Early design inspiration
Posted: February 23, 2010 Filed under: Design 1 Comment »When I was in elementary school, I spent endless hours as design consultant to a couple named Steve and Stephanie Sunshine. An ecologically minded couple on a tight budget – they were also new parents – the Sunshines urged me to reuse and recycle whenever possible. Egg cartons, plastic strawberry containers and toothpaste caps all found repurposed places in the Sunshines’ modest four-room home (as a light fixture, crib for baby Sweets and trash bins, respectively). I think they really appreciated the uniqueness of the custom items I created for them.
Because I didn’t have any sewing skills to speak of, Kleenex became the all-purpose fabric of choice for blankets, pillows and clothing, reinforced with a good deal of tape. Cardboard boxes, plastic lids, wrapping paper, beads and yarn all held a galaxy of possibilities. It was not playing with these dolls, making them talk and interact, that was so much fun, but the process of deciding what they needed for comfortable lives and then figuring out how to make it from whatever I could scrounge up.
Designing and making things for the Sunshines’ home sparked an early love of fixing things up that was not reignited until A. and I moved into the 1527 house. With a limited budget but plenty of weekend and after-work hours, we figured “Why not try?” Joint compound, a wonderbar, tin tiles and 2x4s became the new materials holding dreamy possibilities. An investment in a basic sewing machine and scrutiny of its accompanying guidebook helped me step up to creating curtains and covers out of real fabric.
Comparing our most recent project to our earlier ones, I am amazed by how much we’ve learned and how many new skills (and tools) we have collected. What I have always loved most about every one of our projects is that we did them ourselves and we did them together (and that we are still together!). For many projects, professionals are definitely needed. For many other things, a fabulous purchase cannot be beat.
But for plenty of others, a little sawing/stitching/sanding/spackling turns out something that is just right.
The Garagemahal. Part Deux: Going up.
Posted: February 21, 2010 Filed under: Garage Leave a comment »We were ready. The plans were in place. The subcontractors lined up. A workplan was mostly developed. It was time to build. The garage would be a metaphor for our careers, our lives, the way we approached life.
Well, not really, but after destroying the old garage we were pretty stinking excited to get going on the new one. At this point in our time in the house, we had wrestled with some pretty in-depth projects. Full bathrooms renos, tearing down plaster, rebuilding windows, etc.
But new construction was a different story. So was new construction on a budget. Our contracter agreed to frame and wrap the new structure. So he took care of overseeing the foundation work, framing, roof, and installing the windows. Everything else would be up to us. Mostly, anyway.
Looking back on it, I can now say that things weren’t too terrible. Then again, time has a habit of blocking out the difficult parts. Like when women look back on childbirth. Or so I hear.
Seriously though, we had a good time. Did we get out over our skis here and there? You bet. Did we learn some new skills? Yes. Kristy is now a whiz with a pneumatic framing hammer–hanging siding for a bunch of weekends will do that. Plus, there’s the sense of satisfaction of accomplishing something special.
What we really appreciate–beyond the physical “stuff”–is the amount of detail we were able to include. Our architect and builder helped with this of course, but from the brackets we built that support the fascia boards, to how we trimmed windows, we’re really pleased about how things turned out.
In flipping through some old pictures I was reminded of some especially strong memories:
- Our friend Erika, who gave up a whole stack of weekend time, channeling M.C. Hammer. Who knew rapping to Mr. Hammer would be so apropos to hanging siding?
- K., totally exhausted, taking a nap on a 10-inch wide scaffold while I went to pick up lunch.
- Being woken up after arriving home from a three-day work trip (where I visited Seattle, San Francisco, Boston and New York) at 6:30 in the morning to the urging, “why are you sleeping in? We have a lot of work to do!” I love you too.
- Painting the garage. At least we were safe. Even if I don’t rock climb 5.12 anymore, at least I have the gear to keep us safe.
- Wondering why it was OK for the foundation guy to not show up for two weeks without returning phone calls. Is that OK in your line of work? At least when he did show he had a good excuse. “Sorry, I had a job in Newport that was bigger than yours.” Nice.
