MCM Jim Alexander on Oregon Trail

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

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

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.

20th Century Cincinnati - Day 1

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.

2010 Mid Century Modern Xmas Wishlist

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 - Zenith Stereo Cabinet

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

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.

Finally, A George Nelson Clock

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

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.