Our Mid-Century Door Color

After a few days with paint chips taped to the door we've narrowed down our eight door color options to two.

We've decided on blue over green and Gem Turquoise is leading the pack.

And we're keeping Tropical Tide around because we might need it depending on which grey we paint the trim, which is the next color we'll have to select.

I looks a bit bright when I break out my terrible Photoshop skills, but I promise, in person it's the perfect color to make a mid-century door pop.

Mid-Century Austin Find: Broyhill Desks

Uptown Modern in Austin has a set of Broyhill desks in their store right now.

They have a Broyhill Sculptra desk

And a Broyhill Brasilia desk

This is only the second Broyhill Premier Collection Sculptra desk I've seen for sale in Austin, the first one (which was also found at Uptown Modern) is sitting in my study. Uptown Modern has some other Brasilia items for sale currently, and they've promised even more in the upcoming weeks.

Mid-Century Front Door Color

We bought our Crestview Door Westhaven kit today, we went with double pane reeded for a little extra energy efficiency and privacy. And we've started to narrow down the color for the front door.

We started by thinking blue or green, and now we're down to a few shades:

They're taped to the door now so we can see what they look like from the street and in action. After a few days we'll pick our favorite. What's your favorite?

Crestview Doors Coupon

Crestview Doors is having an outstanding sale. You can pick up a $100 gift certificate for $50 or a $500 gift card for $375. There's a limit of one per customer and you'd better believe I picked one up yesterday.

You can use the card on any interior or exterior doorlite kit and clearance items. If you've been thinking about picking up a Crestivew Doors kit, now is the time to act because the sale ends at 11:59PM, April 28, 2011.

Decorating Your Mid-Century Doorway

Real Simple had a nice little feature on doorway accessories for different styles of homes. The one most applicable to a mid-century home is definitely the modern style, which could give you a nice mid-century modern look on your porch.

I really like the modern pendant light (photo above) that they call out, but there are plenty of good items to see if you're redoing your stoop.

On a side note: We've made some progress on selecting a color for our door. We're down to about six shades and leaning towards blue. I'll share soon.

Seach Craigslist with Photos

I'm sure most people who read this blog check out craigslist every now and again, or daily, or if you're like me you've set up RSS feeds for the things you're looking for and still check the site every day just in case you missed anything good. I love craigslist, but one of the most annoying things is how many times you have to click and scroll to see the photos.

Someone must have thought the same thing because there's a new browser extension called Craigslist Helper which shows you pictures when you search. It also has some other features that I'll probably start using once I get past my initial run: notes, maps, multiple craigslist searching. From my limited use (just tonight) I can say it's not perfect, but it definitely helps the craigslist shopping experience.

New Mid-Century Modern Doorway Light

In many aspects of my life I'm able to live by the rule: Perfect is the enemy of good. However, with home improvement projects, I've had a hard time believing this.

Which takes us to our entryway light (technically I don't think we can call it a foyer, but it's the light above the area right after you walk in the front door). This is what it used to look like, a mushroom light:

My idea was, if we change the front porch light to one of those classic mid-century hanging globes

It would be perfect to have a matching globe inside, just flush mount so there's still enough headspace for tall people

So I went out and bought a flush mount globe light to install. Once I got it home, I realized that the base of globe lights are smaller that mushroom lights. Which would mean repainting the ceiling under the old light base and possibly some light repair work if I did any damage removing the old base, which is stuck on pretty good.

So I returned the globe light. And picked up a nicer looking mushroom light cover that fits in the current base and will still match any globe light that we put on the porch. And it looks good.

Richard Neutra's Mid-Century Home on This Old House

I was watching This Old House this weekend and they were filming in LA, redoing a Spanish Colonial home. But on one of their side trips they stopped by mid-century home of Richard Neutra.

If you don't know about Richard Neutra, check out these wikipedia articles: the man, his house.

From This Old House's press release about the LA shoot:

These Los Angeles project episodes will also feature side stories highlighting the distinctive lifestyle, world-class building projects and talented local craftspeople in the city and surrounding areas. One segment will focus on the active renovations to the spectacular city-owned Hollyhock House, Frank Lloyd Wright's first Los Angeles project built between 1919 and 1921. Another episode will spotlight preservation efforts at the Silver Lake home and studio of the late architect Richard Neutra, known for his influence on California Modernism. "This Old House will introduce to the nation those mid-century, Craftsman, Spanish and other neighborhood landmarks that aren't as well known as the Chinese Theater, for example, but that are just as defining in terms of who we are as a city," Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti said.

