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.

Eames Armshell Restoration Project

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?

Time to RSVP Your Miller Residence Tour

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

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.

DIY Chimney Crown Repair

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

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.

Ultimate Mid Century Modern Swap - Part 1

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.

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 Flat Roof Replacement - Day 2

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.