Used to be that the Sunday magazines in L.A. newspapers were packed with ads for swimming pool builders. New pools became rare in the suburbs for awhile, but with home prices so high right now, and homeowners sitting on mini-fortunes of equity, pool installers in the Valley are swamped, the Daily News says.

Speaking of the Valley...Erik Himmelsbach in CityBeat discovers the Eichler-designed gems of Granada Hills.

These homes are just so conceptually bitchen: High-beamed ceilings; floor to ceiling pane glass walls that reveal serious views; open-air atriums between the front door and living quarters; redwood, teak, and mahogany doors; and a “hanging coffin” in the kitchen to store your dishes. It is literally a Fun House.

Eichler and his posse (A. Quincy Jones, Frederick Emmons, Claude Oakland) built only a hundred of these beauties on Lisette, Nanette, Jimeno, and Darla streets. The neighbors are petitioning for historic status from the City of Los Angeles and it’s easy to see why. The homes are quirky gems of modern architecture. Yet they were designed in the early ’60s for affordability … and racial harmony. It was one of the Valley’s first open tracts, available to folks of all stripes, a radical concept in pre-Civil Rights days.