Mid Century Modern

You may be wondering what "Creamy Ranch" actually is. It is of course the home to my good self, my wife and our blind old cat. It is the first home we bought together and quite possibly may be the last for a long time. Thanks to a falling market we skipped most of the early starter home rubbish and jumped right up to something that could suit us fine for many years to come.

As is quite typical with the older housing stock in Phoenix, it is a single story ranch style house. Some 2,200 square feet, four bedrooms, three baths. Built in 1958 it can therefore be described as being "mid century modern" a building style that evokes thoughts of clean simple lines and Frank Lloyd Wright. It has many little flourishes that on first glance seem mere affectations yet when you think about it, are the sort of design details missing from many of today's "spit and sawdust" houses. Take the roof for example, it has eaves that overhang by a considerable margin and there is a covered patio area out the back that seems uncommonly large and why does that window only go half way down the wall when the others are larger? Now sit there and watch the sun track across the sky, what do you see? A shadow cast by the roof such that hardly any of the windows receive a sustained period of direct sun. This is a home not a greenhouse. It's solid too. Big thick concrete block walls rather than the wood framed rubbish they throw up in a couple of weeks these days.

What it isn't, is authentic. It has been renovated over the years, extra bits added, other bits redone. But in general it has been done in sympathy with the house. They didn't knock down all the internal walls to make a trendy open plan feel. That classic two sided layout is preserved with the bedrooms on one side and the living space on the other. There are no little period features that one can coo over or have pictorials done for "Atomic Ranch" magazine.

I've done a little basic research about the history of our particular little pied-a-terre. Through public records I have found out that there were only four previous owners:

After being built in 1958 by Modern Builders Inc, a Mr & Mrs H lived there until 1986, then Mr & Mrs R stayed until 1993 when they sold it to Mr & Mrs S who sold it to Mrs C in 2001. These people lived here, it was their home. They weren't flipping houses, they weren't here one day then gone the next.

So, there you have it. Our home.