Got Snow?

Although we didn't get hit by the storm as bad as the East Coast, we ended up with about 3" of slushy ice & snow as of late this morning. I had always wanted to get some shots of a the house after a fresh snowfall prior to us getting out and tromping around and messing with the perfectly smooth white blanket. The snow adds a nice touch to the mid century exterior furnishings around the house.

Modern Gingerbread House

Thanks to a gift from my Aunt Debbie & Uncle Jeff from Tennessee, we embarked on our first ever gingerbread house this past holiday. Most people probably build their gingerbread houses a bit before Christmas so they can consume it visually and as a sugar laden tasty treat through the holidays. We view it as a family craft project, of course with a little bit of customization we made it a Mid Century Modern Prefab Gingerbread house.

The kit comes in the box shown in the second photo. A quick organization of all necessary building components is shown in the third photo. A plastic tray houses the gingerbread pieces of the square planned house. The icing is premixed and ready to go along with the assorted candy decorations and is accompanied by a gingerbread christmas tree and candy wreath.

The house comes setup for a super pitched roof, which just wasn't going to work for us. For the butterfly roof profile, I made a quick modification to the front and back gingerbread pieces of the house. The resultant leftover gingerbread pieces allowed us to improvise an additional entry feature and chimney. Having built nice clean architectural models, I have to say the icing as glue proves a little sloppy, but the smaller the hole in the icing bag, the more control you end up developing as you go along.

Although I'm a minimalist at heart, this house is all about decoration, and we used every bit of the decorative candies in one way or another. We made sure to provide the quintessential center mounted doorknob, clerestory windows, and sculpture garden. The whole project was decorated on the fly, trying to proportion and use all the pieces was a good challenge and also a lot of fun. Perhaps next year we will try to do a custom one from scratch.

Mid Century Modern Curb Appeal Poll

Happy New Year, hello next decade. In three more years our house will be 60 years old, vintage for sure. Last we looked, we were well on our curb appeal road with new house color, concrete, screenwall, and walkways all completed. Still left to do is completing the mortar on the screen wall, as it will sit freestanding until spring. Additionally, the roofline needs addressed, ahem, redone & the main walkway up to the house will be removed and redone. Currently you can see the temporary patch job between the old curvilinear concrete walkway and the new inset porch step.

To start the new year off with a bit of evolution, welcome the first ever Cincinnati Modernation poll. This is my first poll 'gadget' in use so let's hope all works well. The poll is located in the upper right of the page. I decided to play with some Photoshop caricature concepts that illustrate our color schemes we hope to start working on as soon as the weather allows. With the temps in the teens today, I don't this will be anytime soon, plenty of time for debate. Trying to keep warm with single pane glass is a challenge in itself.

The first photo is the current situation, second is a dark grey bonanza that limits the palette, perhaps the concrete step should remain unpainted as it matches the concrete soffit nicely. Third up is a bit of throwback to the house's original maroon color, and was part of what we originally planned to do.

Finally a more 'Palm Springs' approach with a white roofline and white concrete walkway. The overcast sky doesn't help the white pop as it would on a clear day and blue sky background. I could see the Salterini orange slice chairs being a nice powder coated white to match as well, clean & clean!

Modern Ornament

It's been awhile. Not much interesting happening in the way of modern renovation ongoings around Westminster these days. In preparing for the winter cold, we have been busy insulating the studio space currently under construction. Cabin fever starting to set in, we recently had to break out the Christmas tree and lights to decorate our modern pad to get into the holiday spirit.

I had almost forgotten this small ornament that I made before Xmas 2008. My previous place of employment had a small contest for our office Xmas party in crafting an ornament. The rules for the contest were to use excess interior finish materials and samples with wallpaper, fabrics, carpet, and various other fun stuff. Being the single track minded Mid Century Modernist that I am, the following is what I came up with.

Mid Century Modern Curb Appeal Part 3

Breathing a small holiday sigh of relief, it's time to share some status on the ongoing MCM curb appeal progress. Having mixed in a little musical room nursery action during our poor weather bouts earlier this fall, we had been eager to acheive a completion point outside before the cold of winter fully sets in. The past several weekends have been abnormally mild and sunny allowing us to scramble together some major progress outside. All of this work relates to a master plan we came up with early after moving in, knowing all the pieces would eventually fall together to make the whole composition, we carry on in guerilla tactic form.

We finally settled on a very dark gray color and have painted the front of the house including the two studio windows. As can be seen in the first couple of photos, fall has been mostly cleaned up and the house now has a new mid century appropriate identity. We have applied two coats of primer and two coats of finish paint preempted by several weeks of prep work on the front wall. Having sanded, patched, glazed, and unloaded two tubes of silicone into sealing the front rectangle, I can say the prepwork is a necessary pain. We are very happy with the final color selection, the gray plays very well with the red of the brick. I will be eager to finish the roofline in dark gray next year.

