We were very honored to have been written up in the Wall Street Journal today, mentioned as one of the many housebloggers that converge on the Houseblogs.net site.

Many blog about their work in order to share progress with family and friends. Reading others’ blogs, meanwhile, helps renovators share ideas, find inspiration and support — and sometimes just be entertained.

Our story wasn’t in the print version of the WSJ, but was mentioned in a sidebar to this story. I had never thought of having a home renovation party, thought it was a great idea on first review, and then started to read in horror:

One reveler near Chicago hung a sheet of drywall backwards, while a partygoer in Seattle messed up the host’s bathroom floor by installing the tiles crooked. During her recent “Martini Bash” renovation event in Toronto, Debora Beam wandered upstairs to find one of her friends halfway through sledgehammering out the wrong wall. . . . Contractors say these parties have become a marketing opportunity. Orange County, Calif., handyman Paul Maceyka says a couple in their 30s recently paid his company almost $4,000 to undo a mess their inexperienced friends had made with a paint sprayer.

If I had thought of having a masonry party to finish our concrete screening wall, I am now of the mindset that the broken toes aren’t worth it. It sure does make for entertaining blog posts, though

I found the television solution of my dreams, but not at any online store. Finkbuilt’s brilliant RetroVision 2000 AV Cabinet is the marriage of two eras, one era in which television was king, displayed prominently and proudly in the center of the busiest room in the house, and another era in which television rightfully takes the backstage to a more active lifestyle.

Tragically, this solution was custom-made for Steve’s own home by his own two crafty little hands and is therefore not something I can click and order. Wah. I suppose then that I am out of luck until Wal-Mart decides to jump on the MCM bandwagon and make them for 35 cents using slave labor from Bangladesh? Thanks, but no thanks. Until Steve opens up his own shop, a girl will just have to dream.

I’ve been asking everyone I know, including the 1950’s House Lovers and the folx at HouseBlogs.net, the same question: “What do you do with your television?”

This is the dilemma I’ve been trying to solve for five years!
We’re not big tv watchers. We love to rent movies, but even then we only watch one a week or so. The television is currently stored in a tv cabinet from Target which threatens to fall to pieces every time we open and close the doors (and isn’t really mid-century anyway).
I have looked everywhere for a tv cabinet that is even slightly mid-century. We have found some modernist cabinets that would fit a flat panel, but we have a 26-in regular old tv and don’t plan to spend money on an upgrade any time soon. We also have rabbit ears since we don’t subscribe to cable I’ve thought about getting a vintage sideboard and just setting the tv on top, but I don’t want it to be the focus of the room, KWIM? Any help? Help!
Thanks in advance.

I’ve gotten a few responses, but not quite what I’m looking for. The ideal situation would be a sideboard that was deep enough for our current tv set. I’ve thought about having a custom piece of furniture made (maybe we could trade a door for one?), but I’m not sure that I want to spend money on something like, you know, teevee.
Ping ‘em if you’ve got ‘em!

About a week ago, David and I stopped at a bookstore on our way out to breakfast. I figured I would pick up a copy of Atomic Ranch and possibly Dwell for us to thumb through, partly because we just plain love to look at house porn, and also because we’ve been trying to figure out our best bets for running Crestview Doors ads.

Atomic Ranch just keeps getting better and better. On the one hand, I have a hard time putting it down. When I call it “house porn,” I am not kidding. I get a little thrill from peeking inside others’ homes and seeing their incredibly flawless restorations. On the other hand, I have never felt so insecure about our own home. I follow reading Atomic Ranch by thumbing through IKEA and Rejuvenation catalogs and trying to figure out how we will ever afford small luxuries like, oh, say, new furniture and fixtures throughout Dwellisn’t rubbing me the right way these days. I appreciate their commitment to writing about green architecture, but the case studies have turned decidedly modern and the advertisements are often off my radar. They have started talking about modern design in general with articles about typesets and textiles. I personally find these subjects interesting, but it isn’t what I paid six bucks for, know what I mean?
I couldn’t help it. I also picked up a stack of books and other magazines on architecture. I decided that this was all research for the business and therefore worth the expense. I don’t have time to give you a review of all of the books, but I have to say that the one that I found the most drool-worthy was Houses, an Aussie mag that included luscious photo after photo (and floorplans!) for lots of modern, green housing.
In the end, we decided to advertise in Atomic Ranch (look for us inside the front cover this winter!) and the upcoming Los Angeles edition of Luxe. We went ahead and subscribed to Atomic Ranch, LUXE and Dwell, but I’m positive that the subscriptions won’t end there. You can also see us listed as one of the “fabulous finds” in the latest edition of Austin Monthly Home. Cheers!

