The MODNESS of 9251

Going mantel

2011-01-28T06:39:00.000-08:00

Our living room is open, airy and connected to the dining room and the kitchen. It's a space that's anchored by two walls of windows and the original limestone fireplace.

It's also a planning nightmare.

Way back when we first toured the place, we couldn't figure out where to put a TV. Our house was built in 1958, when TV's were small, black & white and shoved into a corner somewhere.

As you can see from the picture above of how our home could have looked in the 50s, our space lends itself better to a conversation room than a modern-day living room. And while we can definitely appreciate that, it's just not realistic for our lifestyle.

But we decided to roll with it, bought the place and planned to figure it out later.

It's later.

We've had our TV in all sorts of positions since we moved in. But wherever we put it, it was in opposition of what should be the focal point of the room: the fireplace.

Long story short, we decided to combine the two.

We built a custom, floating mantel out of the redwood we repurposed from the walls of one of our bedrooms and from old window sills.

The mantel is Jan Michael's own little invention that he had the idea for almost a year ago. We knew it was meant to be when his sketches survived what we lovingly call our biblical flood.

Looks more like a map to hidden treasure than anything!

So we attached two wooden brackets to the studs in the wall, and then secured the larger part of the mantel to those brackets.

We built in compartments for each of our electronics and a panel in the middle that hides all the wires.

Then, after a lot of sanding and staining, the mantel was ready.

We attached a TV mount to the fireplace just to be safe.

Then we hung the TV and plugged everything in. All the electronics are plugged into a power strip, which is also inside the mantel, so that only two cords (power and cable) come out of the mantel, along the fireplace and down to the wall socket.

In the end, it's a seamless look that allows us to enjoy a fire and a movie (or a fire on TV) at the same time.

9251 in 2010

2010-12-30T20:24:00.000-08:00

It's the end of the year and time to look back on what we've accomplished in our (insane) mid-century modern home renovation.

Sure, we're still walking around on bare concrete floors (except in our bedroom) and cooking in a raggedy old kitchen, but we've definitely made some major progress in the 13 months we've owned this place.

First, we:
Gutted the place. Took out all the carpet, and the asbestos tile (mistake!) ourselves.

Washed everything and removed 40 years of cigarette smoke residue, dust and wallpaper.

Replaced our roof and the entire soffit/gutter system.

And moved in.

Then, we:
Knocked out the 1/4" wood closets (no studs, no drywall, just wood) and built a real wall of closets in their place.

Cleaned the tobacco skin off the fireplace limestone (who knew it was gray and not brown!).

Removed the tongue-in-groove wood from the walls, re-insulated and replaced with drywall.

Rewired outlets with grounds or GFCI's (hello three-prong outlets!).

Replaced the light fixtures and added outlets in both bathrooms.

Installed modern house numbers (we previously had none).

Replaced all the plumbing to the kitchen sink and got a new faucet.

Got rid of hundreds of patio stones and bushes.

Survived a mini-flood because of a cracked pipe.

Ordered Kahrs Linnea Collection: Hard Maple Espresso engineered hardwood floors.

Installed a new front door with a Crestview Window Kit. Replaced the outdoor light fixtures. Installed working doorbells.

Demo'ed and expanded the band room.

Extended the refrigerator wall.

And adopted Lucy.

And this Fall/Winter, we:
Installed three huge floor-to-ceiling windows in the front of the house.

Nearly completed the master bedroom and moved into it (blog entry to come).

And right now we're in the process of building a custom, floating mantle for our fireplace.
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It's been a long, stressful year, but we're still chugging along. Of course we didn't meet our goal of having the house Christmas-party ready in 2010, but we'll tentatively invite you to Christmas 2011 at 9251.

There are many blog entries to come as we wrap up different projects and can give you proper befores and afters. For now, we'll leave you with a picture from Christmas last year and one from this year.

Same tree, drastically different living room.

