We are almost done with our kitchen/master bedroom/bath project but have decided to hold off showing more pictures until everything is finished.

We decided to do it this way because we don’t want the final presentation to be anti-climactic.   We think it will be more fun doing it this way.

In the mean time, we are going to do some blogs about little things we discovered while doing the renovation.

For example, the picture on the left is of the original counter top that was revealed when the workers were dismantling the old counters.   Obviously, it is the original mid century boomerang patterned Formica!!!    We think it is kind of cool.

At one point, we even considered using the reissued boomerang Formica in our renovation.   We ultimately decided to go with something a little more versatile.

It was fun discovering this bit of history hidden from sight all these years.   This house continues to offer up mysteries that confound and delight us.

Deb Allstott is our color consultant and window treatment expert.

Deb, who owns Home Matters in La Grande, Oregon, has been a life saver when it has come to picking colors for our renovation.

Though we were comfortable selecting the colors for our living room area, the rest of the house was too much of a challenge. This was especially true with the hard surfaces where it's not "just a can of paint".

Deb has an excellent eye for color and has been invaluable in helping us find colors that are dramatic while working well with the colors we've already selected.

If you happen to live in the La Grande area and need help figuring out colors, give Deb a call.

You can find her at:

Home Matters - Deb Allstott
1115 Adams Avenue
La Grande, OR 97850
541-624-2333

Our Mid Century Home has been pictured in the Fall issue of Atomic Ranch Magazine!

A picture of the house and a paragraph about it can be found in the "Home Page" section of Atomic ranch magazine on page 43.

If you do not yet subscribe to Atomic ranch, though we suspect many of you already do, please check it out their web site at http://www.atomic-ranch.com.

We have been reading Atomic ranch for many years and always find it inspiring.    It is a wonderful source for ideas about what to do with your home.

If you aren’t subcribed to it already, we suggest you do.

Our home -- with its open floor plan, beamed ceiling, and floor to ceiling windows -- was most unusual for our little town in 1955.

We often wonder how it came to be.

La Grande did not issue building permits until the 1970's so that usual way of finding the history of a home is not available.   Unlike its cousins–the Eichler’s, The Rummer's, the Cliff May's -- our house is not part of a development.   There are no others like it in town.

A friend who lived about a block away when the home was built told us it was built by a contractor, we gather as sort of a spec home.

We did do a search of city directories at the public library, thinking perhaps the home had been built with a specific family in mind, a family whose home it was for some time.   Not the case.

The city directory shows the first two owners stayed only about two years each.

The home had six different owners in its first 28 years, the families of: Forrest Russell, a teacher; James Haas, a biologist with Oregon Fish and Wildlife; Dave Slaght, the city manager; John Reid, a physician; Eugene Washington, a civil engineer; and Barry Heath, a Presbyterian minister. The next owners, the Fetz family, kept the home for 20 years and then sold to the people from whom we bought our home.

We would love to learn more about our house, how it came to be, what it was like originally, etc.   If anyone reading this lived in our house or was in it in its early years, we would love to hear from you!