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.

Modern House Numbers . . Installed

This past Friday I picked up our house numbers after a small delay in getting them powder coated in clear. A little more weekend rain proved a wet morning on Saturday, a perfect delay of painting intentions, yet allowing some house number installation. My intent was to fasten the numbers, weighing in at 9lbs, directly into the original redwood fascia board. Aligned with the brick edge of the house of the left side, they will anchor the long visual flat line of the roof, and also cast a contrasting shadow onto the brick wall.

Currently the original redwood fascia boards, painted the original MCM maroon, are covered up by a 'Gene it up' special of beige aluminum break metal. We plan on tackling the process of removing all this aluminum trim, which goes all the way around our flat roof, and repainting the original redwood next spring. I'm sure there's a reason they covered the original painted redwood up and since finding our flat roof leak in the studio demolition, we've had our fill of MCM discoveries for this year.

To begin the installation my first step was to cut out the aluminum trim to expose the bottom of the original redwood fascia to directly mount the numbers. Using some large snips, balance, and patience I was able to get a decently straight cut. I clamped the numbers to the roof and proceeded to very carefully drill the first pilot hole. I was able to avoid splitting the 3/4" wide redwood, and actually the area I was working in looking in fairly decent shape underneath the aluminum trim.

The numbers have 3 mounting holes spaced evenly along the mounting plate, all between the numbers. I put one 2" #10 screw in and it alone held the hefty numbers. Swinging the numbers away from the house I was able to cleanly drill the other two pilot holes thanks to my large wooden clamps. A couple screws later, viola, modern house numbers installed, looking nice with the brushed finish.

I should mention we've made some other progress on our curb appeal work. The form work for the concrete landscape walls has been pulled and we've graded the dirt within. We have since finished priming the front of the house and mocked up the block for our screen wall on the side of the house. Fall is definitely in full effect as the leaves have blanketed our Mid Century world. We have been trying to bust out some major progress before moving inside for the winter indoor work.

The rest of the photos are from various angles capturing a snapshot of where we currently are, starting to look a lot different than when we bought the place. Having dedicated areas for landscape is exciting. Today we are going to start applying the dark grey paint and getting some bulbs moved around in the new landscape trays. We probably ought to rake some leaves at some point as well. . . .

Mid Century Modern Curb Appeal Part 1

Our latest and greatest project has been our ever ongoing work to enhance the exterior 'curb appeal'. As mentioned in an early post, the outside of our MCM had a fun 80's exercise in the school of 'Gened up'. The first photo is our first look at the house on a very rainy day in May of 2005. Note some of the Gene interventions: fake green shutters; new electric meter on the front of the house with hideous galvanized pipe; angular lumber enclosed planting beds; vertical slatted blinds; and a lovely glass front storm door, complete with beveled glass and brass detailing.

We have had our work cut out for us with a complete 'curb appeal' overhaul, having done most of the completed work in 'mini-project' approach. A couple years ago, I pulled out all the front landscaping, including the wood enclosures and white gravel. We then poured the front concrete porch, a maturation of the original exterior concepts. I left the existing concrete landing and wrapped it with a new slab and inset step to match. The new concrete color juxtaposes nicely with the old weathered landing. Most likely the landing will get painted dark grey to match the house.

The large air conditioner was removed last summer, with glass replacing it's huge chunkyness on the front of the house. Last summer I scored an awesome 1950's MCM front storm door from a local salvage company, Building Values. It took 6 months to come across the right door, but this one might be a duplicate of the original. The door is simply trimmed with a removable glass frame, even the color almost matched our original maroon color.

This past Spring, a bad storm caused the next door oak tree to drop a huge limb that ripped out our entire electric service, meter and all. Long story short, we lived for almost a week off a generator. In the end we had the new meter and service installed on the side of the house, the required piping, etc was installed very cleanly next to our downspout to conceal it from the street view, photo to come in follow up posts.

We also installed two lines of aggregate pavers that were sitting stacked out back when we bought the house. The smaller ones are set in gravel next to the porch and along the entire front of the house with aluminum landscape edging. The larger ones are offset parallel to the porch. Part of our larger idea is to have a long rectilinear planting bed between these two walkways. Currently we are debating on whether to pour concrete or to set some patterned pavers for the landscape enclosure. The jury is still out. The outline of this new enclosed area can be seen in the fifth photo. Currently I've dug the trench for the concrete or paver enclosure.

With the studio roof recenlty fixed we've shifted gears to working outside while the weather is still nice. Painting the front of the house and getting the landscape enclosure finished is the goal before fall sets in. We've decided to go with a dark grey for the front color of the house (see sample in the third photo). We think this will compliment the red of the brick and keep the color scheme simple. The existing tan is going to remain on the flat roofline until next spring, unless we get our act together and go painting bonanza.

Around the new front storm door, we have patched all the gouges and nailheads from the installation. Since I reused the original redwood, I knew I had this tedious chore coming, much of the jamb face had damage, insert wood putty. A lot of ivy once covered our house, a ton of its remnants have left their mark on the concrete fascia and soffit. We decided not to paint the concrete finish, but to clean it and patch as necessary.

We certainly have had a few good laughs at how our house has looked, oh, for the past year or so. With a red front door, a white primed window, the other windows sage green, and chicken pox on our front door, how can you not laugh? The antique house numbers on the mail chute door have been removed and its come time to work on the windows. I have re-glazed several windows on the house and have to say, reinstalling new glass in a metal casement window is no easy task. We are focusing on painting the front 'wooden rectangle' face with a lot of window prep work before painting. We are going to extend around to the redo the two studio windows in the next phases.

This past weekend we scraped all the old caulk around the wood and windows in preparation to re-seal all the material connections, currently the front wall is quite drafty. I started reglazing with the largest window, you can see some process in the last three photos. Basically, you warm the glazing up in your hand, roll out small ropes and finger apply the glazing compound into a 45 degree angled profile from the glass to metal frame. Followed with several passes with a 1" putty knife, you work the putty to a nice smooth finish. It took me 4 hours from start to finish on the large window and the smaller adjacent window. The fresher the window glazing the smoother the job.