Cincinnati Modernation

MCM Jim Alexander on Oregon Trail

2011-08-03T21:47:00.001-04:00

Awhile back I had the opportunity to tour and consult on a potential remodel project in Wyoming, this one a sweetly suprising Jim Alexander designed MCM tucked in the western neighborhood labyrinth of Wyoming. The house has had a few additions, similar to the other Jim Alexander house featured here a couple years ago. This one had come and gone, and come back on the market again, if we were 5-8 ahead of where we are now, we may have jumped on this one ourselves considering the reasonable price and Wyoming school district.

The house is sited high from the road one house away from the corner lot with a heavily wooded backdrop, especially helpful to the long slate of floor to ceiling glass. From the road the house looks small with the carport alongside a later extension of the private area containing the bed and bath rooms.

From the corner of the lot, where the secondary parking is, you can get a glimpse of the overall house with the flat carpot roof juxtaposed against the sloped open volume. Yes, it was love at first sight.

A carport is something we lack at our house, and I always raise the jealousy level to heightened when I see something like this with the integral storage. These boxes also serve as a screen wall to the living space you enter into beyond.

I almost forgot to mention this house was teasingly featured back when we toured some Atomic Indy folk, I had never got to see the house up close. Appropriately, this house has its house numbers front and central on the vertical wooden cladding.

The moment between the flat carport roof and the sloped house roof allow a brief peak into the heavy tree canopy above.

From the back yard looking toward the street, you can see how the house is composed of two long narrow tubes. The screened in porch and associated roof and the room behind it were late additions. I'm totally into the sloped roof overhang profile and note how awkwardly narrow the site for this house is, there is barely a side yard along the deck and a small grass area out back, leave it to the modern mind to lay out a house on such a site.

Although the side yard is small, the two decks are lushly discreet from the neighboring houses and make the most of extending the interior living to the outdoors. Some of the glazing has been upgraded to insulated double pane.

I nice little swan sculpture in the side yard came with the house. Just a bent ribbon of aluminum becomes MCM lawn art.

Inside, a brick fireplace greets you, complete with a Jere 'Birds' sculpture with a killer operable aluminum bullet light fixture. The fireplace tools are mounted permanently to the brick wall to complete the composition.

An original white double cone sconce on the interior wood paneling at the entry, drool. This light is just too freakin awesome.

Last but not least, is the dining light, of which I cannot name the designer, anchors the dining space, hovering all atomic like from the high ceiling. Beyond the drab kitchen (yes it needed my upgrading design skills), with the living room beyond. A nice post and beam Alexander special, and just down the street from my Laramie Trail kitchen project no less.

Modern Landscape - Summer 2011 Progress

2011-07-13T20:52:00.000-04:00

For almost every weekend since winter has past, we've been working hard to finish selecting plants for the enclosed concrete landscape beds along the front of our house. Before we begin, have a look at where we started with beige 80's mania. Lately, everything has started to fill in nicely, we are sitting back enjoying our new view(s) so it's time to share our progress. On the left side approaching our house we have two tiered beds, and along the front we have one really long bed that gets varying levels of sun and shade which has made our plant selection tricky.

On the far left we have a full sun perennial garden and closer up the higher bed is half sun (angularly) and half shade. We've always done well with a couple of annuals, the rest are perennials. This bed is in almost full summer bloom and adds a nice splash of color against the front of the house.

A close up of the mixed color. Echinacea flowers in the rear add a natural screen wall to the far side of our house. Up front are some summer phlox, veronica candles, different echinacea, and balloon flowers. Behind the tall echinacea, we have our herb garden.

Over in front of the concrete porch we poured a few years ago and adjacent to the newer walkway slabs we poured last spring is our other full sun perennial garden. We've tried to mix a lot of color throughout the seasons to contrast against the gray color of the house. Next year, this bed should be a slow fireworks display of color.

On the other side of this bed is a totally different color array of flowers. The long planting bed is made up of three different sections predicated on the quantity of sun each area receives. We've tried to stick to only flowering perennial plants in this section.

Looking straight at the full sun bed, there's a mix of agastache, echinacea, geranium, salvia, liatris, & shasta daisies. We are planning to add allium bulbs to have some early spring blooms.

The middle section is full shade due to our thriving Magnolia tree. We've kept is simple here with impatients and some spiderwort clusters. Over time the spiderwort will take over a majority of this area hopefully. It's a finicky plant, only blooms once a day in the morning for a short period.

On the far side is our almost full shade garden. Last year we had planted 5 azaleas to anchor this bed. Unfortunately, due to an accident by our roofers we lost two of them. We moved the remaining plants spacing the 3 survivors evenly and added some columbine, astilbe, and irish moss along the back side. The astilbe and columbine are spring bloomers and looked great when they were in bloom.

Walking pack along the paver path to the front door we added phlox down the entire length of the bed, previously we had only done half the length. It now anchors the whole bed and is slowly growing over the edge of the wall. This also flowers in early spring before almost anything else. Behind the phlox is a row of shasta daisies.

From our front door looking straight on the walkway. We've prescribed to mostly geometric, linear arrangements, this bed is the anomaly, but it's a good thing. We scored the large planter shortly after moving in the house at a DWR warehouse sale and have it stuffed full of cascading flowers.

Trying to catch a little color in front of the dark gray. All this is the culmination of several years of work, we are glad to be at a point of completion. You'll have to forgive all the kid toys in the photos, this is the way we roll most of the time with two young kids you have to keep it real.

Thrift Store Scores - Misc. Recent Finds

2011-07-06T20:39:00.000-04:00

Lately, I've been hitting up thrift stores more than working on our house. In all honesty we've been working our asses off on the landscape every chance the sun comes out, more on our progress soon. It's been hit and miss around the thrifting scene lately, giving cause to pull out the modern eagle eye and search the filled aisles of shelves that most thrift stores have. Here's what I've scored lately:

Just the other day I scored this wood Roadrunner. Searching Google I found a few similar ones floating around but nothing exactly like this one. It's unmarked yet totally has a Danish look, looks like we're going to start collecting more birds.

Hiding under a few things Wendy found this little Jere-esque copper / metal flying bug. It's really small but totally reminds me of Curtis Jere's work. The body is an old thick nail with wire legs and copper wings. It had a single antennae that has since fallen off with the slightest touch, you can see where it originally had two.

A Danish candlestick is always a MCM household staple for generally any flat surface whether it be a mantle or credenza. I usually prefer these in pairs but couldn't pass on the profile of this one. It's made by a company called PEET with purpleheart wood, the tapered part is about 1/4" thick, probably wasn't easy to turn this wood so thin, but it's rock solid.

If you scroll back a few posts, you can see we've been on an Art Glass search and acquire mission. Not only does this piece weigh about 5 lbs, but has a nice cone profile on the inside void creating a cool atomic profile. It has a sticker on the bottom 'Made in Czechoslavakia' but I know nothing more about it other than we like it.

Last but not least, is this metal bird, I wasn't kidding about collecting birds, eh? It instantly reminded me of a Cardinal with the Eames bird kinda look. It doesn't fit with our wooden bird original scheme, since it's just our 3rd bird, we'll let it hang around until the next score.

Another shot from above of all the latest additions to our collection.

Cincinnati Concours D'Elegance 2011

2011-06-14T22:35:00.001-04:00

This past Sunday was Cincinnati's 34th Annual Concours D'Elegance, a world class exhibition of motoring excellence benefiting The Arthritis Foundation and Children with Juvenile Arthritis. The show takes place in the formal gardens of Ault Park and features over 200 collector cars spanning almost the entire history of automobiles. This year’s special exhibit featured Ferrari's and Fire Engines, so appropriately I have some tasty examples of Mid Century Ferrari's up front followed by a few other fine other gems I saw at the show.

1956 Ferrari 410 Super America

1958 Ferrari 250 GT Drogo Coupe

1959 Ferrari 250 Cabriolet (Series 1)

1962 Ferrari 250 GTE

1967 Ferrari 330 GTC

1962 Jaguar E-Type Roadster

1963 Studebaker Lark Wagonnaire

Late 60's Fiat Dino 5400

1958 Porsche 356 Speedster

Late 50's Porsche 356 Speedster

Eames Armshell Restoration Project

2011-06-09T23:00:00.004-04:00

A little renewal has been in order for awhile, not just the blog, yet also the latest addition to our household, this Greige Eames Armshell with original lounge H-base. A byproduct of a facebook giveaway, this little guy was traded for a couple of other pieces we were looking to sell, win and win.

Initially it looked as if I might have got the bad end of the trade, the chair was a mess. It had a huge rust stain or something on the seat, the fiberglass was gritty, and the base was rusty, all probably from years of being outside. With a little resilience and persuasion to my wife (still can hear her echos of "We're not taking that home!") it was soon in the back of the wagon and on the way home.

Now's the point where I point to where credit is due. Starting with the Brick House's DIY Eames Restoration post, I followed pretty much the same steps taken to restore it to original beauty. One of the unique characteristics of this chair to me was the rusty lounge base, so I ended up stripping, sanding and repainting the base in black. Otherwise I left the original shock pads on and sanded, sanded, and then sanded some more.

Fast forward to completion and oh my what a difference. I ended putting several coats of the Penetrol to get the shiny finish, being patient for the oil based product to dry and air out a bit was necessity.

I'm really digging the low lounge base, we have one rocker and the rest 'normal' H or X bases in our Field of Eames living room. Sitting low, as demonstrated by my offspring scale figure, propping my feet up on our sectional sofa ottoman has never felt more appropriate. Be sure to also check another great very thorough Eames restoration post that recently was put up by friends over at Plastolux. Someday I would like to do the Eames color wheel of side shells around our dining table.

Doesn't it look right at home?

MCM Zenith Console Manual

2011-05-26T09:17:00.004-04:00

Last fall I scored a super awesome mid century Zenith stereo console. Since then I received a lot of great feedback and even stories from others around the country that have found the same piece. Recently a few requests have been floating around for a manual. Luckily the original one for our unit is still tucked in the album niche and now it's here for anyone who needs it. The full PDF can now be found here, cheers!

Thrift Store Score - Homecrest Siesta Chaise

2011-05-15T10:08:00.009-04:00

The other night I got a text from my mother that went something like: "Stopped by our Goodwill today, they had a wire chaise like your outdoor chair set." She was referring to our collection of Homecrest wire chairs in our back yard. After an anxious phone call later, she agreed to stop by the next day, and by that evening we had our long hunted Homecrest Siesta chaise and our next furniture restoration project. I knew just the spot in our solarium for it to reside.

I don't know how hard these are to find, but I've been looking for over 5 years for one to fill in our collection. Beyond looking killer, this chair is SUPER comfortable, I'm talking 'did I just fall asleep for a couple hours?' comfy. Like our other Homecrest chairs, this one swivels has an adjustable spring loaded mechanism, ours is seized with paint. Sandblasting, priming and powdercoating will be required before we endeavour in some custom made covers. Fabric is already on my mind, how sweet would this look in some Girard Millerstripe?