- Sacha the dog expressing her displeasure with us, and the commotion we were making in her tight, organized little world, by taking a dump on our bed.
- Being more than happy to give construction site tours to the 50 or so people that stopped by to ask about the project.
- When it was done, telling someone five or six times in as many minutes that he couldn’t rent out the upstairs as an apartment. Me: “I’m sorry, you can’t rent it. There’s not even a bathroom.” Him: “Well I’m sure we could figure out something.” (Like what? An outhouse? A chamber pot?)
- Finally hiring a “siding guy” to finish the very top/most difficult part of the garage. After being so careful about working with fiber-cement siding and the dust that’s created when it’s cut–using HEPA-filter masks, eye protection, keeping the dog inside, etc.–siding guy was pretty much caked in the stuff within minutes. His response to our concern? “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’m around fiber cement dust so much that I’m pretty much immune.” Yikes.
Anyway, we now have one very unique garage. In the final installment, the interior! Try not to get too excited…
My, what a lovely yard you have.
Going up...
And up...
And up!
Putting hundreds of dollars of high-end rock climbing gear to use.
Hanging siding...
...is hard work.
Mostly finished. (in the days before we repainted the house and garage.)
The Kitchen: HGTV in the house!
Posted: February 7, 2010 Filed under: Kitchen Leave a comment »About four years ago, someone in A.’s office saw a notice that HGTV was going to be in town and was looking for people to be part of a new show called “Look What I Did!” To qualify, you needed to have done work to your house without help from a contractor or other professional. On a whim, A. sent them some pictures of some of our projects, and surprisingly, they found ours interesting enough to make the cut.
One day, their crew showed up at our house and filmed us chattering on and on about our kitchen. They played up a reference to our honeymoon in Italy, but that wasn’t really an inspiration for the kitchen re-do. I think it was another HGTV show where we saw someone doing a textural wall treatment with tissue paper that spurred on our remodel. Even though we didn’t move walls, add appliances or get new furniture, our kitchen changed quite dramatically. When we moved in, the kitchen had:
- Gray indoor/outdoor carpeting
- Pink and blue patterned wallpaper with blue trim
- A plastic tile backsplash painted blue
- A weird, warped, some-sort-of-laminate countertop that was dark yellow and sparkly
Sick! It was really gross.
So, we pulled up the carpet and laid brown and cream square tiles in a checkerboard pattern, took down the wallpaper and put up a tissue paper texture that we then painted with two tones of yellow, painted all the trim white, put in John Boos rock maple counter tops and a painted tin tile backsplash.
We also took the doors off the cabinets and painted the insides of the cabinets and the shelves bright blue. I love the open shelving; it’s so handy. All of our cabinets were open for a time, until our dog got wise to the possibility and started stealing food out of them. Sheesh. A. made great glass-front doors to protect our food. Now she just waits until we’re cooking and jumps up on the counter to nab our mise en place. That’s why we call her the counter-terrorist.
We need to work on scanning in some other “before” photos. It’s amazing to see the difference. We’re also working on converting our HGTV spot from VHS to be able to post it. We’re still surprised it didn’t win an Emmy.
Plastic tile ... classy!
Work clothes - ready to go. Note the indoor/outdoor carpet. Nice!
Progress.
Tin tile, maple counters and a Chicago Faucets, well, faucet.
Entering the butler's pantry. Our butler spends a lot of time in here.
If your walls had this much depth and texture, you'd be happy too.
L's favorite breakfast spot--next to the heater!
A fun and functional project. A scrap piece of countertop works perfectly on a base we made from galvanized pipe. Perfect for prepping a morning coffee..
The Garagemahal. Part Un: You need to wreck to build.
Posted: February 3, 2010 Filed under: Garage, Uncategorized 2 Comments »The old garage was sketchy at best.
