Midcentury Dreaming

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts on the chevron floor angles and for the sweet well-wishes! I'm doing better, but still trying to take it easy until next week, when I'm having a second procedure done on my throat. It's been nice to press the reset button a little bit and spend some much-needed quality time with my family. Thanks for hanging in there for me. :)

Some of you may have seen on my instagram account that recently I stopped by to see a house that we almost put an offer in on, but didn't. As much as I wanted to make a move, the timing just wasn't right - the house went on the market a few weeks before Michael accepted his new job offer and before we had fully committed to moving to Phoenix. I wanted this house SO much though. I pretty much give it credit for getting me excited about the idea of leaving New York and buying a home. :)

It was just what I imagined us buying - a completely original midcentury gem in a cool old neighborhood. Of course, these houses only come on the market once in a blue moon, so it sold in just a matter of hours for more than the asking price. I was heartbroken even though I had never even seen the house in person and we weren't even technically looking at that point. But seriously. Check out that door!! So cool, so much potential.

It never makes sense to go down this road, but it's hard not to play the should have/could have/would have game with this house. I love the house we did end up getting, and in many ways our current house is a better fit for us, but it's going to definitely be a different look when we're finished with it than a midcentury house would have been. (Angie Hranowsky's home comes to mind).

Anyway, I decided to rub salt in my wound by driving past the midcentury house the other day. Turns out a flipper bought the house (GASP) and there were workers there ripping absolutely everything out. It was completely gutted, and all the kitchen cabinets and interior doors were being taken out just as I pulled up. The guys saw me poking around and admiring the pulls on two bifold doors and told me I was welcome to have them before they tossed the doors.

My grandparents and my great grandma (the one from Sweden) both lived in really cool midcentury style homes in Arizona and I think this home felt a lot like theirs to me. Grandma Johnson had this really cool stone mosaic coffee table and these pulls reminded me of that table and the style of her home. But I can be stupidly sentimental about grandparents sometimes. It's probably for the best the universe bequeathed these pulls to me so I can have a little something that makes me think of their homes, and thereby overcoming the temptation to buy the whole dang house when it goes back on the market in a few months. (I may have still called the flipper's listing agent though, just for kicks) :)

I'm sure some of you have a few good sob-stories for me about a home that you desperately wanted, but that just wasn't meant to be. Dish!

Signing Off Early (and a little poll)

Last night was scary and weird. I have this problem where food gets stuck in my throat. Once a couple years ago an Ibuprofen liquid gel pill got stuck and it was very scary and painful. It happened again late last night and it looks like the pill did some serious damage to the lining of my throat. I'm headed into a procedure that will help us know more. The whole thing feels silly and it's just about the worst timing. Deadlines galore and new, exciting projects that need research (I'm excited to share a big one with you in two weeks), but all of that will have to wait while I focus on getting healthy for the next few days. Thanks for your understanding while I take a little break here, too.

When I come back I'll be sharing some cool things we've done in our bedroom and (hopefully) some good progress on the chevron floors. Speaking of, I've waffled a lot this week with the angle choice - 22.5, 30 or 45 degree cuts.

I like both the 45 and the 30 best for the space (the room is no quite wide enough for the 22.5 long slope). The two longest cuts in both the 45 and the 30 here in the photo below are what the finished cuts would actually look like (24" long planks from miter cut to miter cut). You can see that the 45 degree angle makes for a much more narrow row than the 30 degree cut plank even though they are both 24" long. Trigonometry at work!!

What's your preference?

And, of course, some of my inspiration images to take you on through the rest of the week. Have a good one friends. Wish me luck with this dumb throat thing. xo

images found here, here and here - I'll try to update the specific photos with links later. :)

Book Club: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Auction Book

A couple years ago I found a pretty beat up copy of the Sotheby's Auction catalogue from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' estate at the flea market.

I wouldn't say that I'm more interested in Jackie than the next person (other than her work with Sister Parish on the White House reno - I have another vintage book on that topic and it's fascinating. I'll be sure to share later.). But this catalogue is really something else. It's almost like reading a blog by Jackie. Most of the items for sale included photos of her wearing or using the item and usually a short, interesting personal story about the piece.

It's not the same thing at all, obviously, but it made me glad for a second that I've kept going with this little blog here for my family's sake. I'm no good at keeping a personal journal, but maybe my kids will be interested in reading these posts when they're older. And in the off-chance that I've kept any of my furniture/clothes/jewelry that long, that they would have a little provenance and family history that make my trinkets a little more personal and meaningful. (And now I'm thinking it's time to curb a lot of the F21/H&M purchases. Cost-per-wear, baby. Cost per wear.) :)

(My favorite page in the catalogue - a painting of Jacqueline and her sister Lee in India. Those trees! The watercolor sold was one of the original paintings used in the book Mrs. Kennedy Goes Abroad)

PS Don't you ever wonder if blogs as they exist now will still be going strong in, like, ten years? Or are blogs the 8 track of social media? :)