Time to RSVP Your Miller Residence Tour

2011-04-18T21:19:00.020-04:00

photo courtesy of IMA

Sometimes, it has been said, the best things in life come in threes. In 1953, the combination of Eero Saarinen, Dan Kiley, and Alexander Girard created one of the finest examples of residential modernism, the Miller House. Debuting for public touring starting May 10, the house will be available to the public after several years of meticulous care by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. There is no doubt the house, interiors, and its surrounding gardens represent the epitome of Mid Century Modernism at its best.

photo courtesy of IMA

I was fortunate enough to tour the house last spring along with other bloggers on the now legendary Columbus blogger tour. From the geometric landscape to the sunken conversation pit to the atomic awesome thoroughness of the house, there's no doubt a tour will rock you to your modern soul. If you're local, it's less than 2 hours away, there are no excuses. CF3 is currently setting up their group tour set for mid July. For more info, be sure to visit the Columbus Indiana website for more info and to book a scheduled tour now.

photo courtesy of IMA

Thrift Store Score - Art Glass & Beyond

2011-04-02T09:39:00.036-04:00

One of the great things about collecting is the surprise finds that lead down collection roads you had never noticed. One of the roads we've recently discovered is the world of modern art glass. It's one of those things that are surprising in how little you actually know about all things modern. I've always been a fan of Chihuly, had been familiar with Blenko, but until recently have come to know names such as Murano, Fenton, and Viking.
I could say it all started with the piece to the left, my recent $4 thrift store score, but it really goes back to another thrift store score of a nice large Polish Art Glass piece found almost 2 years ago. This 8" Turquoise bowl sat lonely on the bottom shelf for weeks, I walked by it multiple times, referred Wendy to stop by and look, then finally without warning, it jumped off the shelf into my hand. I mean how can you resist a hefty colorful piece?

After the thrift purchase and some online research I was hooked, we needed to build our collection some so we headed up to Waynesville Antique Mall (be sure to check them out on Facebook) and purchased a few more pieces. I was shocked at the variety and selection we found of modern art glass there. This gray vase stands as the anomaly to our small collection.

Another Waynesville Antique Mall purchase. The glass with the bubbles makes me a little bubbley myself.

Green is our default house color, we had to make sure to keep with the rhyme scheme. This too was purchased at Waynesville Antique Mall.

And last but not least is the latest entrant into the collection. I think this piece might be real Murano, I've understood that the gold flecking was a trademark move by Murano makers. That with the spiraling air bubbles leave no doubt in the craftsmanship and work that went into this little piece. This was our lone purchase at the 20th Century Show this year. Be sure to check out some more photos from the show on our Facebook Page.

20th Century Cincinnati - Day 1

2011-02-26T12:30:00.033-05:00

Checking in live from the CF3 table, this year's show is packed to gills with modernists. Being next to the entry, I am witnessing a steady stream of purchases going out the front door. I wanted to highlight some of the local vendors representing Cincinnati. To the left CF3's modest table.
Susan Rissover from Cincinnati Modern has a plethora of modern properties for sale.

The Fisks from Mainly Art never disappoint, how many Eames chairs can you fit in one booth?

Design Smith Gallery's booth.

The guys from Atomic Style Home have an amazing Jere-esque wall sculpture headlining their booth this year.

If you need to add to your art collection, there's no shortage of Charley Harper work. Be sure to stop by the Harper Art Studio booth and grab a Ford Times print before they are all gone.

20th Century Cincinnati 2011

2011-02-23T12:20:00.005-05:00

If you're starting to sweat with cabin fever, the snow is starting to melt, and your itch for modern eye candy has grown to its brink, finally, it's time to get your modern on at the 20th Century Cincinnati show this weekend. Being one of the largest modernism shows in the region, it's guaranteed not to disappoint. A lot of modernists are traveling from out of town for the weekend. Yours truly will be stationed at the CF3 table both Saturday and Sunday morning, make sure to stop by to see all the great events CF3 has planned for the year. Also be sure to tune in to the facebook event page to let us know if you're planning to attend. In the meantime, you can reminisce about some of the extra-curricular events from last year here and here.

DIY Modern Built-In Wardrobe Part 5 - Closin' Em Up

2011-02-10T20:22:00.013-05:00

The first step to mounting the sliding doors was to mount two lengths of track along the top and bottom of the cabinets. Starting at the top, I quickly realized we wouldn't be using all the hardware Ikea supplied. In the photo to the left, I've clamped the tracks at the joint between the track runs. We wanted to make sure we have a smooth transition for the doors to run across. After this was mocked up I was able to construct half a door with sliding hardware to see just how tight the clearance is at the ceiling.
This is the point of our show where things don't work out as planned. Running the hardware in the track it became unsettling obvious there wasn't quite enough clearance at the ceiling. Queue Ikea hacking skillsets. To the left, a before and after version of the sliding door hardware modification. A plastic lock and steel nub amounting to about 1/8" of height were engaging the ceiling at the lowest point. A few hacksaw cuts & filing sessions later I was able to regain the 1/8" we needed without compromising anything but my Ikea warranty. Not that we didn't void the warranty when I cut off 1-1/2" of the bottom of every cabinet.
The lower track was a cakewalk to mount, we only had to make a couple of custom cuts matching the factory cuts to get it installed. Next we built one of the skinny doors and went for full out mock up. At the very left hand side of the wardrobe we have just enough clearance to allow us to hang the doors per instructions. I did not realize the doors are actually not glass, yet highly polished mellamine or something with substrate backing. All the better, glass doors and kids = bad idea anyhow.

With the mockup giving us the desired results, we went full blast to work building the rest of the doors and mounting them into place. After the doors were hung, we checked all the clearances and then modified the door stops and their factory locations to give us the custom door operation originally planned. To the left the final product is pictured. At last our wall of storage was near completion. Note the small reveal around all 4 sides. I can still hear the folks at Ikea, "You won't be able to do that."
At the floor we had about 1/4" to 3/8" left to spare. It seems most projects around our house introduce unforeseen future projects. Here, we've realized we have Red Oak flooring in our master bedroom and hallway. Considering we ripped our 'Gened Up' carpet a bit, we'll call it character for now. I'm looking forward to getting these floors refinished.
The final step before moving our clothes in was to deck out the cabinets with the Komponent system Ikea offers for the Pax wardrobe system. Using the two wider outer bay for hanging rods we utilized the center bays for drawers and shelving storage pictured to the left. The first phase of master bedroom refinish is complete.

DIY Modern Built-In Wardrobe Part 4 - Cabinet Installation

2011-02-05T19:20:00.056-05:00

When we started this project, I was on Xmas break and had the perception we could knock this whole project out over the course of the week off. Yes, we're still laughing at our ambitions, yet a few weeks later we were finally ready for the cabinet installation. Given the tight constraints we were going for, a mock-up of the first cabinet was in order. Before it went well, we had to reinstall the previously removed hardwood flooring prior to the first cabinet going in. Interestingly, we have Red Oak hardwood flooring in our bedroom previously thought to be cheap pine.

A closeup at the floor to wall condition. We laid out the far bump-out wall to set the cabinet flush with the face of the wall. Since the flooring went back in, it meant another 1" had to be cut from the bottom of each Ikea cabinet panel. We used the best of the removed flooring up front, the cabinets cover a majority of the reinstall. These floors are begging to be refinished.

Luckily, mother nature dropped a mid winter 40 degree day on my lap which quickly turned into some well ventilated outdoor work. Using some blue tape, a straight edge, and a couple of clamps each panel was cut down with a circular saw. I used my a finish blade on the saw to keep the cuts smooth. The mellamine lined particle boards Ikea makes tend to split like mad if you don't use this method.

Back inside, the two large cabinets at each end set up. These cabinets come with adjustable feet that allow you to level them front to back which helped us keep things true with each cabinet installed.

Here's where things got a little tricky. After building the cabinet, sans back panel, we had to get behind the cabinet to nail the back on before it can be slid into the niche. To accomplish this, we had to slice and dice our existing carpet up and pull up some staples. At the center point of our niche, the ceiling is the lowest, even carpet pad staples sticking ever so slightly up were causing us to scrape some.

Cabinet #3 installed, the blue drywall is almost gone, thank goodness. BTW we decided to switch up the design a bit and go for two 29" cabinets in the middle instead of three 19" cabinets. It's too nice to have Ikea 10 miles away now. A quick mission later, we had swapped 3 cabinets for 2 and had money in our pocket.

Getting the 4th cabinet in was the trickiest. 1 - This was the absolute tightest spot at the ceiling. 2 - We had pinched ourselves in creating minimal side to side clearance. We planned for a 1/4" gap at each end for this scenario and after much scooching we were able to wiggle it in.

Alas a hard day's work was done. Cabinets are leveled, fastened together, and mounted to the walls, solid. Note the wavy reveal along the top of the cabinets. The tightest spot will allow just enough space for the door track. Next up, we'll be looking at the door installation, the most difficult and custom portion of the project.

DIY Built-In Modern Wardrobe Part 3 - Prep

2011-01-26T19:28:00.012-05:00

Last we left the wardrobe project, the rough framing was complete & original pine floor was prepped for the new cabinets. Next we spray foamed all the gaps in the wrecked plaster, A few cans of 'Great Stuff' did the trick. We opted to use R-13 batts to further seal the new wall, and applied some foil tape the seams and edges.

Next we hung some moisture resistant drywall on the new framing. I tried to delay but had to finally deal with the huge gap in the plaster left from the old closet wall. The ceiling in the old closet and the ceiling in our bedroom don't exactly align, plaster work truly was done by hand on our house. Good thing the wardrobe cabinets will cover up most of the irregularity. Although not pictured at this point we also drywalled the wall bumpout on the far left. The cabinet frames will be flush to the face of the new wall.

After all the drywall was in I went to work filling the major gaps with some Speedset and mesh tape. The Speedset has minimal shrinkage and can be applied over almost any material. I used regular drywall mud after that to begin feathering the old to new over the course of about a week.

A few sanding and mudding sessions later we primed the affected area and are now ready for some cabinet installation. I don't think I realized all the pre-planning, prep and finesse it was going to take for 'built-ins' such as these. We did learn a couple of things along the way, first we need new a new door for our bedroom, the current one reeks of 'Gene'. Second, our bedroom plaster ceiling is not in the best of shape. We need to cover it with something interesting, like industrial felt. Queue future project research.

Here's a detail shot of the final prep. Previously there was a wall here. I decided to not deal with the door quite yet, provide myself with future options, and leave the edge of the new drywall so we can tear out the crappy door frame. The final product didn't turn out half bad. The unfinished drywall will be covered by the new cabinets, which overlap the new drywall work 4-5". Speaking of cabinets, I think we're going to start building them tonight.

DIY Built-In Modern Wardrobe Part 2 - Design

2011-01-08T15:05:00.018-05:00

After demolition, our next step was to establish the wardrobe design so we could actually purchase the cabinets and get our materials on site. Ikea offers their PAX wardrobe cabinets in widths of 19", 29", 39" which are combined to make the larger wardrobes which offer different sliding door widths of 59", 78", 98", and 118". After about 10 design iterations and two trips to Ikea to measure, finesse, & verify to the 1/8", here's the final layout . Two 39" units sandwiching three 19" units. All 93-1/8" tall, only problem is that we only have 92" ceilings, queue my Ikea hacking tendencies.

