a dollar short and a day late

Ordered some mini-bidness cards early last week from a place called something like "Overnight Cards" and paid the extra bucks to get them on Friday. When did I get them? Today.

Sigh.

Not sure what I'm gonna do with 1,000 cards. Maybe we'll be on another tour?

the home tour cameth!!!

The Austin Modern Home Tour was yesterday, and it was a hoot having our house on the tour! We decided to stay at the house all day, and I'm glad we did. We met a herd of nice people interested in modern and also met several nice folks that read the blog. Plus, it was good to be there to explain certain features and tell a few war stories. And it's always fun to hang out with the architects from Element 5 Architecture as well as the Swanx lady.

Our house was one of several that one could pick up tickets at (probably because we were the northernmost house on the tour), so folks were lining up well before the 11 am opening.

Lining up to see the house!

That's us way up northeast. Come to think of it, there's not much Modern north of here...

We didn't count how many people came through the tour, but Michele, the Swanx lady, estimated 1,500 to 2,000 people walked through the house (!!!). Last year the tour had 2,500 signed up, so that's indeed possible. Given that we're an outlier, we probably saw less traffic than the more central homes. There were only a few five-minute lulls during the day, otherwise the house was full of folks. For the most part the weather cooperated. There was a light rain early in the morning and a light sprinkle mid-afternoon.

As a friend noted, it takes a "special kind of person to allow thousands of strangers to tromp through your house". It's not for everyone cause there's always a handful doing stuff they shouldn't be doing (using the restrooms, peeking in drawers, pulling books off the bookshelf), but all-in-all most everyone was well behaved. The only casualty was the wall in the stairwell, which will need to be repainted (but we were expecting scuffs and whatnot in the stairwell, so no problem).

Big hits, based on the number of questions and comments we heard, were the LEGOhaus, which we set out on the kitchen counter. Lots of people really liked the LEGOhaus, especially kids that came through with their parents (and dads that never grew up).

LEGOhaus on the counter (plus the horde!)

I pulled one of the Isettas out onto the driveway to (1) show off the car, (2) indicate the purpose of the garage, and (3) demonstrate that the grass was drivable (a lot of skepticism was expressed about the drivability of the grassy driveway; lots of raised eyebrows that said "Do you really believe that?").

I pulled the green one out onto the grassy knoll.

A photo the good folks at the home tour posted on their Facebook page!

The grass in front of the garage caused a lot of confusion on what exactly the garage was. Guest house? Studio? Nope: garage (or, as one person called it: "toy barn").

The artwork (and our decorating in general) got a lot of attention and compliments (some of it real intense). We got a lot of kudos that the house wasn't professionally staged and was well decorated by "real people". A common comment was that the art and decorating made the house feel "warm" and lived in. Several of the houses on the tour were vacant and for sale, so some of the local furniture/decorating stores stage the houses with their wares for the tour. Neat stuff, but hard for them to reach the level of "It looks like someone really lives here." And sometimes the dogma of professional decorating and staging leaves out the "surprises" that rank amateurs like us stumble into (there's a lot of trial and error in what we do...).

The Adorne plugs and switches got a lot of love (and surprise that you could get them at Lowes!). There were squeals of glee on popping out the "hidden" plugs.

Switch in the process of being Adorne'd last weekend.

Other items of great interest were the foot faucet, the tub spout in the ceiling ("Why would you do that?"), the mixture of low-end (IKEA) and high-end (Graff, Danze) fixtures, the Donald Judd picnic table, and the buds-n-suds room. The kitchen (and the associated cabinets and fixtures) got a lot of attention as well as did the cabinets elsewhere in the house. The scale of the house also got a lot of compliments. It's not too big (and I suspect a lot of folks could actually see themselves affording to live here and thus living here).

Buds on the right, suds on the left.

We put the kitty cat in the garage with a heating pad (which he seemed to enjoy) and other accouterment and then had a scare later when we accidentally left him outside after leaving the house in search of post-tour therapeutic Mexican martinis. Fortunately, the cat came back!

Serengeti kitty hiding in the plains.

"Roar."

Scratches please.

I didn't hear any negative comments (except for the raised eyebrows concerning the grassy drive), which is not surprising since people 'round here are generally polite to your face. Our "spies" heard a disparaging sigh of "white on white on white..." (to each his own) and a couple of older ladies who felt the house was too cold (temp-wise): "They clearly don't want people to stay. It's too chilly in here!" (Yesterday was a strange weather day for controlling temps...). One lady approached the kitchen, covered her eyes, and stomped off while hooting "Too busy! Too busy! I'm not going in there!" 

A number of folks said our house was their fave. One fellow, who saw our house first and then came back to share his assessment, said his fave was a toss-up between our house and the lake house. He was told the budget for the lake house was $800 a square foot. Yikes!!!

Swanx goodies!

The Modern Home Tour has been our favorite home tour in Austin for many years. The range of houses at various price points (some reachable for us) was helpful as we developed our plans, and the ability to take photos inside and out has always been great fun. Krisstina Wise is the creator of the tour (based on a newspaper article, I had given someone else credit for creating the tour several years ago, but Krisstina is, indeed, the mother of the Modern Home Tour). I think Krisstina actually stopped by to say hello and thank us for opening up our house (I wish I was better with names...). 

