Still busy... I swear!

I know it's been quite a while since we added anything here, but don't be fooled... we have been busy.

We've decided to tackle the back yard, and there's a lot to do. We'll post drawings and other info as we get it, but for right now... I got the barbecue cleaned up and we'll be smoking up some spare ribs on Sunday. :)

ALSO on Saturday June 19th, Haley and I have been asked to give a presentation on local organizations & resources at an event put on by the Architectural Heritage Center in Portland called "Mid-Century Modern and the Recent Past: Documentation and Preservation."

We were also asked to participate in a panel discussion. It's an all-day event and we're really looking forward to it. Here's a link and the low-down.

Rejuvenation is sponsoring “Mid-Century Modern and the Recent Past: Documentation and Preservation” at the Architectural Heritage Center on June 19th, 2010. The Architectural Heritage Center is a non-profit resource center for historic preservation.

Event Summary
What: Mid-Century Modern and the Recent Past: Documentation and Preservation
When: Saturday, June 19, 2010 10:00 am - 4:00 pm
Where: Architectural Heritage Center 701 SE Grand Ave. Portland, Oregon

Cost: $20 (Includes lunch)

More Information: Visit the AHC website or call (503)231-7264

Closet Doors

The first week after we bought the house we ripped out the gold-mirrored, floor to ceiling closet doors in the hallway and promptly threw them in the dumpster! Whew.... But wait. We had nothing to replace the doors with. Consequently, we have been staring at our junk pile in the closet for nearly 3 years. Now, it wouldn't be so tragic except for the fact that the hall closet is prominently positioned in the front hall right behind the glass wall where our tiki fountain focal point sits in the atrium. Doh!
I started my search for door options. Flush panel, floor to ceiling doors were the easiest and most affordable option, but they seem too heavy and dark for the small, dark area at the end of the hall. Hmmmm. Then I found this photo of a shoji screen door design and knew that was an excellent option. Now, where do I get them?

We really like the natural look of the panels in this photo, but most shoji screen closet doors I found have glass panels. Time to get creative!

Several years ago I was given a roll of grass cloth wall paper. (Thanks, Ty!) At the time I didn't know what I would use it for... I just knew that I loved the look and would find a way to use it in the house. Grass cloth paneled doors are just the thing I need for the closet! We contacted our favorite door supplier to see if we could get the doors made without the panels. Then we could make and insert our own panels covered in grass cloth wall paper! Easy.

Apparently, I am developing this nasty habit of asking for things that are nearly impossible to create. And if it can be built, it will cost a fortune! Once my eyes stopped burning from viewing the door frame bids (seriously, ranging from $1400 to $2200 for ONE SET of 60" x 92" closet doors... just the frames...OUCH!) I started drawing up plans. Steve has tools and skills. I knew he could make these frames.

Here's the plan:


Supply List:
6) 3" x 8' Hemlock boards
2) 28" x 88" Masonite boards
2) cans of spray adhesive
1) roll of grass cloth wall paper
1) standard closet hardware kit
1-1/2 inch brads
1/2 inch staples
primer paint
oxford brown paint
utility knife


Simple frame construction. These are fairly light weight so they didn't need to be over-engineered. Steve just toenailed the pieces together with 1-1/2 inch brads.

Primer coat on.

Final coat of Oxford Brown. (2 coats)
Preparing to spray the Masonite and grass cloth with adhesive. (Hint: I had Lowe's cut the Masonite to the exact size I needed. They offer this service at no extra charge and there's no need to get out the jigsaw or table saw at home. Yay!)

Trimming the panels. We cut the wall paper a bit bigger than the Masonite so we could get a perfect edge for trimming.

The grass cloth panel looks amazing!

Attaching the panels to the door frames. 1/2 inch staples did the trick just fine.

Installing the the closet door hardware. This is just basic, bedroom style sliding closet door hardware. We didn't show the metal track we attached to the ceiling, but trust me... it was super easy to hang.

The finished doors in place. I've gotta admit that it's much better than looking at all our junk in the closet... and it's far better than the gold and glass doors that were there when we moved in! We still have to put up a piece of trim to cover the metal track that the doors are hanging from, but that project can wait for another day.


Total cost: $75
Time: About 3 hours labor; 4 hours of paint drying

Yeah, I'm pretty impressed with this one. I never thought we'd be making closet doors, but I never thought we'd be renovating a house from top to bottom either!

