M O D F R U G A L – Page 3 – Budget Minded Modernist

HGTV Smart Home 2014

I was giddy to be invited to tour the new HGTV Smart Home here in Nashville and it was a great day out! Looking through my photos, I wish I had been able to get more snaps, but there was always someone else in the room, and as much as we tried to get out of each other’s shots, I found myself focusing on details I was drawn to, rather than trying to get the whole room shot….BUT… HGTV took care of that on their site! To see the whole gallery of photos go HERE.

What makes it a Smart Home?Â “HGTV’s Smart Home boasts the latest in home technology coupled with eco-friendly features and energy-efficient design. Located in the Duncanwood Reserve neighborhood, this English cottage-style residence consists of three bedrooms and four and a half baths and features technology to connect the home’s appliances and devices, giving the homeowner better control over energy use, security, interior climate and lighting.” More details on the technology can be found HERE.

It also has a huge TV in the dining room, which I found odd, but I guess that’s what all the cool kids are doing!?

The home is designed by P. Shea Design, built by Carbine and Associates and the interior design is by Linda Woodrum of TS Hudson Interiors. The HGTV House Planner for both Smart Homes and Dream Homes is Jack Thomasson.

I think all of us took this EXACT same shot…what a cute laundry/dog area! Otto would dig this.

I like the drama the black tile gives to the upstairs bath.

My favorite room was the upstairs den.Â Throughout the house, there are touches of Sherwin Williams Indigo Batik, but this room went all in, and I LOVED it.

The color is washed out in my photo below, but it was much more like above, rich and bright.

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One of my favorite pieces of furniture was this shagreen chest being used as a bedside table.

My favorite piece of art was James Richardson’s “Twin Giants” from York Art.

I love getting to tour houses of ANY kind, from estate sales to open houses, so this was a much needed treat! Thanks for having me!

BTW, in case you didn’t know, you can enter to WIN this home beginning April 15! Details are HERE.

Cabbage is Rolling!

I have the good fortune of coming from a family that manages to find humor in all of life’s crevices; the darkest, dirtiest, scariest recess can’t keep us down for too long, perhaps out of pride, or fear of falling apart, but we can usually laugh our way out of a tight spot.

Over the past week, I have been spending a lot of time in the hospital with my family, and when we were at our most tense, yet guardedly relieved after my father just came through 5 long hours of surgery, we stood in the ICU begging for a flutter of his eyes or a squeeze of the hand, when the voice on the intercom announced, “CABBAGE IS ROLLING! CABBAGE IS ROLLING!”

We looked at each other and started laughing. Did we hear that right? CABBAGE!?

CABG, or cabbage is apparently medical lingo for Coronary Artery Bypass Graft, so the intercom was simply alerting the nurses that another bypass patient was successfully coming out of surgery, while we are giggling like 12 year olds. We are a classy crew.

Irreverent, juvenile, and a little inappropriate? Maybe. But it felt good, and put our situation in perspective. Our triple cabbage, with a side of thoracic aneurism, is still alive, and that’s something to be pretty damn happy about, so we let the tension and fear slowly roll off with each chuckle and belly laugh.

This week has served up a good reminder to myself….no matter how tough it gets out there…embrace my inner 12 year old and look for rolling cabbages….they are there, even if it takes a while to find them.

Besides, I’ve always agreed with Maya.

â€œI don’t trust anyone who doesn’t laugh.â€
â€• Maya Angelou

The Anonymity Thing

The one question that came in on my FAQ post was the one I knew I had to address in greater depth than the comments section – the anonymity thing. When I meet people in person through this site, it almost always comes up… some get it, some don’t and I’m OK either way as long as they respect my wish to remain anonymous.

I naturally have close friends and family members who know I have this site and they mostly interact with me about stuff posted here offline. I think they like their anonymity too!

So why? What’s the big deal? Everyone else has their selfies all over instagram and their blogs, so what’s my problem?

I chose anonymity 5 years ago for many reasons. It’s not because I’m ashamed of how I look- I’m not! I was, however, a little insecure about why anyone would care about my renovation journal, and I didn’t want it to be about ME, but about sharing interests. As a transplant trying to learn my way in this town, I also wanted it to be a way of connecting with my new community. I had never lived in a suburban area before, and I missed the interactions we enjoyed in urban apartments and historic neighborhoods, despite loving our new found privacy. So I guess I was seeking some virtual neighbors.