For the sliding doors we went with the Anstad style doors to keep it clean and minimal, the layout is to the left with arrows showing how the doors will slide. To acheive this door configuration, I'm going customize a two sets of doors by splitting a pair of 59" and 78" sliding doors mating a narrow and wide leaf, gotta keep the symmetry. The simple glossy white doors will fit our interior rhyme scheme nicely and be a major upgrade from the 'Gened Up' mirrored doors with bronze trim.I borrowed my dad's truck for a day and made a mission to dispose of our demolition materials, pick-up the Ikea wardrobes (frames and doors), and hit up the big box lumber store to get wood, drywall and insulation. We ended up with this heap of almost 800 lbs of materials filling our solarium, errr storage shed to the brim.

After demolition we had to address a couple of problems. Here you can see a heating pipe and telephone line that circumvents the perimeter of one side of the closet. To solve this issue we will have to fur out the far short wall as a must to deal with the heating and the potential bad termination of the heater cover against the wardrobe doors. We had to do the same thing for the shower wall in our bathroom remodel.
Moving down the wall here's a shot of the nice deterioration of the original plaster wall at the base of the wall. Overall, the plaster on this wall is a mess and really, I'm not into trying to make it pretty so we're going to fur this wall out as well. This will allow us to do three things; give the floor above some secondary support; give a space for the heating pipes to run without having to modify them; and we can seal off our utility room with insulation and new drywall. Another problem is we have missing flooring where the wall was removed which the new wardrobe will not cover up.

Up at the ceiling, there's another heating pipe going to the first floor. We can also see the gash left in the plaster from the wall removal. The new wardrobe cabinets won't come out far enough to cover this up see I'm going to have some plaster /drywall repair on the agenda.
Fast forward a couple days and a few solutions later to a bit of progressive work. The rough framing is now in place, I made sure to layout the cabinet bracket mounting locations and provided plenty of blocking along the top of the wall. To solve the flooring issue and the ceiling height issue, I decided just to take all the flooring up which gives me another full 1" of height. Since our flooring sits on 2x sleepers on the concrete slab I opted to pour concrete / floor leveler to fill in between and give us a level surface. Now, onto some insulation and drywall.

DIY Built In Wardrobe Part 1 - Demolition

2011-01-01T10:00:00.018-05:00

Hello 2011! To end 2010 and begin the new year we're kicking things off with a little project that will finally allow us to store our own clothes in our own master bedroom. For 5-1/2 years we've been unable to use these two closets due to them having been 'Gened Up' and in shabby 50+ year old shape. Beyond the luxurious bronze trimmed mirrored doors, the inside finish of the closets has always been lacking, enough for us to not feel comfortable to store our clothes in here.

We've been dreaming of a built in wardrobe since moving in, Ikea's Pax system is right up our alley and with Ikea about 10 miles up the road, it's a go. First we had to determine if the wall with sliding doors can come down. A couple of test holes in the ceiling confirmed it wasn't a load bearing wall, which means we don't need no frickin wall. Up goes the protective plastic, demolition commences.

You might ask yourself as I did before beginning, how much demolition can there be in a little closet? After about 2 hours of gratifying sledge swinging and crow bar pulling, here's the mess I made. I'm not a huge fan of copious amounts of dust. I should have just hung out at one of the big box home remodel stores and waited for one of those DIY crasher guys from tv to choose me to make over our bedroom.

Here's the completed demo revealing the new wardrobe recess. The intent is to go floor to ceiling and wall to wall with the new built-in wardrobe with full height sliding doors. We're looking to maxmize every square foot of possible storage space because, let's face it, we need as much storage as we can get. Up next we'll look at the wardrobe design and layout and the rough framing & insulation to prep for the wardrobe install.

2010 Mid Century Modern Xmas Wishlist

2010-12-18T11:50:00.010-05:00

It's probably safe to say most Mid Century Modern enthusiasts have a sizable wishlist, no matter what point they are in their depth of collecting. One of my most wanted items right now is a George Nelson Saucer Lamp. We currently have a cheap Ikea pendant over our dining table, a signature piece would look killer through the window from the street and mirror our next door neighbors Pear Lamp.

Sometimes the little pieces that can make huge differences. An Eames Hang It All from Herman Miller would look great by our front door and contrast well with the dark gray wall. With two little ones, coats + fashion = need for more storage.

Custom framing by Fab Frames for all of our collected Charley Harper Prints would allow us to officially hang them around the house. Wall space is a bit slim right now until we finish the studio & master bedroom. Framed in the same style & color, these three prints would look awesome on the wall above our staircase.

This is mostly a luxury wish, yet an Eames designed plywood elephant would find a nice home in our living room. Our kids like elephents, we like Eames, it's a perfect combination. Hive Modern carries them in a nice array of colors.

Last, but certainly not least is my all time most wanted 'will buy when the kids move out of the house and we can have white things again' chairs, a Eero Saarinen designed Womb Chair by Knoll. It might be the most comfortable of all Mid Century Modern signature chairs I've sat in. The Bertoia Bird Chair and Eames Lounger are close runner ups.

Thrift Store Score - Atomic Taylorstone Cathay Dish Set

2010-12-05T08:53:00.020-05:00

I made a really nice score yesterday, so nice I have to share. Having recently made many fruitless thrifting ventures, there I was shrugging off another thrift store stop with nothing gained. Then there it was, stacks of these super atomic dishes jumped off the bottom shelf, thank you peripheral vision.

In total we made out with a 31 piece set of Taylorstone 'Cathay' dishes. This collection was made by Taylor, Smith an Taylor in the late 1960s. Around the rims of the plates and bowls it features several atomic / mcm iconic shapes and icons in mint green and sky blue colors. It was love at first sight.

All in all we have 5 mugs, a creamer, platter, large soup bowl, a saucer, 8 bread and butter plates, 1 regular bowl, and 8 dinner plates. Although not a complete collection, a sturdy one if we choose to keep and collect them. We already have one vintage set of dishes, but no where near as cool as these.

The dishes certainly make for some photogenic MCM picture taking. Looking around the internet it seems we could collect to build a 12 person set plus extras, there is a bit of it floating around out there.

A Bright Spot in Fall

2010-11-24T13:04:00.009-05:00

The past few weeks, the temperatures have been dropping, so have a crapload of leaves. A few weeks ago, I finally got around to seeding the bare earth around the newest concrete work which has since produced a nice bright spot in all the fall dreary.

To integrate the new hardscape, I left space between the new pads to regrade against and plant grass to seamlessly tooth the landscape and concrete pads together. Considering the summer drought torched our lawn, this is the only actual 'green spot' of grass in our landscape.

Here's the view walking out the front door. After clearing the leaves a bit, the lines of green prevail. We're hoping next Spring to replace the remaining existing concrete walkway with similar bars of concrete to finish off the front of the house. Attempting to get the rest of the yard as newly green will also be on the agenda.

Thrift Store Score - Zenith Stereo Cabinet

2010-11-14T14:35:00.009-05:00

I obsess about furniture as much as I do renovating our house. With as much thrift store stalking as I do, it's not often I make a killer score like a Lane Acclaim series credenza or a Flexsteel sofa. My recent find of this Zenith Stereo cabinet may top them all. Imagine my suprise having never known of these to find what seems at first to be a nice Danish credenza, a simple vertically layered box, splayed tapered legs. Doors open to reveal speakers and then . . .

It suddenly transforms into a vintage sound system. With my heart racing, sudden urge to pinch self to confirm reality, I immediately grabbed a thrift store employee who helped me plug it in to confirm it worked. Instantly I knew it was the newest member of our furniture collection. Its final residing place in our house is yet to be determined.

The top raises up smoothly and holds to reveal the operable turntable (needs a little work) and the stereo receiver. The original manual was still in record storage slot.

Mid Century Modern Curb Appeal - The Gray Has Arrived

2010-11-01T19:14:00.006-04:00

Without further ado, I've completed painting for the season after a month of priming and painting. This past Saturday the weather made it into 'paintable' conditions to which I took full advantage. With two coats on all surfaces visible from street view, the vision is complete, until next spring. The dark gray is very striking from the street, redoing the fascia was well worth the payoff.

And soon to be forgiven, but not forgotten is where we started 5-1/2 years ago. If you've been following along, it's been quite a slow, yet rewarding process. So long beige.

CF3 Coffee Chat - Adam / Goetz Residence

2010-10-22T19:19:00.020-04:00

The October CF3 Coffee Chat took us to the other side of the Ohio River to Dayton Kentucky. Perched high on the hillside, the Adam / Goetz residence was built in 2000 by the current owners. Most of the Mid Century Modern homes CF3 tours typically have renovations, additions or other more modern time modifications, this was our first tour of a way newer ground up custom modern home. To the left the backyard has a small lap pool ripe for this photogenic moment.

Approaching the house, there's a lot of concrete, we know I'm game immediately. To get to the front door one must ascend either the concrete steps or ramp to the first level from the driveway similar to the Woodie Garber home in Glendale.

This is the main approach to the house. The plan is symmetrically balanced with the horizontal rooflines echoed with the cantilevering balconies. The house has a great view of the Ohio River Valley.

The house offers many photogenic moments which I took full advantage of prior to CF3 members arriving.

The structure of the house is a combination of concrete, steel and wood. Large I-Beams cantilever from the structure to carry the balconies. The cable railing is hardly noticable lending transparency to accent the cantilevered planes.

Inside, the house opens up immediately with full height glass and open floor plan. The house is undoubtedly influenced by Mary's House designed by the late David Niland with heavy symmetry & planar forms.

The main living space is central to the four corners of the house. Custom concrete countertops abound all the built-ins nooks around the house. A nice comparison shot of Mary's House can be found here.

The large galley kitchen heads the main living space off the entry with openings open the backsplash and cabinets. The white stays true down to the cabinetry.

More photogenic moments.

The formal front of the stark white house contrasts heavily against the natural hillside offering visual purity of the built object.

DIY Chimney Crown Repair

2010-10-18T19:27:00.010-04:00

Uniquely, our house has a huge chimney, almost 12' long and 2'-6" wide. And due to 57 years of weathering, let's say it's seen better days. Our original intention was to have a new metal cover made for it as part of our roof contract. Since our roofer was unable to secure a metal band around chimney cap supplier, we ended up having to deal with the existing chimney crown. Every time we would get a heavy rain, we'd get a few drops in our fireplace, not good. I chiseled into the fossil like layers of said crown to the left only to find cmu coursing stepping up, thus the large mound of seeming concrete on our chimney.

With a little research, I found a great product called Crown Coat from a local supply website. One evening I did all the prep work to the existing cracks then taped it all off before applying the product. It's like painting thin concrete and dries pretty quick and evenly. Although a temporary fix, I'd say the money was well worth it for a 15 year warranty product. After a good rain I inspected the results to see the crown was shedding water as well as most of the new roof. The next step before winter is to do some tuckpointing repairs on the rest of the chimney. Hopefully I can find someone to fabricate a cap down the road, aka next year.

Before

After

Finally, A George Nelson Clock

2010-10-12T19:26:00.009-04:00

And on the 28th day of September, Wendy bestowed onto me a birthday gift of pure delight, a George Nelson Turbine Clock. Being my favorite Nelson clocks, it made sense that it anchors our living area on the fireplace wall above the mantle and built-in bookcase. I'm really digging the shadow effect with the spotlight at night.

A shot of our living area with the new clock replacing the unframed Charley Harper prints. This spot seemed to balance the area and give the clock the proper wall space it deserves. Now we can also add some more Mid Century Modern accessories to the mantle. Nonetheless it's nice to add an iconic piece to our collection.

