wile e.'s house

the master bedroom closet

maybe shoji screens would make sense for our bedroom spaces--this conversion had to divide a space similarly to ours.

more design i can't wait to use

i can't wait to find a place for these prints, once i find copies of them. or maybe i'll make replicas of them. all three are by charles harper, and the work just looks so familiar that i'm certain he must have illustrated some children's books i must have loved once upon a time. as much as i adore the first two, though, i have a soft spot for the cardinals--they remind me of my favorite photo that smartboy took. look at them! :)

rasterbation

i'm really looking forward to blowing up one or two of smartboy's photos using the rasterbator and putting them up on a couple of carefully chosen walls. maybe the first one you see when you enter the house, and maybe the last one you see before you fall asleep :) you can also pay mybiggerpicture to do one for you--more expensive, but it might be better quality (depending on what printers are available to you). and less labor.

and more ways to incorporate his photography creatively into our decor: transfers onto fabrics (pillows, perhaps?).

ecodesign

remember how i was looking for the perfect rug for the living room? thanks to 2modern, i believe i've found it. this rug was designed by angela adams (i could swear that's the name of a feminist author...), a member of an organization working to end child labor; it's all wool on the front, backed by all cotton, with the two adhered with latex. i think it's a delicious complement to the color palette we have planned for that room, and is available in nifty shapes and sizes.
also exciting: should we not be able to find used, vintage bar stools to put in the kitchen, emeco makes them out of recycled aluminum. used is, of course, 100-percent recycled :) and true vintage, but when we can't find vintage that works, recycled is great.
2modern has a wide variety of ecofriendly pilllows, blankets, and other accessories, too, when we get down to that level of accessorizing and decorating. most of the rest of the furniture is way out of our price range, if a delight to behold.

episode 3, in which wile e. considers the family room.

we will do a lot in our living room (livicus roomicus). the house will allow for all of our just-come-over-for-the-evening entertaining spaces to remain on the first floor, so only we and longer-term guests will come up beyond that level. this will let us have a really nice sense of privacy upstairs--a true family room, with television, dogs, knitting, work, and whatever we really do all day left out without worry. i'm really excited about the potential this area has.

because of the conversion of this area--which is currently the tenants' main living area, including their kitchen, bathroom, laundry, study, dining room, and living room--there are lots of spaces and plumbing already in place. i'd previously been fretting about what to do about that kitchen, but in talking to my friend lotta yesterday, who'll be embarking on a similar mission with her husband-to-be in the not-too-distant future, i realized that we could leave a lot of that kitchen intact as a wet bar for snacking and casual entertaining. what a bonus!

that said, we do a lot in these areas:

• we watch a lot of television. a lot.
• i work, on my laptop while sitting on a sofa. a lot. sometimes it's stuff i do while watching tv.
• sometimes i knit or read while watching tv.
• in our current family room, which is adjacent to our kitchen, we eat. i doubt that'll happen any more, as the new family room will be on a different floor from the kitchen. but we may snack.
• guests will sleep, and i'm sure we'll nap.
• the dogs' crates may be in one of these rooms (there are two rooms, big open floor plan, that will combine to be the family room and my study, sort of). they'll eat in here, too, if that's the case.

so we'll want the rooms to be really comfortable and cozy, but not so cozy as to induce sleep while i'm working :) and they need to be well lit when we need light, but dimmed when we want to watch a romantic movie. i want the rooms to feel intimate but not cluttered, messy, or crowded.

my design priorities for these rooms are functionality and clean modernality, as usual. they have southern and eastern exposures, so light won't be a problem most of the day--indirectly through the kitchen that adjoins them (and will essentially become part of them), they even get western exposure. i don't actually ever remember going up there and not seeing it bathed in light (though we never go up at night).

i have found, with great gratitude and joy, a sectional sofa that beautifully evokes a midcentury modern aesthetic, with petite tapered wood legs, a low profile, just the right height of armrests, and just the right lines. the cushiones could be less rounded, but it's slipcovered, and with two big black furry dogs, that makes up for a lot. it's room and board's jasper ($$$$). we love a sectional, because it allows all of us to lounge at the same time. make no mistake--all of us lounge at the same time. it's just that the dogs have a very different idea of personal space than we do. although it's shown in white, i wouldn't buy a white sofa even slipcovered. not for my family room, where the dogs lounge regularly. no way. i think the color palette on the second floor will be warmer than on the first. i could see this in a mossy green or deep crimson (though i've owned a deep red sofa before and might just be over that). if in green, our color palette for the room would probably look something like this --continuing the same maple floor we had throughout the first floor, with the cream color on the walls and the blue and taupe as accents in furnishings and such. i think those achieve the fairly modern, soothing-but-not-sleep-inducing mood we'd be going for. in addition to the sofa, we have a couple of midcentury modern armchairs to add to the mix that are curbside finds and tossaways just waiting in the basement for reupholstering. we'll need a new coffee table; i do adore the nelson bench , but i'll find a similar item on ebay or at a yard sale rather than pay the $600-700 it takes to buy one new. topped with a tray, great for snacks, but mostly, i just adore how it looks. something about the slats emphasizing the horizontal--the same thing i love about prairie architecture and stacked-stone walls--and the contrast between the blond maple top and black legs. and those clean lines. yum-o.

those walls have the textured plaster i so would love to have smooth, but again--not sure i'm interested in undoing that. we'll see how much remedial work is required. if a lot, worth undoing. if not, i'll let it be, most likely. and we'll need some slim trim boards; i don't think there is any up there right now.

i cannot WAIT to tear up every inch of carpeting up there. it reeks of cat pee and god knows what else. replace it all with beautiful maple hardwood. i drool to think of it.

