I wrote on a blog called East Nashville Atomic before I started this little blog. The beginnings of our mid-century modern journey are recorded there and I realized there are some posts about our first thrift store and estate sale finds that I’d like to repost here. The first one will be today followed by more next week.
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Posted by mahlbrandt
Every lamp needs a shade. At the time when Jason spotted this beautiful lamp as we were driving past the thrift store earlier this summer it had the ugliest Victorian style lampshade. We told them they could keep the shade.
At an estate sale a few weeks ago we found the perfect lampshade on an ugly lamp. The lamp was so ugly that it didn’t even deserve a photograph before we heaved it into the trash cart. Here’s the lamp with it’s new shade.
In a few months this lamp and shade will have a new home in Jason’s renovated studio but for now it’s waiting in hibernation.
2 Comments | Art, Art: interior design, Art: mid-century design | Tagged: lamp, mid-century, shade | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
No, I’m not pregnant. Did I fool you for a second? This post is about an addition we’re adding to our home … sometime in the yet-to-be-determined future. As in, we’re just dreaming for now.
Our mid-century (1955) ranch is 1420 square feet. Plenty of room for two people. Plenty of room for two people who frequently work from home, even. It’s a 3-bedroom, 2 full-bath home* which allows us to have a comfortable master suite, a music studio for Jason and an office/craft room for me. (*Originally it was 3-bedrooms, 1 full-bath and a den.) The only problem is that we want to have kids. And we don’t want to move. Ever. We love our house and our garden and our neighborhood that much. Our lot is .36 acres and our house is average size for the neighborhood so there is justification for an addition. Commence daydreams of building on.
Commence? What am I saying. We’ve lived here 3.5 years and we’ve been talking about where and how and what we could build for 3.5 years. Just recently though, Jason was talking to one of our friends who is an excellent carpenter/handyman about some possibilities and suggestions. JB said, “If I was y’all I’d build off the front. You have a big front yard.” Jason heard less grass to mow. Current home layout:
We had never considered that. All of our previous ideas were to build off the back, near the driveway. A few days ago I had time to draw some sketches of how we could make it work. I love drawing out floor plans. Am I weird? I used to do this all the time when I was a kid … drawing out my dream house or the house of the made up family I was writing a story about.
The first sketch is the simplest solution – cut off 1/3 of my 11’x10′ office to create a hallway and add two modest size bedrooms with closets. My office could even be further cut down to say … 6’x6′ to create a playroom area or a reading nook or something. Total addition: approx. 300 sq. ft.
The second sketch takes the same idea but shoves it further from the existing house to create a den or study area and possibly an enclosed outdoor courtyard area off of the master bedroom. An enclosed outdoor living space is a little fantasy of ours. Total addition: approx: 500 sq. ft.
I showed Jason my sketches and he loves the second one. Sweet! Let’s do it! Oh wait, we don’t have kids. We don’t have $50,000 lying around. That’s OK. For now, I’ll just map these out in Illustrator.
What do you think? Do you have experience with adding on to your home? Would our house lose it’s ranchiness if we had an addition that made it L-shaped (or gun shaped)? We don’t have room on our property to expand on either side. This box I added on the tax assessment schematic shows it would be about 26’x20′ for the larger of the 2 addition plans:
I wonder how much these plans will change in the next … oh … 7 years or so.
5 Comments | Art, Art: graphic design, Art: interior design, Art: mid-century design, Art: modern design | Tagged: addition, floor plan, floorplan | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
Jason and I have been with Verizon for at least 8 year but this summer when our contracts were up we came the closest we’ve ever been to parting ways in favor of getting the iPhone. As much as we love Mac products and even after weeks of research, the idea of dropping around $400 on making the switch didn’t sit well. Truthfully, we wanted them so bad but we prayed about it and had no peace about making the move once we were standing in the Apple store.
All that to say, we got what we decided was the next best thing: Palm Pre Plus. It’s not an iPhone but at least we have Verizon’s excellent coverage and the phone is very, very close. It has a large touch screen, tons of apps, unlimited data usage and a slide out QWERTY keyboard (which I think is a lot easier to use than iPhone’s touch keyboard.) Another nice feature of this phone/Verizon is that it’s as easy as pie to turn the phone into a mobile hotspot so I can use the internet on my laptop from anywhere. Anywhere … like poolside or on a tour bus. That means I. can. work. from. anywhere. (Please, Boss?)
Jason and I have never had smart phones before and these things are rocking our world. Here are some of my favorite applications / the best palm pre apps I’ve discovered so far:
Standards like YouTube, Facebook of course
1. Pandora – free customized online radio
2. TweeFree – apps make the Twitter experience so much better
3. Flashlight – bright white screen
4. Evernote – photo and text notes that can be accessed online from any computer
5. Asphalt5 – super fun driving game. drive with the phone like steering wheel. Bonus points for including a Mini Cooper.
6. Speed Brain – good brain exercise
7. AP Mobile – news
8. AccuWeather – I find it to be more optimistic than Weather Channel (which is also a free app) and usually right. I like how it just shows a red thermometer for the days when the high is 100º and up.
