Plycraft Lounger Touchups

I occasionally see this same chair listed on craigslist or ebay for $500-1000, so we got a such a great deal for paying just $300. There were a few scuffs on the wood here and there, but nothing too bad. Here are a couple shots of the blemishes on there when we bought it:

With the exception of one small edge area where the wood was slightly damaged, the rest of the scuffs just needed to be buffed or sanded out. This was a quick project. I systematically worked my way over each section of the chair, using a fine sand paper to lightly remove or minimize the surface blemishes, then went over the entire thing with a nice wood oil. This was one of my rainy day projects at some point over the winter, just hadn't gotten around to posting about it.

Here are some shots of the chair post-clean up and oil polish:

So beautiful. It looks nearly new now. What surprises me is what great condition the leg bases are in. Compared to the wood parts, there's not as much you can do about improving those once damaged. Common problems I see on so many of the same loungers for sale out there are the metal is rusting significantly, the black base cap and/or an end piece or two is missing, but ours isn't missing anything and there's minimal tarnish on the legs.

Gainey Pots and Indoor Plants

With south-facing floor-to-ceiling windows and such a big living room space, adding a few indoor plants was an obvious must. Especially after scoring two large Gainey pots on Craigslist. I wanted to have at least one fruiting tree, since our entire space is so much about functionality. The first was an easy choice - a lime tree!

After doing some research on different varieties and finding out which grow best indoors, I decided on a 3-year old Bearss lime tree, which we purchased back in early October from Four Winds Growers. It's a seedless variety, and when ripe we'll be able to pick limes right from the tree in the living room and add to a rum and coke, Nick's famous tacos, or just a glass of water.

It began blossoming in mid-January, and here's a picture of it on February 1st:

I selected the matte black planter for the lime tree, which is my favorite of the two Gainey pots. It looks a bit funny because the tree is only about 2 feet tall right now, but it will definitely grow into it. The Bearss lime is a semi-dwarf variety, which means it can get up to about ten feet tall. We'll probably let it grow to around the top of the window. And there's a plant caster with wheels underneath the pot to make it easier to move if needed.

I was really surprised at the number of blossoms on such a small tree. Obviously they won't ALL turn into limes, but there are easily over 50 of them on this little guy already. Here's a closer look at the top cluster:

I liked the idea of having the window framed by plants on each side, and really wanted another fruit of some kind that wouldn't do well outside here (at least not year-round). We considered avocado, pomegranate, and another variety of citrus, settling on a clementine tree. Finding true clementines in the store is sometimes difficult. I would like an avocado tree, but there are several cold-hardy varieties that grow just fine outside in the northwest, so that's what we will get if/when we decide to get one of those.

The grower where I found my lime tree doesn't sell clementines, so I just looked around for a good deal. Once ordered, the clementine tree took awhile to arrive because of a snowstorm in the midwest, and it was pretty much dead on arrival. The company does have a replacement policy and did send me a new one, though it seemed to take threatening to contact my credit card company to reverse the charge to hear back from them, claiming they hadn't gotten my earlier email. So I'm not going to name the company I bought from. Also they've sent me so many spam emails since my purchase, while I've had zero from Four Winds.

Still, once they sent my replacement clementine it arrived quickly AND was blossoming, which was great! It's a 5-6 year old plant and quite tall:

We also have a little aloe plant at the base of the clementine

You can see in the above photo the second Gainey pot, similar to the other but a glossy black instead of matte. I don't like the shiny finish as much as matte, so from most views within the room it's partially hidden behind the Plycraft chair.

The trunk and branches are pretty thin but will thicken up over time. There was a pretty good-sized unripe clementine on one of the branches upon arrival and it made that branch droop over a lot, so I'm not sure how it will handle mass fruiting. This one has quickly gone from having a few blossoms to, like the lime tree, having at least 50 in clusters all over.

Closer look at one side of clementine blossoms

I've been pollinating both of the trees with a small paintbrush since there aren't any bees around to do it. We'll see over the next few months how well that worked.

The final indoor planter we needed to find an inhabitant for was the pot and stand we bought from Modernica. With the two larger indoor pots being used for fruit trees, this smaller one was perfect for a purely decorative plant. We perused the indoor/tropical section of Portland Nursery and fell in love with this dracaena marginata, or Dragon Tree. It's the 'colorama' variety, so instead of solid green fronds it has green and pinkish-red ones. Since this matte black pot matches well with the matte black Gainey planter, those are the most prominently featured within the living room. The dragon tree and its beautiful pot and stand looks perfect placed between the fireplace and the hutch.

We also recently found 2 smaller brown Gainey pots at Hawthorne Vintage in Portland, but those will be used outside on the patio, plants to be determined.

Mounting the Television

We both liked the idea of putting the television above our mantle-less fireplace; it's out of the way, yet centrally located. The only problem with this is the cords — they have to go somewhere. With drywall mounting, you can drill a hole and run them inside the wall; not so with masonry.

Still, we figured we could work something out. I picked out a reasonably-priced TV mount that could handle a television of our size and weight, which also came with masonry options and instructions. Mounting securely into masonry requires lag bolts and shields, as well as big holes. The mounting hardware did come with plastic shields, but I bought some metal ones and used both, just to be on the safe side.

Mounting involved using a 1/2" masonry bit to drill six deep holes into the brick, shoving the lag bolt shields into the holes, then pressing the mount to the brick and screwing the lag bolts into the shields. The bolts cause the shields to expand outwards, applying lateral pressure to the inside of the holes, and securing the mount in place. We tested it for weight and Katie was able to hang off of it without any shifting or creaking.