there is a decorative fireplace up there. i'm not really sure how that'll fit in with the whole midcentury thing; i can't picture right now how ornately queen anne it is. that's a plan that will have to wait. i'm not tearing anything original out--i'm not a destructorenovator.

we do have lots and lots of shelving already, fortunately. that's at least one thing we won't have to purchase (which is good, because he's going to flip when he sees the price of that sectional i want). i'm not sure what to do about media storage. i love the $15 midcentury modern buffet we bought at an estate sale this spring, but i'd love to use it in the new dining room for serveware storage. but maybe when the kitchen has been redone, we'll just have room for all of that stuff in there, and there won't be any need for storage in the dining room. so for a while, at least, i suppose it will continue to serve its function.

the cool thing will be that i can get creative with window treatments, because there are few opportunities for privacy invasion from the second-floor windows, as i recall. woot woot! as for lighting, i have no idea until i get up there what kinds of fixtures there are or aren't. and our best decorating is always framing smartboy's prints.

episode 2, in which wile e. considers the new living room.

the one room that will require some walls coming out is currently a storage room. it's the room that, when they converted domicilicus potentialus from a single-family home into a duplex, they split in half, basically, leaving us with an 8'x14' study (much of which is actually occupied by a closet) and the tenants with a staircase and tiny first-floor foyer. when we tear out the walls (including the closet), we should end up with a 17x14ish living room (minus the footprint of the staircase up to the second floor. not a huge room, thanks to that staircase, and it'll also be the front entry, but i think it'll be okay. (what's currently our living room will become our dining room. we don't have one right now, and i sooooo miss having one, as much as i love to entertain.)

mostly what i think we'll use that room for is how we used to use our living room when we used to have a separate living room and dining room and used to have people over a lot: we would entertain a lot and people could hang out in there or in the adjoining dining room or in the kitchen until dinner was served. i don't know whether we'll be able to fit a television in there as well, though that'd sure be cool--we love having people over to watch movies and things like the olympics, the oscars, and stuff like that. we really can't do that now, because our current living room is so jam-packed with work stuff and dog crates!

it'll also need to serve as an entry room, making a great first impression on people and welcoming them into the house. i don't think we need to keep that closet there, because there's a coat closet right behind it in the hallway that'll be open to it if we take the closet out (i hope hope hope we can).

it'll also be the room we cut through to get upstairs, which puts it in danger of getting cluttered if we aren't careful. you know--oh, i just brought in the mail, but i'm not going upstairs *now*...or, i want to take off my shoes and work clothes, but i'm not going upstairs *now*...yeah. potential for disaster there. maybe we'll keep a laundry basket at the foot of the stairs for my bad habits :) it's pretty important to me to keep this space uncluttered, clean, and welcoming.

the room faces east, so that side of the house gets brilliant morning sun, but it's shaded by the front porch, so really it doesn't get much direct light at all.

so we won't have space for different zones--private conversations and group gatherings--but that's okay. private conversations at our parties usually take place in the kitchen anyway :) so we'll put an appropriately scaled sofa (maybe the ikea lessbo we already own, but maybe something nicer) and a chair or two (of which we have a couple of midcentury moderns awaiting space, thankfully, and refinishing and reupholstering--some curbside finds and hand-me-downs collected over the years--in addition to my already reupholstered one), a coffee table (time to refinish the midcentury one i got on the outing with vickie from years a-go-go), and an area rug (there's a good ikea purchase) atop new hardwood floors. and there we go: greeting guests in a midcentury modern room, nearly completely furnished already. i have a color scheme in mind, too, thanks to pittsburgh paints' very cool voice of color tool: nordic lights palette.  the holly glen (a medium blue) isn't a bad match for the color of my already upholstered chair (it's much greener than that, but the tone is right), so i'm thinking walls in cosmic rays (an icy blue) with accents in prairie dust (a grayish taupe). lovely. i want a modern, soothing mood, and i think those colors really achieve that. plus they work reasonably well with the modern furniture that we already have :) budget and all, you know.

the walls in there do have a textured plaster finish that i'd love to get rid of, but i'm not sure i want to get rid of it badly enough to worry about it. if there are cracks or water spots that are going to require repair after we deal with structural repairs, or we have other work to do to the walls after getting rid of the drop ceiling (oh, did i neglect to mention that little eyesore?), well, then we'll have to think about tackling getting rid of the plaster finish. otherwise, not so much into major cosmetic wall prep. buy some paint and be done. and trim--we need base boards and some kind of simple crown moldings to finish off the edges.

i've only just started investigating hardwood flooring. i love maple, the very pale blond wood,  and so that's what i'm hoping for. a nice 3/4-inch thick hardwood in every room. but i'm not sure what to do about the kitchen--you know, maple floor, maple cabinets? but that's not what this post is about. it's about the living room. and in the living room, maple flooring. yum. (i should add that i am investigating bamboo--if it's the green answer, it's in, baby.)

we do need some window coverings in there, but i haven't seen anything that inspires me yet. something that is easy to keep clean and dust-free (i loathe mini-blinds for this reason), allows for complete privacy (it's a window straight in from the front porch), and fits in aesthetically with the midcentury modern look of the rest of the room. this will take some thought.

oh, and the other little purchase will be a replacement light fixture--aesthetically pleasing and something that takes compact fluorescent bulbs. again: not seeing anything yet that i love, but i have time. i'm sure i will.

and we'll frame some of our favorites of smartboy's photographs to finish off the room. doesn't sound like a lot of decorating money, which is good, because it'll be a relatively high-dollar room to do structurally (removing the drop ceiling, plastering the old ceiling, probably remedial work on the portions of the walls that were concealed by the drop ceiling, tearing out the walls, and of course installing subfloors, all before we can begin any of this other stuff).