Repurposing a 1957 Voice of Music Hi Fi Consolette as an iPod Sound Station

2010-12-11T15:10:00.001-08:00

Those in glass houses

2010-11-22T20:30:00.000-08:00

Floor-to-ceiling windows were a part of our home's original design, very similar to, if not exactly as they are in this picture below of a home like ours in Better Homes & Gardens 1953.

Sometime in the mid 1960s, they were replaced with a more traditional style: four small windows about 24" shorter than the originals. And we think they were homemade windows to boot.

Needless to say, we were itching to restore one of the coolest parts of our home.

Once the original rough openings were demoed, new construction could begin.

The new windows are 68" x 78", which means they're kind of a bear to work with. Luckily, we had some skilled help.

Two huge windows weren't enough for us, and if you remember our Photoshop comp we wanted to add a third in the front bedroom on the other side of the front door.

Doing so meant we had to take out most of the framing and two small windows in that room, but the result is a massive improvement for what will serve as our future music studio/beat laboratory/inspiration station.

With all three windows in, we moved on to sealing the house back up, which meant reusing the original redwood siding. 50 years of wear and tear had done a number on some of the pieces, causing them to crack and split as we screwed them back in, so finishing this part of the process took several weekends. We even had to steal some redwood from the storage sheds in our carport.

Now that the windows are finished and the house is sealed tight, this should be not only a huge improvement on the look of the house but also a big energy saver. These puppies are Low-E tempered glass, compare to the single-pane windows that were here when we moved in.

More than five weekends in the making, here's phase 1 of our new front elevation:

The change created a little buzz in our 'hood. A neighbor who's been here since the early 60s said, "That's how I remember this place back in 1964." He couldn't have given us a bigger compliment.

And Lucy clearly thinks the windows were installed just for her benefit. She loves that she no longer has to jump on something to see out the window. Now you can't pry her away.

Next step is to rescue the house from the ugly maroon stain/paint. Stay tuned for that.

9-2-5-1

2010-07-07T10:22:00.001-07:00

We originally planned to save our Neutra-esque house numbers for after we painted the exterior, but after half a summer of grueling projects like sanding ceilings and digging up patio stones, we needed something simple, quick and easy.

You could have guessed by now that putting the numbers up wasn't as fast as we thought it would be. First, we laid the numbers out on a board to get the spacing right and to make a template to drill through. Sounds simple, but we ended up obsessing about the kerning for hours. The template was a good idea, though, and once we had the holes marked, it was as easy as drilling through the wood and into the house.

We decided to place the numbers on our carport for a little originality. Plus, the front of our house will be completely transformed with the new windows we plan to get, and they'll leave little room for house numbers.

To finish up, we added a solar-powered spotlight that casts some pretty cool shadows on our numbers at night. It's hard to believe, but our house never had any numbers on it. It barely even had numbers on the mailbox, and even those were only on one side and peeling off. So this is a big improvement.

Lucy in the Renovation

2010-07-06T17:00:00.000-07:00

Meet Lucy, the 9251 mascot.

We've been talking about getting an animal since we first got together, almost four years ago. The timing was never right and with us living in apartment after apartment, our poor pet wouldn't have the home it deserved.

Now we finally have that home, a place where we don't have to worry about keeping her quiet and paying astronomical fees to have her. And the renovation of 9251 has certainly taken its toll on us, to the point where we'd welcome a meowing, shedding, pooping, scratching distraction. So, we adopted our distraction from the pound about a week ago. It's amazing we only adopted her, since it's hard not to walk away from the pound with as many animals as you can carry.

We looked specifically for a grey cat like her, and yes, we discriminated. But we're sure Lucy doesn't mind that we picked her in part because of the color of her skin (fur). She knows it mattered more that she is smart and sweet and never bit us, not even once.

So far, Lucy is exploring every inch of the house (including trying to get in the rooms we've closed off to her) and we're just trying to keep up. Eventually, Lucy will have free reign. But for now, we do our best to keep her out of boxes of nails, piles of drywall dust and stacks of glass tile.

Never a dull day at 9251. Or a dry one.

2010-05-10T18:49:00.000-07:00

It was late in the evening, one of the only dry nights we had in April, and our house was flooding something biblical.

