The new addition

I have a lot of updating to do, since the last post we've moved out of our horrible slum apartment in the Madison Punk neighborhood, and moved everything into our new house. We started unpacking, and as of this posting, the house is pretty functional...especially if you don't look in the garage and notice all of the unpacked boxes stacked out there. I'm especially happy to report that the kitchen was unpacked, set up, and produce a full curry dinner by the third night after moving in. However, a week after we moved in, we drove across the state to Spokane, spent a romantic night at the Fairfield Inn (including dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory), and came back with a new addition to the family...

Introducing ARDBEG!

Here he is, all 3.3 pounds of wiener adorableness.

 Just to make this post house-related, note the cork flooring in the kitchen and den! It was installed by the previous owners, it's no original, but it's still consistent with the mid-century period. I love it, it's warm and sort of soft. Perfect for standing on for hours while simmering a curry, or sitting on while you're playing with a puppy.

Ted isn't quite sure what to think of him yet, but he seems pretty enamored with him.

Covering up the floor

Matt is piecing together the living room carpet. For the living and dining room we chose a "felt" carpet called "House Pet."

So we spent lots of money having the lovely white oak floors refinished, and the next logical step is to cover them up! Well, not really. But we knew we definitely wanted area rugs in the living and dining rooms. The dilemma was that we wanted nice-looking rugs but were unwilling to spend a lot because one episode of giardia (Ted, I'm looking at you) or a dish of lamb vindaloo too close to the edge of the table...and the rug is ruined. Solution? FLOR carpet tiles! Disclaimer: In no way do I benefit from extolling the virtues of FLOR or providing a link to their site, I just love the product that much. We designed and ordered our rugs online, even ordering the tiles from our apartment in Paris.

Always the critic, Tessa weighs in with her opinion.

 They were inexpensive, compared to area rugs of the same size. My favorite thing is that if a tile gets dirty, you just pick it up and wash it in the sink with water and dish soap. If it's really really dirty (again, Ted, I'm looking at you) you simply toss it and order a replacement...for $10 to $20 per tile, a lot easier on peace of mind and the pocketbook than a whole area rug getting ruined. Plus the variety of styles and colors seems endless and it's really fun to get creative and mix and match.

The wieners agree that carpet tiles are more comfortable than slick, cold hardwoods. And if wieners know anything, it's comfort.

Oh, and if you care (or pretend to care) about being green, many of their styles are apparently eco-friendly. The "house pet" style is made of 80% recycled materials. That was a nice benefit, and I could pretend to be smug and say that was important to us, but to be honest, my biggest concern is ease of stain removal. Or failing removal, camouflage of said stain. I have dogs, and I'm clumsy.

The felted appearance and the simplicity of the design seemed to fit in with our mid-century modern theme, and I think it's neutral without being boring. Thoughts?

Dining room.

Carpet in the den, "Morning Late."

Finished living room carpet. Note the awesome lamp Barb found at an estate sale and fixed up for us.

Study

This is my favorite corner of the house so far, I love the warmth of the color with the light from the windows and the views of the trees and the yard. This will be Matt's writing den and home to all our bookshelves. I'm thinking of roller shades for the windows.

Before: Kind of a chilly blue/lavender thing going on in here.

Matt and Barb, hard at work.

After: "Warmed Cognac." IRL it's a bit yellower, less reddish.

Guest bedroom

Before: I wasn't a fan of this purple hazey wall color...

We used Benjamin Moore Aura paint throughout the house, and we loved it. It covered evenly and thickly and after just two coats the color was deep and rich.

After: "Elk Horn" warmed the room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My plans for this room are for a Tiki Guest Suite, in keeping with the retro 50's theme of course. Care to book your stay?

A little paint and varnish

The atomic ranch was essentially turn-key move-in condition, but of course we wanted to do a few things right away to make it ours. First on the agenda was a bit of painting...the previous owners had painted the entire interior but with the exception on two walls in the living room, we didn't like any of the colors they'd chosen. That's putting it a bit mildly...the colors in the kitchen and the den actually made me a little queasy. They had to go. So...as soon as we had the keys in our hands we stopped off at the paint store (shout out to Rita, she was super helpful and friendly)(and thanks to Tiffany for the store recommendation) and picked out our colors. Then we had the hardwood floors refinished too. Here are some of the before and after paint/refinishing pictures. I apologize that the colors are not completely accurate, but lighting, flash, blah blah excusicakes.

The Living Room

Note the sickly yellow/lime, also found in the den and on one dining room wall. It initially bothered me a lot that each wall was a different color, but we stuck with that scheme since the green/gray on the south wall was nice, so we just covered the yellow with a warm "tumeric."

Before: view from dining room, looking west into living room

After

 

Before: Looking east into dining room from living room.

After

Welcome home!

Welcome to the home of the Atomic Wieners. On October 2nd, Matt and I got the keys to our 1954 rambler. We'd been house-hunting for ten days, but in that time frame we'd seen over fifty houses...maybe one-third of those we'd actually toured either with our realtor or at open houses. In the end we narrowed our search down to our top ten, then I made a spread-sheet and assigned numerical values to our criteria: from quiet neighborhood, number of beds and baths, updated kitchens, formal dining area, to a dachshund-friendly yard. And to our delight, the house that we were both the most emotionally drawn to was also the house that scored the highest on our scale: the Atomic Ranch. Matt was drawn to it because it was similar to the house he'd grown up in, where his parents still live. And because it was in a neighborhood he loved and had always coveted. I fell for the house because of the quiet, "Pleasantville" neighborhood and cul-de-sac it was on, the greenbelt and towering trees it backed on to, and the comfortable and practical floor plan. Then the more reading and research I did into the mid-century modern design themes and architecture, the more excited I got about the possibilities for design and decorating that could go into it. Matt and I both love mid-century modern design elements: clean, simple lines, bold but earthy tones, and the retro nostalgia for times when men kept bottles of whisky in their desks at work. Of course Mad Men helped inspire this too. But I must point out that we bought this Corona sofa before the Mad Men pilot was even pitched. Trendy, schmendy.

Anyway, that's the back story. So here we are, keys and paint brushes in hand, ready to turn this little house into our forever-home, full of atomic dreams and wieners (dogs, of course). I created this blog mostly to keep track of my wishlists and ideas and inspirations, my links and photos. But along the way I'll document the process and the befores and afters, probably some follies and hopefully some successes.

Oh, one more thing. We haven't actually moved in yet, because our home-buying adventure was not as ideally timed as we'd have liked (special thanks to you, Henry, and your well-timed Notice to Evacuate, we never liked that rental anyway...) and we've had another adventure, to Iceland and France, planned for many months. So, while the refinished floors cure and the paint dries, we'll be taking a dip in the waters of the Blue Lagoon then whiling away afternoons sipping vin rouge at sidewalk cafes. I'm hoping to have time to update over here while we're away.