Sorry, fan. I didn't mean to desert you.

Well, obviously i lack devotion to my blog. It has been a long time since i bothered to even open it up.....but i have done some things that merit a post or two. I will get the camera out this weekend and do so, just to show how a couple of these projects were wrapped up. But in the meantime, take a look at another blog that is hysterical. I have seen pictures that made me wonder what marketing genius was taking them and thinking they would help sell a house, but these operate on a completely different plane - - - - one that is far lower than any i have seen, yet oh-so-parallel. lovelylisting, indeed.

Pocket Door Time

I finally found a carpenter who would take on the pocket door project for the powder room/half-bath in the entryway. Just to remind you of the context, here is a picture of what I started with:

A teeney-tiny bathroom with a door that would not even open all the way - it would hit the sink and stop short of opening all the way by a few inches.

Unacceptable.

So I took out EVERYTHING - stripped it down to the subflooring, changed the light fixtures, sink, toilet, paint colors, medicine cabinet, flooring - you name it, it was removed and replaced, as you can see in the pictures here:

But that still left a new problem with the door. The old door would have been able to close, but, damn, I just didn't want to rehang it in this cool new space. The room is so small that the door would be a significant ugliness. So we bit the bullet and are paying to have a pocket door installed. It just wasn't going to be right to do anything less.

So the old door frame is gone, and i have already missed my opportunity to photograph part of the house's skeleton. The pocket door frame has been installed and the sheet rock is up, taped, mudded, sanded and ready for paint already. This guy rocks. The painter starts tomorrow, and the door will be installed before the end of the week!

I am planning to get a facelift

We went and talked with the designer who is coming up with a plan for residing and reroofing the house. Since it will get an entirely new skin, we want to add a little drama. The front of the house looks like we live in a hobbit hole at best, in the hobbit's garage at worst. The siding and roof are in bad shape, though not leaking. He has come up with a very cool entryway addition with some pretty exciting posts and beams, with a metal roof and board & batten siding. We also asked him to incorporate some stacked stone facing, and he has lots of it in more places than I had thought of, so that is a big plus. We had a bit of a problem imagining exactly what this might look like with the actual materials, so he is going to work up the design drawings a bit more with some color adjustments, and also a couple alternatives for materials. But I did some surfing and found a blog with some nice examples of these materials, so now I am starting to get it. Here are two paticularly nice pictures from that blog, with all the elements he showed us, just not in the same configurations.

Our windows don't open out like the ones below, but this is a very nice example of the types of materials and structures we will probably incorporate into the changes to the facade. He has proposed using cabling like this for the railings on the decks, which i also love.

I found a "Better Homes & Gardens" specialty magazine called "Exteriors" (they have one for every topic I can thing of) that has some other interesting variations along this same theme. After I show these to my husband and get a yes/no vote on the options, I will go back to the designer and see if we can finalize the plans.

Then we'll need to get bids.

Gulp.

Even an ancient dog can learn new tricks

Just in time for the Beijing Olympics: here is a link to a great New York Times article about home renovation in China. It has shining examples of how you can blend the very old and the new to create an incredible environment. Inspiring!

I want to live here

Here is a very interesting site on bathroom fixture design. It is not every day that a showroom embraces minimalism, rather than cramming every sample down your throat.

Down to the last details in two bathrooms.........

I visited my mom and sister in Indiana over the weekend, and it came to my attention that I have not posted the progress on the powder room in the entryway and the bathroom in our guest bedroom. So here is a the powder room with lights, mirrors, towel bar, etc., all installed..........


The to-do-list for this bathroom is down to patching the grout in a couple spots, and there is a carpenter that will start on the pocket door this week - yay, finally!

And here is the replacement faucet for the guest bathroom, flanked by my exciting find - - - glass soap dish and water tumbler mini-shelves (ordered from www.atgstores.com) that are such a fine match for the sink. You can get a better sense of the iridescent quality of the backsplash tiles in this picture, too. I bought the last of the tiles from www.naturalstoneoutlet.com, so they no longer have them on their website.

And notice also the sleek drain pipe. It takes something that is so functional and turns it into a sculptural detail. I never thought I would be so admiring of a piece of plumbing. My plumber has temporarilly connected the water supply lines with brass fittings, but has ordered chrome, which he will install the next time he is working on another project. The sink, faucet, and drain pipe are all from ModernDanish.com, so if the hot links to the individual pieces don't work, just go to their homepage and browse. It is so worth it.
Here is a picture of the light fixture. There is a new exhaust fan with ceiling light, too, so now there is more light overall in the room. That ceiling light allowed me to turn off the lights in the 3-light fixture so I could get a decent photograph. The only things left to do here are 1) install the toilet paper holder, 2) finish the floor, and waaayy off in the future we will replace the shower with a real shower pan and tile walls. When we do that, I want to cut a small window to let some light into the bathroom from the adjacent closet, which actually has a window in it.

Time out to welcome readers of LiveModern

Welcome to my blog! I found LiveModern when searching for shogi-screen doors. This is a saga about renovating a house that was modern in 1978. But just like that space odyssey mission to Jupiter that was due to arrive in 2001, the place was freeze-dried soon after launch. It has been revived from that state, and is slowly reanimating as I move from room to room renovating the life back into it. It is a great house on a splendid lot in a pleasant neighborhood in a sleepy little university town in beautiful part of western Virginia - in a word, it is worthy. While out-dated now, it will live on eternally modern if I have anything to say about it. . . . . and I can't shut up!

Please take a bit of time to go back to the first entry where I launched this operation so you will have the context for what I am doing here, and I hope you will find it interesting and maybe even inspiring. My philosophy is that the world would be a better place if we would all get busy retiling our bathrooms, kitchens, and any other appropriate surface we can find. Stone and tile are among the most beautiful materials on the planet, so earthy and organic even when shiney and synthetic. These materials will play a major role in my renovation as it evolves over the next few years.

So browse or study as your schedule permits, and feel free to send me your comments, questions (even if they start out with "why in the hell.......") or suggestions, because this is my new obsession in life.

Thanks for your time!

p.s. every surface is or can be made appropriate!