Someday I would like to own an awesome house from the 1970s

yes where is one I can buy

I know!

this thread needs pictures

This thread needs a "lifestyle wife"!

Sunken floors! Fucking pieces of driftwood sitting around as "sculpture"! Giant-ass sliding glass doors covered by hotel curtains! No fear of bold colors!

my next door neighbor's house had all of this. the houses were built in '71 and '72 i think.

lol it really does laurel

Interior Desecrators!

the house i grew up in was totally like this. sliding glass doors and orange sinks.

what is that thing on the wall

If it’s moving, offer it a bong hit. If it’s not, paint it.

Hmm those pages are mostly different from the ones that used to be up. I guess he changed them when the book came out.

http://www.connieben.com/images/IMG_3344e.jpg

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/27/86/b99f729fd7a0a23931fbc010._AA240_.L.jpg

This book is like my book full of house wishes.

http://www.simplymod.com/images/bk-complete-home-decorating.jpg

can't find any decent pictures of the houses in The Ice Storm :(

shag carpet and coke spoons and fringe, oh my!

avocado green appliances gold linoleum and rust-colored carpet!

The classic, as recreated by a graphics students:

http://static.flickr.com/65/163337020_17407ab9a0.jpg

we had gold linoleum and rust colored carpet but the appliances were a sickly shade of yellow.

xpost.

http://www.mauirealestate.com/blog/blogpics/livingroomhaiku.jpg

http://valpak.ru/images/arizona2.jpg

Not so much the decor.

http://www.highlandholidaycottages.co.uk/isle_of_skye/sealladh_breagha/self_catering_cottage.jpg

yes to geodesic domes

yes to lautner-style vistas + nature-hugging geometrics

http://www.treadwaygallery.com/onlinecat/march0407/images/large/961.jpg

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/09/12/boyd_lead_wideweb__470x312,0.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3122/2388385420_9de0963e00.jpg

<3 wood walls, too

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2184/2268086236_9bff3d760c_o.jpg

i live in frank lloyd wright country

Love the first pic Abbott posted, the one with the books and that last one. The others, not so much.

http://img.hgtv.com/HGTV/2002/10/09/70h_paneling_e.jpg

And a tiny 'roof' indoors over the bar! Fuck yeah!

And a tiny 'roof' indoors over the bar! Fuck yeah!

WANT

it looks like a miniature shakey's pizza

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/150/335643776_2b83b957f3.jpg?v=0

Shag carpet tapestry! A favorite.

http://www.movemodern.com/mm/images/stories/Christmas/mod_white_tree.jpg

(white xmas tree is embarrassing tho)

The one get bent posted reminded me of how much I love this:

http://planetagadget.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/pierre-cardin-bubble-house.jpg

that house is like fallingwater with a jim henson makeover

at last!!!

i thought no one else thought these were cool

http://modculture.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/12/30/naxos.jpg

Neat, but it's a bit sterile.

http://www.xmere.com/forums/uploads/IDOTD_images/bookcase.jpg

I was hoping no one else thought they were cool so in ten years when I can buy a house there will be no competition. :(

http://www.cyberpunkreview.com/images/alien15.jpg

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i279/urbanretro/urbanretro2/Interiors-Of-1974-2.jpg

I love when shelves are built right into the wall (esp bookshelves).

in ten years, oughties-style mcmansions will be all the rage

http://www.simonsdiary.co.uk/simonsdiary/us%20tour%202003/ustour2003day6/GRACELAND/elvis%20jungle%20room%202.jpg
http://z.about.com/d/architecture/1/7/N/l/graceland1333865.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1081/1451095814_5f427030c7.jpg?v=0

(I'm more of a fifties fan)

STYLE:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3277/2651933192_55fbf1700c.jpg?v=0

http://www.lighttape.eu/images/gallery/img_monster_disco_02.jpg

i've been saying for years that i wanted shag carpet and gold wallpaper, etc., it will certainly be the new minimalism or whatever by the time i have money to decorate. although maybe not.

I like some things abt the minimalist/mid-century modern look that is kind of big now, but it's so sterile and cold. It feels inhibited somehow, like it's afraid to be fun or bold.

Yeah Doctor Casino that is the kind of bedroom I DREAMED of having as a kid.

Also my grandma had nothing to read at her house but Good Housekeeping and Reader's Digest from the '70s-'90s. Such cool houses!

it def is for the having just come in on the tail-end of this, and so having just a quick glimpse of a time that's gone but seemed like it was way cool.