The studio windows have been temporarily painted until there's time for a major overhaul and reglazing next spring. Removing the "Gene it up" special Sage Green color in it's entirety from the front facade has left us with nothing but satisfaction. The early 90's is behind us, hello 2010. Although the tan roofline remains for now, we have reduced the palette of colors & materials down to the brick, the concrete, the gray paint, and the existing tan roof.

The new concrete landscape walls poured during the course of the priming process are now cleaned up and weathering quickly to match the color of the porch slab poured last year. Extensions of the front porch slab, the orthagonal geometries of the landscape walls match the roofline and extend the integration of the house to the landscape. The new Neutra style house numbers were installed before the painting was completed leaving several other miscellaneous tasks.

I have mocked up the concrete block screen wall as can be seen in the third and fourth photos. If you look closely you can see the new double bullet lights hanging from the soffit. This block was sourced from the local big box home improvement store on the cheap. I hand selected all 56 blocks digging through an entire palette of blocks at the store to get the best quality units. Three station wagon loads later I have a rough loose stack mock up to get a sense of proportion and alignment to the house. I have a few solid blocks I intend to mix in randomly to the stack that I'd like to look at before finally setting the blocks. I'm digging the look of what we have currently have mocked up, opinions are welcome.

The fifth photo shows the new perimeter house walkway adjacent to the front door. I've expanded the walkway which consists of exposed aggregate pavers set in gravel with aluminum landscape edging. This matches the work I had already done along the long front landscape bed. The aluminum edging is a must for any MCM gravel scape, it can be set curvelinear or straight as we've done. The perimeter walkway pays off when taking the trash out on a rainy night and I remain under roof. All the aggregate pavers used along the front of the house were stacked out back when we bought the house. We utilized every single one thanks to the previous spacing layout done in AutoCAD.

While the long landscape bed may look bare, less should not decieve. We have the entire bed prepped for spring having tilled, cleaned and leveled out all the soil in the planting bed. Our sole resident currently is a small magnolia tree. Wendy and I have planted over 200 bulbs near the front steps in the long landscape bed filling the full width of the bed and about 7' in length. We plan to divide the 28' long planting bed into 4 equal segments that correspond to the varying amount of sunlight the bed will receive.

With much progress made, we still have a bit to do before fully moving work to indoors. The downspouts all need painted as well as the dryer vent. I also need to set a level mortar bed before finally setting the block screen wall and anchoring it to the brick. We are also thinking we're going to paint the existing front concrete step dark gray. The existing walkway connection to the front porch is another job for next spring when we take out the existing curved walkway up to the house. Just when you feel like you've made some progress it's merely a good view of the next hill of tasks on the horizon to climb.

Cincinnati Balluminaria 2009

Cincinnati's Balluminaria is an annual event that kicks off the holiday season in a momentous way. The event coincides with the Holiday Floral show taking place up the street at the Krohn Conservatory earlier in the day. Eleven hot air balloons tether themselves around the edge of Eden Park's Mirror Lake and sequentially light up the evening. We couldn't think of a better way to kick off the holidays. The event is completely free and quite a sight. Here's a sample of what we saw.

Mid Century Modern Nursery

We were not sleeping well. At seven months, our newest modern arrival was way overdue for his own room. Most families have their baby nursery done a month before they are born, right? The problem is we have been playing musical rooms so we could remodel one space at a time. The difficulties in renovating a MCM and raising a family in parallel are cumbersome. One must approach strategically with guerilla tactics whether it be in late night or temporary displacement.

A few weeks ago, in the midst of painting the front of the house, we had a few rainy weekends, one of which included the older little one going to grandma's for an overnighter. Add on a pack-n-play for the baby to sleep in overnight in his sister's room and we had the recipe for a full day and late evening to swap rooms. First we had to consolidate and downsize the 'office' room enough to accommodate our king size bed and other bedroom furniture. Next, we could move the baby into and accessorize the nursery with the many collected items.

Having already refinished this room before using it for our own bedroom, most of the heavy lifting was done. Our theme for the room is zoo animals based on the Dwell Studio bedding set. The Eames rocker is a must for bedtime rocking. The Target crib and changing table are on their second term of duty with Ava already having used these as a baby. It pays to go modern white with the kid furniture if you plan on having more than one. The Ikea sofa has been in the household for awhile as well as the simple shaker style wood dresser and tall Ikea lamp. The end tables are Lane thrift shop finds.

New additions to the room include installing the new, 'Skojig', overhead light, another Ikea special. Also we installed the curtain wire hardware and hung the Dwell Studio curtains. We mounted the colorful storage pods on the wall and added some wall decals that matched the bedding. We also decided to leave the Charlie Harper 'Skipping School' print in the nursery, as it complements the wall color and every kid needs to have a Harper print. One thing to note, although all our bedrooms are on are lower level, each bedroom has the large southeastern facing window to help brighten the space. Ever since the nursery has been complete, we all have been sleeping much better, sometimes through the entire night even.