Compact living with room for the whole family

Cramped city spaces led Sofia and Mattias to solve their family situation in a rather unique way. Now they and all the children spend as much time as they can in their shared holiday home on Djurö outside Stockholm.

In the city they live apart, but in the Enkelrum houses on Djurö they live together with their respective children as often as they can. They each have two children from previous relationships, aged 19, 14, 13 and 10. Here in the holiday home, everyone must fit in and have their own place to sleep and their own storage. You should also be able to retreat and be completely alone when you need to. Mattias, who is head of public affairs at the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, and Sofia, who runs her own podcast business, sometimes work from the house and have even fitted a desk corner into the annex, where you can work in peace.

An older holiday house belonging to Sofia's grandparents used to stand on the plot, and before Sofia and Mattias met she had used the cottage herself for many years. With the new family situation they needed a place where everyone could be together, and Djurö was the logical solution. The old cottage was of an older standard and poorly planned, so a new house felt inevitable. They found Enkelrum, which felt exactly right, above all because they wanted to work with a company that delivered turnkey houses. Enkelrum were also very accessible and easy to work with.

“We chose to build a 30-square-metre annex first, because under the building regulations you must have a main building to be allowed to build an annex. Then the old house was demolished and we could use the annex, mainly for storage, while everything was prepared for the 60-square-metre holiday house,” says Mattias.

They were also able to place the larger building a little higher up, so they now look out over nature and the neighbours. “Here I can sit on the slope like an old man and watch what the neighbours are up to,” says Mattias.

Where the old cottage stood they have now laid a lawn, and they chose not to change the plot but to leave it as it is, with some plants that have been there a long time, such as an old rhododendron. “We're really pleased that we didn't remove any trees unnecessarily when the houses were delivered,” says Mattias.

At delivery it turned out that, between the electricity poles and a neighbour's fence, the annex only just made it through after many hours of puzzling. As a result, the larger house had to be redrawn ten centimetres narrower to get through the tight passage.

In a compact home every centimetre and every detail matters. Both houses are clad inside with horizontal wood panelling and fitted with solid interior doors from the Swedish manufacturer Njord.

“We added solid interior doors from Njord in the MDF version, one of them a sliding door. Our holiday house isn't that big, so the solid interior doors with an MDF surface really do their job. Both their insulating ability and the architectural idea of opening up and closing off help make the house feel much more spacious. Above all, they're really beautiful.”

The smart plan with two buildings also means they can have guests to stay. “And our two eldest boys have used the annex a lot,” says Mattias.

“Sofia and I have had the same views on the interior. We wanted a classic holiday-house feel that is still modern, and we discussed it many times with Enkelrum's architect. We wanted to stick to wood and have also chosen wood for the furniture and other furnishings. Several pieces of furniture come from the old cottage, and to avoid the feel of a newly built mountain lodge we would rather shop at flea markets than buy new. We've said no plastic in the houses, but it isn't entirely easy.”

Mattias built the bunk beds himself. The decks, however, were built by their creative and skilled carpenter Lennart. This year Lennart has also built a pergola over the newly installed outdoor kitchen. “The outdoor kitchen has given us even more space, and we usually cook there when there are lots of us. We socialise with the neighbours and invite friends over, so it's a good social space to have outdoors when the weather allows.”

Everything they need is here. “Life is simple on Djurö. I turn on the air-source heat pump from the car on the way out, so everything is nicely warm by the time we arrive.”

From the city centre they come straight out into nature, where they can enjoy boating, swimming, exercise and mushroom picking. But above all, they have a place where everyone can be together.