Modern 50 - Houses Invitation!

We received a letter from the Modern Architecture preservation Project of Tucson (MAPP) informing us that our home has been nominated as a candidate for the program. The group is gathering information on 100 historic homes in Tucson through photos, plans, and other publications and will be viewing our home sometime in May. The awards program is entitled Modern 50 - Houses and will identify 50 "exceptional and unique Modern homes built in Tucson during the mid-20th century." We're pleased to be invited to participate and are so thankful that the group is willing to wait until our kitchen project is completed before they come to view the house! If you'd like more information about the project you can visit http://mapptucson.org. to see an article from the Arizona Daily Star on the Modern 50 for commercial and institutional buildings you can visit http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/byauthor/305770.

Wish us luck!!!

Kitchen Curtain Idea

My husband's mother and father passed away this fall and while cleaning out their home he found these lovely little hand-embroidered towels. We're sure they were never used. His mom had folded them and carefully placed them in her cedar chest. Who knows? They may have been a wedding gift. I love old kitchen towels but I never know what to do with them since they're just too nice to use. I've decided to make a valance for our large kitchen window with these. The view from this window is just too nice to cover up with full curtains. I'm not sure how I'm going to make these yet. I almost hate to cut up the towels. Fortunately, I have some time to think about this project since our kitchen cabinets haven't been installed yet. Here are photos of the towels.

The Wicker Furniture

My husband tells the story of purchasing this set of wicker furniture in Minnesota for some ridiculous price (maybe $25??) from an elderly woman who was having a yard sale. He dragged them to Arizona in the 70s and stored them in a friend's garage where a dog chewed on them and they were subjected to other indignities. Needless to say, they were in rather rough shape. They are lovely, however, and I could see that they had great potential but they were unsafe for sitting and needed quite a bit of work. I've done some chair caning and basket weaving in the past but I felt unqualified for this job so I took them to a local wicker furniture repair shop on Fourth Avenue to have them repaired. I can't tell you how much this cost because I'll end up having another panic attack. Let's just say that it was far from cheap. The owner of the shop also talked me into buying another little chair that matched our set pretty closely. The wicker is so old that they no longer make the same size so the guy in the shop had to use a slightly larger size but it's really hardly noticeable. I painted the chairs white and made some custom cushions for them. The paint is not staying on the chairs very well, unfortunately, and keeps chipping off. I had to use spray paint since there are so many little nooks and crannies in the design.

I thought they might be Heywood/Wakefield but I've never been able to verify this. I purchased a book on their wicker furniture and there is some that is close in design but not identical. What do you think?

The Little Back Porch

When we first moved into the house there was a little covered porch on the north end of the "very long room" where we stored anything we didn't have room for at the time, primarily my husband's tools. After he added a workshop to the west side of the carport for his tools we decided to turn this covered porch into a screened-in porch. Here are photos of the project and the end result. My husband had collected some lovely antique wicker furniture when he lived in MN. I paid a small fortune to have the furniture repaired and painted them white. They look so nice on this porch and add a feminine touch.

Solar Features of our home

Arthur T. Brown, the architect who designed our home, was one of the pioneers in early passive solar design in Arizona. Our home, built in 1949, has a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows facing south with a huge, very thick wall opposite them which collects heat in the winter and radiates it around the east end of the house. The only challenge to this design is that the windows are single pane and not insulated. They are extremely large so we can't afford to replace them. We have plans to make insulated shades for them and these are in progress. We have added solar panels to the roof to continue the architect's dedication to solar design. Here is a link to a solar website that mentions Arthur T. Brown. I believe that the home they reference is The Hirsch House but I don't have any verification of this yet. There is a book, published by the U of A Press, about the architecture of Art Brown that was given to us by the previous owner but we have managed to misplace it. Our home is featured as are many other buildings, both residential and commercial. Here's a link to the solar website. http://www.azsolarcenter.org/tech-science/solar-architecture/solar-building-design-in-arizona.html

A Mid-Century Design Website

My blog now has a link on a website called "Retrorenovation". This is a very interesting site with lots of photos, links to other blogs, chats, and other forums related to mid-century living. Check it out. http://www.retrorenovation.com

The Retro Ceiling Fan

Here's a photo of the totally cool ceiling fan that was in the ceiling of our kitchen. Much to our amusement, when we broke into the ceiling we discovered that the fan was never vented to the outside through the roof. Fortunately, the fan didn't work so we never experienced the results of this "mistake". We love the look of the fan so my husband took the motor to Hemco (a great place to take old motors for a "tune-up") to see if it was worth fixing. They simply cleaned the motor really well and it started working perfectly. This fan has so much power that it could easily remove a body part if one isn't careful. We had planned to put the fan over the stove before we decided to get the new cabinets but there is a fabulous, modern stove hood with fan included in the cabinets that we are purchasing so now we're trying to think of a way to include the fan in the design of the kitchen. I think it looks like an ornament that one might find on the front an antique car.