My last mention of the Internet Archive’s Building Technology Heritage Library collection didn’t highlight my obsession with house/floor plans, and I though you should know.  I have a whole notebook full of houses that I have dreamed up over the years and before any move, I would obtain the floor-plan of the apartment so I could plan the furnishings.

Lucky then that the Building Technology Heritage Library collection included home plan catalogs for prospective 40s and 50s home owners to dream and plan, right?  Or, no.  I was really hoping that I would stumble upon the original plan for our house, but I have not, yet.  That’s the house as it is above.  There are a few thick walls round the outside, making up planters and defining the patio space.

With what I have seen of common house plans and houses in the area, combined with examination of walls and doorways, I think the house was originally laid out like this:

The ‘dining room’ was a 60s addition that used the existing roof over the breezeway and added a doorway from it to the utility room hallway.  A bathroom/bedroom area was made out of, what I think would have been, a workroom beside the utility room.  Finally, perhaps in a 90s kitchen remodel, the wall separating the kitchen and living room was opened up and replaced with a counter peninsula.  Even with two remodels, the house footprint hasn’t been changed from it’s original 1949 slab and footings.

I can find some plans with an original bedroom layout like mine, and some with a breezeway to utility/workroom area like mine, but none with all of it combined in one plan.  It could just mean that my house wasn’t bought out of a catalog, and that’s just fine too.  I just wish one day I will stumble onto some blueprints shoved in a rafter or something!