One of us had had good intentions: to destroy the dandelions that negated our hard work in lawn by making it look scraggly and unkempt. The other was enjoying a glass of wine at a friend's house. By midnight, we were both soggy and sore.

During our home inspection six months ago, it was noted that the faucet on the front of our house did not have a handle. It was written off as a four-dollar fix and forgotten. Until, for that night's purposes, the faucet was turned on with pliers. And after forty minutes of murdering dandelions with the stuff you attach to your hose our future band room, master bedroom, hallway, bathroom and laundry room were an inch deep in hose water.

Our band room was the biggest catastrophe, seeing as it had been our storage area for all the boxes we haven't yet unpacked (which is half the stuff we own). The rest of the rooms just needed the shop vac, since we haven't moved into our bedroom and the floors are stripped to the basic concrete throughout.

Once everything was out, we tore into the wall and found the pipe was built into the wall. And it was cracked. Like Whitney Houston.

One industrial fan, one dehumidifier and bottles full of bleach-water mixture later it looks like we've managed to avoid mold and mildew, although we might need to replace the drywall near the floor in some areas.

We've since replaced the plumbing and the faucet is working fine, although we'll probably be gun-shy with it for months to come. Chalk it up to one more thing our previous homeowner neglected to tell us about.

On the bright side, the dandelions looked more like fallen soldiers when it was all said and done.

The barn gets a facelift

2010-04-25T21:19:00.000-07:00

• Mockup #1

• Mockup #2

• Mockup #3

• Mockup #4

OK, we haven't actually accomplished the whole facelift part yet, but with Spring now in full swing we're itching to make our mockup a reality and paint the exterior of our house a color that doesn't remind us of corn fields and chewin' on straw.

We're grateful the house has retained its original redwood vertical siding. We do wish it wasn't soaked in years of red stain and maroon paint (it's a mix of the two).

We've landed on neutrals with a bright lime green or orange door to set it all off. We're getting excited just looking at the picture.

And since an "after" isn't nearly as good without a "before," here they are together.

As you can see, we're also thinking about transforming the front of the house with 62" x 72" windows that are fixed at the top, sliding at the bottom. Just as the architect of our house, Ralph Fournier intended. And just as you saw in our previous entry on our home's design featured in Better Homes magazine.

Someday this stuff with actually happen. For now, we'll leave you with a quick funny story:

Way back when we were still hunting, we toured house right across the street from 9251. We stood in its living room, looking out the front window, telling our realtor Zoe that we weren't sure we wanted to look out at a barn every day.

We're now the proud owners of that barn. And we love it like only barn-owners can.

9-2-5-1

2010-01-23T15:28:00.000-08:00

As typography lovers, we wouldn't settle for less than address numbers you could find on a Richard Neutra house. Neutra was known for designing every square inch, down to the signage. The typefaces he chose were meant to mimic the openness and simplicity of his homes.

House Industries' has an entire typeface based on his style: Neutraface.

First-time home blindness

2010-01-23T12:09:00.000-08:00

It's a classic condition probably all of us homeowners have experienced at one point or another: you only notice the stunning tongue-and-groove ceiling and not the plumbing under the sink that’s so corroded you can stick your finger through the metal. You notice the angled windows and miss the nails popping out of the drywall.

To be fair, we knew this place had issues. We saw the soffits rotting in front of us and knew the entire roof would need to be replaced.

We knew we'd have to replace every inch of flooring and completely re-do the pink, floral master bathroom.

But our new home goggles kept us from seeing some of the most challenging projects we never thought we'd have to tackle, such as:

*Faulty ductwork that was pulling air from the "attic" and circulating into our lungs. We retrofitted all new ducts from sheets of galvanized steel.

*Improper sealing allowing bugs and cold air in and making our eyes hurt. This whole area was re-done, from the studs up, and this little gem is now closed in the right way.

*Forty years worth of cigarette smoke stuck to every flat surface. It took weeks of scrubbing with TSP just to get the walls back to shades of beige. And pounds of dust hanging in the air that made our photos look paranormal.