Fairwell Red, We're Going Gray

2010-10-05T19:15:00.032-04:00

57 years has taken a toll on our roof, the job would not be complete without doing it right. After the discovery of the deteriorating condition of the original redwood fascia, we opted to proceed with removing and remediating as much of the original material as we could, sort of a search and discovery DIY project, I'm game. We had to phase the project into a couple of sections due to the potential weather conditions. I ended up having to remove and replace the top 2x4 band that levels the top edge of the roof. The existing 2x10 framing is sandwiched by the new 2x4 on top and a layer of handtroweled cement soffit below.

Near the chimney there was a bit of water damage where water HAD passed through over time. I had to fasten the soffit up to the new framing to level it to its original place and provide a little more blocking for the fascia to go back into. This is a good example of the mottled look the existing concrete at the soffit and top of the wall. The jury is still out on whether we should paint this or not.

After carefully removing the fascia boards, the wounded soldiers are stacked against the house. The original red color of the house is tempting to keep and preserve.

Many, many more wounded soldiers. I was able leave a small portion of the bottom 1x10 band on the house to sand and prime in place. At this point we had already reinstalled the front area. Along the way the final roof trim had to wait until this job was complete.

The process of remediating the redwood involved planing down each board about 3/32" to reveal the original and very beautiful grain. I then glued any splits and filled all the nail holes before getting ready to do a final sand and prime. On a few pieces I was able to flip the board over to the opposite surface. It's a simple, yet time consuming process.

Doing all this remediation in our small back yard proved a fun challenge to use every square inch of space to allow the wood fill to dry. Two rounds of patch, sand, patch, sand, prime and we were ready for reinstall.

Here's yours truly getting busy priming up on the ladder. The right side of the house is pictured with the newly fascia install. I did have to mix in a couple of new 20' sticks of 1x10 and 1x8 to replace some of the super rotted sticks that we couldn't salvage. Having given the roofers notice they could install the final coping, time was limited to finish the rest of the roof.

Fast forward to a few weeks later, to the left is our current status report. All the fascia is reinstalled as well as the roof coping. After fastening the fascia to the house, I patched all the screw heads with exterior wood putty and sanded from the roof. It's was quite a process from start to finish, yet well worth it. We've since touched up all the primer for some consistent finish. The next steps entail priming the metal coping and beginning the final dark gray paint.

Since priming, color has become the big debate around the house. The argument is partially around that the primer light gray looks kind of good, so I had to reconfirm our intentions with a little Photoshop action to the left. Intentions confirmed.

An upclose view of the final installation. Be sure to check out the before shot here for the transition, makes this photo almost poetic.

CF3 Coffee Chat - Friedman Residence Tour

2010-09-26T09:09:00.024-04:00

With summer in full sweltering session, CF3's August coffee chat took us to Amberley Village, a local suburb of Cincinnati loaded with great Mid Century Moderns. The Friedman Residence is a very modest house cared for with meticulous maintenance by its current owners. The home is also slated to be featured in an upcoming issue of Atomic Ranch magazine.

The house has a typical low pitched roof from street side, yet the roof partially zig zags to butterfly along the back of the house. Similar to our house, one walks into the compressed area only to have a nice release of space of the main living and dining areas. The large expanse of glass across the back of the house emphasizes the open space.

Inside the living space, it's obvious why Atomic Ranch is featuring the house, the original details are immaculate. A large brick fireplace anchors the large open area complemented by a recessed bullet light and Nelson Pear lamps beyond. The layout of the furniture is precise and cohesive, providing a very functional and open space.

A photo of the aforementioned fireplace up close. The roman brick wall and hearth are accented with different masonry patterns and limestone banding to create an asymmetrical composition. A built-in planter has been converted to a bench on one side and a Frank Lloyd Wright designed Sprite on the other.

A couple of super sweet freestanding Danish lights are at one end of the living / dining area. Newer cork floors keep it crisp.

I wish I had taken some photos of the original bathrooms, but I did grab a couple of the ultra 50's kitchen, almost perfectly in tact. The upper cabinets are outwardly profile with linear frosted glass doors are backlit. Underneath, Boomerang Formica counters are edged in stainless and cap base metal cabinets complete with the recessed door profile. It's not often to see these cabinets, let alone in such a great intact setup.

These cabinets deck out the entire kitchen. In this photo you can barely see the Nutone exhaust fan on the ceiling at the top of the photo, at the bottom a glimpse of the retro stove. Be sure to look for some more photos of the house in an upcoming issue of Atomic Ranch magazine.

Thrift Store Score -Teak Bird

2010-09-19T12:40:00.002-04:00

We recently scored this little teak bird at a local thrift store among a couple of other smaller items. Sometimes it pays to look beyond the furniture and scavenge through the racks of smaller items. After we had the bird for awhile I felt he looked a little lonely, so my daughter and I glued together a bunch of leftover redwood shavings and created a little modern nest for the bird. The designer/maker of the bird is unknown, the bottom is marked "From Bob, 1955". Drop me a line if you might know more.

Flat Roof Replacement - Days 8 & 9 (The End Is Near)

2010-09-15T19:26:00.021-04:00

We're feeling pretty good around our MCM flat roof abode. We are officially dry, no roof leaks, and thus can proceed on interior work we have ever so patiently been waiting to get moving along. The process and timeline of our roof replacement project has mandated this patience so we can do it right. This first photo shows the original red colored fascia in its entirety, color change is good.

Digging into this area revealed our time capsule from a year ago, the previous patchjob repair we did when we initially discovered roof leaks. The newer plywood from the patch job was already saturated. Some roof joists were previously replaced around the chimney along with a couple of the 2x purlins.

At the corner of the roof a close up shot of the existing wood deterioration found during the existing roof removal. The 1x material around the outside is our redwood fascia. Not much was keeping water from getting behind it.

At the chimney a close up of the new framing and a small wrap around that the roof does at the chimney. While it looks cool from the ground this roof detail has suffered a lot of water passing through to the chimney below and the interior of our future studio space. Problem solved.

The last of the new plywood installation is almost complete in this photo. No more wet substrate is left on the house. Milestones are good at this point, I'll be observing many of them.

Later, the tapered insulation is going down. This area is the most complex in terms of crickets and drainage. As Day 8 neared an end, all that was left for this day was to throw a sheet of rubber over this area and figure the rest of the tapered out on Day 9.

That evening I was able to walk around the roof with no roofers staring me down. At this point all my photography is not exactly smiled upon. Of course this is of no detriment to bring to you the process of replacing our entire flat roof. Nonetheless this photo is great in showing the huge mess of materials, etc, just piled about. The temporary rubber overnight install can be seen to the lower right weighted down by buckets of adhesive.

The roof only has four downspouts to drain the entire roof. The roofers custom fabricated new stainless steel 'boots'. One of which is in my hand to the left. This boot is mechanically fastened to the framing with the rubber adhered to the wide pan, and the downspout to where my hand is holding it. In our case these boots drain through the roof to the downspouts. We had issues with our old boots leaking onto the soffit at one drain.

Day 9 I was able to only catch the end of the day. The tapered was figured out, origami training must be a prerequisite to install tapered insulation. Here the roofers are getting prepared to lay down a large sheet of EPDM. The glue is applied to both the rubber membrane and tapered insulation. After air drying the glue when joined forms its bond.

At the valleys of the crickets there is a reinforcement strip installed for additional support to any potential punctures. When the roof was removed several gouges were found from tree branch impacts. The large oak tree next door should be good for awhile since we trimmed it back.

The final rubber installation before us. You can make out the tapered insulation layout in a star shaped pattern. While complex the final result looks quite simple and clean. I'm proud to say the water test in this area showed great drainage with very little puddling.

And yet another milestone, the EDPM rubber installtion is complete as of 9 days of work. The new umbrella is fully extended and ready for storms. To this point 9 working days have been spread out a little over a month. The next steps towards completion involve mostly trimwork and rubber details. We'll take a look at those in the next roof post.

Mid Century Modern Curb Appeal - Summer Plantings

2010-09-05T11:00:00.013-04:00

Since fall is pretty much here as of the low 50's we woke up to this morning, its time to take a look at the landscaping efforts near fruition. Last we looked last Spring, we had started with the bed to the far right of the house, near the new screen wall. In front of the porch, we lost interest in our short lived bulb garden once things were done flowering.

After digging all the bulbs and sorting them for storage and future relocation, Wendy and I choose 7 plants to fill the rectalinear area. Not really knowing what we wanted permanently, we choose mostly annuals to drop a dash of color in front of the dark gray house. The new walkway pads now have fresh soil in between and some initial new grading around them.

In our newest poured planting bed, we got to work immediately after the concrete was cured. This area receives way more sun giving us more options for plants. Our main requisite for all our plantings was vibrant flowering color.

A look at the two landscape beds together. The Impatients do a great job filling in around the gray planter we got from a DWR warehouse sale.

A view of the previously completely plantings filling in nicely. The linear arrangement of the plants helps emphasize the horizontal lines of the house. I can't help but be geometric.

This post is a bit of the time capsule, here the roofing materials had just been delivered and the 'Gene it up' beige roofline is still intact. Regardless, this is a nice overall view of the landscape progress. More grading has since been completed to blend the concrete into the grass. The roof is almost done and we've been installing the remediated fascia boards recently. We'll take a look at those changes shortly.

Modern Kitchen Renovation - Circa 2008

2010-08-30T20:21:00.016-04:00

It's dawned upon me lately it'd be nice to have a little more modern eye candy here on CincinnatiModernation. What follows is a kitchen renovation I designed and completed in 2008. The project involved a very nice MCM home in the Wyoming suburb of Cincinnati. Unfortunately the existing kitchen had no character whatsoever.

Removing an existing wall now serves as the opening into the new kitchen extending the open floor plan of the existing house. The original low kitchen ceiling was removed to extend the sloped ceilings throughout the first level. An existing exterior attic vent was removed and replaced with glass to mirror the large expanse of glass between the dining and kitchen spaces. The custom hanging island cabinet anchors the new space.

Contrasting Ikea cabinets and stainless Kitchenaid appliances compliment the stark color pallette. The new ceiling and window wall was lined with cement board while the flooring was renewed with cork. Only one hole was needed for the faucet in the Corian island counter beyond the large underset stainless steel sink. New Bertoia stools were a must to line the new island.

Before.

After.

Flat Roof Replacement - Day 6 & 7

2010-08-21T09:38:00.023-04:00

Since I'm a bit behind in Roof Replacement Posts, I'm going to start consolidating. We'll take a look at and review Day 6 & 7 in this post. I'm measuring by days for reference and to illustrate how many working days it takes to this huge project. To the left, Day 6 began with redoing Day 3's hiccups with additional layers of tapered insulation. It was nice to see the roofers using levels this go round.

Why did the roof still pond after a new install you might ask? Simply, the roofers weren't leveling their installation to confirm postive slope to the drain. The existing structure of our house surely has settled and moved a bit since 1953. It had become apparent leveling the plywood would be critical on the varying existing wood structure. With a level horizontal surface the tapered insulation is able to do its job in providing positive slope to the drains. Day 6's completion tied in nicely to Day 5's tapered.