If you can catch a return, the Neutra house is gorgeous and any fan of mid-century homes should see it. I'm looking forward to those other side stories on upcoming episodes too.

Done: Paint Master Bedroom Closet

The wife and kid went on vacation, so it's the perfect time to empty everything out of the master bedroom closet and paint it. I should have known that it was going to take longer than I expected, all repairs and renovations on mid-century homes seem to. I was hoping to get things done in a few hours, but two days isn't bad for the outcome.

Here's what things looked like before I got started.
My wife's side

My side

Must have been painted by a shorty because they didn't paint the top

The first surprise was that my wife's side of the closet was painted wallpaper. I was planning on just painting both sides white and being done with things. But the wallpaper meant that I had to tear some things out first.

The second surprise was finding this on the top shelf

I'm guessing it was the original owners and no one noticed it till now because it was so high and far back on the shelf.

The things you find when renovating in Texas

Great mid-century packaging though

The final surprise was under a random piece of wood that probably held a shelf at one point, some of the original wallpaper.

After pulling out the wallpaper I couldn't bring myself to paint the wood, it was just too pretty. Plus I really like the white on one side, wood on the other look. So here's what things look like now.

The white makes my side of the closet look a lot bigger. I'm pretty happy with what it looks like, even if it took two days to get there.

Broyhill Brasilia For Sale in Austin

There is a plethora of Broyhill Brasillia for sale in Austin right now.

Room Service Vintage has a Broyhill Brasilia dresser, regular dinner table with arm chairs and side chairs and a nine drawer triple dresser base with landscape mirror.

They also have a coffee table that isn't a Broyhill Brasilia, but would look pretty amazing next to any Brasillia piece.

And to finish off your room, stop by Uptown Modern, who currently have a Broyhill Brasilia side table. I'm not sure if it's the Brasilia lamp table (26x26x20) or the Brasilia end table (20x28x20).

Mid-Century Interior Home Colors

Mid2Mod is a mid-century store in Dallas that I hope to shop at one day. If you like Mid-Century Austin Living you should check out their blog. They have a great post about interior mid-century paint colors. They talk about the popularity of gray walls in mid-century homes, which I found interesting because all of our walls are a light gray.

Mid-Century Mailbox

I've been hunting for a mid-century modern mailbox. I've also been looking for one that wouldn't break the bank (who knew mailboxes could cost so much). This Apartment Therapy post was a nice start and led me to the Postino Mailbox.

I think it will look great with the modern Eichler address numbers and mid-century door knob we're planning on.

Mid-Century Comic Movie

Besides being a mid-century design nerd, I'm a pretty big comic book nerd. I love it when world's collide.



This was made because of a poster design contest by Super Punch. You can check out some of the fantastic, mid-century-inspired posters here.

From the movie's page:

Inspired by classic Sixties movie titles and prompted by John Struan of Super Punch fame, I've built a 1960s style title sequence for the upcoming X-Men: First Class film.

Set during the midst of the Cuba Missile Crisis, X-Men: First Class tells the story of the first team coming together, before they would become the heroes and villains we know from the original X-Men Trilogy.

This sequence was designed to give a very brief primer on the time period, the setting, as well as show the relationships of the characters in this film, as they are very different from the previous movies and audiences shouldn't be confused as to why Professor X and Magneto, enemies in the original trilogy, are the best of friends in this prequel.

Super Punch held a contest redesigning the posters for the film, which played it safe by sticking very close to the correlation to the original trilogy, and winding up rather mundane compared to the slick trailer rife with espionage, red fear, and 60s hair. Several people were quick to make posters in the Mod, Saul Bass, and James Bond style that I had in mind, so it was decided that I'd make a title sequence instead.

And yes, that music is a very melancholic rendition of the 90s cartoon theme song.

Mid-Century Kid's Book: This is London

I did some hanging out in a used book store this weekend where I happened upon Miroslav Sasek's This is London. It is a fantastic example of a mid-century kid's book. It's a bit old for our little one, it's 64 pages and the suggested ages are 9-12, but we read a few pages a night and eventually we'll get to the end.

