What's Next

Hi everyone,
Obviously I haven't written posts here for a bit.

My design firm Shelter& has morphed and grown larger. I'm using collaborative design in the service of the affordable housing that we so desperately need, for aging-in-place in the neighborhoods we love, and as a counter to displacement happening all around us. Living in shared well-designed places allows us to be more connected, resilient, and lets us live more lightly on this planet with authenticity and intention.

So my work as ZOdwellings has grown to include advising cities and Bay Area agencies about collaborative living policy, and advocating for broader definitons of  the "family household" for down payment assistance programs.

And, and and.... 

Right now, I'm trying to develop a PILOT program where homeowners who want these benefits can have your city foot the bulk of the design/building costs to rework your home for collaborative living. In return  you'd commit to keeping the rents you ask modest. Have distinct privacy, wonderful collaborative kitchens and functional Commons. Small homes. Large homes. Any household that wants to share can reap the rewards.

In the end, our cities get housing faster, and for less dollars than in large housing projects. They can appear in one's, two's and three's in every neighborhood, giving our small more nimble remodeling companies work, and making our neighborhoods hubs of local reinvestment.  By us and for us, you know?

And those of us who have ventured into collaborative living get some rental income, and possibly co-ownership with its shared costs if we find that right couple or family. And of course the gifts of collaborative ownership.

Because I'm focused on the pilot program and evolving it with my non-profit and public partners, I'm relying on my Linkedin website for now. Find my website goings-on here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lonigray

Sound interesting? 

Then I want to hear from you! Would you want to be a part of the pilot if it comes to your city? Are you a homeowner, or a family looking to share? Tell me your circumstances.

Also, if you're a space designer wanting to learn the art of strong collaborative design, let me hear from you. Tell me about what you're doing and why this interests you.

Our Cities need to know the new faces of collaborative dwelling and how we want to redefine HOME.



Tell me your stories...I'm listening.

Loni 

loni@ZOdwellings.com

Part I: Thinking Beyond: How do I DO Resilience?

As our house moves through the rest of our remodel and redesign, TJ and I jump in at points to prime, paint and move furniture out. Then we back out so our contractor can assemble and install. Then it's back in again with our old and new mix of furniture and personal goods in new arrangements, places and configurations.

It means three things: We're slightly crazed, as the mix of old places and new places keeps shifting like sand between our toes. "Where did we put my coat rack that we want to hang here now?"  It also means I'm not ready with AFTER pictures and plans to show you what we've accomplished. Lastly, between the chunks of intense activity, there are chunks of mulling time. (And that mulling helps me escape the feeling of invasion, since all the work is in our private quarters at this point!)

While doing all this furniture shifting, we assembled our new clothing wardrobes in a temporary place - sigh! our sitting area, the catchall for the time being - so we can completely clear out the former master suite upstairs and rent our final suite.

This time, we are specifically  advertising for "Transition-minded housemates" and "people wanting to move toward resilience."  I'm excited. Finally I'm saying that I want people living with us who also need to take steps towards self-reliance. But doing so means I have to define what resilience is in very concrete terms for day-to-day living.

What does resilience mean to me? How do I do resilience? 'Til now I've just thought about it as gaining security and control over my life. Yes, that is the goal, but it does not articulate the actions.  As I mentioned in my post Gift to the Group, I realized that I want to do very specific, personally satisfying things that make me feel secure and empowered. Resilience begins with who I am. Who we each distinctly are. Our inner most Ring of Resilience is ourself. To my mind that's exactly as it should be. First we must ask, "What do I know, love to do and feel is a valuable skill to possess (as well as offer to my community and neighbors)? What is my unique mix of passions and mastery?"

As we decide what we wish to do with our time, it becomes a commitment to ourselves to create a place for that in our homes. Rather than just think, "My home houses what I do.", it should turn into more concrete questions:

"How will I do it?" "Where will I do it?"  What will I need?" " With whom will I share this activity?"

That then drives the layout (or the redesign) of the space so we can easily "do."  This facilitate those acts. This makes a commitment to them that makes them real. This helps us develop a rhythm of acts we want our life to include. Anchoring them in place is the important step that respects both who we are and how we intend to live moment to moment.