Here's another view of the north wing of the roof. There's a large diamond shaped cricket that does the heavy draining on this area. Water tests showed Day 6's remediation to drain well.

Day 7 kicked off with sweltering heat and more tear off. By now the same old same old stuff. Remove existing 4 layers of roof, insulate the roof cavity, then glue and screw 3/4" T&G plywood to the roof rafters and so on with the rest of the tapered and rubber membrane. If you look close to the photo on the left you can see the use of shims to assist the plywood leveling.

A close up of the roofer leveling with shims. I'm very glad I insisted they use levels. Had I not been supervising the roof progress, we would have ended up with another pond to fish in on our roof. I don't think many flat roof homeowners would climb the ladder to inspect progress and geek out on a roof install. I call it necessary, that's just me.

I can't resist the awe of what we had for an existing roof, layers of nasty wetness. With the roof almost completely insulated we are noticing our AC in more productive to cool these hot summer days inside.

This is not the time capsule I had hoped to find in our house. This area had the worst ponding on the house, thus the most juicy. Note in this close up the deterioration of the original plywood as it's sunk into the purlin spacing. The purlins had plenty of rot and many needed replaced throughout this area. Don't you want to just take a bite of this pie?

Day 7 complete, it was time for a water test. The results to the left after a couple of hours, a unsatisfying long puddle along the cricket which is supposed to have positive slope to the drain. Here's the educational part of the show. Basically after a good rain (per code) a flat roof is expected to have no water on it within 48 hours of typical weather. This allows enough time for any puddles to evaporate. While the water in this photo does evaporate in the given time, I can't help but be frustrated with the lack of care the roofers could have taken to level the plywood.

I'll digress with my frustration of roof puddles and look at another dilemma, our now revealed original fascia. To start, this was the original color of the house. Now we knew Gene had Gened up this house in every way he could. His installation of beige aluminum over the fascia had to be for a reason. Although the original color was good to see, it's going to be some work to remove and repair a majority of the redwood around the roof.

Here you can see the rotting / deterioration / lack of maintenance up close. This is the inside corner on our porch. Our fascia is composed of a 1x8 upper band and 1x10 lower band. Almost all of it is going to have to come down. While we plan to reuse this redwood, new redwood is not cheap. At least the beige is gone.

Ultimate Mid Century Modern Swap - Part 2

2010-08-15T08:05:00.022-04:00

The MCM swap is complete. Upon returning from Indianapolis last night, a bit of patience was needed for the pouring rain to subside. Then I was finally able to construct our new Preway fireplace on our front porch. I have always drooled over having one of these to use outside for our outdoor firepit.

I have come close to buying a red one and a dark blue Malm brand one in the past, but this swap was one that I couldn't pass on. There were two major manufacturers of these types of Atomic style fireplaces, Malm and Preway. DWR is selling the Malm brand for $1,500, gulp. The Preway's on the other hand, are hit and miss, a google image search shows no shortage of eye candy.

I am still geeking out that we acquired a white one, color at it's purest, and for now a nice contrast to the dark grey color of the house. Many thanks to Baz over at Atomic Indy for the swap. I'm sure he was up all night placing his Maragret Wenstrup pieces in various configurations around his Atomic Ranch.

For the time being I'm really digging the dominant appearance it has from street view and the periscoping flue as it sits in front of the house. The fireplace came with all the necessary components to install indoors and vent through a wall or roof. I envision that we'll move the new firepit to our back patio area shortly. For the next few days. . . .the neighbors will just have to learn to like it.

Ultimate Mid Century Modern Swap - Part 1

2010-08-14T09:32:00.007-04:00

Does this piece of art look familiar? You may recall back earlier this year my Margaret Wenstrup artwork score. Well today is the day the piece travels to Indianapolis for new ownership with Baz from Atomic Indy. At the recent CF3 swap meet at Bellevue park, the verbal agreement was completed, today the delivery and exchange takes place. You may ask, what are you trading that huge piece of art for? Tomorrow, I'll post a picture of what I'm getting in return.

Flat Roof Replacement - Day 5

2010-08-10T19:05:00.013-04:00

Things have been busy, thus posts on the roof progress are a bit delayed, no worries, Day 5 is here. Today I was able to catch photos of different phases of the demolition and installation of the tapered installation. To the left is the original built up tar and gravel roof. This is some nasty stuff, while the roofers have been very clean with their demolition, we still are in clean up finding lots of little black gravel around the yard.

Here's a closeup of the vent stack and it's original flashing. The original plywood is still in place in these first two photos.

Later at lunch plenty of progress was being made. Having erred on Day 3's work and subsequent ponding, we made a change to the flat area tapered insulation slope. We opted under the roofer's suggestion to go from 1/8" per foot to 1/4" per foot. Additionally the 'crickets' are being switched from 1/4" per foot to 1/2" per foot. With so much variation at the top of the existing roof joists, shimming and framing as necessary to level the initial installation of the plywood will be imperative.

Another view to put it in perspective. After installing the new tapered thicknesses at this area, the work from Day 3 will be redone next to tie into today's work. All in all there, the existing roof joists and purlins are in pretty good shape this area.

Today I managed to catch the tapered insulation installation, something that has since become very educational. Basically there are underlying planes of the 1/4" tapered insulation. Then crickets tapered at 1/2" are then installed on top of the initial 1/4" per foot slope. A cricket is an elongated ridge that diverts the water to the drains. None of the crickets have been installed in the photo to the left.

Here's a romantic shot of the finish install. The wrinkled in the top center of the photo are temporary. You can see the valleys running diagonally along the large cricket shaped like a diamond. The roofers seal every day's work before leaving in case we get rain between work. With the way the roof has weather has been we've averaged about 2 days of work so far. Craving more? Check out CincinnatiModernation's facebook page for more photos.

Mid Century Modern Curb Appeal - Red Roof

2010-08-08T13:58:00.005-04:00

And on the 9th day of roof work, we have the first reveal of our original house color, the color often used by Dombar, maroon/ red, similar to Wright's preference of Cherokee Red. While the roof membrane is now completely installed I have about 5 days of work to catch up to which will be featured in the next couple of posts. For now we're enjoying the lack of beige on the front of the house. We have some major work to do on the existing redwood fascia, more to come soon.

Abrom Dombar 1912-2010

2010-08-02T21:03:00.026-04:00

Unfortunate news came today, Abrom Dombar passed away yesterday, he was 98 years old. We recently verified that our house was designed by Abe. It's nice to be a little part of history. To the left are photos of some of his architectural work. Below is some text written by his daughter April & grandson Daniel.

"Abrom was born April 27, 1912, in North Vernon, Indiana, after his parents emigrated from Odessa, Russia (now Ukraine) in 1905. He graduated from Hughes High School in Cincinnati and attended the University of Cincinnati's school of design, art and architecture before joining Wright and one other at the newly founded Taliesin Fellowship as a founding member in 1932.

In Mr. Dombar's second year of college, he was awarded the autobiography of Mr. Wright after being voted the most talented student of the year. Yound Mr. Dombar snuck into a speech being given by Mr. Wright where he learning of Wright's dream to have a fellowship. It was months later that Dombar joined Wright, Edgar Tafel, William Wesley Peters and John Howe to establish the now-famous Taliesin Fellowship.

As accounted in the book The Fellowship by Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman, Wright had wanted Dombar to take over the Fellowship at Taliesin when Wright retired, but Dombar chose to return to Cincinnati to begin his own architectural design practice. While at Taliesin, Dombar went on to live in Bear Run, Pennsylvania where he was the first foreman at Fallingwater, perhaps Wright' most famous work.

Abrom Dombar was a Lieutenant in the Army in WWII serving three years stationed in both France and Germany. During Abrom Dombar's career as an architectural designer he created both commercial and residential properties, always staying true to his creative nature.

Architecture may have brought Dombar some noteriety, but his real passion was as a family man. He was happily married for 67 years to Sarah Penso Varon, who passed away in 2007. He leaves behind a son David Dombar, daughter April Davidow, four grandsons and their wives, and six great grandchildren."

"Most persons back away almost immediately as soon as they hear the term 'modern architecture.' They get a mental picture right away of some flat or oddly-shaped house. That, however does not properly define organic, or modern, architecture. Modern architecture is a building to suit the climate, landscape, and various conditions and to have the house natural to the materials used." - Abrom Dombar, 1937

Flat Roof Replacement - Day 4

2010-07-29T12:25:00.016-04:00

Day 4 started with a light approach to finish off the sloped area of the roof while strategizing a better approach to the flat roof areas. Given the weather has been in the 90's lately, I certainly have empathy for how hot it must be to work on a black roof all day. With Day 3's work closing on a bad note, we used this time to reconcile a new approach to negate the ponding over the new installation.

Although much of this work is the same as Day 1 & Day 2, I think it helps to document the process day by day to get a sense of the amount of work and time it's going to take to finish this roof. Again, up comes the existing 4 layers of roof, down goes the batt insulation, followed by the 3/4" T&G plywood and the new roof.

At the transition to the flat area that has major existing ponding issues, we discovered that portions of it actually have 2 layers of built-up roofing, originally we thought there was just one. The sexy photo to the left gives some perspective on just how many layers builds up to about 2-3" of material to be removed. My roof thanks me every day we have work done.

After the final install, we got some soaking rains. It's a good thing they seal each days work off, the small puddles along the transition between the new and old roofs is a result of the level change. Removing the existing roof could almost be considered excavation. Day 5 & Day 6's work are complete, so I need to catch up on posts to catch you up to where we're at. In the meantime, be sure to check out CincinnatiModernation's facebook page for more photos, Day 5 going up shortly.

Flat Roof Replacement - Day 3: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

2010-07-23T13:14:00.049-04:00

Day 3 of the roof replacement started very wet, with storms having dumped a ton of water and a lot of ponding to sweep off. The goal for day 3 was to work on half of the north side of the roof, or what you see to the right. This area is entirely over our kitchen.

I was fortunate to be home for a bit in the morning to catch some of the initial tear off. Pulling up the existing membrane reveals the anticipated moistness underneath. You can see the juicy fiberboard for the most part. The cutout beyond is the drain. The original built up roof can be seen exposed beyond. When you step on the exposed fiberboard, water literally squeezes out.

This was the scene upon getting home from work later on Day 3. Seeing as this was the first area to receive 'tapered' insulation, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. About half the roof has new installation and membrane on it at this point.

Here's a better shot that shows the angular valleys that run to the new downspout boot. We had stainless steel boots custom fabricated for our four downspouts. Basically a layer of 1/8" per 1'-0" tapered underlies the area. Then 'crickets' or mini pitched roofs as I like to call them slope to the valleys at 1/4" per 1'-0". The valleys, in theory slope about 1/8" per 1'-0" because of the underlying tapered insulation. This insulation carries about R-5 per inch of thickness. In areas we will have several inches, add this to the R-19 batt and existing construction. We are making leaps and bounds in R value.

Here's a close up of the new stainless drain. As you can see, the drain has a lap joint to seal the EPDM roof to the stainless. Another layer of lap seal will go down before all is said and done. The new downspout boots are extra long to provide plenty of purchase space for the downspouts to overlap.

Although it looks kinda nasty, here's the new condition where our flat roof wraps around the sloped roof. Beyond our large windows can be seen. The painter will paint over the visible clutter when the painting is done following the roof. All in all a much better installation than before.

