Part of my general obsession with wanting to be a grown up who owns a house is my liking of mid-century modern style. I drool over it. I already have a set of 1950's square dinnerware, and some 1950's clothing. I want my gramma's old '57 T-bird. I want a bathing suit like Gidget's. However, what i really need is THE house. An Eichler house. Eichler built about 11,000 homes in the 50's and 60's- all but 650 in the bay area. His houses, I must say, rock. Hard.

The picture to the left shows how the "classic" Eichler looks when you open the front door. You go through the doorway, and come out into the outdoors again! Many but not all of the homes are arranged around a central atrium. There are sliding glass doors from this atrium into various parts of the house. (Of course, you can also navigate through hallways inside the house.) The atrium means that the main living areas of the house (living room, family room, kitchen, dining) often have glass walls on two sides. So much light! So much warm air escaping through the single pane windows on a winter night!

They're like a budget version of the houses I always stared at in my dad's architect magazines when I was growing up... I certainly can't live in that one famous glass house that you always see, but I could buy an Eichler! You can buy a shitty one for the same price as a normal shitty house up here. And then it just is harder to unshitify because it is a quirky house with no attic, radiant heating in the floors, doors from the bathrooms into the backyard, and extremely flammable mahogany paneling.

Maybe, (big maybe) I will get my funky 50's house and I will dance in front of the wall of sexy windows. Or maybe I will live in a boring 80's house with sprayed on stucco and tan carpet.