M O D F R U G A L – Page 10 – Budget Minded Modernist

Flea Market Friday

Happy Weekend! Here’s a quick round up of things we saw today at the Flea Market.

This was a small, child sized Barcelona chair made of plaster. If it were concrete, it might be great for a garden/patio, but I think it would disintegrate…it was already chipping away, but quite a fun find.

Kathy ended up taking this little chrome and faux burl formica gateleg table set for her kids to use for creating and crafting without guilt.

There’s always one…..

You know you’re getting old when the Zima sign is “vintage”.

Did I find anything? Well, yes I did…..

One eyed baby owl and mama and a likely knockoff Bertoia. Not a bad day.

For a round up of all Nashville Flea Market trips, go here.

Fun in the Sun

I took a little trip last week to sunny Southern California. The plan was to meet up with my college girlfriends for the weekend, but I decided it was a long way to go for just 3 days….so I flew out a bit early so I could visit the vintage modern mecca of Palm Springs. Oh yes, I did.

Being that this was my first time to PS, I had to pretend to be a hipster and stay at the Ace. I also knew I’d be cold on those desert nights and wanted that fireplace.

When I first arrived, I downloaded the architecture tour map, I thought that would be so much easier than constantly pulling over with my paper map. I had to leave it to download overnight onto my laptop it was so slow. Then, once it was on my phone…

…. that’s how it stayed for the 3 days I was in Palm Springs. I had read some reviews saying this would happen, but with Modernism Week around the corner, I assumed someone was ON IT, right?!

So, I got to be a Peeping Patty the old fashioned way, with my trusty paper map from the visitors center. First stop, Kaufmann House…duh.

I notice this sign, and a version of it at all the popular architectural gems in town. Just in case I didn’t feel like a big enough creep outside their house with my camera, now, I am worried about the “armed response.” That’s always the problem with admiring residential architecture. Even though I am in my car, I still feel like a jerk snapping photos of someone’s house.

I hit up some shops with the fabulous, and funny Summer of Modernhaus!Â We had a blast scouringÂ the thrift and vintage stores, and leisurely lunching like ladies.Â I was thrilled to have a fellow vintage vulture with me to shop the town! We saw some things, and ate and drank some things too. Thanks again, Summer for making the drive to come and play with me!

The place I had hoped to visit the most while there, Modernway, was closed..AGH! So I took these photos like a weirdo with my phone pressed up against the shop window…AGAIN with the boundary issues…

So, that was worth the lack of shame, right?Â I mean, DID YOU SEE THE STUFF?! Yeah, me too.

I found the dealers at the shops fun to chat with, and I even learned something from a couple of them….like I can reupholster my Hannah Morrison chair in regular fabric instead of the fiberglass reinforced stuff from Knoll.Â GOOD TO KNOW!

Would any trip be complete without ogling birds and fawns?

So, I passed up quite the sweet art investment. The iconic Slim Aarons Poolside Gossip shot at the Kaufmann House, blown up to a redonk size. Licensing these prints from the Getty is super expensive, but I have not enough dough or wall space to invest…. but boy, did I want it.

I felt no trip to PS would be complete without a stop at Trina Turk, which did not disappoint.

At the Angel View thrift store.

I managed to find ONE memento that would fit in my suitcase to take home….. Meep Meep!

Back on my own, I got my nature geek on and drove up to Joshua Tree National Park to get a spectacular view of the Coachella Valley and the Salton Sea.

I had budgeted enough time in my day to go to the Integratron for a sound bath, but couldn’t get in, BOO!!! So, I decided that since I enjoyed the view so much, I was going to see it from the other side, so across the valley and up the tramway to Mt. San Jacinto I went.

Let me say one thing about the Palm Springs Tramway. The format does not lend itself well to its clientele. A bunch of snowbirds are not typically going to possess best sense of balance. Cram them all into a tram with me, add a rotating floor, and I’ve not been fallen on and banged on the head that much since an 80’s mosh pit. NOT FUN, for them, or me. But the view from the top made it worth it.

And there you have the Salton Sea in the distance from the other side of the valley.

My last night included a street festival where I got to hang with the Lord of the Cello and Stuart the Pig, as you do.