Over at the chimney, the inital new termination installation started. This is a critical spot to ensure no water can leak down the chimney. We had a bit of water damage in our studio at the other end of the chimney where water had rotted away the roof joists and the plaster below.

The bad, here's a shot at the existing fascia. It's in pretty rough shape in spots, you can see here the corner isn't exactly aligning. I'll be grabbing a few pieces of redwood to let the roofers replace as needed. Hopefully this will scrape and clean up nicely. A coat of paint can do wonders.

More bad, here's the mostly concealed from street view of the sloped roof fascia. With the rotted piece laying on the roof, this is where I'm thinking some replacement is in order. One nice thing is the flat EPDM roof area extends up and is tucked behind the upper fascia board.

The ugly. Well, there's not much optimism in this photo. After taking a good look at the dry install, my eyes seemed to be fooling me, so I grabbed my 4' level and immediately realized something wasn't right with the tapered insulation slope. After bringing the hose up onto the roof and letting loose, it's easy to see what's not working. Ponding is exactly what we don't want. Ponding leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to me wishing I had a pitched roof. That said I think since this photo was taken we have worked out a solution with the roof company and will be able to report more soon. Be sure to stay even more caught up with photos on CincinnatiModernation's facebook page, be sure to 'like' it.

CF3 Bellevue Park Cookout, Swap Meet, and Movie

2010-07-21T20:37:00.012-04:00

Got some MCM goods hangin around the house that you feel like trading? Like barbeques? Want to watch some rare movie footage of the local Frank Lloyd Wright designed Tonkens Residence? Wanna check out one of the most swank park structures in town? This Saturday evening be sure to stop by Bellevue Park to join us for a CF3 cookout, MCM swap meet, and movie viewing. To the left is a photo of the cover of City Beat, a free local publication. Yours truly was interviewed and featured with two other CF3 co-founders for a great article highlighting the weekend event and talking modern preservation. Check the end of the article for a couple of my quotes.

Bellevue Park may be one of Cincinnati's most iconic Mid Century Modern park structures. The shelter was designed by R. Carl Freund in 1955. The structure and form has a clear Frank Lloyd Wright influence and a dramatic view of downtown Cincinnati.

So what more do you need? Clear out your spare room or space piled with modern goodies you know will never fit into your MCM motto, load them in the car/van/truck and enjoy a casual modern evening with a view while swapping for other MCM goodies. Be sure to check out the CF3 evite for more details.

Mid Century Modern Flat Roof Replacement - Day 2

2010-07-18T09:18:00.031-04:00

With a short delay due to weather late last week, work reconvened on the roof early this past week. Day 2 was dedicated to finishing most of the low sloped roof. Luckily this area had been found to be in great shape. A couple of 2x purlins here and there have needed replaced. The existing redwood fascia is going to need some remediation as expected as well. To the left a view of the open structure and beginnings of the batt insulation installation.

The two most critical areas of a flat roof are the flashing and transition details. Part of day 2 would entail the connection of the roof to the massive brick chimney. Previously the roof was just draped up to brick.

Looking the other way, the crew is busy setting plywood over the insulated area. After the 3/4" T&G plywood is installed, 1" polyisocyanurate insulation board is mechanically fastened to the plywood deck before the new EPDM is glued to the insulation board.

A view of the critical transition of the 'flat' roof over our kitchen to the sloped roof. You can see many things going on in this photo. The old fascia cover peeled away reveals the existing redwood fascia with the existing membrane roof draped up to a termination bar fastened to the fascia. Needless to say, a very hideous condition.

The insulation installation is kind of a pain as it has to be run under the purlins between the 2x10 joists. On top of that an airspace has to be left above the batt and under the purlins to allow an airspace to keep the roof ventilated. The roofers are doing a great job making sure there are no gaps. The relief on my conscious almost is making me look forward to winter heating, almost.

This is a closeup of one of the recessed bullet ceiling lights I installed a couple years back. Around it the existing aluminum baffling, a remnant of the old radiant ceiling heating system. We took our high efficiency bulbs out of all these fixtures and taped bags to the ceiling at each light inside as a precautionary effort. I'm glad we did, we had a bit of debris fall into the bags.

Day 2 work completion to the left. I'm only able to stop by to check out and photograph the work at my lunch break and at the end of the day. It's impressive to see what can get done by a working crew in 4 hours. At this point we have about 18' of the sloped roof mostly complete end to end. The flashing and painting won't go down for awhile.

To the left, the new rubber flashing condition at the chimney. This looks super clean compared to the previous debacle. Addition splice layers double up the strength and durability of this connection. Note the new perimeter dam of the roof edge. After perimeter flashing is installed, this will keep the roof from overflowing on the remediated fascia.

Mid Century Modern Flat Roof Replacement - Day 1

2010-07-09T19:51:00.048-04:00

Happy coincidences are good. It's Cincinnati Modernation's 50th blog post and it's about none other than the new roof finally starting work here at Westminster. Coming home to the scene on the left during my lunch break, the roofers had begun excavation, juicy.

The goal for day one was to rip up about 8-9 feet of the existing sloped roof, install insulation and new decking, then 1" of polyiso insulation, then glue down the new reinforced EPDM membrane.

Some of the initial discovery involved just about what was expected. The roof joists and 2x purlins are in pretty good shape as is the existing redwood fascia board. The workers are standing on the existing plywood decking, probably the original plywood. On the sloped portion there was very minor damage and wear. Nonetheless this must be removed and replaced for the insulation installation.

Trying to get a shot of the existing fascia, which is fastened to a perimeter 2x that is connected to the stepped exterior masonry wall. It's a long way down to the back yard from the high point of our roof.

Here's a look at the open structure. A couple of the purlins had to be replaced, but since not much water has ponded and been absorbed in this area, not much damage. The 2x10 joists are 12" oc and with the 2x purlins the roof is a bit overbuilt to today's residential standards. This shot reveals that our solarium didn't have a ceiling before the vinyl 'Gened Up' nightmare that occured to it during the 90's. Thankfully we will resolve this in the future.

A closer look at the edge of the existing shingle roof. The roofers use a ginormous saw with wheelbarrow like handles set to depth to rip the existing roof into strips, ply it up by hand and to the dumptruck it goes.

A closeup of the four friggin layers of roofing at this area. Shingles over EPDM membrane over rolled asphalt shingle roofing over the original built-up tar and gravel roof. Almost a new roof for every 15 years. Photos speak louder than text here.

Later after Day 1 completion of work, I grabbed my ladder and headed up to check out progress. Here's a closeup of the new construction vs. the old from what I could get a photo of. The roofer's policy is if it's predicted to rain, no tearing off and any work that is done is sealed off in case of weather issues. It has rained a good bit since this work was done.

Overall everything is securely weighted down and the new rubber looks extremely clean.

A nice view from the side. Note the perimeter of the roof is now higher to create a mini dam which will lend to a nice coping condition at the edge of the roof. With all the existing layers of roof, this is a flush, overflowing condition in heavy rain currently. I'm thinking we need a couple of overflow scupper locations on the flat area just in case.

Nothing like dead weight to do the job. As of today with the rain, Monday will be the earliest that work will progress. It's hard not to be anxious seeing the smooth field of new reinforced EPDM. We're doing an infrared thermal scan after the next phase to analyze the difference in the existing and new. Make sure to check out more photos on Cincinnati Modernation's facebook website as the roof makes progress.

Mid Century Modern Flat Replacement - Final Prep work

2010-07-07T19:29:00.010-04:00

Maybe in a perfect world, all roofs would slope and trees would be spaced a good distance from any flat roofs. For us it's a normal world, a flat roof and a very large nearly 50 year old Pin Oak tree hovering above. Before investing in the new roof, part of our prep work was to trim some of the suspect and detrimental branches. We used the same tree people that cut down a couple of dying trees in our back yard a couple of years ago. One guy ties himself off throughout the tree, ties of branches, cuts and lowers them down. This left us with a mounding heap of branches to clean up and a truckload of thicker branches for firewood.

With the thankful cooperation of our MCM neighbors next door, we were able to team up on the tree work. I must convey a shout out to their generosity. In all the tree had 8 branches trimmed and is looking better than ever. To the left a little perspective on how tall this tree is compared to our house. Did I mention all this timming went down on the same day of the concrete pour? It gets exciting to have a couple of projects go down in a single day.

As of this evening, the roof tear off begins at 7am tomorrow morning. Our final bit of prep is interior oriented as we have to take expensive high efficiency light bulbs out of the ceiling fixtures and tape plastic over all the recessed fixtures. With all the shabangin going on during the roof demolition and installation, we are trying to be preventitive. Upcoming is some thermal infrared photography to see the difference between the existing and new roof constructions. Be sure to keep up with the roof progress sooner on my facebook fanpage. Go ahead and 'like' cincinnatimodernation on facebook while you're at it.

Mid Century Modern Curb Appeal - And The 'Crete' Goes On

2010-06-28T20:20:00.041-04:00

I like to pour concrete, maybe one day we will pour some all the way out to the street. For now, in awaiting the new roof, I've been itching to work on some curb appeal outside. Alas while taking a week off last week, I impromtu decided to start throwing a sledgehammer at the existing walkway. Having complete two phases of concrete work on the porch and the landscape enclosure walls, I was thinking it was time to work on our patched walkway that leads to the house. Seeing as the sledge hammer wasn't doing much, I had to run and rent a jackhammer, a fun toy that can easily can get out of control.

In these first couple of photos, note the existing curvilinear walkway with a temporary patch we did to tide over the previous demolition. The plan was to infill the corner with four long walkway pads and also extend the lefthand planter enclosure. Eventually we will pour more stepped beds around the side of the house, the new extension will be right next to our property line.

A couple sweaty hours later, I had the existing walkway out to the next expansion joint. The design allows us to be able to keep the existing walkway and the existing expansion joint lined up almost perfect with the pavers in the grass. It was right about now, the crane truck with the roofing materials showed up for delivery.

While there was a ladder out I headed up to the roof to grab an aerial shot for a little perspective. Shadow was unavoidable.

My next step was to layout the overall outline for excavation and dig out the existing grass. Then I had to place 4" gravel fill and compact with a hand tamper. Using some of the demoed concrete and some already on hand gravel, everything worked out about perfect.

For forming up the concrete, I framed the outline of the pads using 2x6's so that the pads would be thicker and have a little more hefty presence. Using a double 2x6's in between the four pads, we'll eventually fill the gaps with dirt and plant grass. This will require some regrading down the road.

Moving on to the planting bed, the new wall enclosure steps down equally with the steps so they both are extensions on plane with one another. Using coated plywood and 2x4' I created a 6" wide and 18" deep wall form. As this was the end of the first day I didn't make it to bracing and fully leveling the frame. Not bad for a day's work.

The next morning I braced and leveled the wall forms, piled a ton of concrete chunks in and around the base. Then I piled all the soil I dug up from the front walkway pad excavation around the outside base of the formwork. My uncle Ed, the concrete finishing master, stopped by to help me out on the day of the pour. I use a Mini Mix truck company for the concrete, the smaller truck does less damage to the landscape. We started the pouring with the walls on the side.

Next we filled the pad formwork. It was a super hot day so we had to move quick. After filling the forms we had to manually tap the sides with hammers to help fill any voids, then we screeded the concrete level. We then floated a smooth finish, edged the sides, and finally Ed finished the concrete with a rubber float. Ed has done the same hand finish to all the concrete work we've done so it was best left to his artful hand.