9. Scoop – RSS blog reader that works with a Google Reader account
10. Yelp – restaurant/store/attraction finder. I use this all the time to find out what’s nearby or to call the place we’re going to order ahead or check their hours and to read reviews
11. Topple Ball – fun, phone-tilting puzzle game
12. Pink Pad – cycle management for ladies. Make notes about what’s going on and it helps me plan ahead
Most of these apps are free because we’re cheapskates.
After a month we only have a few complaints about the Palm Pre Plus. Jason’s and mine have frozen 5 times collectively. Three of those required popping the battery out to reset and once popping the battery out and letting it recharge. The other complaint is short battery life but we expected that and we do use them a lot. We got car chargers (and cases) cheap from Amazon.com and we take our chargers with us everywhere we go. I can usually get by with only charging it though the night.
4 Comments | Art, Art: modern design, Family, Family: Me | Tagged: iphone, palm pre plus, smart phone, verizon | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
I’m CRAZY about this guy! I’ve seen this “guitar face” a lot in the past week while Jason was preparing for a big gig.
Did you notice I got a new phone? It has a much better camera than my old RAZR.
Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: Phone Photo Friday, Family, Family: Jason | Tagged: cell phone photography, Jason, Phone Photo Friday | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
At a recent estate sale we found some more Gold Cortez dishes. I don’t even really like this pattern that much but it’s just funny that we keep seeing 1 or 2 pieces everywhere we go so we keep collecting it.
We also found this Corning Ware casserole dish. It’s a good size and has a lid. I took this photo before Jason cleaned 50 years of burned grease off of it. This is definitely one of my favorite Corning Ware patterns with the yellow and blue flowers. Not sure of the name.
Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: mcm thrift store find, Art: mid-century design | Tagged: corning ware, estate sale, gold cortez | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
It’s hot, hot, hot and humid this July in Nashville. Our echinacea is blooming …
Our zinnia are blooming (liatris and canna lilies in background are done) …
and our crepe myrtle tree is blooming.
The crepe myrtle, banana tree and Japanese flowering plum tree all seem to be having a height competition.
That’s all good and lovely, but sadly, our peach tree is not doing so well. The tree looks fine but all of our peaches got some kind of worm that ate them from the inside out. That and some of them got black spots on the outside. Very disappointing. The last remaining peaches rotted on the tree. We need to do some more research before next year. Does anyone have experience with peach trees?
Then there is our vegetable garden… Our romaine lettuce got too hot and turned bitter. Our pepper plants have been suffering from too much sun and aren’t producing. Our brussel spouts have been eaten up by bugs. Our Better Boy tomato plant looks sickly. (Our Better Boys were bad last year too. Not getting this kind anymore!) Our watermelon plants got too hot in pots and the one and only melon dried up while we were on vacation. Our arugula is m.i.a.
But, it’s not all bad news. Our Beef Steak tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and grape tomato plants are doing great! We’re harvesting them faster than we can eat them and they are delicious! (Most of what you see there is the Beef Steak plant.)
I did a little research on the tomato skin splitting. Early on they kept splitting right before they would get ripe. Turns out it’s from not enough water and then a lot of water. Like 2-3 dry days and then a heavy rain. We’ve been watering them for 30-60 minutes a day on a low sprinkler setting now and they’re doing great.
Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: gardening, Art: God's creation | Tagged: flowers, garden, peach tree, tomatoes | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
Our fruit/vegetable garden is in a bit of a slump (more on that tomorrow) but thankfully our flowers are doing just fine. Zinnia are one of my favorite flowers to plant for cutting. They bloom for a long time outside and they hold up in vases for quite a while, too.
Jason and I have been collection glass soda caps on our window sill for the past 6 months or so. I’m not sure why or what we’re going to do with them. If the bottle is pretty enough it gets saved on the windowsill, too. I like to use them as vases.
Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: gardening, Art: God's creation, Art: modern design | Tagged: cut flowers, vase, zinnia | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
At a recent estate sale Jason and I hit the jackpot of small* framed mid-century art. I found the one of the pressed botanical collages on blue linen and the owl carving on gold burlap in one room while Jason found the other flower collage and mushroom paintings in another room—two white on black paper and one color on wood block.
*the blue pressed flower collages are around 6″ square.
As we were walking toward the checkout together I told said to him, “I’m so glad we like the same things.”
Maybe a little kitschy and I have no idea where we’re going to put them but for $4 total we couldn’t resist.
(Bad photos … sorry. There are more details in these than you can see here.)
This owl carving is both of our favorite. Someday it will probably live next to the owls we got in May.
1 Comment | Art, Art: crafts, Art: mcm thrift store find, Art: mid-century design | Tagged: Art, estate sale, mid-century | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
Sorry, I know I’ve been a major blog-slacker this week. Do weeks ever just slip away from you? I can’t believe it’s already Friday! Hopefully this cute picture will make up for my lack of posts the past few days. Have you ever seen an 11-month-old with shoulder-length hair? Jason and I babysat this sweet little girl last Friday so her parents could go out on a hot date.
Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: Phone Photo Friday, Family, Family: Extended Family and Friends | Tagged: cell phone photography, Phone Photo Friday | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
Graphic designer, MCM interior design enthusiast, wife to amazing guitarist and hard working realtor, mama—by way of foster care, adoption and biology—and follower of Jesus Christ.
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