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!