So when I start by asking "What do I wish to do here?", I rightly bring myself, my skills and my intentions to that answer. That may and should require me to think beyond expected or usual uses in my rooms, but I think it's important that it puts my activities as the top priority that I anchor there. I expand a room to meet my requirements and style of doing.

Take a great utilitarian space like the laundry room:
 

http://woohooie.blogspot.com/
2010_04_01_archive.html

http://www.home-decorating-room-by-room.com/
sewingroom.html

For me having been in costume and set design years ago, and home space planning now, I love to manipulate textiles. It is natural for me to expand that space into a place that encourages making with material. And that extends to anyone who shares my house with me. So a utility sink for dying and washing materials, sewing machine, cutting tables, and threads fill my small laundry area, with shelves and drawers for fabric, buttons,  tapes, and patterns, like these pictures of laundry sewing spaces. Mine is an invitation to me, but also to my housemates  to explore fabric, ...and making.

There are all levels of polished or utilitarian finishes. Different levels of "put away" or "leave out and readily accessible." And all kinds of inclusions and exclusions. It can be planned for one, ....or like me, would you make yours for a group to use occasionally?

Laundry Room, sewing area, storage, drop down ironing board, 
washer and dryer, pole to dry clothes
cherylcaseyrossinteriors.com

But if I was a gardener what then? If I loved aromatic herbs, what might I expand the laundry room to be instead? Instead of a hanger bar over the heat register to naturally dry dyed fabric and clothes, would there be hooks for drying herbs, and flowers? 

http://backyardpatch.blogspot.com/2012/10/
drying-your-herbs.html

Would the work tables and shelves house tincture supplies and let me work the leaves and inhale the pungent aromas?

http://www.homesteadanywhere.com/blog/
drying-herbs/

If I defined myself as a foodie, would lovely glass bottles in playful shapes be waiting on those shelves to be filled with herbal homemade vinegars and springs of lavender or rosemary?  

http://thebaldgourmet.com/
how-to-make-bottled-herbed-vinegar/

It's the same room. Who are you, and what do you wish to make of it?

Martha O'Hara Interiors.
charainteriors.com

As someone reaching to grow resilient, this is what transition doing is about. For me, it is a taking back a right of making in a proper space to do it well.

It is an expression of self into beautifully functional things.



****
But then there is another important part to transitioning. Having found this expression, call, or talent within ourselves and having anchored them in place, we now amplify it. We share what we're doing in all sorts of ways with our immediate community, making ourselves a Local Asset. 





 

PHASE 2: The Blue Cabinet

I am looking for my blue cabinet. Like this:

  
Weary, chipped,..... and so full of character.

I lived with this one for a vacation week in Mendocino last summer. As you see, the rest of the kitchen is modern, Danish clean, and obviously a choice owner Ron made to update what is essentially an1880's shanty.

Mendo's Garden Cottage

But this playful piece matches nothing else in the sleek creme and white kitchen. It just has to have a story around it. But I didn't want to ask Ron, in case it wasn't as provocative as my own musings about Mendo's past.





I know just where I want my cabinet to go in my kitchen. Here in that little recessed niche over the housemate fridge:

I love how the rich color says, "Look at me! Aren't I special?" More than that, in my kitchen it will say, "Loni lives here, and this gives you a hint about who she is." I see mine as green. Glass doors would be fun, but I'll take the character that I find and let it create its own story.

Since all my Phase 2 drawings are finally done and ready for Tim, I went shopping at Urban Ore, our local salvage recycling yard, or as they call it their Eco-Park.  No luck. But I'm still hoping to find other opportunities and places where I might find it. I could buy an inexpensive IKEA 30"x24" cabinet, distress, and antique it with my table milk paint. Won't have the period piece feel quite, so I'm holding out. It's an on-going hunt that I am enjoying between other tasks, and hopefully another weekend project that will have its own resonant feeling of putting myself into my house, as this Christmas table project did.



And I will write more about The Garden Cottage too. It's an example that can teach us how to use groups of buildings to achieve an amazing, and wonderfully intimate sense of "home." Ron has done many creative things to make the place unique and welcoming. It's an inspiring case study with many lessons.

Phase I: The KITCHEN #1 - a Touch that Spoke of Story

So what actually happened in our kitchen? I altered only three things actually. 