A day's work done, the concrete bakes away into the evening sun.

Here's a good view of the side wall and all it's bracing glory. Didn't budge hardly at all during the pour, but it's suprising how powerful the concrete filling the forms can be.

Yesterday I pulled the formwork off both poured pieces and stored the formwork for future use. Here's a view from the neighbor's yard for a little perspective on the overall additions. Don't mind all that roofing material up on the roof.

Another final view of the approach. Next we'll get to work on the grass seed and grading with some fresh topsoil. First, we'll let the roofers make a big happy mess.

New Flat Mid Century Modern Roof arrives

2010-06-26T21:38:00.032-04:00

Earlier this week, the new roof arrived in the form of many materials loaded up on a crane truck. We've had a very rainy Spring and early Summer which has delayed the roof start by a couple of weeks. I'm patient to wait for good craftmanship. When the call came and the truck showed up, a sweet sigh of relief started to take hold. The anxiety of flat leaky ponding roof causes a little stress, for me anyway. To the left you can see a pretty nice load of materials, most of it consisting of the rubber membrane rolls, tapered insulation, and lots of miscellaneous roofing materials on pallettes.

The kids in the cul de sac got to witness delight as the crane extended its arm and started lifting and dropping. First came a heavy load of the 3/4" T&G plywood. I was at Lowes the other day picking up concrete form wood and saw this stuff was $20 a sheet, sheet is right. The weight of the plywood is too much for the roof, so it will reside on the driveway.

The heaviest materials going on the roof are the rolls of EPDM rubber, as roofer lingo goes, 10 squares. A square being a 10' x 10' area of roofing material. It was funny as the roofer said they're going to put the heavy material on the load bearing walls, we only have one loading bearing wall on the upper floor. That's the way it goes with expansive space I guess.

I decided to get up on the roof to get some better perspective. There are some remains of the water ponding the roof company workers swept off. Finally it wasn't me sweeping the roof off. Hopefully I'll forget I ever did soon.

Here's a shot of a few pallettes of tapered insulation. Although very light, this is the key to the success positive drainage of our new roof.

A last look at the super swank 3-Dimensional

shingles on the sloped section of the roof. You can see the large saw the roofers are going to use while stripping the existing roof by the chimney and the many gallons of membrane adhesive. The materials are about half the cost of the roof to give some perspective.

Truck empty and ready to ship out. We are about to dig in to the largest project ever here at Westminster. Looks like Tuesday will be the official day to start, the weather forecast looks clear for the next few days after that.

Here's a last look at the roof loaded up from the street. We are getting a lot of enthusiast feedback from passerbys in the neighborhood. As I have declared a moratorium on any interior work until the roof is done and not leaking, I couldn't help myself and decided to pour some more concrete landscape work, more later. Be sure to check out more updates of current goings ons around Westminster on CincinnatiModernation's facebook page.

New Flat Roof Does Cometh - Replacing our MCM flat roof preview

2010-06-23T18:36:00.029-04:00

We're doing it. It's been a long time coming, mostly left to procrastination, but finally busting through our priorities in the form of water dripping onto the floor, the flatness that is our roof will be no more. A crew is going to rip the entire roof off the house, down to the rafters. Before they do, let's take a look at where the roof condition is at, what the problems are, most likely what you're roof problems might be, and then examine what we're going to do. To start, we had the flue cleaned a couple weeks ago. Considering we're getting a new chimney cap, I thought this might be good to get out of the premptive way, plus it's a pleasant picture to start with.

Here's said chimney, and it ain't your regular size chimney that can have a cap ordered from most standard catalogs, our chimney is 12 friggin feet long. In the distance you can see our next door neighbor's red chimney cap. We are getting ours custom made to be similar, a 12' x 3' sheet of metal in the wind will need more braces = more cost. In the end it will save our chimney that currently leaks and needs some mortar work in the long term. We also having it painted grey with high temperature tolerant silicone alkyd paint, say that fast three times.

Okay, so as you can see in the next few photos we have issues. These shots are within a couple hours of some major rain downpours. First and most obvious, the water is just sitting on the roof, not draining. Basically the sun eventually evaporates the water puddles, or it rains again and the process starts over, pretty cool huh? We also have had way too many patches and too many seams. Nonetheless the major problem is insufficient slope to the drains. Water has infiltrated the many roof membrane layers, trapped, the roof is a big sponge.

We have a sloped section of roof that wins the championship of most roof layers in one area. It has four, the final layer being some lovely three dimensional shingles, which shouldn't be used in this low slope application, and can't really be seen for their Gened-up-ness. So what are we gonna do? Sit back and watch a professional contractor do a damn good job replacing the entire roof.

Here's the deal, after they rip all 3 of the existing roof layers off they will place R-19 batt insulation (the pink stuff) in the roof cavity, we have no insulation right now due to the experimental radiant ceiling heating system that's long since been abandoned. The new plywood deck will be 3/4" T&G glued and screwed to the wood structure. A tapered insulation system, sometimes several inches thick, will provide a minimum 1/8" per foot across the entire roof to our four existing drains. Heavy duty .060 EPDM reinforced black membrane will be adhered to the tapered insulation.

Since the existing redwood fascia is covered with Gened-up beige aluminum, this will be removed to expose the original redwood for remediation and painting around the entire perimeter of the roof. A level coping will cap the membrane to redwood connection. All of which will be dark grey to match our previous curb appeal work. At left is a great example of the poor workmanship of the last roofer where our sloped roof meets the flat roof. Remember this photo for the 'after' shot.

A few final shots sweeping the roof for one final look before things begin to make major changes. This will be the last time hopefully that I have to sweep off the roof and look like a crazy MCM homeowner. I plan to post our progress as work progresses. Actually the materials were delivered yesterday, which forced me to crank this post out. For a teaser of what's coming, check out CincinnatiModernation's facebook page and become a fan.

Columbus Indiana Wallpaper Teasers

2010-06-21T10:21:00.029-04:00

Two weekends ago, bloggers from around the country descended on the nation's 6th ranked design city that is Columbus Indiana for a weekend of Modern Architecture touring, yep capital M, capital A touring. Before proceeding, many thanks must be given to Lynn Lucas & Cindy Frey of the Columbus Area Visitor Center for hosting all of us to such an elaborate weekend. Also many thanks to fellow MCM blogger Baz of Atomic Indy for all his organizational efforts.

Maybe you were following along the Columbus instant update Twitter rampage, maybe you have caught up a bit since having reviewed other blog posts to the weekend's design treats. Below are some teaser shots from the touring intended for 'wallpaper' use to wet your appetite a bit for some future Columbus posts. I've uploaded these as large as Blogger will take them, right click, set as background, at will.

Group photo of all the fab bloggers posing on vintage Bertoia furniture. Check out the photo on my facebook page for a list of who's who in the photo. Now onto the wallpapers . . .

Pipe Organ - First Christian Church, Eliel Saarinen, 1942

Light Fixture - First Christian Church, Eliel Saarinen, 1942

Light Domes - First Financial Bank (formerly Irwin Union Bank and Trust), Eero Saarinen, 1954

Staircase - First Financial Bank (formerly Irwin Union Bank and Trust), Eero Saarinen, 1954

Bartholomew County Veterans Memorial, Thompson & Rose Architects, 1996

East Wall - First Baptist Church, Harry Weese, 1942

Oculus detail - North Christian Church, Eero Saarinen, 1964

Detail - North Christian Church, Eero Saarinen, 1964

Cincinnati Modernation goes on the road to Columbus Indiana

2010-06-11T07:49:00.009-04:00

This weekend, yours truly gets to represent Cincinnati in Columbus Indiana on a special tour organized for architecture and design bloggers from around the country. This includes a sneak peek at Eero Saarinen's Miller Residence. Rest assured many photos and reports soon to follow. In the meantime check out Columbus' facebook page here.

Also be sure to check out Cincinnatimodernation's facebook page here and become a fan of both today!

Mid Century Curb Appeal - DIY Modern Screen Wall

2010-06-07T20:27:00.001-04:00

My mock up of our new Mid Century Modern screen wall withstood the entire winter and spring with hardly a nudge. I guess I wasn't expecting much from a over thousand pounds of concrete block. This project was part of our Curb Appeal series that we left last fall I finally got around to setting this puppy in place and figured it was a good opportunity to explore a 'how to' blog post highlighting my process of something from start to finish. Before proceeding, please refer to the Gened up 'before' scenario here, a long overdue green lumber fence, no thanks Gene.

Although the mock up wall, freestanding by none other than its own weight was doing okay, the plan was to 'set' the wall permanently and level it out. The mock up revealed the concrete base wall we had poured was not exactly level in either direction. This photo shows the wall out of plumb about an inch with the blocks 'stepping' a bit indicating the wall was leaning the other way as well. The plan was to use a bed of mortar on top of the concrete wall to use as a leveler and then glue the blocks together. Technically the wall would need to withstand a 250 lb point load to any point of the wall. I have mucho faith in Gorilla glue.

My entourage of equipment included (1) 10 lb bag of mortar mix, 4' & 1' levels, knee pad, bucket, drop cloth, rubber mallet, (cold chisels), trowel, brush, rubber coated gloves, and of course the glue.

Although not pictured, the wall screens our electric meter (previously on the front of the house), and our trash/recycling bins not shown in any of these photos. One of the main reasons I chose the block I did is the transparent nature of the block once the leftover concrete in the holes starts to come out. The tedious task of busting all the holes out was the first thing in line.

I tried a couple of ways to knock the concrete out of the holes, it ended up that my super long handy dandy chisel was the best tool for the job. I threw down the drop clothes to catch all, make that some of the debris and went to town.

Along the way to feel some sense of progress, I started disassembling the blocks. This also gave me the chance to brush off and clean the blocks of little grit and debris before their final placement.

As I'm more than halfway through at this point I started having fond memories of picking through the pallette of blocks at the store to find all the perfect ones. Then had to make two trips with the wagon to get them home, the car was on the ground for both trips. At each block weighing 23lbs, 56 blocks = 1,288lbs total moved 6 times = sore back.

Once the block was removed, it was time to dig into the leveling issues. As suspected there was a heavy 1/2" lean going down towards the house and slightly towards the rear of the house.

After quickly mixing up the small batch of mortar in the bucket by hand, I recalled all of my lessons from 'This Old House' episodes and threw down my best version of a base mortar bed using my hand trowel. Before doing so I was sure to get everything nice and wet to keep the moisture in the mortar. Also made sure not to use all the mortar so I could fill in the face gaps after setting the block.

After getting the mortar base down it was time to wiggle the block into place and level across the wall at the same time. Sounds simple with just a 4 block width, but it took a few time and adjustments to get it right. This was the most difficult and time consuming part of the job.

Since the block will have some thermal expansion with the change in weather, I made sure to leave a little space between the blocks. Working from one side to the other the base course was set. I then filled the needed gaps in the mortar and hosed off the driveway, it was time for the fun part.

You might have to enlarge this photo to see the Gorilla glue dots, 10 per block. Since water activates this glue I kept the block nice and soaked between each course. The weight of the block is enough to keep the glue from rising which it tends to do. I also decided to glue the wall freestanding and not anchored to the house. The brick will move independently of the block so there was no sense in creating a problem.