*Countless electrical mysteries and phantom wall switches. We're only beginning to figure them out.

*Five million nails popping out of the drywall. We hammered every single one of them back into the studs and reinforced with screws.

Could we have known how much work we were in store for? Probably not. Some things you can only find once you’re living in the home, stubbing your toe on the faulty trim and breathing in the fiberglass air.

VAT= run for your life

2010-01-23T12:07:00.000-08:00

Remember all the things we were blind to on our first, second and even third tours of our new home? This was the ultimate unexpected project.

In the 50s, designers used vinyl tile like it was going out of style, and we can see why. It's extremely durable, easy to clean and neutral enough to go with most any mid-century décor. There were two popular types of tile those days: Vinyl Composite Tile (VCT) and Vinyl Asbestos Tile (VAT). Guess which one we had!

VAT floors are your worst nightmare. Armstrong went bankrupt because of them and countless cases of mesothelioma have been reported. Their retro appeal doesn't hold a candle to the nuisance of their toxicity. We know that now.

We've mentioned before that when we bought the house, it had wall-to-wall shag carpet in a rainbow of colors.

We tore it up to see what we were dealing with underneath. We dreamed of gleaming, stained concrete throughout the house. And so, with that in mind, we attacked the VAT floors and had removed 90 percent of them within 24 hours.

Then we thought about it.

Actually, a family member asked us if we had been wearing masks during the tile removal in case there was asbestos in the tiles. This is the part where we look at each other with "Oh sh*t" faces. We had worn dust masks, sometimes. But nothing near the protection asbestos removal code requires. And that was just the tip of the asbestos iceberg.

There's nothing like asbestos contamination. Once it's in the air, it's everywhere. It's in your hair, your clothes, your tennis shoes. It's in your furniture, your cabinets and your ductwork. The more we researched it, the more scared we got that we'd need to quarantine the whole house and start over.

Looking back, it's a tempting option. After $5,000 worth of air cleaning (we're still not sure if that's a hoax) duct cleaning and the removal of the remaining tiles, our house finally tested safe again.

During that time, construction, renovation and all progress came to a halt. We raked some leaves and did some yard work (more on the bushes later) but lost most of the month we had allowed for working on the house before we moved into it.

So please, please, learn from us. If you're buying a home built before the 1980s, check it for VAT and check it well. If you spot vinyl tile of any kind, use this as a guide to determine whether you’ve got asbestos on your hands:

*If it looks the part:
Research old Armstrong catalogues. We found ours (a lovely brown and mauve combination) there and our hearts sank. Also, here's a list of asbestos tiles produced from the early 50s to the early 80s.

*If it's the right size:
Standard asbestos tiles came in 12" by 12" or 9" by 9" squares.

*If the test says so:
If there are already broken pieces, this is an easy thing to do. Carefully package the tile in plastic and send it to Micro Air. They can give you a definitive answer on whether the tile contains asbestos as well as advice on removal.

If there's even a slight sign of asbestos, turn to the professionals for removal. It'll be a headache, but maybe it won't be the migraine we went through.

Platform/Slat Bench Restoration

2010-01-22T09:04:00.001-08:00

If you've been into modern design for more than five minutes, you're aware of George Nelson and his platform/slat bench, introduced in 1946. For the past decade we've plotted to construct our own, but it never quite made it to the top of the to-do list.

On one thrift-store-scouring Sunday, we ran into one of these benches covered by a pile of vintage fabric. Given the stamped markings, leg style and brass hardware, we figured that this was an older piece dating back to the 1960s. And with a $40 price tag (less than the cost of wood to build it on our own), we couldn't pass it up.

The bench was in rough shape and judging from the faded finish, it had been in direct sunlight for the majority of its days.

Looking back on this project, it took almost double the amount of time to restore than it would have to build new. There were a lot of surfaces to sand (each individual slat) and quite a bit of turning, rotating and waiting during the stripping, wood filling, staining and finishing processes.