First, I created a focal point, which I'll talk about in this post. Then I did the major rethinking to space plan for multiple users- so important if you are sharing a room. Lastly, I didn't paint!  Instead, I accidentally but happily found a palette that worked with the original cabinet color. Saved the dollars, and felt okay about the "not-quite-terra-cotta" orange lower cabinetry. But I will talk about that later.

Here's where the kitchen lives on our first floor. Notice there are rooms all around it, so no windows offer direct natural light into this continually-used home workspace.

Step #1 Tie the Modern Kitchen to the Story

First change I did was to give my kitchen a story focal point, just as I had in the dining room with my harvest table. In the BEFORE pictures below, you see a nondescript modern, and anything but 1908 kitchen. 

Since my story is Modern Farmhouse, I could leave most of it, but how to bring in one element that expressed the country aspect?

It was an inexpensive change, one I've wanted to do since I moved here. I recreated the existing chimney! 

What?

Do you see  the chimney here in the BEFORE shot of the pantry, fridge wall? It's that drywall covered column against the pantry doors. I know it's our chimney because you can see the other part of the chimney chase on the other side in the old laundry that is through the door. (You can also see the black dot marking the chimney chase on the plan above.) 

But could I just uncover it? Was that chase now a metal column or the original brick?  I hear water running inside the chase from an upstairs bathroom, but didn't know where the pipe was located - kitchen side, laundry side, inside or in front of? 

In the end, not knowing what I would find and not wanting to spend money filling in the gap that removing the wall would create in the flooring I was going to keep, I decided to recreate the chimney with thinly sliced, real brick (called Slim or Thin brick these days). I researched the many, many brick colors and then TJ and I picked one that went with the California Western Victorian period, that we also liked. (Remember, make the house story one you love.)

Here's how it happened:  
 
The wall came off, and yes, the 18" x 18" brick chimney is indeed there. You can see the original stove pipe hole too. Also, there are pipes running up the right side. If I'd hoped to use the original chimney, I'd be dealing with that plus the 4" gap in both my subfloor and finish floor. Building on top of what was there was the right choice.  

The archeologist in me immediately imagined the original design. Was the cook stove against the wall right here, or sticking out into the heart of the room? The bricks are widely, coarsely spaced with messy mortar between, and that's true-sized timber framing around it, so my guess is that it was covered up originally. The chimney was utilitarian not meant to be seen. Heh, well now my house will have an exposed chimney!

Cement board establishes the original profile and a hearty chimney size, giving us a strong surface onto which we can adhere the brick.

Authentic materials offer wonderful texture to our very digital world. Our homes are the perfect place to have materials we want to touch. That feel like hearth and home literally. This thinly molded brick is real brick, but it is 1/2" thick and comes with corners and flats. Looks substantial, but at one fifth the weight.

                                

 Finally, mortared and washed, here's my new original chimney, below.  

My contractor wanted to put the matching upper cabinet I made for this wall up first and then brick around it, so it was all tied together.

                                                 But instead, I insisted that he build the full chimney first, then mount the cabinet right up against the brick, so it looked like the chimney came first, long ago, and had always been there. Then the cabinet was added later onto it.




 To add some fun and bit more back in time feel, I also had Tim bury an hand-hewn railroad nail in a course of mortar, high enough to hang some period or playful piece.  Ideas and images for what might fit are welcome!

I am pleased that I was able to bring the house story into my kitchen with one piece, but I was careful to do it with real materials and textures. I didn't play at "old." I used authentic finishes to recreate it.
 
(To see a slideshow of these pictures, click on any picture in the post.)

Pistachio Green

Today Melissa told me that my color is pistachio.

It was a compliment.

Work Meditation

Friends have offered to help me set up,

and you know my first reaction is “Yes thanks!” But actually, I think it’s important to do this myself. Reassemble my studio as a meditation. What is important, and what can I do without. If I have bodies working for me with stuff to “organize” and put somewhere, I’ll project manage not listen to the inner voice about what I need, and what I can let go of. And then where my head feels it should be put.

Since I have given myself this week to reassemble my place in this new space, I may just have to do this alone. Or however long it really takes. On my own.

In my space.

Showing My Baby Part II

It’s cool! It’s working. 

