"A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories." - Andy Goldsworthy

We made what will probably be the most dramatic house change that we will ever make.  It looks like a whole new house, and most importantly, it looks like "us."

It's official, this house is ours, and we belong to it too.

After much deliberation, we decided to sandblast our house.  Sandblasting is a process that uses an abrasive material (recycled copper in our case) to remove the paint from a surface and open the pores of concrete block bringing it back to its most basic and natural form.  Our house had two layers of paint, the off-white that we started with, and then the original, very 60s (but not in a good way) orange-beige.  Once sandblasted, our house revealed gray concrete full of beautiful and varied little pebbles.  If it is possible to be both modern and organic at the same time, that is exactly what our house is.

This is what we started with:

This is how our house looks now:

All that's left to do is patch a couple little blow-outs in the grouting (expected with 60 year old grout) and put a sealant on the block to prevent moisture from getting in. 

An unexpected benefit of sandblasting was that it exposed some very attractive metal that had been covered in paint.  Who would have known that our electrial boxes and faucets could be so handsome?!?!

A quick thanks to Baja Sandblasting for their attention to detail, professionalism, and just general awesomeness.

"If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door." - Milton Berle

One of the first changes that we wanted to make to the house was the front door.  We started with a very black, very ugly, and very suburban looking door.  When we came across an ad for Crestview Doors in an issue of Atomic Ranch magazine, we knew that we were headed in the right direction.  Within a couple days we had selected a design, and soon we were on our way to the door of our dreams!  The door was the first step to take our house in the modern direction that we had in mind.

We selected Crestview's Allendale design with single panes of reeded glass.  We chose new hardware (goodbye faux bronze!) and selected a crisp white paint.

Now our door oozes cool!

Before:

(Sweet glue job...)

During:

After:

So I have this really old chair...

Midcentury modern furniture has the potential to be very expensive.  For the average homebuyer, this can present quite the challenge.  So the trick is, rather than to buy it new, buy old.  Recently we purchased four Erik Buck dining chairs for $50 a piece.  You can see one of the chairs below:

Pretty inexpensive when compared to some other chairs from Design (Not) Within Reach at $700 a piece.  You can see how similar it looks to the one we bought for less than 10% of the price:

After buying the chairs we also decided to get a new fabric which we will use to reopholster the chairs we bought with.  We'll show you the finished product in a future post.

Family can also be a great resource for midcentury modern furniture.  Below you can see a contour chair that we got from a family member:

Other places to get affordable midcentury modern furniture and or decorations are from companies like CB2 (http://www.cb2.com/) or Chiasso (http://www.chiasso.com/).  Our clock from Chiasso (about $50):

By being smart and looking for deals, you can make your house swing, without draining your bank account.

Shopping List

We have so many items that we can't wait to bring into our home... one piece at a time.

Our current shopping list includes:

A Jacobsen Egg Chair (most likely a replica)

Arco Lamp

Exterior globe light

Spektr light for our interior hallways

This will no doubt be a constantly evolving list.  More to come as we explore other online sites and retail stores!

I got my architecture degree from HGTV...

One of my coworkers (an architect) has the following quote on a post-it note on his desk: "Engineers... get their Architecture degree from HGTV."   Engineers and architects have a history of conflict.  From the Millau Viaduct (Bridge) to a elementary school addition, the idea of style vs. function has been fought over since the dawn of man. 

As an engineer, I typically don't get too many opportunities to exercise my artistic side, so when the wife and I bought a home the first thing I did was...

download Google Sketchup (http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/)!

Most programs that are used in the construction industry have way too many features and are too complicated for general use.  This is where Google Sketchup becomes a great tool for the public.  Google Sketchup is a very simple modeling program.  If you play video games, you can model with Google Sketchup.  You can create a new model, download and import objects, and export pictures of your model, or the model itself. 

So how do you create a model of your home?   Well the first step is to take measurements (lots and lots of measurements) of your property.  Wall and window and door and fence and plants and heights and distances from each other.  My suggestion is to just focus on the outside of your home.  You can always measure and add the interior walls later.  Once you have made a simple drawing of all the measurements it is time to model.  The basic idea in Sketchup is to draw a shape and then extrude it.  For example, if you know the measurement of the perimeter of your house, you can make a simple rectangle, and then make it "pop up" to the height of your house.  The windows and doors are done using the same extrusion method.  Once complete you can add colors and make windows (Which will actually let you look through a wall). 

Here you can see the first version of our house model.  Please note I did add some colors for fun:

So once you get the model created, then you can REALLY start to have fun.  You can go to Google Sketchup's 3D Warehouse (http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/), a site which has tons of already created models for you to download, and then import them to your model.  I ended up downloading quite a few cacti, bushes and outdoor furniture to import into our model.  Some of our ideas can be seen below.  Let us know what you think!

- C.

Changes are a happenin!

When we originally bought the house, in all of our excitment we ordered house numbers, a new mailbox, and a new doorbell.  After almost 3 months in our house we finally got around to ripping the old ones down and putting up our new appurtenances! 

So if you remember our rather bland alcove in the beginning (ignore the Halloween decorations):

We decided to go make some changes!  (See below)

We ordered all items from a great website called Chiasso (http://www.chiasso.com/).  They have a ton of modern stuff... needless to say this won't be the last time we order something from them.

Next up, selecting a new exterior light and waiting for our new door to arrive!

It's not about the destination...

... it's about the journey.  So goes the famous saying.  Before we could start changes on a house we needed to get a house.  The house we ended up buying was definitely livable, but no where near what a midcentury modern home should look like (for those of you not familiar with this design type check out the links we have provided).  What we did get was a blank canvas, which has actually been a blessing in design.  Instead of spending the money for what somebody else would want, we can choose what our house becomes.  Below are pictures of the house.

The home pretty much as we bought it.  This photo was taken around Halloween, hence the webbing on the door:

We decided to get rid of the tree and grass.  Our reasoning is not that we hate plants, rather we plan on having desert landscaping, and the placement of the tree (touching the house) wasn't really working for us.

Flower planter in front of the house:

The backyard:

Porch on the side of the house.

Back of the house:

Fire pit and grill area:

Kitchen, messy with Halloween pumpkin carving:

More interior photos to come!