Avid readers of this blog may have noticed that posting has been a bit light lately. The reason for that is that real life has been insanely busy. Over the past few months, we’ve been in the process of purchasing, renovating, and moving into our new home.
After renting for our entire adult lives, my husband and I finally became homeowners this August, signing the deed to our first place that is entirely, completely ours. (Well, it’s a co-prop so technically we co-own with our neighbours, but close enough.)
That means, for the first time in my life, we have the opportunity to customize the place to make it ours. And indeed, we’ve been doing some renovations, which, I’m sure anyone who’s ever been through the process knows, has been a real learning experience, to say the least.
As a petite 5’1″ woman, buying a home with 10 foot ceilings has also presented a few challenges. From climbing up on ladders to reach the ceiling for repairs or renos, to the day-to-day challenges of reaching things on high shelves, it turns out that all this extra vertical space is both a blessing and a curse. Needless to say, we own several stepladders and use them extensively.
And while it’s a nice idea in theory to redo our entire house to make it hobbit-sized, the reality is that it would be impractical, insanely expensive, and terrible for resale value. (Even if my very nerdy partner would be thrilled with the idea…)
Life in a hobbit house? My partner would be thrilled. But it’s not very realistic. (Photo from Cotopaxi, Ecuador, October 2023)
Here are just a few of the issues we’ve run into since taking possession of our place:
Kitchen cabinet and countertop height
Our new kitchen has a ton of storage space, which is amazing. But, it also has relatively recently-installed cabinets with, ugh, doors that flip up to open horizontally, not vertically. Which means that if I need to reach anything on a shelf higher than the bottom one, I have to stand on a stepladder. Not the world’s biggest deal, but definitely a bit of a pain.
To be fair, even my partner, who is 5’8″, has trouble reaching the second shelf door to close it once it’s been flipped open. He has to jump to close it. And the third level is useless for both of us for anything other than long-term storage, since it’s so far out of reach.
Seriously, who ever thought this was a good idea?
We’ve looked into options to replace the doors with vertical ones, but it’s all a bit out of our budget right now. So I’ve been living with it. And also living with the countertops and island, installed at the standard 3-foot height. This is ever-so-slightly too high to be comfortable for most petites to work in the kitchen.
I’ve heard of people doing entirely custom kitchen designs with lower countertops. But, quite frankly, it would be a real pain, as most appliances like stoves and dishwashers are made to slot in next to countertops of this height. In our case, my partner does most of the cooking, and he’s perfectly comfortable with standard countertops. So I’ve adapted. For small amounts of kitchen prep, it’s fine. For anything more complicated, I have a handy stepstool.
Custom closets and high shelves
One of the renovation projects we did before moving in was to install custom his and hers bedroom closets. And mine is, I have to say, basically a dream closet. Carrie Bradshaw, eat your heart out!
But, taking advantage of the high ceilings to add extra storage space does mean that a lot of that space is out of reach. Basically, I can reach the clothes on the hanging bar, but that’s about it. Anything above them is too high to access.
When I was working with the designer to come up with the closet configuration, she recommended a double-hang space with two bars, one for shirts, one for pants. My husband’s closet used exactly that design. However, for mine, I had to explain to her that this was just not going to work for someone of my height.
So we went with single hang bars with shelves above them. And if I want to reach those high shelves, I need to move a stepladder into the closet. Not a big deal, and the extra storage for little-used items is nice, don’t get me wrong. But if you’re petite and you’re setting up shelving, you need to spend extra time making sure that the things you use on an everyday basis are within reach.
Furniture that fits
Our hunt for a new living room sofa was another issue. Like most petites, I tend to be too short to comfortably sit on most furniture with my feet on the floor. Which means I’m usually curled up on chairs and sofas, sitting sideways, with my feet tucked under me, or cross-legged. Over time, this does terrible things to your posture, as most petites I know can confirm.
We tested dozens of sofas before buying our new L-shaped couch. One of the reasons I liked it so much is that the seats are relatively shallow. It’s also a bit lower to the ground than many other sofas, which means that, if I sit forward just a bit, I almost comfortably put both feet on the floor: A rarity for most furniture made for adults.
It also has a nice chaise lounge section where I can stretch my legs out. Sort of like a permanent footrest. I highly recommend this to all petites.
Or, y’know, you could just shamelessly use your partner as a pillow like I do. He doesn’t mind. Really.
A lot of our other furniture isn’t particularly petite-friendly. It consists of items we’ve acquired over the years, and most of them are meant for standard-height humans. But I’ll give one shout-out here: If you’re looking for a comfortable chair that is also a great fit for petites, I recommend the Ikea POANG chair. It’s an armchair that is low enough to the ground to be a great fit for us shorties. My husband has had this one practically forever, but they still sell these new.
Ikea POANG armchair, approx. $199 CAD.
Low ceilings? No problem!
The one good thing about being petite? Our basement, which has low 6-foot ceilings, feels perfectly comfortable to me. While friends who visit us have to duck to avoid hitting their heads on the rafters, I can make full use of all the extra square footage worry-free.