My choice to fly under the radar, yet still be in a public domain, might be seen as hypocritical by some, and that’s OK..it’s my gig! My blogging has always felt a bit narcissistic, so maybe part of me feels slightly less self centered if I keep my image out of it?

It just seemed if I didn’t try to be everything it would keep things simple.

HA! It has actually been far more difficult to remain anonymous when today, so much social media is connected. My google account wants to connect with my Facebook who wants to connect with EVERYTHING, and it seems like there has to be constant vigilance every time software gets updated because THEY know who I am and they want me to share it ALL by default.

I choose to remain anonymous now because I realized the community I wanted was, and is, there…without having to give it all up! I don’t keep my children’s spaces and faces under wraps because I think predators are stalking us – we just aren’t that interesting – but it’s about respecting them and their privacy…especially as they are getting older. They used to WANT me to put them up on the site, and now they are very glad I don’t, and you can’t “undo” that kind of stuff. I also like to think I am teaching them that the internet can be a wonderful place if you are careful and responsible…but I could really be deluding myself there – I guess time will tell?Â If the Things turn Anthony Weiner > Carlos Danger in their young adulthood, the last laugh will be on me.

BTW, I don’t judge anyone who wants to post their kids online AT ALL – I think it’s great, I know I enjoy following along, and I truly admire them for feeling free enough to do so, it’s just not me/us.

I guess, at the end of the day, I just never thought it mattered. I can only picture the voices of my peeps on NPR and does it stop me from listening? Nope, I nerdily tune in every day (Ari Shapiro is now in London!) and listen along, blissfully unaware with no faces to many of the names….although, Ira Glass is kinda handsome.

Theater of the mind, friends…theater of the mind.

Thank You + FAQ

Thanks so much to everyone who encouraged me to keep this corner of the interwebs open. I really have met SO many great people, both virtually and in real life through this venture and I look forward to meeting many more, so that’s a done deal.

That said, I am planning to reorganize some of the content and decided that it might be time to create an FAQ.

I’ll obviously include the questions I get emailed the most, but figured I might as well open it up while I’m at it!

Q: Whatever happened to that wood slatted compost structure you started 3 years ago?

A: It’s still half built since we realized we might have to move it. #FAIL

But seriously, I will do my best to answer what I can here, and then the most common queries will go up on the FAQ.Â Hit me.

Year Five

Hard to believe. So much has happened in the past five years. The difference in having children aged 4 and 9,Â who are now 9 and 14 – it boggles my mind. They were babies when we moved to this city, and now they are big boys, helping with projects and more present in many ways, yet more distant in others. I have not been here much this year, perhaps because of the subconscious awareness of how little time I feel I have left with them?Â Another five years and my nest will be half empty!

I always debate whether to keep the site going at this time of year….When I started Modfrugal 5 years ago, Instagram didn’t exist and Twitter was only 2 years old. So much about how we communicate and connect with each other has changed, and sometimes I feel like this site is a dinosaur. My main source of sharing is still through Instagram (@modfrugal), but I will keep it since some things just need a little more detail than 140 characters and a single photo can provide…despite the fact that few people seem to have the time to read blogs anymore.

While the renovations are so few and far between now, there’s still work to be done, but the timeline is just more ambiguous. We are still dying to redo our master bath, so much so that in our desperation for a good warm soak, we rigged up a makeshift bathtub on the back deck last Summer! I only now realized I never posted about it. A stock tank from Tractor Supply, and a little plumbing savvy brought us a hot water soaking tub on the edge of the forest.

Now if we can just get something like this going inside! Winter is when you crave a hot soak the most, but going out there in the freezing cold with an uninsulated tub has not drawn me out yet this season.

After 2 trips to the Atlanta Ikea, we finally got the pantry installed – it was the project that seemed to hang over us for the past 5 years, and once we got started, it dragged on for most of the last 9 months as well.

