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.

Cincinnati Concours D'Elegance 2011

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

Thrift Store Score - Art Glass & Beyond

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 2011

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.

CF3 Coffee Chat - Adam / Goetz Residence

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.

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.

CF3 Coffee Chat - Friedman Residence Tour

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

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 - Day 6 & 7

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.