Here's your link....

Here is a link that might be useful: Vignette Design

I'll be nice and say to each their own. :) They like the opposite of what I like.

Those before pictures, that dining room set, I am in love. I wish my dining room looked exactly like that.

I admire the commitment to totally changing the look and feel of a house from one style to and other. I imagine for cottage lovers in the southwest, a ranch might be easier to find than a charming vintage cottage so it would be worth it. And as the author said, all in one level.

That said, everything the author hates, I love. Probably because it's so rare up here.

This post was edited by robotropolis on Wed, Jul 16, 14 at 9:12

I think they did a good job transforming one sort of interior into another because it was done so completely.

That said the series of 9 or 10 pictures starting with "Just for fun a 1952 ranch..." are perfect as they are in their time capsule state and anything done to those rooms would diminish them.

I'm not much of a fan of the 1950's/1960's rancher because of the floor plans and low ceiling heights. However, I remember seeing one where the roof was raised in the center section and it looked wonderful. It might have been Charles Faudree, but I can't remember for certain.

Our first home was a 1956 ranch. Moved in 1985 while pregnant with #2, after #3 we needed more room/bedrooms, but didn't find anything we loved as much as our own home. The rooms were all large and the corner lot and yard were great for playing. We added an upstairs in the center also. Haven't seen the house Charles Faudree did or owned, but I've seen this blog before. Am I missing something, but she doesn't show the after of the modern decorated ranch or the before of her home, right? I know I need a nap, but I've looked at it twice. ;D

The work on our last home started the week of Spring Break. Most of our neighbors came home after a week at the beach to a closed-in addition. They were amazed so much progress could have taken place in just a week.

We ended up gutting the kitchen during the addition - a "while we're at it moment." The wall oven controls looked like a car dashboard. Later we bumped out the breakfast area just a bit. Made a huge difference and DH wished he had approved it earlier. When we first bought, we removed all the nasty carpet and wallpaper (she smoked non-stop) and painted. When she dropped by to see what we had done to "her" house, she disapproved of everything!

Aren't people funny, Allison0704? Some of them retain such ownership of houses they've sold. I saw the original owner of my house a few months ago and her first question was about how the house was doing.

The main thing that really bothers me is that the walls look filthy due to whatever treatment they used. I hope they remember they do not live in Europe. Some of it I do like. Mostly the rooms without the wall treatment

Another big fan of ranches here! When I watched my parents getting older and struggling with stairs and a large older home, I went on a search for a ranch for us. We have two levels, but everything we will need when we can't manage the stairs to the walkout basement is on one level.

Ours was built in 1960. I wish we still had the original kitchen and baths that the previous owners redid. I like that old kitchen in the pictures! Not crazy about the color of tiles, though. Now, if I could redo with St. Charles metal cabinets, I would be in heaven!

Thanks for the fun pictures.

I like the inside of the first house. But I would never put that much money into changing the interior of the house to look like a cottage, only to have the outside still look like a ranch.

Does anyone else have a problem with autocorrect totally changing the words, like vignette to vintage. Just makes me furious. I might have called my granddaughter an ugly name today in a text message, unbeknownst to me...

Yeah, 'spinach artichoke' turned into 'pinch ethnic joke' in a text to my DD a couple of weeks ago. Thankfully I caught it but still! We got a good laugh over how horrible it was.

Sorry for the temp hijack. There are a lot of 50's and 60's ranches around here thanks to the rocket boom in that era. Some are still almost like they were as-built, some have been razed and a completely new big house put in its place. And some look about like the one in the link. And some are a partial re-do that is a bit of a combination where you have a nod to some of the features that made the ranch so likeable. Cozy bedrooms for the kids, a decent hall bath, porches, and patios, redone with good outdoor space. But yes, those that raise the roof seem to make a huge difference in the overall feel of spaciousness.

I was born in California and lived in four ranch houses, mostly in the Bay Area (three built in the mid- and late 50s, the fourth perhaps a bit earlier) before my father was transferred to NYC.

