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Ranches: Design Ideas for Renovating, Remodeling, and Building New

Today's info: "Best is reviewing several books first prior to purchasing at Amazon.com."

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Manufacturer: Taunton

List Price: $29.95
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Average Customer Ratings:

The ranch can be found everywhere on both coasts and in America's heartland, too. The ranch is simple, functional, and unassuming. But it can look dated. What homeowners are rediscovering about ranches is just how affordable and flexible they can be. This book provides a fresh set of eyes with which to look at the ranches we live in--and the ones we're thinking of buying (or building). It's rich with ideas and inspiration, featuring more than 20 examples of updated homes and ranches built from scratch.


PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS:

Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 728.323
EAN: 9781561584376
Format: Illustrated
ISBN: 1561584371
Label: Taunton
Manufacturer: Taunton
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 208
Publication Date: 2003-08
Publisher: Taunton
Release Date: 2003-10-15
Studio: Taunton


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Atomic Ranch
• Ranch House Style
• House Transformed: Getting the Home You Want with the House You Have
• The Ranch House
• Western Ranch Houses by Cliff May


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

not what you might expect -
Writing a book is a huge undertaking so hats off to the authors. I can't give this book a favorable review however. This is not a book about mid-century architecture. The ranch-style homes in it have been substantially remodeled and very few mid-century details remain as you can readily see from the photos. As a fan of that period of architecture, this was a disappointment. But for someone who finds their rancher to be too low, too spare or too retro, this book shows how to get rid of all that and turn a rancher into something more like a bungalow or a shingle-style Cape Cod with a new kitchen. The furnishings in the homes are often brightly colored Scandinavian, early American, Native American, or craftsman. Many of the shots look very much like they are from a 1992 Metropolitan Home magazine although there are quite a few kitchens with stone countertops. If you want to convert a rancher, this might be for you. If you want to restore one, you'll need a different book.

Best for those who would rather live elsewhere -
The title implied that this book would be ideal for me; I like ranches, I feel that they are undervalued, and I see many that are ripe for renovation after years of benign neglect. They're often small by today's standards, too, and I'd like to know how other people have expanded or changed their ranches while maintaining the buildings' architectural identity. For all these reasons, I didn't like this book much. The author disparages the architectural style that some of us appreciate--she is downright insulting about the exteriors--and seems to feel that the reader/owner's main goal will be to ignore the exterior of their house or transform it into something very different such as a developer-style colonial. Little advice is given about maintaining or updating the wonderful horizontal form of the ranch, choosing trim, siding, roofing, hardware, doors, windows, etc., or maintaining and enhancing the architecture-nature connection that makes ranches interesting through appropriate landscaping, decks, gardens, and other outdoor features. If you find it at your library or a charity book sale, it's worth a look, but it didn't contain what I thought it would.

The Not So Modernist House -
Before buying, I was offended by the spate of terse, one-star reviews of this book (which may or may not have been written by the same person) and took the advice of others who seemed to love it. I was so wrong. This book is for people who find themselves stuck with a ranch house ("Very few people love the exteriors of ranch houses") when they might have preferred a bungalow or a cottage. The photos are well-shot, the design ideas apparently fill a need, but this book is by no means Atomic Ranch.

This book shows why to save the Ranches -
I sent this book to my brother who is restoring a 40-year-old Ranch house. He's really found it inspirational and I've enjoyed looking through it too. Here in the Atlanta area, the old Ranch houses are in danger. McMansions and their greedy, tasteless developers would have them eliminated. Yes, most of the Ranch survivors are unremarkable upon first glance but the ideas behind them--well explained in this book--are wonderful and they are certainly built of better materials and with more care than the slapped-together structures of today. Of course a weakness of the Ranch house is that like the McMansion of today it was mostly built by developers out for a dime. The pages here show the potential of the Ranch. There are some lovely rennovations, beautifully photographed. There's a good history lesson on the Ranch and its architectural and cultural sources too. I heartilly recommend this book for Ranch owners and architectural historians.

Shows Ideas of What Can be Done -
The common ranch house was developed shortly after World War II. The design fit the needs and desires of the returning servicemen and the workers leaving the wartime industries for traditional employment.

The ranch style house had several new design concepts. Typically they were built somewhat remote from the downtown area, this was the era of the automobile. They were very well made, and designed to be easy to expand (thanks to the coming Baby Boom). The building lots of the time tended to be quite large, with plenty of room in the back yard.

Many of these homes, built in the 1950's or early sixties are available at quite good prices. In addition, with a house over fifty years old, many states and localities give preferential treatment in taxes, loan guarantees or other advantages to remodelling, renovating or updating an existing structure.

This book looks at a series of ranch style homes that have been updated to meet the needs of their current owner. This is a beautifully illustrated idea book. It is filled with ideas that ranch remodellers have used to update their homes. And while some of these ideas are expensive, so is moving into a new larger home.

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