For the most part though, we spent as much of this past year outside that we possibly could, enjoying what we have managed to accomplish so far. Lots of al fresco dinners, family bike rides, movie nights, and lots of deck time. Several camping trips (and how we pack it all in) and local excursions Tims Ford, Cumberland Caverns/Bluegrass Underground, Land Between the Lakes, Fall Creek Falls, Cashiers/Highlands, that Fall Creek Falls Do-Over and Cataloochee, kept us on the road this year, with the exception of my quick jaunt to Palm Springs.Â We are still committed to checking out at least 1-2 Tennessee State Parks a year, so that trend will not wane.

The rest of our projects were mostly maintenance based like re-staining all the decking and revamping the butterfly chairs.

As for screen time – I finally gave this site a makeover, and started a new site, A-Frame Living. Plus, I am still very involved at Thing One’s school, which will be Thing Two’s school next year and there is a website redesign there in my near future as well. Phew!

We’ll see what 2014 brings! One thing I do know is that a sale will happen. I need to make room in the garage for us to set up a corner for a mini pottery studio, so some things need to go and I’m in a paring down and minimizing phase right now – which is good news for anyone wanting to shop. I just have to figure out where and when.

For those who still come visit over here now and then – thanks for saying hi! I know how busy we all are and I appreciate the effort it takes to engage in media these days. I have the best readers who send wonderful emails and share their projects with me. Let’s see what we can get done this year – I can’t wait, and hope to see you around the interwebs!

Pantry Done!

This has been one of our more embarrassing renovations time-wise. It’s taken over 5 years to get this done, but it’s FINALLY off the list. To see all posts related to the pantry, click here.

To recap in brief, we gutted and rebuilt our kitchen when we closed on the house 5 years ago, but left the other side of the kitchen like this, thinking we’d get to it within a year. That didn’t happen.

Over Spring break 2013, we finally got it going and were making great time to finish within a couple of weeks, BUT…we ran into a snag with the countertop, the overhead lighting had to be changed around, and there needed to be yet another trip to Atlanta for some finishing strips, and eventually, a slab of butcher block. So we got to this point, it functioned, and we came to a screeching halt.

Until we could figure out what we wanted to do, we used the Corian counter top that was in the original kitchen. We had saved it, and had been using it in the basement workshop the past few years. The photo above doesn’t look bad, I have to say, but this one below better shows the color situation.

Compared to the crisp white Abstrakt cabinets, the Corian was yellowish. We could have sanded down the Corian, but if we were going with something other than the quartz from the main kitchen, wood seemed the most appealing and least expensive choice. We discussed our options, Summer came and went, and life rolled along with nothing happening in the kitchen for the next 5-6 months.

Over Fall break, the CC tackled the beast of the lighting situation himself, which was not an easy task. We still had 3 of the original square recessed lights left in the kitchen and 3 new cans from the main kitchen renovation. I never felt we had enough light over the island/table for prep, and it looked bad to boot. I had always planned to move the sputnik over the island as it is too big to hang in a walkway, but there it was, bumping the heads of our over six foot high friends as they walked in from the back deck. On top of that, we had never finished painting the ceiling in the kitchen because we were going to be tearing it up again any day…5 years later. Of course it wasn’t just a simple swap of fixtures, the depths were different between the 2 styles of recessed lights, so it took awhile and a lot of sheetrock dust.

I can’t even begin to tell you what a difference changing the lighting has made in this kitchen. Lighting is like paint – often underestimated, transforming a space to such a degree you can’t understand why you didn’t do it earlier. We had to repaint the whole kitchen ceiling afterwards, but that’s the price you pay for waiting so long!

But it was worth the wait. We have it on a dimmer, and every time I’m chopping at the table, I am grateful for how much better I can see.

So, now the kitchen is almost done!

Pantry cabinets and counters are in, lights changed. All that’s left is a bit of caulking and some more trim around the desk area. I’ll re-shoot the whole kitchen once that is done….and when all that glassware on the brassÂ etagÃ¨re gets dusted…gulp.

We left the fridge sides exposed so we could use it as a bulletin board for our conversion charts, important phone numbers, etc… This counter is now toast, tea and lunch making central. It has really helped the flow in the main “U” to have these stations moved over.