Hi Swampee. Whether or not you can recast a 1950s ranch into an Arts & Crafts mode despends mostly on the aesthetic quality of the house itself. An informal, semi-rustic 1950s ranch, with spacious rooms & wide openings between them; with tall gables over tall, vertically divided windows; with a dark-toned hipped or gabled roof with deeply cantilevered eaves; with broad accent walls & heavy piers of rubble stone rock or tapestry brick; and with rough-sawn wooden siding might make a perfect background for Craftsman-style pieces, just as it is, and for a simple reason: both the earlier furniture & the later house spring from similar aesthetic impulses & both therefore have a similar respect for the subtle beauty of natural colors & materials. The Gamble House in Pasadena, despite its early date, is nothing so much as a well-executed 195Os ranch blown up to giant size. If, on the other hand, your house is the kind of 195Os house my friends all had when I was growing up--with small rooms, narrow hallways & hollow-core doors; with short double-hung windows surrounded by skimpy trim, with pink-&-black plastic tile in the baths; with turquoise counters & appliances in the kitchen; with gigantic plate-glass picture windows flanked by teensy wooden shutters; with a pale gray asphalt tile roof & only a band of one or two courses of gray cinderblocks to separate the expanse of wide-lap pastel siding from a wide swatch of crewcut crabgrass--then trying to create the expansive aura of an earlier period will be a harder--but not impossible--task, and here's a paragraph from Edith Wharton's The Decoration of Houses, that--despite the fact that it was written in 1897, and that it's talking about rooms, and that it's talking about a completely different style than the one we're discussing here, besides--explains why: "[T]he esence of a style lies not in its use of ornament but in its handling of proportion. Structure conditions ornament, not ornament structure. In other words, decoration is always subservient to proportion, and a room, whatever its decoration may be, must represent the style to which its proportions belong. The less cannot include the greater. Unfortunately, it is usually by ornamental details, rather than by proportion, that people distinguish one style from another. To many persons, garlands, bow-knots, quivers & a great deal of gilding represent the Louis XVI style. [A]n architect familiar with the subject knows that a Louis XVI room may may exist without any of these, and he often deprecates these as representing the cheaper & more trivial effects of the period, and those that have most helped vulgarize it. In fact, in nine cases out of ten, his use of them is a concession to the client, who having asked for Louis XVI room, would would not know he had got it were these details left out." In other words, you can't just stick leaded glass doors, copper lanterns & Craftsman-style wooden brackets onto a typical 195Os tract house, Mr. Potato Head-style, and expect to get a good-looking result. It doesn't work that way. But that doesn't mean you're stuck with aqua siding & white wrought-iron porch railings, either. It's just a matter of using the right colors & finishes & planting materials, materials that are compatible with both the actual period of the house itself and the also with the feel of the earlier period, rather than trying to gussy-up your house with inauthentic details that are incompatible with the structure--the proportions--of your house and that have a sstuck-on look. How about posting some photos so we can see what you have to work with? Regards, MAGNAVERDE

I'm afraid I have to disagree. Tearing down perfectly good houses just because it's expedient seems terribly wasteful to me. Not only are most older houses built more solidly than a lot of the flimsy houses that get thrown up nowadays, they often include nicer detailing and better finish than common building techniques allow on more recent construction. Let's also not forget, that if you tear down a house, most of it will end up in a land-fill. The original poster says that they like their exisiting house. It's solidly built, is attractive, and that they've already invested in renovations that suit them. Why would they want to move? Ranch houses don't always have small rooms and low ceilings. Even when they do, sometimes just tweaking the floor plan a little bit, enlarging windows, or other relatively simple solutions can make a huge difference. Personally, I'd much rather live in a nice older house than one of the huge boxy things springing up on small surburban lots everywhere across the country. Older houses may not have two story atriums, "spa" bathrooms, or twelve foot islands in the kitchen, but they had good proportions, room for a spacious garden, were built solidly, and had a grace that few "today" houses posess. As for some of the other generalizations made above, foundation reengineering most likely wouldn't be necessary. Brick veneer houses already have much thicker foundations than most other types of houses. The foundations have to be built thicker to support the weight of the brick veneer. Framing may or may not be an issue. Many houses built mid-twentieth century were framed using much sturdier timbers than are used in construction today. HVAC, electrical and plumbing aren't particularly onerous. These sorts of things are routinely improved and reconfigured in exisiting structures all the time. That being said, I don't recommend that anyone live in a house while major remodeling is going on -- but many people do -- and survive to tell about it. If budgets are tight, it can save a lot of money. If you tear down your existing home, obviously, the possiblity of realizing that savings doesn't exist. The idea that extensively renovated houses never recoup the expense put into them is just nonsense. I know of an awful lot of people who make their livings by buying up older houses, extensively (and in some cases expensively) renovating, then selling at a profit. Naturally, it depends on location and not getting carried away so that you over-improve for a particular neighbourhood or existing market conditions -- but good houses with fine details, in good neighbourhoods will always command top dollar. My advice is still to consult with an architect. An architect will be able to tell you what's possible or isn't possible. He may even be able to suggest solutions to your needs that will save you money. It may not be necessary to add a full second floor. A partial second floor and a small bump-out somewhere on the existing house may be all you need. A few hours spent with a good architect may yield surprising results. If you like your house, tearing it down is probably the last thing you want to do.

GGG, You are right, I'll check one of the book stores to look at the latest mag. It is amazing how much we all are doing to our small houses. And really appreciate the ongoing wirtings/pics from all. SDtriplits....jeesh, you are doing all of this with 3 babes walking around? I'm having enough trouble getting things done on my own. Find trying to complete something requires something else which becomes a revolving door going to HD and I'm not even changing walls, etc. Having 1700 feet when you are finished will be wonderful. As for being embarrassed, me too at this point. Haven't posted any pics yet because of the "in-between" stages. Will get there with some before/afters. My front opens into what was being used as a dining room, open to living room. Using the entire space as a living area. The kitchen too is rather large for such a small home, but was remodeled before I bought, there were other ways it could have been done for better flow but better judgement says to work with what has been done. Your house sounds like it is laid out like a ranch, but think the design is a bit more than such, although same era and probably looks a lot like mine interiro wise. My creativity isnt' as good as it should be and making me a bit irritated when things don't work out as envisioned. Or I have gotten myself into more than planned. Am very visual so all the things that need to be done are tough for me to ignore.....need patience on this one. Still, it sure helps to know what others have done and are doing to keep me on track and see ideas. Sandy

I usually like banquettes when they are tucked into a corner, not free-floating. I think in this case I would flip the kitchen layout significantly. Here's one idea: I tried to draw squares of roughly 24"/side for each seat at the banquette & put a good size table in the open space. The door(s) into your office/ex-DR could be a pair of french doors, maybe 4' wide in total, set on a diagonal to clip the corner between the end of the long banquette seating & the wall between the DR & LR. I think this would give you good counter space & plenty of lower cabinets in the kitchen, but you would be short on upper cabinet space b/c you'd only have from the door to the laundry to the window (over the sink, which doesn't have to move). The stove would need to move, as would the fridge. For the peninsula between the kitchen & den, you may want to have it extra wide (I tried to draw it wider than the other base cabinets). If you used a 24" base & backed it with 12" or 18" cabinets that faced the den, you'd have storage for video games, books, board games, etc. This is just one idea, hopefully it sparks other (better) ones.