Kevin Knauss: Health, History, Travel, Insurance
Posts related to Mid Century Modern design and history.
I am very pleased with the electric LED fireplace insert and installation. Even when not in operation, the whitish birch logs reflect the ambient light for a nice distraction. There no longer a black hole in the corner of the room. To view the installation and other reasons why we wanted to replace the old gas log, watch the video below.
As I studied the variety of paver catalogs, my eyes kept coming back to the concrete cobble stone pavers. I liked the lines, shadows, colors, and certain random nature of the small irregular cobble stone paver. As real granite cobble stones were out of my budget, the target became one of the manufactured concrete cobble stone-like pavers. To complicate the design, we wanted to keep the walkway as a design element as it is a welcoming feature leading guests to the front door. The walkway would need to be a different style of paver.
Overall, the bathroom remodel does not scream mid-century modern. It is more comfortably modern with some warmth from the natural wood vanity. I think it will age well. If we sell the house, there is a tub for children to have their bath time, so the family aspect of the room is not lost.
While the replacement of the deck was a necessity, I decided to splurge and add some under the bench lighting. My goal was to softly illuminate the deck and stairs so that from inside the home the deck was plainly, but not glaringly, in view.
I had had enough of the built-in gutter swales that is traditional on MCM homes. I decided I wanted the rain water to sheet right off the roof into fascia gutters. Since the gutters are on the east and west side of the home and are not visible from the street, they’d have no impact on MCM nature of the house. One contractor really didn’t want to go with the fascia gutters but offered to enhance the directional flow of the rain water with crickets or standing seams in the roof material. He was also less inclined to repair the portions of the roof that had been cut away previously to remove dry rot sections. By contrast, the other roof contractor had no problems with correcting the cut out portions and adding full fascia gutters into the re-roof project. My gut feeling was that both the contractors would do an admirable job of re-roofing our house, but we went with the company that had no objection to installing the fascia gutters.
Five years after our kitchen remodel with bamboo cabinets I thought it would be a good time to see if our decisions, clouded with the marketing hype of cool products and designs, withstood the test of time.
The post war boom and reinvention of America with mid century modern architecture is most evident in the Bugs’ cartoon Long – Haired Hare in 1949.