To me, they were what houses were supposed to be. Alas, I have not lived in one since.

The last two were not built on a slab, but had a crawlspace; I'm not sure about the others.

And I seriously doubt that the ceilings were 8 1/2' -- more like 7 1/2'? (We were a short family until my brother hit adolescence, so my ideas about ceiling height were fuzzy at best.)
===

Anyway, the reason for my post is to ask if anyone can explain how the ranch house became a "rancher"? I mean, originally the rancher was the person who owned the ranch and lived in the ranch house! Is "rancher" perhaps a regional term, and if so, which region calls it that?

And I never heard/read the term until the last few years: so is "rancher" perhaps a recent term?

When we were house-hunting in suburban SW Connecticut in 1965, the realtors called any one-story house a ranch house.... Words cannot convey the culture shock!

The ranch house, to the best of my knowledge, started out in the Western US when the West experienced a boom growth, perhaps following World War I and then continued through World War II when GIs received funding for homes,some of whom built Levittown and those homes in the East and the ranch homes in the West. I am sure Pal or someone here will properly correct that if it is incorrect. That's just always been my understanding, not from documentation, however.

Okay. But my question was about the use of "rancher" rather than "ranch house".

[And about the Connecticut realtors' tendency in 1965 to use "ranch house" for any single-story home -- well, we never saw a single one which would have been considered a ranch house in California.]

Romance all you want about interiors, but a typical 60s ranch floorplan is much less suited to a family than today's standard, generic 2-story suburban home, even without considering the bathroom situation. I may be attracted to a ranch in 30 years. But I don't find anything romantic about a kid's bedroom a closet away from the only family living space--or from the master bedroom, for that matter.

Eeeeek.

This post was edited by peony4 on Thu, Jul 17, 14 at 1:10

I think anything overused takes on a colloquialism. I expect that was what rancher was to ranch as people who now call draperies drapes instead of draperies. Drapes has become a noun instead of a verb. Rancher is also used to describe a house as well as a cattle farmer.

Oh, lavenderlass!! Calling lavenderlass! Look! LOOK!

peony -- that diagram is pretty much our current home. Ours is about 15-20% larger overall, and we have a 3/4 master bath in lieu of the WIC in the diagram, but the general layout is the same. Ours is in a post-war development of ranch homes for the middle class, ca. 1950-1960. However, ours is oriented with the short side toward the street (shift the entry to the short side, and shift the kitchen door to where the kitchen window is as a back/side door). As a result, ours seems much more "bungalow" to me than "ranch". It lives very much the same as my first home did -- a 1929 Tudor bungalow.

It's interesting how orientation can make such a big difference. Traditional bungalows were designed to fit on narrow urban lots. But in the post-war boom and the push to the suburbs, land was less expensive, and the houses were simply turned 90 degrees with the long side facing the road, with accompanying style changes. It allowed for a more expansive "feel" even if the Levittown-like mass developments didn't have homes much larger than the 1920s neighborhoods folks were leaving.

I've turned off autocorrect, Patricia! So frustrating!

I love this, minus the flooring

It might not be what I would pick in my own home, but I love it nonetheless.

Well, that flooring is a problem. LOL. It is a very nice room otherwise. It needs parquet floors.

Well, that flooring is a problem. LOL. It is a very nice room otherwise. It needs parquet floors.

missingtheobvious,

Rancher is a newer term to me too.
I hear it mostly on "House Hunters" on HGTV.
Never heard anyone say it in real life.

A rancher is a guy with a rope and maybe a horse. That's the only way I've ever known the term before.

Patricia, thank you for posting the site! I think that 70s ranches in metropolitan areas are some of the best buys around---and have much bigger lots than newer homes. Some of them are built better than the new ones, too---at least in our area. I was very happy in a one level house in Florida and could be again if I had a free hand with a well proportioned ranch :)