We finally launched the Crestview Doors Online Store. You can shop all our models. You can even buy one if you want. It was a huge effort to build the site. Our deadline was Labor Day weekend and Christiane and I stayed up past 3 am that Friday night perfecting it.
It was very cool to see how our knowledge and skills meshed. We both do interaction design, but my background is more design and advertising, and Christiane’s is more programming and business processes. I did all the visual design and copy writing, and Christiane integrated the shopping cart with a CRM system and credit card processing. It all comes together on the product page and at one point we were exchanging snippets of code wirelessly via IM across the living room to get it done.
It was all very 21st century.
Writing is not my strongest skill. I can appreciate well crafted ad copy. I can even write some given enough time and the right mood. Unfortunately, the Crestview Doors website required a lot of ad copy. The biggest challenge was writing a description for each of the 35 models of doors. I started out on a roll, writing informatively about the designs I had been thinking about for months…

The Pasadena is our most adaptable design. It is grand enough for a large rambling ranch, and understated enough to add a modern touch to a small cottage. With its formal simplicity it can replace a windowless flush doors on a 1960s mid-century home without breaking the modern aesthetic.

Then I started using analogies…

The Woodrow is the ‘57 Chevy of doors. Like tailfins on cars, it seems to only appear in late 1950’s then vanishes suddenly, leaving a design that is highly evocative of a very narrow time in style history.

Then … it started getting late and I started to fancy myself a poet.

Like the eye of a cat, the Parkway is both serene and intense. It can add punctuation to a Ranch that changes everything. On a mid-century modern it lets in light without breaking the modern aesthetic. On a modern contemporary, it’s warmly institutional, like a schoolhouse door.

Then it got later … and I started to get punchy.

What does the Fontenot that you do not? Like a strip of highway flashing past you, the Fontenot is frenzied and ordered at the same time. Use it to add a swinging, fearless touch to your buttoned down Ranch. Paint it green and order is with custom blue art glass. Why? Because you know what the Fontenot’s.

Then I got down-right nutty.

Wellington! Weeeeeeeeelingtoooooon! Time for dinner!
The Wellington is the protected childhood of a hard partying English rock star. It is Weetabix and rage.
Add a homey touch of rebellion to your house with this 50s classic.

This oddball writing has been up on the web site for almost 2 weeks. Sales are going well, and traffic on the models with the goofiest descriptions is good. So now I’m wondering, is this wacky copy helping or hurting sales? Is it turning people off or is it attracting just the kind of customers we want? Do I need to fix it or call it a happy accident?
I really Fontenot.

