Mid-Century Modern

I pay a lot of attention to set design when I'm watching a movie or television show. Often, I'm paying more attention to the decor than I am the plot - I've been known to rewind a movie to catch the dialogue because when Starlet whispered to Leading Man, I was too busy admiring her sofa to hear what she said.

For the record, I love furniture and I love design: almost all of it. Wanting to live with it all the time and being able to admire it are, for me, two distinctly separate things. I don't want to live in a cottage/country home, but I can walk into one styled that way and swoon with the best of them. Likewise, the gilt-rich furnishings of the White House's historical rooms would be too much for me to encounter every day, but that doesn't stop me from lingering on every photo of every side table and settee, thinking about the craftsmanship and wondering about the hand of the fabric. There are few design styles I dislike altogether.

Which brings me to mid-century modern. More and more, I've come to realize that when I'm watching an episode of Mad Men, or a movie set in the fifties and sixties, I love the furniture. Sure, some of the plaids are screaming for Marsha and Jan Brady and occasionally, the stain of the wood seems dated, but overall, the crisp, clean lines of mid-century modern always look classic to me, like they could be dropped into a 2010 house and play the role of a newly purchased piece just fine.

So, some eye candy:

The character Don Draper's office, in AMC's Mad Men (image found on halcyon.com):

An Elle living room, image sourced from Apartment Therapy:

From Metropolitan Home:

From blog.vastudc:

I'll probably always prefer to live in rooms that are a mix of traditional and modern - this girl needs a little bit of gilt - but if I had to choose a very close, second runner up: it would be mid century modern, purely.

From Lookliloos.com:

It is entirely possible my admiration for mid century design stems from the chairs, since I have a bad, bad thing for chairs - more on that later.

Doorknobs

I've always known I would replace the doorknobs in our house. They are builder's grade brass - boring. They are probably one of the first things I notice as "off" in our rooms, yet they are the last thing I think about in the hardware store. I think my husband must be brainwashing me.

Luckily, two of the doorknobs in our house have broken. Yay! Doorknob shopping that requires no explanation. You must have doorknobs.

What I'm trying to decide now are what kind of doorknobs to get. While I think my house flows, we do not have the same metal finishes in each room. The room I'm sitting in right now, the dining room, has antique gold window treatment hardware. Our office has black drapery rods. The kitchen cabinets are in the process of getting stainless steel pulls (more on that later). Our bedroom has oil rubbed bronze hardware; the basement has brushed nickel, as does one son's room. My other son's room has black hardware and my daughter's room sports white curtain rods. Somehow, it all works; I suspect it's because the rooms are large enough that they don't really seem like one unit, even while being somewhat open to each other. Each room is very much its own personality, but the decorating style in each makes them all family.

My choices seem to be finding a finish that relates to all that and using it throughout, using a different but coordinating finish on each level, or even more deeply mixing and matching. For instance, I could do a doorknob in one finish on the public facing side of a bedroom door, and a second finish on the interior side.

I have no idea. And it's a big job, because I can't just change the doorknobs - I will have to change and/or paint the lock jamb thingie and the hinges.

Hmm. Maybe it's a good thing only two doorknobs have broken.

I have always liked glass doorknobs, since my late Aunt had them in her Tudor style home in New Jersey (someday I will have to do a post on Aunt Shirley, who was responsible for immersing both my mother and me in the love of interior design).

But glass doorknobs can scream Victorian:

As these do to me. There is nothing about my house that speaks Victorian. With the right decor, I think those could also do well in a beach house, but despite actually living in a beach house, our home has coastal touches but I"m not sure if it's beachy enough to carry that ornate glass knob.

Then I found these:

That, to me, is stunning doorknob. It does exactly what I always hope an item will do - meet Traditional Me and Modern Husband halfway in the middle. It's clean AND pretty. I love it - trouble is, I found it on a http://www.housetohome.co.uk. Darn UK. Shipping could be pricey and I don't even know the base price. I will have to investigate.

After I posted this, I realized what I'd love to do is have a plain glass doorknob against a doorplate that coordinated with whatever metal was going on in the room, perhaps aged. I think doorplates help a glass doorknob not disappear anyway, and the right plate shape could further pull the glass doorknob away from traditional and into a little more current, a bit coastal, somewhat...okay, somewhat beachy.

Definitely have some investigating to do.

The Light On The Ceiling Goes Round and Round....

Technically, I dislike ceiling fans. They are not an aesthetic favorite, and I have a hard time finding ones I like, beyond the big Tommy Bahama looking ones that lazily swirl over porches - those I like. Having neither a porch nor a porch ceiling, they are nothing like the ones I have, and so I'm contemplating replacing them.