People think I’m exaggerating when I tell them that when we moved in, the garage was ready to fall over. I can understand their skepticism. After all, people have a tendency to be overly dramatic. “I’m starving!” “I just got back from the gym and O-M-G that workout was so hard I almost DIED!” “I was a great high school athlete!” “If Republicans were in charge we wouldn’t have a budget deficit!”
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
When it came to describing the garage, I wasn’t over-hyping reality. The thing was listing over at a 15 degree angle, literally held up by a 4″ x 6″ post that we affectionately nicknamed “the kickstand.” It was so bad that the garage door was half off of its tracks, unable to align with its crooked opening.
To add even more excitement to our lives, there was no foundation, just a thin concrete pad, and the roof was covered with seven layers of asphalt tiles (3 layers should be the max according to code). So think about it. A decrepit old structure, leaning WAY over to one side, with a ton of weight at the top and no support down low. Sketchy.
Needless to say, we never parked in that garage. We did keep our lawn mower in there, but had to chain it to an eye hook so that no one would steal it. Remember, the door didn’t work.
It took us a few years to figure out what we wanted in a new garage, save up the money to build, etc.
Along the way we also came across a great book that served up plenty of inspiration. The aptly titled Garage is an excellent read, especially if you appreciate, well, garages.
Of course we didn’t want a vanilla garage. No, no, no, that would be far too simple. And boring. We wanted a one-car garage so we could maintain plenty of yard space. We also wanted some modern touches inside, but it had to complement the house and fit in with the neighborhood. Oh, and we wanted a second story so we could have a detached office/bonus room. All within budget, of course.
Knocking the garage down was a good time though. We recruited 10 friends or so to help.
(Note: it’s easy to recruit people to stand around while stuff gets destroyed. But it’s nearly impossible to recruit people to help with actual work. Mini-rant is now complete.)
Destruction begins.
Naked.
Anyway, we totally over-engineered the situation, rigging up ropes and pulleys to pull and push the thing over. We thought through which studs we’d cut through, where people needed to stand, etc. We pulled off all the siding for some reason too. Probably I thought we’d reuse the old, rotting wood.
Oooh. That chafes! Also note that 10 helpers started, two finished.
In the end, knocking the sucker over required little more than whacking the kickstand out from under the garage eave, then making sure the various helpers and helpers’ pets were out of the way. The garage came crashing down in a pretty elegant way. It wasn’t even loud–it just sort of gently folded to the ground.
Those green jeans were on sale at Value Village. Who could say no?
As usual, we didn’t come lightly to the decision about what kind of garage to build. For months we spent nights and weekends walking our neighborhood, looking at details of garages we liked. We surfed the web, we read books, I filled sketchbooks with sketches. We interviewed builders. We looked at materials and thought about what we could do ourselves vs. what we would hire others to do.
Finally, we landed on a builder. We showed him our ideas. He said they looked great and that he’d refine them for us. He agree to frame and wrap the structure, leaving the rest of the work to us. We were excited, ready to go. And then we waited for his plans. And waited.
A week before groundbreaking he showed us his plans. We didn’t like them. And then we put the brakes on the project and hired an architect.
I shouldn’t be unfair to the builder though. He was honest, did great work, did exactly what he said he’d do, came in under budget, and allowed us to do a ton of the work ourselves.
I mentioned this in another post, but a good architect/designer makes all the difference. They look at space, light, shadow, function, symmetry, asymmetry and materials in really different ways. Of course we had never worked with an architect, let alone hired one. So we researched that as well, interviewing plenty.
Some didn’t “get” what we were trying to do. “You have a big lot. Why not just lose your entire yard and connect the garage to the house?”
Some didn’t appreciate the opportunity to work around our challenges. “You know, on your budget it’s going to be impossible to build in many interesting details.”
But in the end we hired iDR Studios. Matt Melcher ended up doing a lot of the work with us, and it’s a relationship that we still have today. A month or so later, K and I were totally blown away with the plans, which included details we never, ever would have thought of on our own.
Up next: Building, subcontractors, design details and M.C. Hammer.
Done for the weekend.
All that work makes a dog thirsty.
