Our Latest Acquisition

K and I went shopping this weekend for some furniture and stumbled upon this little gem. We knew we needed a credenza / media center and after much looking and debate we finally settled on one that we both love.
We picked this up from the Atomica guy near Deep Ellum. Man they don't make them like they used to. When you open the drawers everything is made from solid, high quality wood - no veneering whatsoever.
We are trying to work on a mod style in our house and we are discovering a difficulty we could never have imagined. Apparently we like to put stuff on everything and once I set the blue vase on the credenza we were stuck. If you put anything else with it things start to go downhill. So we are trying to work on our minimizing skills - something hard to do we are finding. But we are enjoying the attempt.

Of course the wood wall behind is going to change but truthfully I don't feel that the two woods conflict with one another that much. But we do want to brighten the room as a whole and help set off the furniture. So there will be more changes down the line.
As soon as I put the credenza in place I suddenly - and perhaps for the first time - felt like an adult.




Sedona has discovered her new favorite spot in the house.

Simple Changes

These are a few of the simple changes that need to be made. K is looking into ways to conceal the flowery tiles above - alternatives to chipping it out [dangerous as you might damage the tiles around it] or painting it.
The light switches are, of course, a very simple switch. But we have to change out the actual switches as they are that ugly tan color. We are thinking of going with metallic silver switches - something other than simple white. But if that doesn't work then white it is!




These are my favorite curtain hooks. They are in the art storage room / former nursery-mural room.

Lamest Before and Afters Ever Plus Some Other Stuff

AFTER

BEFORE

Yes I swapped out the mailbox - country for gray cool. An improvement. It felt good to twist a screwdriver again.



Sedona's new watering hole.

BEFORE:


AFTER:

Yes..... I removed the louvered doors. I was left exhausted.


Boxes left after one night of unpacking. There are still boxes to go through but they are down to a more respectable number.



Jerome is proud of his new collar - He disappeared for a day and scared us half to death. And then as cats will do he magically reappeared as if nothing had happened and demanded to be fed and petted. And he has liberated himself from his collar as well.


I plopped my keys down one day and this is how they landed - pretty cool I thought.



The Studio: Day One. It feels good to get the studio back up and humming. I've had a couple of good working days. Today was a little lackluster for some unknown reason.





K did a super job on the lawn - here is part of her job.

Plop Design and Some Other Interesting Finds

Before


After
I know it isn't much. I call it 'Plop Design' because you essentially plop down what you own in place of what was there before - no paint or any altering of the space other than with your belongings. Of course we will do much much more but until we get unpacked and organized this will have to do for the moment. At night the area looks like a David Lynch set which is kinda cool.


Sleeping cats - The door is typical of the house - a Texas country ranch [as in farm] style.

These two houses were an interesting find while driving around the other day. They look like a contemporary take on Mid Century Modern design. Purists will probably be horrified by these structures. I am not so stringent and think that they are impressive - more of an homage to design of the 50's than a post modernist interpretation.

Greetings and Salutations

The house is now officially ours! Sorry for the delay. We had a bit of a paperwork snafu and had to close a day later than planned. The paperwork wasn't our fault but it put a lot of stress and strain on the whole situation. But now that is all in the past.

Sorry for the delay in posting as well. The internet guy doesn't come until Sept 7th which seems like a ridiculously long time. So I have borrowed K's laptop and I am writing from my neighborhood Starbucks catching up on emails and posts and whatnot.

We are in our space. Our belonging are all sequestered somewhere in the USA as they have not arrived yet from our trip back east. This too seems to be a long wait; I cannot really do much. All my tools - my entire studios setup - is on the truck and unavailable. So K and I are left to loafing like a couple of junkies on an air mattress in the den with the TV at the foot of the bed. It is a sad scene really. The cats are adjusting slowly.

So I spend a lot of time walking around the house familiarizing myself with all the dings and cracks and problem situations that I find that will eventually have to be addressed. There are a lot of cutesy country light switches that need to be dealt with. In fact all the light switches and sockets must be changed out completely as they are all that awful tan color and all the sockets are the two prong type that need to be swapped out for the grounded three prong variety. I sense a great deal of re-wiring in my future. All 29 sockets must be changed and I can't remember how many light switches not to mention ceiling fans that must go and other lighting issues.

