Old Lady Furniture

I loved my Mom-in-Law.


And I had the rare gift of a second mom who actually thought I was good enough for her son. Don’t get me wrong, we had our differences – another time I’ll tell you how I had to fire her while she lived with us.  In all, she was caring and loving. But also like me, she had her own mind.

The reason I bring it up though is that one of our differences was our taste in furnishings. She grew up Chicago White Lace Irish and loved baronial antique pieces with curls and heavy white marble tops. Yes, I know, I know: Read that- valuable, but ick. I have never wanted to live with pieces that wear me. I was just twelve when I went through my colonial and 4-poster canopy beds phase. I’m very glad I grew out of it by thirteen. Even more so because what my folks failed to mention back then was that those were overly polished pressed wood, Levitz-quality reproductions. Oooh, bigger ick.

So TJ and I are emailing back 'n' forth with pictures of furnishing pieces that create “the story." "Like this?” He asks.  Do we want a trestle? Pretty, but they get int he way of all the human legs we need to put there.

What kind of tables says country house to me?

What kind of rugs? Those oval rag rugs in dreary colors? Ooooh, more ick.

Search for farm or country and you get tons of banal, weary looking kitsch that fails to delight to my heart. I’m selling my lovely smaller dining set in glass, with wood and green metal. I grew up hoping someday to live in Manhattan and have a sleek but warm wood taste. I love lean but playful, rich colors. I adore textures and repeating lines. I love the materials of  farm- real wood substantial, but not farmhouse.

I warn you, if you’re stepping through this process as we are, and writing your story, be sure you want to live in what you create too, even if it's perfect for the house. It’s your home, make it tell YOUR story! A modern story inside an older house if it's you, is what you must do. Being a designer and space planner, I could do a true to 1908 period story, but only if that’s the story I want to live with!

I‘m modifying the house's story to have more straight lines to read, “Modern Rustic Country.”

In Search of an Honest, Affordable Man

OMG, what a pain! 

Searching for a reliable general contractor. I’m jumping into recommendations at trusted local forums, ones I’ve relied upon for years, and they’ve changed. The best ones have been found out, and now the GC’s or workmen are writing their own recommendations as clients. Sometimes I can tell, but sometimes I can’t. I hate that I can’t trust them anymore. Damn. Damn. Damn. 

And there are dozens to sort through. I’m tired just looking. They’re hungry and in need. But I’ve had bad, graceless work done and have leaks to this day, so I need to get a good person. I’m turning to people I know, but most don’t pinch a penny quite the way I am attempting to here. So when I say,  “Can you adjust to the finish level consistent with my house?”,you can hear them thinking, 'Grand Old Victorian.'

Not quite!

In Search of an Honest Man

Okay so we’ve determined a miniscule budget on purpose - $25,000 -  to be able to add three housemate to our household!

I’m determined to save the rest for my business' growth. I also need to see if I can really squeeze the dime as we all must these days. DIY time wherever possible. We will do all the priming, painting and finishes and reuse everything we can. Good for the planet, good for the pocketbook.

But still we must move a laundry, split the great room into new work studios  for TJ and for me, add a new bath and master closet, renew an upstairs tub, add cabinetry and another fridge to kitchen for the housemates, relocate hallway and pantry storage, add a new deck railing and roof, and spruce up the outside. Oh, and also cordon off a section of the backyard with a low fence for our pooch Dash, so a housemate doesn't inadvertently let him out of our gate when they park their bikes. Oh, a lockable bike rack too.


( add planned AFTER house sketch)

I no longer have the shoulders or knees for rehab myself though I tell you, I yearn to do a little tear-out. Oh the pleasure of a wrecking bar. You can’t imagine how just plain good it feels to yank a wall down! Plus I no longer have my hubby General Contractor/builder to coordinate the order of workmen. Or a sense of what this all would cost here in the Bay Area. I need a GC. 

Sigh.

A Different Lens

The goal of my house make-over is not a beautiful design. 

Sure, I want to tell the right story somehow and make it attractive. But it’s just so clear that the point of my design work is two-fold: to be as miserly as I can with the dollars I've allotted to the project, and to make sure that the flow and use of the house is really transformed to comfortably hold and respect multiple residents’ individual needs. That brings a different eye to the task of interior architecture. It's space planning pure and simple, one that I dearly love. It’s the human element of dwelling design. 

Yes, I adore choosing palettes and finishes that tell that story.  But in this project, that's icing.

My success happens when the room works for groups of individuals that all want to make a meal, whether they want to eat together or not….

No Silk Purse, but Still

I'm surprised, and relieved,  at how much Rach's outside perspective and fresh eyes brought to this effort. She gave us our home’s "story." 

As we walked through the common areas designing, she suggested we make the dining room the gathering space, using a large farm table. 

As soon as she said "farm table", it pulled everything together in my and it turns out, TJ's minds. Now, as I think about the changes we need to make, I am choosing things that enhance the story. Plus of course, Rach and I have been talking color and a few pieces to warm the living room up visually, while I am thinking space design for a collective. It's been a great melding of talents.

Thanks, sweetie, we have our story. The ugly toad will hardly become a prince by our redesigning “kiss”, but maybe an earthy farm gal.

A Former Resident's View of Toadhall

My 27-year-old daughter came for a visit last week, and I got fresh eyes about my house. She’s lived in several apartments, and has also shared houses with owners in San Francisco, London and New York.

She helped us winnow down what we "must do" to make it worthy, while also helping us see beyond all the beaten up, poorly done, "needs work" things I can't not see anymore.