When I joined up with my girlfriends on the coast, things like this happened, but the rest you’ll never know. Our stomachs ached from laughing that hard. Despite a few days together, I still don’t feel like I got totally caught up with all of the other 8 girls. How crazy is that?!

Adios California. Let’s do this again sometime.

Pantry Update

We’ve made some changes to the pantry plan.

Because I am very lucky to have talented and sensible friends, we have been saved from creating a “stuffed mastodon/hummer” in our kitchen. BEST ANALOGY EVER BTW.

Angie Keesee-thank you!

If you remember, the previous plan looked like this below. The empty end would be filled with cabinets we already own…this is a mock up via IKEA that works with your shopping cart, so you don’t build in what you are not buying. The main reason we had decided to put the high cabs around the fridge was because of the door opening. We had originally wanted to have them on the opposite end of the fridge, but thought moving them was a fair work around at the time….wrong.

It is just too heavy to have it this way, and she drew up this for us.

Much better, right?Â She reaffirmed all my doubts and reservations about the current plan, and I love her plan. This is how we will roll.Â To solve the door problem, we will either remove the door altogether, or perhaps put in tiny solid french doors. We can’t switch the opening to the left side because there’s a lot going on with the mudroom corner on that left side. We can’t do a pocket or barn door either. Quite the persnickety situation. The cabinets to the right of the fridge are the wine rack and the bottom cab we already have.

Now to get our trip to IKEA coordinated…things have come up, and it’s looking like late February before we can go.Â Thanks again to dear Angie and studio aka! Onward!

Horse Hoarding

Only upon reviewing the year, did I realize that 2012 was a bumper year for acquiring vintage art! Mostly large in scale. The horse over my bed, the wall hanging in the dining room, Chinese Girl in the bathroom and the Red Horse in the living room….except that I never told you about him, only here on instagram.

When I brought him home, I also learned that I might need a horse intervention. I don’t really understand how it happened, but it became apparent that I had been subconsciously horse-hoarding. I enjoyed riding at summer camp as a kid, but I was never one of those “horsey people”. What happened?! Look around my house and you’ll see, I’m not just the crazy bird lady, fawner of fawns, but now I’m prone to horse-hoarding. Let’s call it chronic equestrian assemblage, shall we? Sounds less creepy….or maybe not.

Exhibit A is the aforementioned red horse in all its textural yumminess.

The girl at Pre to Post Modern told me that the peeps who do the sets for Nashville were really interested in it, and had taken several pictures. Maybe for the Juliette Barnes house I posted about when it first went on the market?! Sorry….you snooze, you lose.

Then, there’s the others……

Um, yeah.

Year Four

I can hardly believe I just typed that. Four years?! It seems impossible, but there it is. We have been in this house 4 years now, and my little corner of the interwebs has hit the four year mark today.

New readers wanting to play a quick bit of catch up can see previous recaps for Year One, Year Two, and Year Three.

This was the year of getting small things done. Not a lot of big and involved projects = less posting. Sorry about that, but you don’t really want me to show up for nothing, right?

Smaller DIY jobs like a new outdoor movie screen, painting the treehouse, dealing with a drainage problem, protecting the firewood, as well as smaller scale craftiness like a the troll brothers, wooden garland, Dr. Who ornaments, and easy nonslip rug adaptations. I had yet another chance to rehab some chrome with soda, and I knocked out some other vintage chair rehabs here and here.

I closed the e-bay store since I was swamped with other things, and having only 3 items in the shop at a time didn’t make sense for the fee structure of a storefront. I’m still selling things here and there, but from my personal account. I’m always going to be selling items on the side, but I’m looking forward to getting deeper into my ceramics this year…maybe I’ll even have some pieces to sell, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves!

The only major job that got done was the very satisfying accomplishment of the half bath. I can finally stop apologizing to guests about the state of the facilities. I think as I do some revamping around the site, I’ll add the half bath to the tour of before and nows.

We traveled a bit this year.Â Colorado, Smoky Mountains, Maine and England. And we enjoyed being home quite a bit too. Especially the back deck in early summer. We think we have given up on creating a ground level patio off of this area due to the ground slope and drainage, and will eventually build another lower deck. Maybe in the fall, maybe next year?