*for me

one more from graceland:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3020/2652933854_719f1bd75e.jpg?v=0

I was born in '74, so I do have firsthand experience. I'm not sick of it, I just have a higher tolerance. Like this stuff is a drug or something. Also maybe because I used to work as a painted and decorator in the late 90's, and we had to paint everything in fucking magnolia! It's not enough for me for a room to be painted orange or have a shag pile carpet - it's got to be over the top. Like the picture upthread with the grand piano, or the three-TVs-and-mirrored-ceiling, is where I'd have to start off.

painter and decorator

grand piano also key for doing coke in style. possible FACT: no one has ever been offered a line by a beautiful 40 year old woman in thick gold costume jewelery in a magnolia room with a print of a sandollar on the wall while wynton marsalis is playing. that woman doesn't exist in that room!

she needs shag carpet to exist!

but anyways, tawdry decor, rain down on me.

that pool table looks weirdly long

wow some amazing stuff on this thread - good job abbott

y'all would like Atomic Ranch magazine
http://www.atomic-ranch.com/

I got pissed at the last issue because they covered some guy who was so dedicated to 'restoring' his '60s house that he purposely made it less energy efficient (ie single-pane glass windows).

Okay that is just stupid. Like the main thing I hate about old apartments I've lived in, however awesome-looking, is crappy plumbing/wiring/heating/cooling.

This is my new favorite thread in the history of the world. How old is everybody here? I've been spectulating for a long time that people born around the same time as me (1981) are especially susceptible to this stuff, since we grew up around it in vestigal form or in images, but didn't experience it firsthand enough to go "Ugh, I'm so sick of that stuff!"

i was born in 1976. my parents' place when i was a kid had a shag wall-to-wall carpet with different shades of brown, as well as a huge wooden lp cabinet, and the coffee "table" was a chrome/mirrored trunk. oh yeah, and there were vertical blinds, and the wallpaper was a wall-sized photo of the sun setting on a forest. that's just the living room. what do i win?

The desire to convince them to sell me the house at a highly competitive rate?

I was born in '73. I never hung out with anybody rich enough to have any of this wacky shit, so I never got sick of it.

The desire to convince them to sell me the house at a highly competitive rate?

oh, they sold it years ago. (and it was an apartment.)

i live in frank lloyd wright country

-- Jordan, Thursday, 14 August 2008 22:16 (1 hour ago) Link

i used to live a half mile from his home and studio, the place was built for midgets.

i have a bunch of frank lloyd wright houses near where i live right now. ennis house is up in the hills, hollyhock house is over in barnsdall park a few blocks away, and there are a few other of his romanza/textile-block houses nearby. i took a course about the freeman house and got to hang out inside it a few times (and the ennis once).

sorry i used "few" three times in that short paragraph... the humidity is making my brain not work.

more of a 50s fan also:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v369/colinohara/1-1.jpg

love that photo!

LOVE that green couch.

Abbott-

1p3 CRIBS

-gr8080

http://www.flickr.com/groups/1970houselovers/pool/

re: bar roof (http://img.hgtv.com/HGTV/2002/10/09/70h_paneling_e.jpg)
My Grandparents have this in our basement, except since our last name is D1cks, they had a sign made in a Bavarian font that says THE D1CKS INN, with matching coasters. AWESOME.

http://www.hdmag.com/hospitalitydesign/photos/stylus/21546-URBN_Garden-View_WEB.jpg

The Robin Boyd houses in Aus in the 70s, were a great example of all this (Abbott's posted one above, that one with the mezannine). Canberra still has some fine examples of this kind of housing. I love it!

http://www.canberrahouse.com/images/wp-marawa.jpg

http://www.canberrahouse.com/images/fenner-1.jpg

I grew up w/shag carpeting and I gotta say that it gets really fucking filthy. You gotta get Stanley Steemer in there every 3 months or so, else it's unlivable. Abbott totally OTM on houses w/no fear of color, tho.

Shag carpeting is kind of demonic. It is not actually comfy on the feet and libcrypt sums it up: filth sponge. Which is why a groovy hardwood sunken floor is the only choice. Or that weird slate.

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/09/12/boyd_lead_wideweb__470x312,0.jpg

^^^ my fave so far but if that's really a neighbor out the window then you'd have to get comfy with yr exhibitionist tendencies.

I dunno if anyone lives in any of the boyd homes anymore, I think they're all national trust or something.

Now I am sad I didn't take a photo of the garish wallpapered laundry bin in my parents' house before they got rid of it some time around, err, last year. (Already gone: orange and brown-black stripey fuzzy sofa. Still remaining: some orange and brown patterned carpets, faded orange mock-velvet curtains, assorted giant decorative candles, things my mother crocheted out of odd different-coloured ends of wool, avocado bathroom which my mother is now threatening to change because she saw on TV that not having a modern white bathroom knocks £3k off your house value or something. As soon as she does so, white will be OUT and the avocado revival will start.)

I think Britisher 70s design may be different from American 70s though, but there's obviously some overlap. And nobody we knew could buy a designer home, just acquire the bits which filtered down to the high street, and move into 70s houses a decade later when the original owners left.

