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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Palm Springs/Camera Found!

I found my camera this afternoon and was able to free my photos from my memory card. This is what happens when you stage your house, go on vacation, never unpack, show your house a bunch and keep it 'for-sale' ready, move your stuff into storage for a month, move to a new province, don't unpack for a month. I was starting to think the camera had been lost forever, but there it was in the bottom of a small box with some baking supplies, right where it belongs.

Anyway, on to Palm Springs. We spent a 10 days in Palm Springs this spring with my family, and it was mid mod marvellous! I had joined the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation (they have a free membership option) before we left to get the low down on the architecture of the area, but it's easy enough to pick up a pamphlet in town for a self guided tour.

Here's what we saw:
Palm Springs City Hall

Detail of City Hall, love the turquoise against the sky blue.


I loved the cut out! The shape was echoed on the facade with slanted cylinders that provided shade to the windows. Didn't get a picture though.

This is the old police station:


I love the mustard color.


This is the outdoor waiting room, the room is similarly mirrored on the interior with terrazzo floors if I remember correctly.

More pics to come!

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Before and After- Floors

Before


In between


After


The highest gloss finish seemed like the best decision at home depot but now that we have it on the original floors don't look very glossy anymore! I'm sure Hank will get to work on taking down the shine with his toe nails. He's helpful like that.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

He said She said

Today I went to the King Koin laundromat to wash our comforters. I was impressed with the King Koin, super clean and had helpful staff, but that's off point. On the way to the King Koin I got turned around and ended up by the Mennonite Central Committee thrift store where I thought I saw some Danish modern teak furniture in the window. That turned out to be a mid-c hallucination (happens to me all the time), but I did wander in and find a Sunset decorating book for recreation rooms. Of course I had to buy it since I am furnishing a rec room right now. Thumbing through I found some awesome pictures of what I call "Man Rooms" also know in the Sunset book as "Studies". Since Bill loves a good man room I pointed this one out to him.


Me: Hey! Check out this awesome man room, it's like the ultimate man room! (pointing at picture in book).

Bill: Yeah it's pretty cool. (trying to endure one more decorating conversation)

Me: Check out the awesome fire place!

Bill: Yeah... it's cool

Me: Ooh look at those cool Navajo rugs... and (laughing) look at the gun rack.

Bill: (Interest piqued) I was actually thinking about that today.

Me: (Surprised) Vintage Navajo rugs?!?! Cause I was totally thinking about that today too!!! You should totally get some, they would look awesome! Have you seen Dale Chihuly's studio? He has an awesome collection of rugs.

Bill: What?!... No. I was thinking about guns.

And here I thought we were having some sort of Vulcan mind meld about vintage rugs! In Bill's defense though he did find two awesome danish modern teak chairs at the antique sale this weekend. Unfortunately they had been sold. But the antique guy recognized us and asked for our email, since he had seen us at some other shows (and since I am physically unable to shut up about our retro reno, he nick named us the Retro people). He is going to email us when he does estate sales that have our style of decor. And.... he is going to nose around a bit when he does his estates to find us some vintage kitchen cabinets!





Friday, July 16, 2010

What's been shaking and the Bungalow

We have been busy! In the past week and a bit Bill and I have:

  • Dug up three dead rose bushes and one tree (by we I mean Bill)
  • Successfully turned 30 (me)
  • Purchased a white leatherette vintage sofa bed for the spare room.
  • Rented truck to pick up said couch.
  • Discovered Harvest Haven a great organic market far close to Lethbridge.
  • Built a fence and gate.
  • Unpacked almost all of the boxes.
  • Visited the farmers market.
  • Introduced Hank to the neighbours. (involves cheese and playing fetch)
  • Weeded rose gardens.
  • Trimmed the rose bushes.
  • Worried excessively about the lawn and the possibility of fairy rings. (Bill)
  • Test driven an old truck. (still in the air, I like it but Bill is more practical about things like reliability)
  • Played Mario on Wii. Thanks Mom & Dad, Stephanie & Andre!
  • Realized that we gave away the iron before we moved.
  • Decided on MDF slab cabinet fronts.
  • Decided on Formica for the countertops

  • Found an awesome dog park
  • Fell in love with this pendant chandelier from rejuvination.com

Here is a picture I took of the roses. I still can't find my camera! But the iphone camera is not too bad.

