Big Features Small House Award-Winner Squeezes Versatility And Style Into Compact Package

First Place: New Homes less than 1,800 sq. ft.

“Be it ever so humble….”

There’s no place like Scott and Stacy Whitesitt’s two-bedroom residence overlooking Rathdrum Creek.

It’s compact. It’s cozy. It’s charming.

But humble?

No way.

Not with an entrance so carefully orchestrated that first-time visitors might suspect they’re approaching a castle instead of a cottage.

Scott, with ALSC Architects of Spokane, deliberately routes vehicles past the house and down a small incline to a circular driveway. There, two carports stand like sentries whose steep-pitched roofs conceal a workshop on one side and a roughed-in guest room on the other.

Between the carports is a 9-foot-high stairway - tapered to exaggerate the perspective - leading to a 60-foot-long bridge that traverses the native landscape.

Just inside the home’s front door is a multi-purpose room that diffuses any threat of claustrophobia one might suspect entering a 1,200-square-foot home. The room’s chapel-like 21-foot-high ceiling and 14-foot-tall window on the north wall create the ambiance of a remote lodge.

The two bedrooms - one upstairs (together with Scott’s studio space), the other on the main floor - are spacious but inadequate for the Whitesitts and their three young children. Scott’s solution is a bedroom tower to be built on the adjacent hillside and connected by an enclosed bridge over the driveway.

So far, though, the house and carports have cost the couple only $85,000 - and buckets of sweat equity. Here are some of the ways they saved money:

The biggest savings resulted from keeping space to a minimum. Their house is half the size of the typical American home.

With 10 years of carpentry experience, Scott was able to do virtually all the labor himself.

Because the site is so rocky, they built on concrete piers, minimizing excavation and concrete costs.

Inexpensive finish details include plywood kitchen and bathroom shelves, low-cost light fixtures, baseboard heat, exposed structural elements, and exterior handrails incorporating galvanized pipe in lieu of more costly lumber.

The Inland Northwest Home Awards jurors were impressed.

“I particularly like that the house sits away from the carports,” wrote Spokane Art School director Sue Ellen Heflin. “The cars are not the dominant influence in the living space.”

The home “fits (the) site great,” commented landscape architect Dave Nelson. “The elevated walkway is fun.”

“A satisfying solution to the approach of the home,” wrote Washington State University architecture professor David Wang. The reverse entry and carports are “a humane way of incorporating the automobile as a design element without emphasizing it as part of the living quarters.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos