California Bungalows of the Twenties

I bought three bungalow plan reprint books from amazon. This one is in the middle of the scale for me. The plans in this one are not as good as those in The Bungalow Book, but there is more variety in this one than there is in West Coast Bungalows. There is a drawing or picture of the exterior of each house and a plan. Some of the pictures are photos, some are drawings. This book has a few multi-family plans. It also has a handful of plans with strange, little bedrooms they call boudoirs. These are actually beds in a closet. I'm not talking about fold down Murphy beds. These boudoirs are tiny rooms just big enough to hold a mattress with enough room at one side for a person to stand--no closets or room for any furniture. Some are for double beds, but both sleepers would have to crawl in from the same side, because there are walls on three sides of the bed. There is even one where the sleepers have to crawl onto the bed from the bottom side of the bed. Very strange. Aren't we glad this idea didn't catch on?

I had this book years ago, lent it to someone, never got it back, finally found and bought it again. I love this book so much. I used to own a 1914 California Bungalow in Hollywood; when we got it, we sleuthed around to bring it back to it's former glory. Books like this really helped. Fun for fantasy, too. I love these floor plans. The tiny house movement now afoot could easily use some of these "murphy bed" ideas. I love how beds pull out from walls, fully flat and made, in unexpected places. In my old house, there was a built-in desk, with a fall front, and large cabinet doors below. If you opened the doors, you could pull out a full size bed! It slid into the walls behind, half into a closet, half into the lower half of a built in wall unit of storage in the bathroom. By the time we got the house, the desk and bed where no longer where they were supposed to be, you could only see how it had worked originally, but it was very cool to see this book decode that sort of thing. In this book are one-bedroom homes that can actually sleep parents with multiple children, by means of these novel beds and multi-use rooms (den + office)

Growing up, my father was a contractor so he would get sent a lot of architecture magazines and pamphlets. I always enjoyed looking at all the layouts and designs and imagining what each one would look like inside. This book along with several others I've ordered is so interesting to study. I love the layouts of older homes built before "open layouts" became so popular. Knowing that each room served a purpose and in many cases craftsmanship was so detailed. Homes today just seem a little boring compared to homes of decades past.

This is a reprint of a historic book. A valuable resource book if you are involved in historic architecture.

I've always liked the idea of living in a craftsman bungalow. Seeing these plans makes me love the style even more. Small doesn't have to feel cramped and many of these floorplans would work for modern times; some with small modifications. Those interested in the tiny home movement would also appreciate these plans. There are nice renderings of interiors too.

So fun to see different house plans! Love it! It makes me want to build a new one.

Great book! Just what I was looking for...

Ok not the best book of this type.

I recommend this book.Although a lot of the exteriors and floor plans within this book are fairly similar to each other, this book is well presented legible and a pleasure to read.