This four-part series discusses, diary-style, our experience with researching, measuring, purchasing, installing, and using an IKEA kitchen system with IKEA fixtures, Wilsonart Laminate countertops, Frigidaire appliances, and Rejuvenation hardware. Part 1 details the experience we had using IKEA’s downloadable kitchen designer. Part 2 will talk more about the purchase process and how to be prepared for delivery and installation. In Part 3, we will tell you the nitty-gritty details of our installation fiascos. And in Part 4, we will walk you through our kitchen one year after we installed and moved in to discuss how it is holding up.
First of all, I want to emphasize that I am in no way affiliated with IKEA as a company. This series represents my attempt as a regular consumer to relate to you our unique experience with designing, purchasing and installing our IKEA kitchen cabinets. That said, we had a pretty good experience, and I feel like the devil was certainly in the details. Hopefully, these details will help you out if you decide to go this route and save you some of the small pains we experienced. And many of the details were in the purchasing.
In the previous installment of this series, I talked about designing our kitchen. We had originally handed the design decisions over to our contractor to bid on. If I remember correctly, his bid included granite countertops and custom oak cabinetry. He was definitely going to create a beautiful kitchen for us… to the tune of around $25K.
The more David and I talked about where to cut corners, the more the kitchen came into play. We figured we could afford the kitchen or the dining room, but not both. Did we really need granite countertops?
At the time we were designing, I was headed in two different directions. On the one hand, I loved the kitschy 50’s diner look: chrome-trimmed counters with Formica’s beloved boomerangs and a Marmoleum floor sounded like soda-shoppe heaven to me. On the other hand, we thought about selecting a space-age Apollo theme with gold, red, white and black mosaic tile for the backsplash and black silestone counters with inlay gold flecks.
Our contractor wasn’t familiar with IKEA cabinets and didn’t know how to begin spec’ing them for our project, so we agreed that he would do the kitchen finish out, but we would figure out how to do cabinet and countertop installation ourselves. Enter the IKEA kitchen planning tool and our own experience with Photoshop.
Although we eventually decided against boomerangs or Apollo themes, we still wanted those classic Akrum cabinet faces. We decided we could make almost any countertop and backsplash work with their features, and we had heard that installation was a do-it-yourself kind of job, so we set about placing our order.

Make no mistake, ordering an IKEA kitchen is half the work of installing it. It isn’t possible to order the kitchen on the website. You’ve really got two choices: you can either fax in your order for pickup, or you can go and get it.
I strongly recommend the go-and-get-it route. In fact, I even more strongly recommend that you plan two trips.
The first trip to IKEA needs to be the trip where you simply go and see all their wares in person. Touch the cabinet faces. Pull on the knobs. Run your fingers over the seams of their showroom countertops. Make sure you open and then SLAM the showroom cabinet doors, especially the sliding pantry (which we found to be too unstable for our desire). Whether you plan to make your IKEA kitchen last or use it as a temporary solution while you save for your dream kitchen, you want to make sure you are getting your money’s worth.
The truth is that IKEA’s cabinets are inexpensive and, yes, they are cheaply manufactured. These are not custom oak cabinets with commercial ball bearing hinges. These are plywood and melamine, and they will wear with time. It is a good idea to walk around the showroom and familiarize yourself with the mismatched seams and slightly uneven corners. For some, the imperfections of an IKEA kitchen are part of its charm. For others, the more expensive kitchen is worth it. And, trust me, you are going to earn your cheap kitchen.
Your second trip to IKEA is to order and pay for your materials. We went armed with our IKEA kitchen planning tool mockups, our Photoshopped mockups, our price list, and a general list of notes we had made from looking at the IKEA catalog and website. We went to the kitchens department where the attendant was overwhelmed with customers. Another warning: IKEA takes a long time, so don’t plan to use your 45 minutes of Smaland without strategically planning it around your discussion with the kitchens specialist.
Our attendant was very sweet–I’d pass on her name if I could–and helped us avoid major mishaps later by giving us two pieces of advice. First of all, she told us not to use our print outs. She asked us to recreate our drawings on the in-store computer. She came to the console to double-check everything when we were done, and then she made some minor adjustments according to her own experience. This was invaluable. Even though the folks at IKEAfans.com have had some great experiences with faxing in their order, I found the face-to-face experience to be invaluable.
Once we were ready to hand over our credit card, she checked things one last time and then, right in front of us, began to make notes on our invoice. Yes, they can do that. They can modify the layout of your invoice. And it is a good thing, too, because she modified it such that all of the parts for each separate cabinet were grouped by cabinet instead of grouped haphazardly the way her computer wanted it to be. Then she made notes on the printed out invoice to indicate which cabinets were which because, as some of you know, the printed out invoice does not have much English on it. She explained that later on, when the cabinets were delivered to us, they would all be on one huge shrink-wrapped palette. We would want to have the invoice handy so that we could organize everything in piles before installing. And the items each only have their parts number printed on the packaging–not the product name.
We chose to have the delivery sent to our construction address. We contemplated picking up the shipment, but this would have meant renting a Ryder truck and driving to Houston and back to Austin during IKEA’s business hours. This seemed like an unnecessary waste of time, money and gas, so we elected to have the kitchen dropped off.

