Diane's Office

We just finished remodeling John's office and my office. John's office isn't quite back together yet so we'll save his office for another post. My office mainly got new floors, new windows, new wiring, new lighting, and new drywall in this remodel. The stupid pipe that stuck out of the floor (see earlier post) got rerouted. And in doing that, we had a little surprise. We're on a concrete slab, so John removed some of the slab so the plumber could get to the pipe better. Well, as he was cutting through the slab, he thought it sounded hollow underneath. Not a good sign. Sure enough, once he had cut a big enough hole that he could look under the slab, he could see there was a big hole in the dirt under the slab right there. A big enough hole you could fit a person into. Then he remembered that last year, in redoing the deck, which was right outside that wall, he had found a big hole under the old deck that a squirrel had made. And there had been a tunnel going from that hole towards the stem wall.... Well, the tunnel obviously had led to a big comfy heated squirrel condo under my office! It took 4 wheelbarrowfuls of dirt to fill it in. You could see where the slab had sagged over this hole, but I had never noticed it before. Good thing we found it. John used a lot of floor leveler to fix it. Well, this is the kind of stuff you discover when you remodel an old house!

So - here's a "pre" picture of my office wall from the hallway door-

And here's how it looks now-

I now have much better lighting. The original house had basically no built in lighting. We added track lights for over the desk and work table, and also added globe lights for more overall light. I really like the trio over my work table - all are scavenged from thrift stores and Restores - they are all different sizes, at varying heights -

We ended up going with the same tile floor that we used in the bathroom directly across the hall. It's a fake slate by Mohawk (Ember Forest, Gravura). I like the having the continuity and I also like having a sturdy tile for a workroom / high traffic area (access to our deck is through this room).

And finally - I had had lightweight wood slider closet doors.



I had been happy with these and would have been happy to re-use them after the remodel. But for some stupid reason, they had been cut off at the bottom so they were too short and hung too high above the floor level. The contractor thought we should get new, heavier doors, so I agreed. At first, I just figured they would be a natural wood finish like the others. But then, when I was thinking about painting a wall or two of the room in a bright color, I started wondering about painting the closet doors instead of a wall. Then I started thinking about painting ONE closet door. It seemed kinda weird and the idea got mixed reviews from my friends. I was really going after the look of those cabinet doors in the Kerf ads-

But I really didn't know how it would look with only two doors. Well, we went for it and painted one of each set of closet doors a nice orangey red. And I love it! It adds a lot of color to the room.

And I just saw an article on the trend of mixing natural wood with a color. So I guess I'm right in the groove.... :-)

Then I found this pic of a vintage house, that shows a set of doors, each in a different color (blue and white)! Pretty cool. I will definitely be playing around with door color more when we remodel the 2 bedrooms.

Denver Modernism

We finally made it to a modern show! A friend has been going to the Denver Modernism show for years and it just hadn't worked out for us to go until this year. The timing turned out to be perfect - we had just finished phase 2 of our remodel and wanted to go up to Denver to the new Ikea to buy some bookcases for John's office - so it worked out perfect to go there last weekend.

It was a great little show. Not as many vendors as I would have hoped for, but it was still great fun and the prices were really terrific. The show prides itself on having something for everyone, in all prices ranges, and they were right. We went on opening night, had drinks at the tiki bar, had some fried cereal at Charles Phoenix's booth, caught a little of the Miss Modernism pageant, and did some shopping. The last booth we came to had some vintage Jensen Selig Z chairs that I had always admired. They were in terrific shape and the price was really reasonable. Still, how would we get them home with the Ikea bookcases in the back of the LandCruiser? So - we slept on it but ended up going back and buying them when the show opened on Saturday. Ikea always manages to pack things in impossibly small boxes - so we had no trouble fitting the 2 chairs in the car with 3 Ikea bookcases and miscellaneous other purchases. So we are now the proud owners of 2 Z chairs!

We had a great time in Denver and definitely hope to go to the show again next year. We also toured the Arapahoe Acres area of town (in Englewood), which is a lovely MCM neighborhood. Too bad they didn't have any house tours here, like they did during Modernism weekend last year. We also went to a few antique stores - some on S. Broadway (0-100 block and 1800 block) and a new place, Mid Mod and More, at 1716 Boulder St. It's in a cute little modern house right near downtown. And of course there are the classic modern stores there, Mod Livin' and Zeitgeist, but we skipped those this trip.

We just finished our remodel so will post about that soon. Still putting on the finishing touches though. But in the meantime - here's a few more additions to our vintage collection. First - a goofy little 1950s wire fruit basket I found in Roswell -

And finally, some friends are moving away and cleaning out and gave us their vintage Panasonic Panapet radios! Woo hoo! I love these, I had one as a teenager myself except mine was an orangey-red. It's great to have the pets around.

So stay tuned for remodel news. Sorry about any crazy formatting here, I'm doing this is Google Chrome for the first time and the formatting is not working like it's supposed to!