I’ve created the “place” and ways to have privacy and also happily rub shoulders when they want. TJ keeps standing in front of the chimney and new upper cabinet, saying, “ This is just what it should look like. I keep forgetting it hasn’t always been here.” 

As we show the place to potential housemates,they smile as they walk through the house. Some have actually expressed that they can feel how I’m aware of their needs. (And our own, too actually, but they don’t know see that as much.) Places are “sweet,"  and special to them- like the little laundry room. And the upper deck that they can sit in even when it rains. “Oooh, can I do a veggie garden in pots up here?!” she asks. “Yes, it’s wonderfully sunny and veggies will love it up here.” I reply. 

They’re putting themselves into it.

The laundry room has an ironing board and folding area, and we hung a clothes rack right over the heating vent for "air drying." 

Hinting at Story, Hinting at Period

Since I do not have hundreds of thousands for a total remodel and repair of this old house, there's just no point attempting to make this disjointed house tell a consistent, lovely story. Plus, I do want to experience the discipline of not having a "design budget." This is the reality of most budgets. So what to do?

Even as the story translates to juicy design elements throughout the house, I’m cutting it back. ... and cutting it back even more. Erasing most: I am NOT doing the picture railing throughout the public areas. I’m not repainting the existing trim that wonderful green, nor the walls the rich champagne. It's money and time I don't need to use up. It hurts- some, since the designer me can see how elegant it would look! No, instead, I'm understanding that I need just need a few hints.

To satisfy my design urge, I'm putting up beadboard to 76"  in two places: The hideous little hallway entrance to the kitchen - our S curve that you saw in my November 28 post, "Searching for an Affordable Honest Man", and the small hallway leading to the half bath. Ultimately the bathroom will get the new palette and beadboard as well. That palette will be bright white on the beadboard, champagne accent and on the high bit of wall remaining above the wainscoting, this wonderful dark heritage blue I found. That way the S-Curve will hint at Country when people enter, and also be brighter and way nicer. The palette reappears in the bathroom hallway as another hint of period and then may become my palette when I finish the master bathroom in the former laundry room. I'd love to have a beadboard and rich blue bathroom!

Another trick I may want to do - since the pretty green I was going to do as the common area trim is not happening now, is bring the white, the blue AND a more mellow green into the kitchen in "Florida Cracker" style, which really speaks to me and about me:

architect, Jim Strickland of Historical Concepts

The cabinets will be white generally, but there will be "surprises" of green and accents of the same dark blue in strategic places. 

Hmmm what color the island?!

I found our table

...well, actually, I made our harvest table! It comes next Wednesday. And it really feels like mine.

I picked the table top and the legs - well TJ had a say and more than agreed to what I wanted. It's a 7-foot long wooden door from an old factory made of Siberian pine, with an unknown history in a few repaired patches. You just want to run your hands over the dark stained boards. To make it into a true harvest table top, they encase the door with perpendicular "breadboard ends."

I read somewhere that Siberian Pine wood has excellent resonance qualities and is used to make pianos, harps and guitars. Fits our family!

I told the store, which happened to be closing for good the next weekend, where I wanted the legs placed so we had the right amount of overhang (to look like our vision of a harvest table ), and still offer enough leg room at the ends. We pulled 3 ladder-back chairs up to another similar sized table and slid three chairs between the leg placement we measured. They will easily slide underneath. Eight people would fit around our table comfortably.

A silverware drawer in the skirt would've been just perfect, but we are getting a custom assembled table to my specifications using the inventory still left. At less than half price, I can't really complain. In fact, it feels very much like the best part of when I redesigned old broken homes: I used the essential good bones that were there, but made it into something fresh and wonderful.

We paid, set a delivery date and headed back to our car in the heavy rain, excitedly talking about our table. Just as he started the engine, I told TJ to wait, and ran back to the store. "Don't finish the legs or skirt," I told them. " I'll do that." I'd seen many wonderful, distressed milk paint tables while doing my farm table research. 

I don't need another task in all this project planning,shopping and designing, and I have no idea what I'm getting myself into figuring out how to use lye-based milk paint. But now that I've had a direct hand in creating this focal point to our new way of living, I just need this table to be really ours. I want my hand in the table's history too.

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.”

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.