Before hiding the cables and power cord

All that was left was attaching the television and hiding the cables, which include at the moment two HDMI cables and one power cord. I used a small cable hider to run the cables along the brick sideways, then down the outer edge of the fireplace. I painted the cable hider over the brick with acrylic paints in a mottled texture so that it would blend in with the brick:

The cable hider almost disappears in the right light.

The other half of the equation is what all those cables run to, which is this little end table:

In the open cabinet above are a receiver, a blu-ray player, an Apple TV and our modem/router. Below, behind the sliding doors, are all of our movies on disc. You'll also notice a little cat door behind the magazines — that's a little detail the house already had that we fell in love with. It leads to an elevated enclosed area in the garage where the litter box is kept. The cats essentially have a bathroom door, and the litter box is out of sight.

Here's the whole west-facing wall of the living room to get a sense of the television and media cabinet in context:

Go ahead and click... this one deserves to be seen full-size.

That's the view from our couch. I'm very happy with how it came out. I was a little worried that the screen would be too high and we'd be straining our necks every time we watched a movie, but that's not been the case at all. What I love most is that there isn't a whole piece of furniture dedicated to holding up the television, and the small end table to the right would make just as much sense in that corner were it not home to our media electronics.

The Big Move! (And Then Our First Big Household Purchase)

Well we've been in our new house for almost two months and I haven't done an update since we've moved. Part if it is because I've been busy DOING things, and when I'm not busy doing things I'm enjoying being lazy. Also part of it is that working on the blog while living in Utah was a way for me to spend time with the house. Now I'm actually living in it!

Since the last post was about the Eames lounge replica we picked up on Craiglist, I'll start with this adorable picture of the cats enjoying it.

They handled the move like champs and quickly acclimated to their new home. We packed the moving truck and left Salt Lake City on the afternoon of September 14th. We spent the night at a pet-friendly hotel in Boise and then continued on to Portland. After some minor trouble on the road, we arrived at our beautiful home the evening of September 15th.

The first thing we did after unloading the moving truck the next day was take the truck to Ikea and pick up the couch we'd already picked out: the Karlstad, in black leather.

Our friend and upstairs neighbor in Salt Lake had the same couch, and we really liked it. What we didn't like were the terrible block legs that came with it, so we researched alternatives. Fortunately we found an Esty store where you can order tapered legs in a variety of finishes. We quickly ordered a set and got them in about a week, which is fantastic considering they are made to order. 

Here is a closeup of the end:

Changing the legs really made a huge difference. This really is Ikea's most stylish couch, and with the simple (and cheap) addition of tapered legs, it looks like some several thousand dollar mid-century modern style couches we saw while researching what to buy. It's also very comfortable!

Another Craigslist Win

It was early Saturday evening and we were hanging out at our friend's house while waiting for the second coat of polyurethane to dry, so I browsed Craigslist. There happened to be a reproduction Eames lounge listed a few hours earlier in the color combination we were looking for: walnut with black leather. I texted to ask if we could see it right away, since we were leaving town the next morning. Within the hour we were checking it out and decided to buy. The couple selling was really cool and we talked with them for a while. Coincidentally, the guy needed a large photo print delivered to Salt Lake, so when he found out that's where we were driving he asked if we could transport it for him. They even knocked $50 off the chair for it.  Here's the photo from the ad:

Needs a little bit of touch up on the wood and the leather could use some conditioning but overall it's in pretty good shape. We took it to the house and left it in the garage due to the floors being refinished. On our trip last weekend, we were finally able to bring the lounge chair into the house. Here is Nick relaxing in the one corner that is now (mostly) complete! It's really coming together nicely.

Nick Refinishes the Floor

After the day of prep work we were ready to put down the first coat of polyurethane. I vacuumed one more time and then Nick started the application. He had done this only once before, but had a complete handle on it. 

I'm not going to include pictures of all three coats, though there were noticeable differences between each of them and I did document them. He did the first Friday afternoon, which took the longest. We allowed the first coat to drive overnight then Nick completed the second by early afternoon on Saturday. We went back that night to do the final coat, finishing that sometime around midnight. This was the first trip we stayed at the house, but these two nights we had to stay at a friend's place. Sunday morning we left there, stopped by our house to see how the final coat turned out, then got on the road back to Utah.

First room: Master Bedroom. Working his way toward the door where I'm standing.

Closet done

Close up: first coat compared to sanded area

Dining area after

Dining area before for comparison

Living room finished

And before shot of the living room floor again. Incredible difference.

Floor Prep

Even with four days of painting we didn't get everything completed. The studio/guest room still needs to be painted but refinishing the floor took priority for the rest of the week. 

The floors were really dull and very worn. There were some water spots in the living room and black marks that resembled tire treads on some of the bedroom floors, which was probably transfer of some kind from carpet pads back when they were carpeted. 

Dining area before

Living room before

Nick spent Friday morning sanding the wood floor throughout the house while I used the vacuum to clear out all of the dust so he could see the areas he'd already done and where he still needed to sand. I ended up vacuuming 4 or 5 more times after he was finished in order to make sure we got all of the dust and anything else that might have been on the floor.

Nick sanding the studio/guest room

He had to spend extra time on areas like the one below, but was able to reduce these marks significantly!

Tire tread-like marks in bedrooms from carpet pad 

It took several hours of sanding, but the floors were finally ready. We had an appointment to have the fireplace inspected that afternoon, so as soon as that was over Nick started with the polyurethane. Here are photos of the living room and dining area sanded and ready to be refinished:

Living room sanded

Dining room sanded