I have heard that many people purchase their kitchens and take them home on the spot. Huzzah! We had the option of taking some of our pieces with us that day, but again the specialist discouraged this. She explained that it was best to have everything together. This way it would be easier if something was missing or damaged and needed to be returned or exchanged. She was right.
Our IKEA kitchen was delivered four weeks after we ordered, much earlier than we actually needed it to be delivered for our purposes, but it sure was nice to have it ready and waiting. My last piece of advice is to plan ahead. Expect IKEA to be out of stock on MANY of your desired items–and expect the out of stock items to be strangely random.
In the third installment of this series, I will talk a little more about what to do with that big palette o’ cabinetry. Install it yourself or hire a pro? This is the trickiest part of making that kitchen happen. The third article will include a handy-dandy checklist to help you determine the best solution for you and your home. Until next time…
See also:
Kitchens, Part 1: Purchasing Your IKEA Kitchen
IKEA Kitchens, Part 3: Installing Your IKEA Kitchen

See architect Ben Ledbetter’s visionary “Blue Winged House” on Flickr.

We were interviewed by the Austin-American Statesman today and, while cleaning up and getting ready, I realized how much of our home is still technically unfinished. It might not be obvious to everyone that visits, but there is still so much left to do!
When we originally planned the house, we knew we wanted the driveway to extend into the backyard. We planned to build a 50’s style carport (check out the I Dream of Carport post for more details) which would extend to cover the back entry to the home, and we figured this would become the main entry and exit point.
It took us six months after moving in to get the new driveway, and we still don’t have a carport. Instead, we have a boat and two unsheltered entrances, and we usually park in the front and enter and exit through the front door.
There are so many problems with this setup that I have trouble keeping them all straight. For one thing, we don’t really have any landscaping between the front driveway and the front door, so we find ourselves walking through mud during wet weather (and we’ve had a LOT of wet weather over the last few months). The front door doesn’t have a covering either since the deck is still somewhat unfinished, so we drag the mud and the wetness inside when we enter. There isn’t a lot of room inside the front door for loitering or unloading what with the stairs directly inside. And there is no organization other than the shoe bucket… and it is overflowing with shoes the kids have outgrown. Backpacks, purses, keys, mail, all end up haphazardly piled inside the front entrance and on the stairs. I don’t suppose guests feel very welcome when they arrive.
This brings me to the point of this entry which is a plea for help! With winter fast approaching, the need for a new solution is imminent. It seems to me like we need to accomplish four major goals:

1. Use the back of the driveway for parking cars (this means we need to move the boat and install a remote-controlled gate opener).
2. Stop tracking mud and wetness into the house (we will need a carport, too).
3. Create an organized space for the coats, shoes, bags, keys, phones, and mail (this means organizing the nook next to the back door).
4. Use the front entry for its intended purpose (and landscape in a friendly way so that no one has to walk through mud or pools of water or stand under a dripping deck while unlocking the front door).

These are enormous tasks. Have you been through any of this? Advice? I was having fun checking out Better Homes and Gardens article on “Do-It-All Entryways” and thinking about our stuff and what to do with it. I need the solutions to be (1) fast, (2) easy, and (3) inexpensive. Isn’t that how it always is?

If you haven’t heard, the real estate market ain’t doin’ so well these days. Mortgage lenders are shutting down faster than 6th street at 2am. Homeowners are balking at the new rates their ARM’s are adjusting to. Housebloggers are… well, what are housebloggers up to in light of the housing bust?
Newsweek reported this week:

The collateral damage is spreading. Because home sales and moves stimulate purchases of appliances, electronics and furniture, the giant chains that catered to house flippers and renovators have reported recessionlike results. In the second quarter, same-store sales were down 5.2 percent at Home Depot and 4.3 percent at Sears.
Americans who were living high by taking out home-equity loans during the boom have watched their equity drop, and are now faint of heart when it comes to big-ticket discretionary purchases.

I’m working up to a series about how to make sure your renovation makes more money than it takes from your savings account, but until then I’m wondering how other housebloggers are holding up under the crunch. Are you getting hit by the real estate recession?