Homeowners and builders weighed in on the difference between the two design styles taking over rural America.
The world of real estate has no shortage of mash-ups — condops and dockominiums, starchitects and plyscrapers. One of the most recent additions to the lexicon is the shouse, which is not to be confused with the barndominium.
Or is it?
Look carefully the next time you’re driving on the back roads of America, and you’re bound to spot a shouse — a hulking rectangular structure, typically with a metal roof, a big garage door or two and a long concrete driveway. It could easily be mistaken for a machine shed.
In other words, from the outside, shouses look a lot like the better-known barndominiums, or barndos for short.
What, exactly, makes a shouse distinct from a barndo? To Oliver Bell, chief operating officer of the Barndominium Company, it’s the emphasis on the shop part, which is often larger than and separated from the living space, in contrast with the open floor plans of barndos. Shouses also are generally smaller than barndos in overall square footage.