Well, that's not true. I *know* I want to replace them, but I'm not sure with what. There really is no substitute for the delicious breezes they create, so I've made peace with the three ceiling fans we have in our master bedroom, living room and kitchen. I just haven't made peace with the brass fittings and walnut veneered blades the master bedroom and living room fans have, and I'm only eh about the all white version in the kitchen.

Because I don't love them, finding a replacement is going to be tricky. My "perfect light" is a lamp with a beautiful shade on a table. All other lighting - let's just say I'm no easy date, since I'm already shopping outside my lamp on the table preferences.

But there are a few contenders. All these are from Lamps Plus, and let me tell you: scrolling through nineteen pages of ceiling fans is no pleasant task. I need to make a new rule: once you've found something you like, you can stop looking. Too bad I'm looking for three different rooms, however.

Anyway. This one hides the blades a bit, a concept I really like. It's a little too...something for me, though.

This also conceals the blades, and could possibly be a contender in the kitchen, depending on what we decide to do there.

That last one also seems like a cute addition to my son's room, and as long as we're talking boy - the next is probably the first ceiling fans I've ever seen and dubbed as adorable:

Very aerial.

Back to the grownup spaces... the three blade fans seem to really be catching my eye:

They seem sleek and unobtrusive. Less obtrusive, even, than a white ceiling fan, which theoretically should "disappear" into the ceiling, but from my experience, does not. So if you're going to see it anyway, it may as well have some ooomph.

This one is similar, but with a darker shade, which I think improves it:

Last, this one brings a coastal vibe I really like. I'm wondering if it's too casual for my living room, but it could probably work well in my bedroom:

Some of these may be a hard sell to my husband, so we shall see.

Happy Little Finds

While we simmer here in the Mid-Atlantic's summer humidity, allow me to post a few little recent finds that have made me happy.

This oil painting just spoke to me. I don't know why. It's a painting of what appears to be the beginning of a walk or a driveway, and the home appears coastal... sandy terrain, a shabby beach fence behind the mailbox.

It's one of the few things that I have bought recently that break my new rule: know where you will put it before you buy it. I just liked it. I came home and tried it out in our entryway, our basement family room, and finally our master bedroom over the bed, where it now looks as if it was born there. The frames there before, photography, were not appropriately scaled. This feels much better to me.

This is the second (of only two!) rule breaker - this unique little lamp. It was difficult for no photography skills me to really capture all that's going on with this finish. It's brown, it's blue, it's iridescent, it's making me grin every time I see it.

Unlike the painting, I knew where it was going before I got all the way home, however. It's sitting in my soon to be little craft/project space. More to come on that later. And I think I'll be replacing the shade.

The rest are unique pillows. From Tommy Bahama:

Am I a message on the furniture type girl? Not usually, I thought this was not overbearing, and kind of fell into that casual elegance feeling I like.

The stitching on this one attracted me.

No one is going to lay down and snuggle this one, with it's stiff floral embellishment, but I liked it anyway. At any rate, people in my house tend to toss the throw pillows onto the floor, so comfort was not a deal breaker here.

Again, I couldn't capture the true beauty here. The wonderful top blends a suede like material with cotton, and reminds me of lace. A plain white band separates that from the corded bottom. And I love the colors.

Shopping is ridiculously fun.

Let There Be Light

With the exception of a few recessed can lights and my dining room chandy, every single ceiling light fixture in my house needs to be replaced.

The current fixtures are mostly some variation of this:

Lowe's is selling them for four dollars. That's if you buy them individually. I have a feeling the person who built/rehabbed our house got a bunch of them for a lot less, and he put them everywhere. The kitchen. The hallways. The bedrooms.  Where he didn't install a ceiling fan (of equal value, of course), he tossed up these lights.

I don't like them.

The good news is that they are so bland that they almost fade away. At least that's what I'm hoping. The bad news is, well, take a look at the four dollar bargain bin light again, and you won't have to be told what the bad news is.

So along with my other projects, I'm on the hunt for lighting. I want crisp pieces that compliment my decor while adding a soft punch. I don't want them to overwhelm, or necessarily be a full on focal point. I just want them to be another layer, a finishing touch on each room.

I love lighting, and my house is filled with lamps, lamps and more lamps. Those are so easy: buy, screw in bulb, walk away. Ceiling fixtures require a little more effort (mainly by my husband, aka our house electrician). They require scheduling and installation. Therefore, the time between this post and the final installation of all the lights will be lengthy... but more now, I am content to peruse the options.