Remodel Phase 2 Begins

Two years ago we did a major remodel of half of our house. We gutted the whole front half - the living room, kitchen, laundry area, and pantry. We learned that the original wiring from the 1950s was scary, and that the wiring from work since wasn't any better. So we realized that eventually, the rest of the house would need its drywall and paneling taken out too. So - here we are at Phase 2 of the remodel, which will be John's office and my office. Phase 3 will be the guest room and master bedroom and bath. Then the inside will be done except for the guest bath, although it had some of its wiring done in the last remodel.

John's office is in what was originally part of the carport. The roof is very low at that point, and John's office has always seemed a bit...cozy. So, his main objective is to make the space feel bigger. He is removing the walk-in closet which is at one end of his room and adding windows (in addition to ripping the paneling and wiring out on the existing walls). He is also removing the old carpet and putting in click Marmoleum flooring. John has already started demolition, here's our progress so far- here's how his office looked at the beginning- with one little window above his desk (there will be 3 along that wall after the remodel) - the trapezoidal window that will be added is in blue tape on left-



And here's a similar shot after he ripped out the carpet. Edge of closet that is ripped out is on right side of photos. Under the carpet was an old parquet floor in pretty bad shape.



And here is a "before" picture looking from the entry hall into John's office - you see a view of the closet door-


And here is how it looks now, since he tore out the closet last weekend-



His room now seems much bigger and airier already. And here's a final shot of the wall where the trapezoidal window will get added and the other window removed-


Now, on to my office. My office is simpler. Mainly the problem is the carpet and the wiring. But we decided to add another window (see blue tape. Final placement of windows has changed slightly from this.)


And here's what we found under the carpet -



I had forgotten that my office was originally 2 small bedrooms that had been joined into one room at some point. You can see the changes in paneling styles on the wall - half the room has a smooth painted paneling and the other side is grooved paneling and they meet in the middle of the room! Well, under the carpet, you can see the original flooring - one side a checkerboard imitation cork and the other is a charcoal grey with speckles of color. And in the middle, where the wall once was, they have filled in the gap with a variety of flooring.

Also in that wall that got removed in the past is a water pipe that goes outside to a faucet and the drip system. The problem is that it was inside the wall and when the wall was removed, it stuck up out of the floor an inch or two-


To conceal it, they cleverly (?) covered it with a piece of PVC covered with carpet to disguise it- (that's my bookcase to the right of it, I know it's a bit confusing visually)-


Anyway, the plumber is going to have to figure out a solution to this problem because I don't want a pipe sticking up out of my floor! (which is going to be the same slate-looking porcelain tile that we have in the guest bath directly across the hall).

I really don't like this checkerboard tile. The other bedrooms of this house all have different tile. So I don't feel so bad that after the remodel, we will have a bit of variety in flooring also.



The contractor (the same one we used last time) will start in 3 or 4 weeks so stay tuned. Meanwhile, we'll continue demolition.

San Diego Modern

We spent last weekend in San Diego. Had originally planned to go to the Cincinnati modern show but just couldn't quite bring ourselves to fly north in the middle of winter. So we headed to sunny southern California instead. It turned out there are quite a few midcentury modern shops in the area, so we got our midcentury fix. For anyone else planning a trip there, I just thought I'd list them for you.

All of the following deal in original vintage furniture-

Along Park Blvd.-

The Atomic Bazaar
3816 Park Blvd.
619-534-8397
Wed-Sat 12-6
Sun 12-5

Mid-Century Design
3795 Park Blvd.
619-295-4832
Wed-Sat 12-6
Sun 12-4

Design/One
3789 1/2 Park Blvd.
619-501-2057

Near Little Italy and only a few blocks from where you pick up your rental car from the airport-

Klassic
989 W. Kalmia St.
619-640-6995

Boomerang for Modern
2475 Kettner Blvd.
619-239-2040
Mon-Sat 11:30-5

There is also a nice little antique mall on Kettner -

Antiques on Kettner
2400 Kettner
619-234-3332
Closed Tues, open 10-6 Wed-Mon

And there is a fabulous architectural salvage place on Kettner as well. Didn't see anything very modern but a great place for architectural/ design junkies to visit nevertheless-

Architectural Salvage
2401 Kettner
Tues-Sat 10-6
Mon, Sun 11-5

And one new place dealing in contemporary modern stuff-

Mixture
mixturehome.com
2210 Kettner Blvd.
619-239-4788

And one last place, a teeny little store in a different neighborhood but with cool vintage stuff-

Nest Vintage
830 25th St.
619-756-7491
Tues-Sat 11-7
Sun 12-5

Happy shopping!

Planner Group Catalog

I grew up with quite a bit of Paul McCobb's furniture from the Planner Group. We had a coffee table, two end tables, a drop lid desk, and some bookcases (with and without the sliding glass doors). The coffee table and end tables were given away a few years ago but mom still had the desk and bookcases. The desk was sitting in the garage and we nabbed it a few months ago. She had thought she had saved the original brochure (she saves everything) but we had been unable to find it. However, I was back visiting last week and we came across it. Pretty cool to see the original catalog of all the designs, with some prices that my dad had scribbled in. I have scanned the whole brochure and am posting it here for anyone who wants to study it. Enjoy! You should be able to click on each picture to be able to read the fine print.















