First Month Changes

The 1950's character of this house was buried. It was buried beneath layers of flooring, it was camouflaged in paint colors not appropriate for our tastes, and it was buried beneath colonial-style trim details (see previous post of living room). On the day of the closing we showed up tools in hand after taking possession of the house only a few minutes before. We walked in with a toolbox and painting supplies. She got busy cutting in a nice pale shade of grey that will go lovely with all of our vibrantly-colored mid century stuff. I've always had great luck with Behr paints, so we went with a color called 'swirling water' - it's a nice pale grey - a bit on the cool side, but close enough to white that it will work with our furnishings without being distracting, and still goes quite well with the mid-century ethos. Every room in the house needed paint, and several rooms needed two coats, even with the milkshake-like consistency of the Behr eggshell with built-in primer that  we picked up at home dumpster. Especially that red.


While she started on the walls, my immediate attention was on getting the cat-hair saturated El Cheapo wall-to-wall carpet torn out. I had the first room done in 20 minutes - the 'Spite Room' no longer had it's carpeted floor (see what I mean in the photo!). The second in 40. All of the carpet was out of the rooms and in the garage in about an hour. Then came the slow work - the underlayment, all of the staples, and those damn tack strips. Those things just suck. All tolled it took me (and the kids) about two full days to get all of the tacks and tack strips removed from the rooms. The floors are beautiful! Narrow red oak - around 2.5" wide in every room in the upstairs level. Oak treads and risers on the staircase. It needed some filler in all of the staple holes. It also had straight lines of screw holes across many of the floors that needed to be filled - not sure why they were there? There were a few stains, some scratches, but overall not too bad for nearly 60 years old.

Next, I turned my attention to the living room. The terrible vinyl laminate had to come off. I was worried that it had been slathered with some kind of adhesive, but after taking up the thresholds and prying off the first board, I was glad to see this installation had been done properly - and would be easy to un-install. I had all of the vinyl-wood in piles in the kitchen within another couple of hours. Meanwhile, she was killing the painting. She had it just about completely done in two days. The entire house. Three bedrooms, the living room, the dining room, the upper hallway, and the entire finished part of the basement. It was getting to be move-in time.

Moving in went well - as we did a lot of it over the week we were working on the house. A couple Uhaul loads and the majority of it was done. we put up some neat blinds downstairs that came from Amazon and it's really starting to feel groovy in here already. Here are a couple shots of how it looks today. I think the wall color works great with the furnishings and with the very shaggy, very, *VERY* soft area rug that we've got in the main seating area. The afternoon light blew out the color a bit in these photos, but you can at least get the idea.

The womb chair is an original black-legged early-ish example. The fabric is a vintage re-upholster we suspect, and is probably a knoll boucle in chartreuse. If you've never sat in a womb chair - it really is that comfortable. The credenza is a McCobb piece - an amazing present from my wife! It's in really great shape. The square lamp on the right side of the credenza is a quite rare Laurel lamp - that was a present to her from me. The coffee table is also a McCobb - we have quite a bit from Paul - a couple of nice dressers as well. The tall lamp in the corner is a MASH surgical lamp that the wife found in Riverside, CA. I stripped and re-wired it. If you ever watch MASH, look at the operating room lamps next time. I'm not kidding - this is a MASH surgical lamp! The couch was a vintage find I scored off Craigslist for $50 bucks while living in California. I miss the CA Craigslist - amazingly active! It was upholstered in an off-white cool woven wool. More on the couch in a future post.

The orange chair I've had for 4 or 5 years. It was originally clad in football-brown vinyl when I picked it up from the ebay seller in San Diego. Got a steal on it. But... I ended up paying nearly $500 (plus fabric) to have it reupholstered! Turns out it is actually a very rare example of Folke Ohlsson's early work. It's a 'Sonet' lounge chair, model 4410 that Folke Ohlsson (swedish) designed for Fritz Hansen (danish) in 1958. As far as I know, these chairs are very uncommon. I've seen 3 or 4 on fleapay in the last several years, and a handful on firstdibs. I had it covered in a short orange boucle made by Momentum Textiles called 'Boom', and the color is 'Zeal'. I really dig the color. If you're ever looking for some pretty good deals on fabric to recover a vintage modern piece, modern-fabrics.com is the place to go. We've bought a lot of yardage from them and they're great to work with and the prices are very nice also.

The room still needs a few things, and we need to hang some art. I'm watching an amazing Rya rug right now that would look awesome in this room. More later.