Considering for the halls:

I think this light from Lamps Plus is a beautiful, beautiful neutral. My husband is less than sold on them. I either have to work on him, or fall equally in love with other options. I haven't gotten him to give me any options yet, but I suspect he wants something more utilitarian, like this:

Frankly, that's so similar to my current four dollar specials, I could just spray paint their casings and have the same thing. Which actually is an option... perhaps an oil rubbed bronze paint? I'm not sure that will satisfy me.

I'm scrolling through Lamps Plus as I write this post, and all the lights I'm attracted to are along the same lines as the first one I posted. Round, a hint of color, sort of mid-century in feel.

Yep. Gonna have to work on the husband.

Hmmm.

The more photos of my daughter's room I see, the more I question my window treatment decision. I'm still mourning the absence of a funky, graphic print for her curtains.

Her curtains are just so... I don't know.

They are tailored and do not appear as shiny in person as they in the photos, although they are a faux silk. They just aren't as fun as I imagined.  My imagination ran somewhere more to this:

I found this fabric bundle during a Google image search; the fabric is by Josephine Kimberling.

Also love this bundle:

I believe the designer there is Kaffe Fassett.

Fun, fun prints. If I want, I can repurpose the curtains in her room to our lower level family room, which also has yellow walls and blue accents (of course, I am eyeing prints for that room, too).

So we shall see. Maybe as the room comes together I'll fall in love with them a little more.

Experiments and Frustration

I feel like I need to place a paragraph of apologies in this post, but suffice it to say: I haven't become a world class photographer since the last time I posted.

So.

I finally hung two of the prints I had for my daughter's room.

The Experiment part:

They are really close together.

This is on purpose. I didn't want to hang them too high, but I also didn't want the lowest one to be too low, because frankly, I'm not sure my just barely 2.5 year old daughter and son can handle the responsibility of art in a room they spend unsupervised time in (as in, sleeping at night, waking up in the morning).

I hung the sturdiest one (I'll explain that during the frustration part) on the bottom, hoping that if they touch it and realize it doesn't come off, they will lose interest. Meanwhile, I'm leaving the opposite side of the window bare until I learn more about the combination of this low hanging art and my toddlers. I find it better to introduce new things a bit at a time.

I am very pleased with how the frames work with the shutters and the curtain rod, even if it is very easy to work with and sometimes boring white:

And now, for the Frustration part:

I have such a hard time hanging things, particularly framed art. It really frustrates me. And when I read about people who very easily accomplish it by laying out the art on the floor first and deciding placement, I just get even more frustrated, because that never. ever. works for me.

Why?

I have yet to buy two frames that are exactly evenly weighted and hang exactly the same way on a wall. It has literally never happened to me. All the frames used for this project are from Michael's, and they are the exact same frame, yet the center of gravity for each frame is totally different.

Even though I decided placement before hanging them, I still had to move the screw (for the hanging apparatus on these frames, I prefer the grip of a screw. I'll take a photo of it when I hang the next two). I started by using a ruler and level to place the screws directly in line, but the perfectly lined up screws made one of the frames tilt to the left. So I moved the screw, and it titled to the right. I kept moving it until both frames were straight and aligned. And even with all that work, the top one still swings if touched.


The math? Two frames hung, two holes being used, four holes lurking behind the art, which I'll have to putty and paint if I ever redecorate the room or we decide to move.

I have learned that I get a lot less frustrated if I just accept that this happens to me, and go into the project knowing I'll be creating a lot of holes. It helps that I'm going to put off the other side for a few more days.

Meanwhile, elsewhere at the ranch, I have relocated a photo gallery wall to a large staircase wall and ledge I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with.

It is a large wall, and I have a lot of pictures to go. I didn't bother laying out these beforehand, mainly because this wall will fill in as our family goes along. Everyone (mainly me) will just have to deal with part of the wall being blank until the pictures are taken and framed.

I estimate the wall being... I dunno. Twelve feet by ten? With a ledge. So... big. I might hang empty frames as I find them, and then fill in when a picture becomes available. My husband thinks my habit of doing that is hilarious. From time to time we live with the pictures of strangers that come with the frames.

I also plan to use art and such in what is essentially a collage. That drawing in the lower left corner is by me, that wooden man was recently snapped into two by my son so was pushed further down the ledge than he will ultimately rest when my son is old enough to not toss him down the stairs.

While I was taking these photos, two little people came up the stairs saying, "Cheese!" Of course I couldn't resist.

Nothing I put in the house compares to them and their brother.

Have a great holiday weekend!