This is for Shannon, sorry its a little long- The Little Red House- Craftsman Style House

There was a time in my life when I was quite into house styles. Ann and I very carefully studied our home and it is built quite accurately as a Georgian Home from the 1700's. My office which was built in 1886 is an Italianate, a victorian style. Certain style homes were built during specific periods of time. You are all probably familiar with "ranch style" homes which were popular during the 50's and 60's. Then there are homes that have no particular style. Its hard to peg new homes today. Not that they aren't great but the styles seem to get mixed up.



Anyway the Little Red House is what is called a "craftsman" style home. This style was popular in the early 1900's. Craftsman style homes were built of natural materials native to the area. Thus The little red house is sided with fir shingles. The eaves are wide. (this is the area where the roof overhangs the house) It has what are called knee braces on the roof line which are designed to look like a beam protruding from the roof. They serve no structural purpose but are a classic design feature of a craftsman style home. Craftsman homes have large porches. (we added a porch in the front several years ago) Double hung windows are common. The design is simple. The little red house was built as the caretakers cottage for the barn which was a prune dryer. A caretaker was necessary to man the wood fired dryer to dry the plums. The caretaker that live here was "Willy." Kind of like "Billy." There are not too many barns with a huge chimney. The red house was built when the barn was built around 1920. At one time Salem was the "Prune Capital" of the world. There are not too many of these old prune barns left which used to number in the hundreds around Salem. Ours is one of the best preserved. The workers would write their names and the years they worked above the dryer doors that are still there. Mrs. Vaughn who passed away last year, has her initials with her first boyfriend when she was 12 years old with a heart around. The Little Red House is also a haunted house (a nice haunted) but that is a blog for another day.





Projects for the summer are to remove the old dormer that we added when we moved into the house in 1986. Remove the old porch on the east side.(overlooking the garden) Reroof the house with wood shakes. I just planted a white climbing rose to crawl up the south side of the house. When it is done it will look like a little gingerbread house. The inside is like new.





Last year we cleaned out all the brush and cut down ugly trees around the house opening everything up. Derek and I brought in several tons or rock and built a raised wall around the south and east side to make the lawn level and surrounded it with minature roses to flow down over the stone wall and flowering strawberries. Yes Billy helped too. We used the tractor to bring in loads of great topsoil from our soil quarry down by the creek, in the forest close to Mrs. Vaughns. There is a bend in the creek hidden by the trees where we can get great loam.

Derek and I planted Prickly pear cactus on the bank along the road. It gets very hot and dry on that south facing bank and the cactus should do great. I have a variety of prickly pear cactus that would overrun the Willamette Valley if given a chance!





The big project this summer is to cap the drain pipes on the little pond the red house looks over and let the water drain over the top. In other words, turn it into a waterfall. I am very excited about this. When it is done, when you come around the corner you will see a nearly ten foot waterfall pouring from the pond into the creek. It will look very natural. The red house is really built on a beautiful spot the front overlooking the big pond and the geese, the east side the creek, garden and barn, the west side the hillside with the horses and trees and the back with the little pond and soon to be waterfall. Billy is seriously lobbying me to tear it down and build a hobbit hole there, but I don't think so.