Pulling It All Together

Haley loaded up all these pictures. I think they rock... it always surprises me how well our home photographs. Anywho, I'm not sure what to say about these except, enjoy the eye-candy!

Dining Chairs

Well, the Portland Mid-Century Modern League is having the monthly meeting at our house. While it's kinda daunting to be faced with a deadline where tens of critical eyed MCM savvy folks will be moseying around our place, it's sure lit a fire under our collective cabooses.

During the last three weeks we've made a list, divided it into three categories:

1- Would be nice to have finished

2- Really should have this finished

3- Absolutely MUST be finished

One thing in category #3 was refresh the finish on and recover the seats on the dining room chairs.

We like the chairs. They're Heywood Wakefield and they match the table and hutch. But what's the deal with those covers? Ack!

Luckily, this seems to be a fairly straightforward project and between Haley, DD and me, we managed to get the chairs looking presentable in one evenings time. If you're in a similar situation, buck up... it's easy.

Step #1, remove the seat bottoms. (Ours required the removal of three screws per chair.)

Step #2, cut the new fabric to approximate size. You can trim things after the stapling. The padding was still pretty good, so we didn't take off the old fabric.

This is a perfect time to break out the #0000 steel wool, Murphy's Oil Soap and a little Restore-A-Finish for the scratches.

DD folded the new fabric around the edges, stretched things out fairly tight and went to town with the stapler. (Because I'm a tool junkie, we have an air stapler/brad nailer. A regular hand powered stapler will do just fine, but doesn't make that cool "Pa-choonck!" noise.)

I screwed the seats back onto the chairs and.....

...Ta-Da! They turned out quite nice! A quick, immensely satisfying job!

Now... what's next on the list....

Wall Unit Project

4 or 5 months ago, I found a Craigslist ad for a Danish Wall Unit. Their price was very reasonable, but it was in Battleground, WA. Now, I'm not really from Oregon and unless we're talking Tri-Cities or Seattle I kind of think everything else in Washington is just on the other side of the Columbia. I now know that Battleground isn't really close to Gresham.

I contacted the sellers, arranged a time to come look at the wall unit and hit the road after work. I guess it really wasn't THAT far, but the hour drive on a dark rainy night took me by surprise.

When we finally found the place, the wall unit was in pieces, stacked up in a back bedroom in a doublewide and I was ready to leave. BUT upon closer inspection, the pieces were very nice, the hanging mechanism was ingenious, and the sellers dropped the price $300 before I even started any haggling. Soon we had the whole thing packed into the back of the truck and were heading home.

The kitchen remodel was job #1, so we stored the wall unit until last weekend when Haley said, "Hey, let's set up that wall unit today." There are LOTS of pieces. You must make sure things are level AND make sure the shelf hanger holes line up perfectly. It was kind of intimidating.

Here's what we did first:

We cleared out the room and did a sort of test run on the floor. We looked at a few design arrangements on the Flickr Mid-Century Danish Wall units and storage Group to get some configuration ideas and decided this would work best for our needs (stereo, record storage, bookshelf, tiki mugs...).

I thought that hanging the vertical wall supports was going to be really difficult, but it turned out to be pretty easy. Just used a level and 2" long screws. Since the wall is T-111 siding, we didn't have to mess with stud finders or sheetrock anchors.

The unit came with four long supports, two shorter ones and one corner support. We didn't use one of the shorter supports or the corner support. There are three corner shelves and one good size corner desk, but maybe we'll use those in one of the kids rooms someday. This will work just find for us... for now.

We had to reposition things a few times, but overall, everything fits, looks good and we like it. The Eames chair we picked up in Long Beach CA looks great at the desk.

I really like the book/magazine display shelf. Note the Atomic Ranch Magazine and the Julius Shulman book. Both are packed with great eye-candy.

Here it is all set up and ready for books, records, tiki mugs, stereo receiver, speakers....

NOTE: The doors on the upper cabinet are glass. We don't really care for them, so I cut out a couple of pressboard panels, Haley covered them with grass cloth and now they look like they belong. I still need to come up with some way to hide all those electric/speaker wires!

I Hate It When this Happens!

So here's the deal; a year or two ago we picked up this Burke table & chair set at Hawthorne Vintage. The table has a tulip base and the four arm chairs have propeller bases. The cushions are original, but when you turn them over....

...you can see that the original color was orange. We've decided that we like the orange better so why not do what they did and respray them orange. Simple, right?
So with a can of Krylon orange spray paint for plastic in hand, I carefully applied a coat of paint.