Tomorrow we are going to an antique show and I am going to make pie filling for the crusts I made this afternoon before it got too hot to bake.



Sunday, July 4, 2010

Heavy Goose or Dolphin?

Paint color names always crack me up. At one point when I was working at the ACAD library, my coworker and I looked up how a person gets the job of naming colors. Turns out it involves a marketing degree. It would be a pretty cool job.

I decided to go with subtle grey tones on the walls of this house. After checking out this super cool website Retro Renovation. I stumbled upon a post about mid century colors done by California Paints. California paints has a 20th century pallet with authentic period colors. Including the 1930's-40's, which would be a good resource for another gal I know who just bought a house, Stephanie I'm talking to you!


I started to look for colors that were close to Modern White, Organic White, Post War White, Conservative and War Weary. Because we don't have California Paints in the bustling metropolis of Lethbridge, Alberta, I looked for similar's at Home Depot. Instead of buying the gallons and then changing my mind later, causing the vein in Bill's head to pop out, I planned ahead and bought samples! Responsible!

*Please excuse the terrible quality of the photo, my camera is in a box so all my pictures are taken with my iPhone.

We ended up choosing the first (Silver Drop) and second (Heavy Goose) colors (going left from right). They are the closest to Post War White and Organic White. The third color which I loved in the sample and the one that is closest to Conservative, looks really flesh toned with the warm wood, and really grosses me out. And Bill nixed the last one since it was too dark for his liking.

We chose Behr's-Silver Drop for the living room and hallway.

And Martha Stewart's-Heavy Goose for the Bedrooms.


It's difficult to tell the difference on the computer screen but Heavy Goose is a darker cooler grey, while Silver Drop is lighter and warmer.

Here is a pic of the bedroom wall (I've purposefully cropped it so you can't see our bedroom, Bill and I are living like the Bouvier Beale's right now). Done in the Heavy Goose.

And a pic of the office done in the same.

Once it is on the Martha Stewart paint line looks nice, but I would not purchase the brand again. The coverage is not great and it's kind of gummy. I have a bit of sanding to do in a few areas. However I really like the the Martha Stewart palette and the chips are true to color and laid out nicely. If the paint formula was better I would be all over this brand. But won't use it again. I might just get the chips color matched into another formula.

Here is our living room in Behr's Silver Drop in a matte finish. The Home Depot guy was hesitant to give me a matte finish as you have to let it cure at least a month before you wash the walls. I assured him I would restrain myself from washing the walls for July.




Saturday, July 3, 2010

Goodbye 80's carpet, hello hardwood!


Probably the only thing more boring than ripping up carpet is reading a blog post about ripping up carpet, but since I am a woman obsessed here is the play by play on how we did this. I don't have a before picture of the carpet prior to it being ripped out because I was at Home Depot, purchasing a paint samples when Bill pulled it up (convenient, I know!) But here is a picture of the carpet in our carport. I'm sure the neighbors love us. As you can see the carpet was a lovely shade of dusty rose and featured a marbled pattern in the pile. Yuck!







Underneath it we found a few surprises, one that the house used to have a faux fireplace,
and the bedroom had underlay glued to the floor and then half scraped up at some point, when I assume the previous owners decided it was too much work and carpeted over it again.
We were hoping for the best when we pulled up the carpet, in the living room with the exception of the area that used to be covered with the faux fireplace all we had to do was pull staples (my job) and removed the carpet tack boards (Bill's job). We are looking for a retro fireplace mantle to put in place of the old one, but for now we will just move our couch over top. Problem solved.

The glue was another issue though, we ended up sanding the floors down with a square sander rented from home depot and then used a belt sander for small bits. The glue came pretty good but there are still a few black bits that even a wire brush couldn't get. We'll address that situation by strategically placing furniture over top of those parts. Bill did all the sanding, it was a long and sweaty day for him.

After we sanded we stained the floors Colonial Maple it was the closest match we could find to our original floors. I did the staining and after few coats it turned out pretty good.

Our stain featured the lovely Lady Varathane.
Wonder how she stained the floor in roller skates?

Here is a much less glam version of Lady Varathane.
Personally I think the unwashed hair, rubber gloves and knee pads make the look.

After staining the floors we did a top coat of high gloss varathane which stunk so bad we decided to come out the the Crowsnest Pass to stay with my parents. I'll be posting the after pictures in a few days.