Features of 80s childhood homes I (1980, UK) have assumed to be 70s-tastic: wooden stairs right in front of front door and just in the middle of the living room, featuring chunks missing from wooden banisters, chewed off by previous owner's dog; brick wall to one side of the living room, 3/4 the length of the room, cutting off a corridor-width section open at both ends, which served no apparent purpose but was great to run up and down and around as a kid, or turn into a racecourse for wind-up matchbox cars.

I think the UK/US overlap is very strong at the high end, but gets further apart as you move down to the cheaper Woolworths market. I wish my parents had kept all those aluminium floor standing lamps and lampshades, instead of throwing them away and replacing them with understated brass garbage.

wooden stairs right in front of front door and just in the middle of the living room, featuring chunks missing from wooden banisters, chewed off by previous owner's dog; brick wall to one side of the living room, 3/4 the length of the room, cutting off a corridor-width section open at both end

This is more of an early 60's feature. There are loads of houses in our area that fit this description. Granted that Bryan Ferry sang "open plan living, bungalow ranch style" in 1973, but these houses were built in '64.

Shag carpet is a real bitch to vacuum. I am a hardwood floors kind of gal.

-- Abbott, Thursday, 14 August 2008 22:38 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

Yes, but..

My parents' house - built in 81-82 - still has its original avocado bathroom suite with matching carpet and tiles. They've added horrible pale green wallpaper over the original light-beige-painted plaster though. I can remember, when the house was being built, trying to persuade them to go for a plum-coloured bathroom instead.

Only last year, they gutted the original kitchen - brown units, light brown tiles (with pattern matching the bathroom ones), and olive green floor tiles. They still have 1982-vintage carpets through most of the house, although only one room's left with the original-colour walls. They still have a 1982-date standard lamp, although it's in storage now, and a freestanding electric fire and a telephone table still in place.

that one libcrypt singled out looks a lot like the things Huf Haus are making right now (as seen on Grand Designs thread, the flatpack Mondrian thing)

http://www.huf-haus.com/gb/intro.html
http://www.channel4.com/4homes/on-tv/grand-designs/episode-guides/walton-huf-haus-revisited-08-06-04_p_2.html

Hahahaha, someone buy one of these and let me rent a room, it's my only hope.

They still have a 1982-date standard lamp, although it's in storage now, and a freestanding electric fire and a telephone table still in place.

what are these things? /i want them

Shag carpet is a real bitch to vacuum. I am a hardwood floors kind of gal.

-- Abbott, Thursday, 14 August 2008 22:38 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

Yes, but..

-- Mark G, Friday, 15 August 2008 09:14 (2 hours ago) Link

yeah see, i think that this type of perfectly reasonable concern taking precedence over style is more pronounced in our generation maybe, and it's that relative uptightness that precludes us from committing to opulence for aesthetics sake alone. i think this type of style mirrors a more laid back mindframe, one that we generally don't have as people in the seventies or whenever did, and so any attempts to revisit this style in order to recapture the swagger of another time will be doomed to superficialities. maybe that surface-level is all people are looking for, but i think the style grew out of certain attitudes, and to try and separate the two just turns it into more kitsch, which is to an extent unavoidable, since it's not 1976. i guess that means basically i don't want a house so much as a time capsule, though.

i think i think i think

I wouldn't want to live in a museum. If I were to do this in my own place, it would have a 21st century twist (oh fuck I sound like an interior design programme on TV). And I think (<<< ha) that a lot of have that more relaxed attitude, it's just that there are a few uptight people with very loud voices around at the moment.

the way house prices is going you can afford one probably in 2 months' time?

yeah I think I have some loose change in my pocket...

I do get paid today. Missed a day last week, but I think I can swing it.

Electric fire = an appliance that's a glorified electric heater, supposed to look like a traditional fireplace with "coal effect" lighting, but not fixed down.

Telephone table = a little wooden shelf that's screwed to the wall in the hallway, to put your phone on, with a shelf underneath for the phone books. They still use it for the modern equivalent role: it's where their cordless phone base-station and ADSL modem sit.

CASINO MY PARENTS HAVE THAT CHILDREN'S ROOM BOOK and I wanted every single room design in it, especially the boys' room with the beds so high they had to have protective nets or wires or something...holy shit that book.

I'll flip back through it for that one - it doesn't ring a bell but I'm sure I'll know it when I see it!

Equally good though less photogenic are the pages with hand drawings explaining how to build your own bed that you can fold away to reveal a chalkboard underneath, etc. Charming!

Needs bowling alley in rumpus room. Nixon non-returnable.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/presidential_photos/images/nixon_bowling.jpg

If this Flickr group didn't get linked before, it is now: 1970's Interior Design and Residential Architecture