I did a little guesting around the internet last year…with Tabitha of LifeÂ Ã€ la Mode (here), Gabrielle of Design Mom (here), – outtakes from the DM tour (here) and with Jamie of Owl Really (here). It was a thrill, and an honor to participate in each and every one of them.

I still hit up the flea market every chance I get, and I still love sharing those trips with you. I ADORE hitting far away flea markets with internet friends, don’t you? When I see the title of a post on the Rose Bowl Flea, I settle in with the popcorn…it’s just one of those things.

Huge thanks to all of you, new and old, who take the time to stop in and share your thoughts. I’m always thrilled to hear from you, even if it’s to tell me to get off my ass and “Post the new sink pics already!” I will try to do better in 2013 with timeliness, my volunteer schedule made that really hard this year, but now that I have gotten the hang of those responsibilities, I think I can manage it all better.Â For those impatient with my pitiful posting, you know where to find me……you’ll always get the goods first on Instagram.

Thanks again, and let’s kick off 2013 and do this kitchen thing…OK? I have a fun update on that front coming soon….

Photo taken at Brandy’s house on the 4th of July…so much fun!!

Pantry

Yes. I have an unfinished kitchen. Only looongtime readers will remember my first admission of this problem. I’ll summarize for the rest of you.

We gutted and redid the kitchen ourselves. For a detailed before and after of the kitchen, click here and here. We moved in just as the new hardwoods had been laid throughout the main areas, replacing carpet, linoleum and parquet. It was the the second week of new schools, in a new city for the kids, and we moved into a kitchen-less house. I could see the look of concern on the teachers faces as I picked up the kids.

“So, (Thing Two) tells me you don’t have a kitchen right now! How’s it going?”

“Yes, that’s right, we’re managing, but I think it unsettles him a bit, (he was only 4) we’re just trying to sell it as an adventure!”

They stopped asking after a month. We really did manage pretty well out of the dining room, with camping tables set up as counters and a microwave, toaster and electric kettle. It was late summer so we had the grill as well. Without a downstairs bathtub, the washing up was much more difficult than the preparation of meals.

All that to say, when we finally got the kitchen fully functioning around 6-7 weeks later, we were exhausted and we looked over at the pantry wall and said..we’ll get to it in the Spring. Little did we know that actually meant in the Spring FOUR YEARS LATER.

We don’t have the cabinets, and the wall between the fridge and the shelving/makeshift pantry has to come out. It was a horrible realization that we have to undo some previous work. We had opened up this wall and reinforced it/shortened it because we had thought it was load bearing at the time. It used to extend further into the room and we brought it back flush with the fridge….we had it halfway down already! Arrrrgghhh!!!! We all make mistakes in these kinds of endeavors now and then, but it doesn’t make them sting any less.

As much as we would LOVE to tackle the master bath, it is a much bigger job labor-wise and with the dog out of his crate the last few months, we figure it’s only a matter of time before he decides to get curious about the contents of these shelves while we’re out.

Also, I absolutely CRINGE having these open shelves for our pantry. Especially when people come over, it feels so exposed. Maybe not as bad as having an open medicine cabinet, but I have struggled with it and threatened to hang curtains over it and all sorts ever since it went up.

Ikea finally got with it and enabled the kitchen planner for Macs, which was not the case when we first did the kitchen, so we got to planning, and this is what we’ll have in its most basic form.

The visuals on the new planner aren’t as good as the old ones! It’s really hard to tell what you’re looking at here. The bottom cabs are pull-out recycling and drawers. The space on the end is open because we have 2 cabinets already for those spaces that didn’t work in the main kitchen.

The microwave will move out of the main kitchen to this area of upper cabinets as will the wine rack from above my desk. The fridge will move over to the left a bit to be surrounded by floor to ceiling cabinets.You don’t see handles either since we have several already, so it makes it hard to see the full picture as we cobble together leftovers.

Now to get our schedules sorted for a trip to Ikea…we think we can just do a day trip this time without spending the night in Atlanta. We haven’t measured the car yet, but I think our tallest cabinet will be just a few inches too tall to fit in the SUV and we’ll have to rent a truck or van. The shipping cost with Modernash will be too expensive.

We’ll have to move some electrics as well, so we’ll have to get that started before we install anything. Sheetrock dust and chaos, here we come.