I was excited to find out that it's just one book in a series from Miroslav Sasek. I've already added This Is Texas and This Is Ireland to my Amazon wishlist.

Mid-Century Austin Estate Sale: 11304 Pickfair

This looks like the best kind of estate sale, lots of stuff with a high possibility of hidden treasures for those willing to dig.

Here are the details:
11304 Pickfair
Austin, TX 78750
April 8: 8am-5pm
April 9: 8am-5pm
April 10: 9am-3pm

2011 Austin Heritage Homes Tour

The 2011 Austin Heritage Homes Tour is this Saturday, April 9, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. This year's theme is "The Bold and the Beautiful" and the homes don't look mid-century, but I try to take any chance I get to see the inside of homes like this.

If you're interested in seeing them yourself you can buy tickets on Saturday at the Tea Embassy located at 900 Rio Grande.

Authentic Mid-Century Ranch Exterior Colors

We're getting pretty close to selecting an exterior accent color for our mid-century ranch home. We have a big stack of paint chips that has been whittled down from a huge stack of paint chips. Then I had a minor scare because I only want to do this once, which means I want to do it right. So I went on a hunt for authentic mid-century ranch exterior paint colors. If you're looking for the same, let me do the legwork for you.

I started by looking at mid-century home brochures.

I haven't found a better collection than Antique Home, although Flickr can be helpful too. I moved past home brochures after realizing two things: 1) they're going to contain the safest color palettes because the seller was trying to reach the biggest audience, not exactly what you need when you're looking to add a pop of color, and 2) I didn't really have a way to get the color from the image to my house. I could get close; printing off the picture and scanning it at the paint store would be an option, but I figured there had to be an easier way.

So I went directly to the source, paint companies. And boy did they provide.

California Paints has some fantastic colors and insights into mid-century paint colors. Their mid-century modern color palette spans popular colors from 1940 to 1960.

The post-World War II housing boom and the popularization of modern architecture brought bold colors in deep tones into popularity once again. Earth tones dominated exteriors, while interiors featured sophisticated, modulated neutral shades like bone, gray-beige, pearl gray and taupe alongside saturated accents in fuchsia, teal, evergreen, charcoal and chocolate with strong contrasts in chartreuse, tangerine, gold and sulfur yellow.

While this is the period I'm looking for, the main color on my mid-century ranch is white so earth tones and neutrals isn't really the exterior color I'm looking for as an accent. Although the Teal Accent might be an option.

California Paints' Post Modern paint palette is probably closer to what I'm looking for.

Strong contrasts characterize the colors of the Post Modern/Cold War era: pale neutrals and pastel tints, used both inside and outside the home contrast with bright, clear accent colors. Deep shades of gold, yellow-green, red-orange or red-brown and bright blue, mint green and turquoise provide bursts of color in houses painted in warm beige, tan, avocado, peach or cinnamon tones.

Bright blue, turquoise or mint green are exactly what I had in mind for an exterior accent color.

Sherman Williams has a Retro Revival line of paints that's intended for the mid-century home. But they were too pastel for me.

What’s old has circled back again! Retro Revival, features contemporary colors organized into a primarily mid-century sensibility. Part art deco, part 50’s suburban, part 60’s mod, these awesome retro colors are fresh and re-freshed for today’s tastes and styles. Know what’s so great about using classic colors with a new twist? These colors are familiar. We have seen them before in others ways, but re-purposed for modern day, they take on an entirely new light. Are your ready for your own Retro Revival?

Anna Sova's mid-century modern color collection that have a lot of great color options that pop.

Post-war American pleasures, from 1945 to 1960, VJ Day to JFK. The fabulous fifties brought hedonistic consumerism balanced with a beatnik poet's austerity. A passion for anything modern, new technologies and materials helped create biomorphic, abstract and expressionistic designs that were sleek, elegant and functional. Mid-century colors available in high fidelity for plywood blondes with swivel hips.

Then I went outside the box a bit and found the original Eames fiberglass colors (hat tip to Eames Office).

The Brilliant Yellow or Light Blue could make fantastic exterior accent colors.

I think we're on the right path with our color selections and once we have our big stack of color chips down to one or two, I'll be sure to share.