Our old bench, and its new finish, has become a staple in our home. We use it to choose matching wood stains, plan rooms around it, and cringe when it gets bumped (even gently).

Tools used: screw driver, KleanStrip KS-3 Premium Stripper, orbital sander, natural wood filler, fine sandpaper, Miniwax Dark Walnut stain, Miniwax Wipe-Poly

Restoration time: 20 hours

Rescuing our lights from brass

2010-01-21T07:45:00.000-08:00

We live in a home filled with stainless steel legs and brushed metal. So when we adopted a few mid-century lamps, it was on one condition: the brass coating they sported just had to go.

The arc lamp:

We found this gem at a used furniture store and walked with it for a mere $14. It had a shiny brass plating that we desperately wanted to remove.

We thought about sanding, but had a gut feeling that the lamp was made of aluminum or some other light metal that wouldn’t recover from that kind of rough handling.

With fingers crossed, we bought a can of KleanStrip KS-3 Premium stripper and once it hit the surface, the brass bubbled off, revealing a clean silver shine.

The globes:

As you can see from the decades of dust and nicotine-stained wiring, restoring the globe lights that came with our home was more involved than simple stripping.

In fact, stripping the plating off and hitting the metal with a fresh coat of white was the easy part. The challenge was tracking down and retrofitting all new wiring components.

If you’re taking on a similar task, don’t bother with Lowe’s, Home Depot and Menards. You’ll have to go to a specialty store with an experienced electrical repairman who can help you match up the proper inside components.

Tools used: screw driver, wire cutter/stripper, adjustable wrench, electrical tape, KleanStrip KS-3 Premium Stripper, fine sandpaper, Krylon primer, Krylon spray paint.

Restoration time: 3 hours (not including driving around and countless hours of research)

All three lamps add mid-century ambiance to our home and cost us less than $50 combined. And there’s something really rewarding about restoring some of the oldest pieces we own to fit seamlessly with some of the newest.

The architectural mystery of 9251

2010-01-19T23:20:00.000-08:00

Of course, in the beginning of our mid-century modern home search, our goal was to find a west-coast-style Eichler in the Midwest. When we stepped into 9251, we spotted hints of Cliff May. But after some research, we found Ridgewood, a St. Louis MCM neighborhood full of houses that looked just like ours. And after seeing that, we thought architect Ralph Fournier might have designed our house.

Here's our exact home design featured in Better Homes and Gardens magazine in January 1953.

And we found an article where Fournier, who's still alive, talked about building neighborhoods full of his Ridgewood-esque designs in Indianapolis. That's enough confirmation for us.

Turns out that these homes were ahead of their time even by today's standards using post-and-beam construction and prefab panels. And our home was the model for the neighborhood.

Remember renting?

2010-01-01T22:26:00.000-08:00

In retrospect, it's funny how a conversation on renting a small tangerine bunglow down the street quickly escalated into an obsessive mid-century home search. In early 2009, we spent every free minute driving through subdivisions, snapping pictures, scouring the Web and bugging our realtor, Zoe Moore.

After about six months of searching, we tried something we were more nervous about than we'd like to admit: a letter drop to 25 homes. In a nutshell the letter said, "We love the architecture of your home. We're pre-approved. Want to sell it to us in a month?"

We received three responses, but only one seemed like a match. Its safe location, open concept living room/dining room/kitchen, vaulted tongue-and-groove ceilings, angled windows, floor-to-ceiling limestone fireplace, sliding doors and original light fixtures more than made up for its lackluster maroon exterior.

We got possession on October 24, 2009 and within an hour we tore through a house full of 40-year-old carpet (even in the kitchen and bathrooms).

Since then, we've put months of energy and more all-purpose cleaner than the city had at any one time into this place. And we're chronicling it here for our families who don't understand why we look so exhausted or why we take a deep breath before we answer the question: "How is the house coming?"

After spending our first Christmas here walking around on painters’ paper and sitting on lawn chairs, we decided to set a goal: have this place decent enough to have a real Christmas party in 2010. We hope you'll follow, as we get closer to that goal, and maybe commiserate with us a little.