kids there at a time on weekdays. Outside space helps a lot. I think you can do 4 people in 800 sq ft with no trouble. Just think it through and plan to use most spaces in multiple ways. Open concept in the main living areas and small rooms to retreat to for privacy and quiet are key. Organization and storage, fully functional furniture to the scale of the house,
your creativity and planning will make it work. I am a Susanka fan too, but there are lots of other books( and websites!) on planning small living space.