I think they turned out pretty dang good. The color's almost an exact match of the original. I managed to avoid any drips or paint puddles. All that was left to do was let them dry overnight and as the Fonz would say, "Sit on it, Potsie."
Ahhhh..... we like this more than the blue.

Now here's where the "I hate it when this happens" thing comes into play. The paint just will not dry. It's tacky. It's been three days now and it's still tacky (tacky as in "Wow, that's sticky!" Not tacky as in "Ewww... that's tacky!"). See... a piece of newspaper stuck to it. YUCK!

Was it too cold? Maybe, but it was over 60º in the house. Was there an issue using plastic paint over the existing paint? Maybe, but I don't know about such things. I know it's not too thick as I was planning a second coat. I'm at a loss.

All I know is now I have to spend a few hours with the cushions and a can of paint thinner and a few hundred paper towels and take off the orange and hope they still look decent.

I hate it when this happens. :-(

Globe Lights 101

First of all let me say that I am NOT an expert on mid-century modern lighting. I'm just a frustrated homeowner that's trying to renovate/restore his home without breaking the budget on every project.

With that disclaimer in mind, let's talk Globe Lights. If you're a fan of mid-century modern design, you're probably a fan of globe lights. They were a popular option with many many architects and home builders, probably most famously with J. Eichler and the 1,000+ homes he built in California. Mr. Rummer stayed true to this design and used globe lights in most of his 400+ Eichler-styled Rummers in the greater Portland area. Our home had them originally, but a previous owner grew tired of them and tossed them in the rubbish bin.

As close as I can tell, most globe lights original to Rummers were 10" diameter globes with low profile dome shaped bases (or canopies... the part that mounts to the ceiling and covers up the wires) with either a heavy-duty cord or pipe connecting to the glass globe. Most were painted white, but some were black.

NOTE: I could be wrong about the diameter... I've seen some that are 8" and other that are 12" or even 16"... but proportionally, I've been happy with the 10" globes in our house.

Although they are not in-stock at Home Depot or Lowe's, for those of us looking for replacements, we have options. Some expensive, some cheap... but they are out there. Here are a few options I've found.

Rejuventation Sfera
These are relatively new to the Rejuvenation line. They currently offer 8" and 16" versions of the classic globe light. They look great, are available in white or brushed aluminum. All the products made at Rejuvenation are top notch quality, but we needed about nine for our house and at $140 each $1,260 seemed kinda high. And we wanted to go with 10-inchers anyway.

SeaGull Lighting

They have 8", 10", 12" and 14" options... but their descriptions aren't the best, I don't know about their quality or what the canopies look like and their 10" ones are of the cord-hung variety. And it looks like they only come in white. Their 10-inchers are $88 each... $792 for nine.

Ikea FADO

They have 16" globes hanging on cord, and some 10" globes that look pretty good... except their canopies look like upside down tea cups, they hang down too far, and every Ikea light fixture I've tried to install is weird.

Craigslist/antique stores

If you only need one or two globe lights, or aren't worried about how well they match (or don't match), this might be your best bet. Many are of the "Hung by cord woven through chain" variety, so you would need to be able to do a little rewiring. But who konws... maybe you'll get lucky and find someone like the previous owner of our home that's looking to rid his Rummer of 9-10 mint condition globe lights. Hey... it could happen.

Ebay/Eichler Forums

Much like Craigslist, it's luck of the draw here. Happy hunting!

Here's what we did

Ikea is close by, affordable, and it was no problem finding 9 that would match. So that's what we did. BUT in my view, there are problems with the Ikea Fado globe lights. Haley and I try to be problem solvers, so here's what we did to alter them so they looked closer to the originals.

1- Take 'em apart.
NOTE: There's a sliding stopper thingie with a tightening screw that's attached to the stock teacup-ish canopy. You'll need to detach it in order to use it with the new configuration. I used channel lock pliers and my awesome, herculean strength to tear it away. (It was really pretty easy. Here's a pic.)

2- Cut 3-inches off the pipe with a pipe cutter (brilliant name, huh?).

3- Buy new canopies. This can be tricky. I wound up going to the lighting department at Hippo Hardware in Portland, rummaging through a few boxes of old light fixture parts and found three that were exact matches, and two more that were close.

4- Mask off and paint everything. As I said earlier, many were white, some were black. We decided we liked black more.

5- Put everything together, connect the wires and the first thing y'know old Jed's a millionaire! (Beverly Hillbillies reference for our non-American-pop-culture educated friends.)