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.

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.

Mid Century Modern Curb Appeal - Summer Plantings

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.

Mid Century Modern Curb Appeal - Red Roof

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.

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

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.

Mid Century Curb Appeal - DIY Modern Screen Wall

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?

Mid Century Modern Curb Appeal - Spring Plantings

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.