You will be surprised, but there are only 40 square meters of living space here.
This small house with a total area of only 70 m² became a real star of photo shoots, although initially it was created only for a country holiday for a family of three. How the owner of the house Irina managed to turn her house into a real studio with beautiful photo zones and at the same time maintain functionality and an atmosphere of warmth and comfort – read the material below.
Building a house was a spontaneous idea during a pandemic; I wanted to spend time outdoors.
Initially, they planned to order a standard modular house, but due to restrictions related to COVID-19, production was no longer working. Therefore, they actually built it without a design, based on a picture from the Internet, making changes in the process. When building the house, we did not strive for a large area, since we have a main housing of 100 m² for a family of three.
The house was built in about 40 working days, and came within the budget of about 2.5 million rubles (perhaps it is not relevant today due to the sharp rise in price of wood and metal). The peculiarity of the construction of our small house is that we had several teams of specialists working simultaneously (sometimes up to eight people) and each did their job.
Our idea was to make the country space free, uncluttered, and minimalist. Due to the panoramic glazing there is a lot of light and the house looks visually much larger than 70 m².
The house is not like Soviet dachas, to which everything that was not needed in the apartment was taken. We wanted it to not take a lot of time to clean and maintain the cottage.
One of our “tricks”: we have completely abandoned electric convectors, which consume a lot of electricity and dry out the air, in favor of a Cooper & Hunter air-to-air heat pump. This allowed us to save on heating costs in winter and use it for air conditioning in hot weather. In addition, we maintained a good level of humidity in the room all winter, which provided a good microclimate and had a positive effect on the wood trim of the house and solid wood furniture.
We have an IKEA kitchen without upper cabinets, which gives the living room a visual lightness. We did not make a built-in hob, but use a tabletop induction hob, which we store in a drawer under the oven. In the dacha version, this turned out to be a convenient, expedient and economical solution. We cook many dishes on the grill and in a cauldron. We plan to purchase a tandoor and grill.
The idea to rent out the house for a photo shoot belonged to family photographer Yulia Chernopyatova, whom we invited for an individual photo shoot at the dacha. Yulia, being the owner of a photo studio, had extensive experience and knowledge in designing photo zones, saw a photo location in the house and organized autumn photo projects in it. She brought the first props to our house, invited the best photographers, stylists, and decorators.
Together with decorator Natalya Avdeeva and photographer Vera Bogachenko, we decorated the house and prepared it for New Year and Christmas photo shoots. New Year’s filming lasted from November to January almost daily, and sometimes filming went on for ten hours a day. We have done individual, family and children’s photo sessions, and shooting for commercial photo content. A film for an international film festival and advertising for famous brands were also filmed on our site.