She reminded me that she’d always loved this bedraggled, imperfect house, and everything that she loved about it is still here- the gorgeous light through the rooms, a mix of big celebratory spaces (where we even added a disco ball!), and small niches that I’d helped the family create to give us each our own bit of privacy. The neighborhood is terrific, historic, great character, safe with all sorts of hip and funky and fine places you can walk to, plus it’s an easy trip to “The City” she loves.

These are all things our housemates will crave. If the group spaces are welcoming, and there are small details in the intimate corners for ease and privacy (that's my job), plus access to so much in the area around us, then we have real amenities to offer.

Sweet Side Rooms

TJ and I never planned on living together. Neither of us wanted this much house actually. As young widows, we both promised our kids we’d have separate places. Ahh, the silly promises we make. 

When we both moved to the Bay Area from Washington State, we couldn’t afford two houses.  After sitting down with our kids to explain the "revised arrangement," we naively bought the most square footage we could afford together. We figured everyone would have separation that way. Ha! Ya know, that’s a total fallacy. Privacy is determined by the layout and flow through rooms, not their size. This Victorian with its huge great room has over 4,500sf, and all the common rooms – like the living or dining room - feel like hallways to somewhere else. Victorian house circulation just flows that way. There are so many doorways in and out of each room that there’s no sense you can really sit with others to have a quiet conversation. People pass through the room’s activities on their way to another space. 

This place has made me realize that the best rooms are the intimate side rooms off of larger spaces: the small side office off the main living areas, sitting rooms and the little 8x8 extra rooms off the bedroom. They have sweet, sweet feelings. I’ve put a wonderful craft and sewing room into one. 

Years ago, when my daughter needed more space in her room, we moved her bed into the smaller sitting area, 7 x 12 ft. Besides making that sleeping area feel more private and intimate (She liked the feeling so much we also added hanging drapes around the bed a la Elizabethan times.) That opened the main room up for whatever else she wanted to do. 

More importantly perhaps, it allowed her space to keep morphing, and it became more hers when the bed wasn’t the main story the room told.

Before & Bleak

Oh...

So, this is the classy way the stone base of my fireplace was finished in the living room. Notice the nail left embedded in the mortar:

And here's a corner of my dining room floor:

And this is my stair handrailing...really:

I'm looking at the house again, "for the first time." How will others see it. Oh, ick! I'm realizing again that my house is not well done. It's not an arts 'n' Crafts beauty like the rest of the neighborhood (which is great BTW).No, our old girl was built across the Bay from San Francisco during those frightening years immediately after the1906 quake, "Quick, get me outa San Francisco."

Then it was badly updated in the 1960’s by someone with no taste nor care about what they did. I mean, I won't even go into the scotch-taped electrical outlets we found, which we redid immediately. But we're still living with the most graceless, ugly river rock fireplace. (And I adore rock fireplaces, so that's saying a lot!) 

The lovely high curved ceilings were dropped and squared off with drywall and the knock down surface texture on the walls is so heavy-handed in places you can see how the beer party progressed as the guys worked. Many walls have double drywall. (I’ve yet to figure out why, since it would’ve been more effective and less costly to just blow insulation inside.) 

The double walls bury the lovely historic dimension of the trim so it loses the raised profile that catches light and casts small shadows- what creates trim's character. 

Whenever someone added something new, they just cut-off the end that was in the way. No need to realign anything. Oh, it's so sad how poorly things were done in places. The kindest thing a real estate agent could tell me about the house years ago was that it didn’t “tell any story.” 

It’s a total hodge-podge.  

BEFORE

So you know, here's the house as we begin.

TJ uses the bedroom suite next to the master as his work studio, and I use the smaller bedroom below for my design studio, and its closet for office and storage.

And So It Begins

So here she is: We call her Toadhall, our 1908 Victorian.

I’m excited!

Because the house doesn't flow well for the way we live, I’ve sorta pushed and shoved furniture around to use our rooms differently since we bought her 15 years ago. I've also wanted to try sharing house resources for a long while too. Years ago, I was part of what was called Conserver Society thinking and the times being what they are now has made the idea seem more, well....imperative.

Now, circumstances are making it possible to take the steps right here in my house: First, I’m starting up my own business again as a residential space planner, and second, my life partner TJ, a very private, amazing man, has realized he too wants the feel of other folk moving and using our house, even as he still needs real private space. Even from me. So that’s my space planning challenge. He’ll be my crash test dummy. If I can make him feel okay, and stay excited by this, I’ve succeeded.

And you’ll see his posts here too, to let you know how I’m doing….

Yes, I'm a little scared too. I want this to work! I do believe that we can enjoy our home's spaces in new ways that are beyond nuclear family. I explored Co-Housing and other intentional community collectives when my hubby was alive. But he was 6'9" and felt inhibited by the small units.

But I miss people. I am my most productive in a collaborative design and business environment. And when I'm doing my own internal, creative in work, I love the feeling that just beyond there's a lovely flow of human laughter and energy. And working at home has all but erased both, so I should be thrilled. 

I am.

But honestly, I’ve been in my own home with just family for years and as much as I want it, I admit that I’m also used to having everything in my house my way. I want to feel enriched and expanded, not invaded. So I’m a crash test dummy too.

But what I believe living this way could feel like is so powerful for me, that I just must try. What's most important is that I’ll design the spaces to flow for group as well as solo comforts and privacy, not just squeeze a group into it. Intend it.

See what you think. Welcome along for the ride!