The more we look the more we see things that have to be addressed. Now would be the best time to work on the house as it is essentially empty. But I have no tools to deal with the situation. Also - even more frightening - is that I find that in all my inactivity over the last few weeks/months I have grown exceedingly lazy. Now I have never been one to bound out of bed at 6am and grab a socket wrench and greet the day with a major home improvement project. No matter how much I would like to be that guy I never have been that guy. I like to tell myself that I could become that guy. It takes two weeks to form a habit but only two days to break on. We are all fighting an uphill battle there.

I will try to post more and once my studio is set up I can easily post some photos and share some thoughts - especially about the wall colors that are already up. More on that in my next post.
C

Thank You All For Checking Out the Site

Hey everyone I just wanted to say a quick thank you to everyone who has checked out the blog and subscribed to get email updates. We are in the process of shutting down our house in NC - K arrives tonight [hooray] - and will get to the new joint permanently at the end of the week.

I wanted to say a special thanks to the people checking in from overseas as well - Berlin and Kassel in Germany, Hellegom in the Netherlands, and Zagreb in Croatia. But a general thanks to everyone.

I hope to include aspects of our new life in a new city as things develop. Some of you may remember The Weekly Walker days of my original blog a long time ago. I may bring up some facets of that blog but at the moment I hoping to keep it about the new house and then expand to the new city.

Talk to you all soon
C

Introducing K and Her iPhone Photos of the House

Front of the house - Glad to know we have security, I had no clue. My sweetie K took all these pics on her new iPhone and zapped them to me thanks to that new technology called: 'The Internet.' We are really excited to get in and tinker away. We are glad there aren't any total reconstruction projects except maybe the den. Anyway this gives you some more looks at the place.


Master bath - Sorry for the darkness, all the pics were taken with an iPhone so the colors and brightness may be off a little.


Master bath featuring gray tile and flowery insets. Hmmm.


Second bath - The cabinets are at an angle in - so you don't stub your toes I suppose. The tile is a cream/butter cream color, not white. I like the floor.


More tile


Better view of the bath.


The minty sink - good stuff.


The minty loo.


The minty tub.


You can see how the cabinets angle in a little bit better here.


A final bathroom shot.


We have 12 of these things in each corner of each of the bedrooms. They are molded plaster so they aren't going anywhere. If anyone knows anything about these things or have any suggestion about how to cover them that would be greatly appreciated. Corinthian column capitals aren't my favorite look but that's cool. Things like these are what led us to believe the realtor when she said this was the model house with all the bells and whistles. I doubt everyone in the neighborhood ordered these things.


Built in planter/bookshelf in the front room. This is what I mean about the house having little flourishes of MCM but is still a MCR at heart.


Front door - a little too Spanish for my tastes but we'll see.


Kitchen - linoleum floor - will have to be dealt with eventually.



The curly cue wood tracery is actually growing on me a little.


Kitchen again.


This is the front entryway tile that runs all the way to the den. It actually looks better in this photo. In real life it looks more like linoleum. This will be a tough decision what to do with this. Some of it looks a little cracked so the decision might be made for us. We'll see.


Back yard - not big but habitable. And unlike our old backyard I won't have a junior coronary mowing it.


Driveway has a turnaround when you back out of the double garage.


Back entrance into the den - concrete.


Back fire pit area and back fence.


Ceiling patterning and the plaster molded crown molding. All the living areas and bedrooms have this ceiling treatment - except the den which is, groan, popcorn. We'll have to address that for sure. Asbestos anyone?


Front bay window with a low planter - this is another bell and whistle. I don't know if anything would grow back there.


One of the plant 'balls.' They aren't really symmetrical. This one is raised and the other one grows from the ground. They will be addressed too. I like that we have a light there to play with / swap out.


The bedroom mural is in an infants room. This will be the studio so the mural might actually stay around as I cover it to work on my paintings. The cat may stay for a bit.


It is fun to find things in your new house.


This is the original timer switch for the attic / night air fan. Basically you open your windows at night and turn it on and it sucks out the hot air and pulls in cool air. The timer turns it off sometime in the night. When you get up you close the windows to trap in the cooler air. Pretty cool if it works.


Another molding shot with ceiling patterns.


Built in / planter with entrance way tile.


Front room / dining area. We may put the table in front of the front window as there is more space for a full sized table as opposed to the dining nook where the chandelier [which will be gone soon] is.