These last two are part of a big foldout and overlap a bit - sorry -

A Deck - and a House

John started the deck back in the spring - I see my last post, where he had just gotten started on it, was dated in June. Well, it's finally done. And it looks great now - much larger and stronger than the old one. Here's a before picture -


and here's how it looks today.


John was really adamant about doing a zazzy, non-rectangular deck. I wasn't sure at first - I liked the idea of one side of it roughly paralleling our bocce court - but I wasn't sure how practical it would be in terms of arranging furniture on it, etc. But after we mocked it all up with string, I finally agreed it would work. After construction began, we realized that MAYBE his insistence upon an irregularly shaped deck was due to the fact that when his parents built a cool midcentury modern house in upstate New York when he was a child, they had an irregularly shaped deck too. When they were building the house, they lived in a one-room shack down the driveway on their property. (They actually lived in Manhattan and this was a home in the country for them.) We noticed in a picture that their one-room shack (about the size of a shed nowadays) had a little odd-shaped deck they had built to admire their hilltop view-


The main house they had built had a cantilevered deck that had the same great view-


Here's another shot of the interior of their finished house, just for fun. Too bad we don't have those chairs, although we do have a lot of other modern furniture from John's family.


A few years ago, we were planning a trip to New York and wanted to find out what had happened to their custom-built house. John's parents had sold it when he was fairly young. It took a lot of research and studying of maps to figure out that we thought the house must be in Washingtonville, NY (just about an hour's drive from Manhattan). So we rented a car one day and drove up there. We stopped at the first real estate office we saw and asked if anyone knew of a house up on a hill in the area. The realtor said she thought we must be talking about the doctor's place, and gave us directions on how to get there. As soon as we got to the long driveway up the hill, John knew we were in the right spot. It was fenced off and there was a neighbor at the property at the fenceline and so we talked to them. They told us the house was in ruin and abandoned and to go on up. It was very strange - there was still some stuff in the house but it had been vandalized and it was in terrible disrepair. John knew that it had an innovative feature - a rooftop lined in copper to create a giant swimming pool on the roof. It wasn't meant to be a swimming pool, it was meant to hold a few inches of water and serve as an evaporative cooler for the house (the house was off the grid with no electricity). Well, the roof had been the house's demise when it leaked and water poured into the living room. It was all very sad. The deck was in disrepair also and was falling off of the house-


Anyway, we stayed there for quite awhile and took pictures and walked around. When we got home, we were even contacted by the doctor that now owns the place. The neighbors had shown him our pictures of when the house was built. He hopes to restore it some day but it's probably too far gone.

Now that the deck is done, we're discussing our next project. Looks like it'll be a remodel of John's office and my office. Our main goals are: new flooring (they both have old carpet now), **new wiring (which means ripping the paneling off the walls and redoing the walls), and more windows. We are trying to figure out a window scheme for the rest of the house at the same time so when we redo those rooms, we will continue the theme (which most likely will be to add new windows in the same style as the old awning ones we have). The flooring issue is the hardest for me. It needs to be super-sturdy as it is my work space as well as the main route outside to the deck. Some kind of tile seems appropriate - maybe this terrazo tile by Eco Terr? Terrazo seems cold but I sure like the idea of it, it seems sturdy and I love love love the look. If anyone has any experience with it, or any ideas about flooring, please speak up! Cork and linoleum have also been suggested but I am worried about their durability.

The Deck and Beyond

Sorry it's been such a long time since I've posted. It was a long long winter here and winter is not the greatest time for doing house projects. John worked on plans for our new deck and I mainly worked on decorating. I found a few pieces of furniture on ebay - since it is really hard to find vintage MCM furnishings in Santa Fe. I just purchased an expandable slat bench on ebay-


We had a slat bench here before that we had bought at a garage sale, but it was too short for the space. Love the new one.

We also bought an Adrian Pearsall/ Craft Associates coffee table on ebay. Of course, the glass arrived in a million pieces. But after a lot of haggling with UPS, I got paid for a new one.


And here's a cute little Paul McCobb/ Planner Group drop-leaf desk that I grew up with. Just threw it in the back of our Honda Fit and brought it here from my mom's. It's terribly sun faded (on the outside) but is otherwise in great shape. So we eventually need to get it refinished.


I also bought some FLOR carpet tiles to replace the rug I had in the kitchen, whose cheap rubber backing had started to stick to the wood floor.... I threw in a couple of darker tiles for some added interest....


And John has gotten started on the deck. He ripped the old sagging, peeling one out a month or so ago


and just poured foundation piers today.


The new one will be a lot bigger, about where the orange ribbon is in the top photo. Hopefully it'll be finished in a month or so.