Winnipeg is rich with inspiration for Craftsman style.

I felt like I was back in Grade 10.

As my wife and I were leaving the office of our designer, Angie Strike last week, we were given some important homework to do over the weekend involving exterior design elements.

Of course, unlike Grade 10, I actually wrote down our assignment and looked forward to answering all of her questions.

While we had the floor plan pretty much salted away, we now had to decide on the detailing on the exterior elevations.

Right combinations

I admit I'd been anxious to get the process rolling, and I was willing to let Strike come up with exterior elements on her own in order to speed up the process. But, she insisted that we take our time and find the right combination of elements and make sure we ended up with exactly what we want.

"This is a home that you'll be living in for a long time, and you don't want to be saying, 'I guess I can live with this,'" Strike said.

She had a valid point. So, we began our homework.

We've been talking all along about how we wanted a "Craftsman facade," but now we had to get specific.

Strike suggested we hit the bookstores. She also said we should tour around some of Winnipeg's classic neighbourhoods for inspiration. She said Riverview, Wolseley and River Heights were gold mines of Craftsman-style designs.

We knew Wolseley had some examples of classic 1910 to 1930 houses, as we currently live in a 1912 character house in Wolseley.

So, we set out to explore Riverview and River Heights. We weren't disappointed.

There were several streets full of funky and authentic Craftsman designs. We cruised down Oakwood, Baltimore, Ashland and Balfour Avenues off of Osborne Street, marvelling at the facades -- each unique and impressive.

We stopped and took pictures of our favourites. If you are an owner of one of these homes, and saw someone taking pictures on your street this week, that was probably us.

Once we finished scouring Riverview, we headed over to River Heights. Our favourite streets were Cambridge, Queenston, Waterloo, and the tree streets -- Ash, Oak and Elm. While there are mostly Colonial designs in north River Heights, there are still some spectacular Craftsman homes mixed in.

One thing we noticed was how each Craftsman home was its own design, with tell-tale touches like rafter tails, stone-based support columns, angular roof braces and square windows.

Because we're having our garage at the front of the plan, we're thinking of inserting windows into the top section of the garage door. That way, we can tie-in the square-windowed look into the garage, and soften the "wall of door" look from the front street.

We're also thinking of having an A-frame roof section over the front door area, to break up the roof line. We're thinking some stone and wood support columns would add a nice touch to the entryway.

One of our favourite aspects of the Craftsman look is the front porch. While we plan on spending most of our outdoor time in our attached screen porch off of the eating area (more on that in the weeks to come), we still plan on rocking on the front porch when the mosquitoes aren't swarming.

We picked up many ideas in our mini tour, and we'll be taking them to Strike this week.

We have to thank the original Craftsman designers, whose work has proven to be timeless and inspiring.