About halfway up, I'm avidly awaiting the cover up of the electric meter. Along the way I double checked the levelness and alignment like a hawk. End was in sight.

The finished job to the right still in the process of drying. I gave it a couple days to set up and with a lack of fancy scientific measuring devices, I physically tried to push the wall over, no dice. This beast is solid, freestanding on its own, and in the event the next homeowner could somehow conceive of the notion to knock it down some day, it wouldn't affect the house. But why would someone do that?

CF3 Coffee Chat - Bud Goetz

2010-06-01T19:48:00.050-04:00

CF3's latest coffee chat (soon to adopt Atomic Crash Party format) took us to Middletown, a swank 50's suburb on the outskirts Cincinnati. This Bud Goetz designed house is smack dab in the middle of a typical suburban neighborhood and is surrounded by typical pitched roof houses that help this beauty stand out even more. The house is currently for sale and it was a unique opportunity to see it empty of loose furnishings ready for a family to settle in. Check out the listing for the house here.

Now for the good stuff, its obvious from the first couple photos, this is a low profile ranch modern with one roofline. From the street the house indicates its very private nature with the brick wall extending across the front to become a screen wall for the entry coutyard. The brick on this house was reused from a local building demolished back when this house was built. The patterned opening in the brick adds a nice element to the very simple facade.

The color scheme is also very simple, most of the house is the red brick with matched red on the roofline gravel stop, with a dark gray brown on the wood exterior. Set back far from the street, the house seems a lot simpler than it actually is offering very little view into the inside. Sometimes I find MCM's to be blatantly transparent, or rather the living in a fishbowl effect. Others are private oasis' with screens and compositions that lean toward privacy. With the private route, the challenge becomes how to obtain lots of natural light and maintain an integration with nature.

To get to the front door you descend a couple of steps into the entry courtyard, in many ways the courtyard is the heart of this house. The house layout itself wraps around this courtyard with many access points directly into this outdoor space. Overhead an open grid wood trellis extends the roofline to give the courtyard some sense of enclosure. Lush landscaping and a former water feature are centerpieces. Here the house envelope has glass on all sides of the courtyard.

Inside the intricate nature of the design becomes more evident. Built-ins throughout remind me of a Wrightian influence. The interior pallette is simple wood and white walls. I really enjoyed the way the white ceilings intersect with the exposed beam structure in places as can be seen to the right. Flooring ranges from wood parquet floors in the bedroom and this really cool tile flooring in a neat geometric pattern. Someone at the chat mentioned you could still obtain this tile, link please?

The house features built-ins in almost every room & space. Each bedroom has its own built in closet and desk, an example of a desk on the right.

The bathrooms in the house are still original. Here the double inset sinks can be seen. I always get a kick over an original MCM bathroom still remaining, most of the time these are lost through the decades or renovation and style mishaps, yep I'm talking to you 1980's.

Close up shot of the aforementioned tile flooring.

Out back the houses transparency shows up unobsured as floor to ceiling windows line the living space and dining areas. The rear patio is subtractively inset into the volume of the house featuring the inside tile floors extending onto the patio slab.

Around the corner from this house was another modern design by Architect Bud Goetz. We found this on our way to the chat and couldn't resist some drive by photography.

Another Bud Goetz around the corner on another street. Very similar to the house featured in this post. I was tempted to knock on the door and talk to the owners but thrift stores were calling my name. Perhaps we should set up a little 3 house circuit tour down the road. A special thanks to Susan Jackson of Susan Jackson Interiors for hosting the chat.

Atomic Crash Party 6 - Indianapolis

2010-05-23T09:37:00.035-04:00

A recent invitation from Baz of Atomic Indy to travel out and attend an Atomic Crash Party has been fullfilled. Last weekend Cincinnati Modernation made the short trek to Indianapolis to tour this jewel of a modern in addition to touring Atomic Indy's MCM ranch and also driving by some local MCMs. Before we begin, I must hand out many thanks to Baz, the homeowners, the Cohen family, and Indianapolis modern citizens for their welcome hospitality.

The main subject at hand is a white post and beam special set in a deeply wooded lot. It's obvious on arrival there certainly is no shortage of posts nor beams. The open repeating structure frames a horizontal screen wall leaving one bay void for the axial entry. The screen wall encloses a large outdoor courtyard on one side of the entry, a higher garage volume to the left. The ultra thin horizontal profile of the roof floats above the beams minimally and can be seen following through the entire house.

The architectural theme here is transparency and privacy. While the house is enclosed on one portion of almost floor the ceiling glass, the house retains an exceptional level of privacy. Continuity of the post and beam-athon runs throughout the house, thanks to the homeowners removing many 'enclosing' walls. They have been in the house for quite some time, with many additions and refinements to the house along the way all done by them. A huge portion of the interior is built-in millwork with very little consumer furnishings.

The style of the built-ins are very unique with a Wrightian influence. Inside the floors are white, the walls are white, the millwork is natural wood, and the ceiling's exposed wood finish runs continually from outside in. Visual connections run from one end of the house to the other, complete with a social bathroom configuration. At the front door a gravel planting bed recessed into the floor runs from outside to in. There are two twin bedrooms for the children near the main entry, both feature custom hanging bed and built-ins galore.

Back outside and at the back of the house the layout comes together with the full view across the back of this 3,800 sq ft modern. The homeowner's work can be seen in full effect with all the terraced geometric landscape work. Although still in progress, there's plans for a waterfall feature with retaining pool. The concrete work for the upper part of the waterfall is complete, as you may have read in past posts I'm a huge fan of concrete landscaping work. I may have to make another trip to see the waterfall up and running.

Mid Century Modern Curb Appeal - Spring Plantings

2010-05-09T20:59:00.100-04:00

I tell you, it's all in the prepwork. Since we've moved in, we've been dying to get our hands dirty and personalize our landscape with a little MCM style. If only we were in Palm Springs or even Hawaii we'd have an xeriscape-fest and an easy go with chosing super appropriate arid plants that maintain themselves. Instead we're in the Midwest, climate 'transition' zone 8/9 and our soil is a little finicky, and our particular area we are planting is a somewhat sunny, somewhat shady area. Couple this with a husband and wife trying to select plants we BOTH like, this landscaping stuff isn't always the easiest.

The first two years we didn't plant anything, really we just ripped things out. and pondered, and started raising kids, I digress. We finally poured the landscape walls last year, planted a bunch of bulbs at the sunny end, and looked at the very lonely Magnolia, wondering what should keep it company. Along the road of decision making, we were able to narrow down our agreed approach. We wanted a lot of color from spring until frost, we planned to plant geometrically, two square beds in front of the porch and linear lines of plants in front of the studio. Prepping the existing soil was also a task we tackled last fall, tilling and adding plenty of compost and manure.

We started with the 'anchor' plant that will eventually grow to screen the front of the house, Azalea. We picked a sweet pinkish fuscia color and got five of them. In front of the Azalea we went with the tried and true Phlox, along the front wall of the landscape bed, it will eventually cascade over and stay low to allow us to layer to the taller Azalea. A couple weekends ago, we planted these two plants for round 1. Made sure to add some peat moss and compost with the soil on the Azaleas. Both of these plants are early spring bloomers and hold their flowers for around a month, before giving us some green foliage for the remainder of the summer.

In the first few photos some of the flowers of both plants are still hanging around. It's interesting how much the gray of the house becomes a background color to the bright flowers. We're totally going for plush color continuity. One thing to note about our linear approach is it makes it easy to lay the plants out and space them, then time to dig. I always overdig the holes for our plants and mix in some compost and adjacent soil as I plant.

The color of the Azelea is intense, the photo here doesn't do the color justice. Some new growth already kicking in.

We bought 6 flats of creeping Phlox to go along the wall. This Phlox is the same color as the stuff we've had in our gray planter for a few years, proven to do well so we can't go wrong.

End of round 1 ended with a soaking rain chasing
me along planting the Phlox, no worries as the plants were welcomed by a good soaking, finally a little color a greenery.

The width of the front of our house is our reference width to space the plants by, eventually the Azalea will become a hedge along the front of the house. I'm debating shaping them into a giant rectalinear block, I still have time to think about it as it will take several years for them to rise up and mature.

Two weeks later and many trips to the local gardening centers we started round 2 of planting today. After looking at books, researching online, checking stock of desired plants found online we were ready to pull the credit card out. We decided on a couple of flowering annuals, Torenia and Browallia, a dozen of each. Both plants have purpleish flowers that will flower through fall = maximum value + they will mound and fill in.

Having all the dirt prepped and ready makes it easy to plant. Our soil in the planting bed has been referred to as black gold, as it's very soft and potent, ready for plants. The Torenia is a little lower of plant so it goes in front of the taller Browallia. Both are in rows in front of the Azalea filling the gap in front of the bed.

Messing around as work progresses, we can't wait until these flowers really start to take off.

About 45 minutes after unloading the car, the new plants were in ground and watered. Wendy and I cranked out some work quickly while the kids rested. From the street we now have a complete 'green' line in the planting bed. We also planted some Impatients around the Magnolia that will mound and overflow the bed in a couple of months, they start off small.

Here's a view of the linear vision in full effect. Gotta keep everything nice and aligned. Our next step is to plant some ground covering behind the Azalea to cover the remaining blank area. The area is almost full shade so we'll have to look at our options.

Spring Fever 2010 Mid Century Modern Landscape Style

2010-04-19T20:06:00.014-04:00

Spring is here, the grass is well, mostly green, and the flowers are blooming. Some of the fruits of our curb appeal labor from fall are starting to pay off. Its been awhile since posting much about the house, but things are moving steadily in the background. Over the course of the winter we discovered a roof leak in the studio space still left to be finished. The roof leak halted all efforts interior wise for some long term reassessment of what we're going to do.

Long story short, we have decided to do some major work to the house consisting of having our entire roof redone, like ripped down to the joists, insulate the entire roof cavity and put on a commercial grade level of roof that actually drains, I'm really tired of sweeping. We're also going to replace a bunch of glass with thermal glazing, redo the hardwood floors, and finish the studio . . finally. Previously we had left the house it was a Ben Dombar designed home, we have just confirmed our house is in fact a Abrom Dombar designed home, just gotta have my facts straight.

Onward to the house and spring photos. So, in the first photo you can notice the salt damage on the curb were there is no grass, yet beyond, the colors of spring have started to contrast the grey color nicely, did I mention I love grey? We had planted over a 100 bulbs in the front long planter, many of which have come up and started to bloom. Our phlox is overflowing out of our gray planter just started blooming as well. The magnolia and cherry trees are already out of flowers.

This past weekend we got out our green thumbs and got to work on the small planter to the left of the front door. After moving the gray planter closer to the door, we have planted some blue hyacinths with some recycled iris, around our planter we've planted impatients, which will grow and overflow way out the planting bed in about a month, they grow well in this spot. We still have yet to repair the grass damage done around pouring the concrete planters, but seed is in place.

Next up we are starting to look at what to do in the long landscape bed. We have established that all of the plants will be placed in a linear format along the open front up to the Magnolia tree and we want a huge mix of seasonal color. To start we have got some azaleas to anchor the middle of the bed. We are going to do phlox along the front of the planter all the way down in front of the tree, more on our progress soon.