Finally, here's an interview with the architects at Element 5 Architecture about our house by Maureen Stevens.

And big  thanks to these bloggers for mentioning our house:

Spray Paint and Chardonnay

Roomfu

Red Chair Market

Mid-Century Modern Newsletter

the home tour cometh!!!

The home tour is this (gulp) Saturday, and we've been getting ready. Spent about six hours on Sunday upgrading downstairs switches and plugs (swank, baby, swank) and hanging art, mostly upstairs (the piece above is by our friend, Jennifer Balkan). The bride worked on the yard (she's bagged over 50 bags of leaves; it's become an obsession). I did a little touchup painting this early evening. We'll have some last minute tidying up to do on Friday and early Saturday morning before the show, but we're pretty much there!

There was an article about the tour in last weekend's paper, which is good advertising for the tour this weekend and modernism in general, but several statements in the article rankled my delicate cockles.

The article focuses on one of the houses on the tour, a fabulous modern rehab of a 1950s ranch. A couple sentences are particularly irritating.

"Travis Young...came up with a modern yet livable home..."

What's that? Modern yet livable? Did someone really write that?

I know, I know: Most people assume Modern is not livable because (1) it has a lot of windows and (2) there's not a nasty pile of magazines and cat vomit sitting the middle of the living room. That statement contradicts itself because the whole premise of Modern is livability and adjusting design and building norms to reflect the living styles of the day. Sigh...

Here's another one:

"Young sees the home as modern in its approach without foregoing the warmth of wood, brick and views of greenery."

O jeez, where to begin, where to begin... I sure hope Mr. Young didn't say that (and I'm almost sure he didn't; he doesn't seem like that sort of chap...). Being Modern doesn't mean you forego wood and brick (see "honesty in materials" in countless Modern manifestos), but the "views of greenery" comment made me spit up coffee onto my cold, gray floors. Modern means you can't even have a view of greenery outside your windows? No one told me that. Where's the Agent Orange!!!!!!

Wished the American-Statesman had a real architectural writer...

Snowpocalypse Austin 2014

We got dashed with a wee bit of sleet and snow (wee bit = 0.25 inches, perhaps...) on Thursday night and early Friday morning.

Shut. The. Town. Down.

Having grown up in northern Illinois, part of me finds this comical; however, given how some Texans drive (and really, let's be honest here, Americans in general [or maybe people in general?]) it ain't a good idea to be out on slick-as-snot streets. Even in the northern climes, it ain't a good idea to be out when it's sleeting. It's especially not good here because people just don't know how to drive on it, and it becomes bumper car time.

Stay tuned. Snowpocalypse Austin Too 2014 may be coming on Tuesday!

office x-mas parties (and the impacts of coming out of a recession on building costs)

The architects' swag rag featuring our home.

The architects were kind enough to invite us to a holiday shindig (back amidst the holiday season late last year) at a nice new restaurant they designed called Haymaker. At the shindig they were showing off a new swag rag that included our house as the first featured project!

During imbibitions and chatting with one of the architects, one of the architect noted that construction costs have increased substantially since we built out house. His guess was that our place, built today, would cost 50 percent more. Holy 2x6s, Batman!!! I'm not sure I believe that, but I certainly believe costs are higher. A lot higher. When we were closing out our construction loan, the banker, building a house of his own, was having to pay 10 percent more to keep subs on the project, and that was six months ago.

Headline in yesterday's paper.

Since then, like a Formula 1 race car hitting the back straights, the housing market in Austin has kicked into a bee-buzzing high gear. As we headed down the path to build our house, the banking crisis hit, which made getting financing to buy a lot and build a house a bit of a challenge. On the negative side, buying a lot and building was a risk: Would the market recover? Was this going to be a disastrous decision? Would the real estate gods smile on us again? On the positive side, if we could get financing, the lot sellers (of the spec building kind) would be anxious to dump there lots and the builders would be hungry. That could save money (and ultimately did: I estimate our lot is now worth at least 80 grand more than when we bought it).

Now that the market has swung the other way, costs have apparently gone sky high. Not surprising if you think about it. The build market before the banking crisis was pretty hot, so the building industry grew to accommodate that demand. The banking crisis brutally reduced that build demand, so the building industry shrank considerably. Now that demand has come back like zombies starved for cerebral matter, there's a great deal of demand for new construction with a low supply of builders to do it. And prices go up. Economics 101.

This is something to consider if you're thinking of building during the early stages of boomtown. At some point building capacity, and thus competition, will increase and prices (may) come down. Our builder works with the same subs on his projects, so they are less likely to walk from a job, jeopardizing future work with the builder. Perhaps that something to look for when choosing a builder. And although we didn't have to worry about it when quoting out our house, it might be good to include an "appreciation cost" when soft bidding. In a hot building market with several months between soft bidding and building, costs may increase beyond your ability to cover.

Postnote: A little bird told me that even previously loyal subs are bailing out on their loyal builders. oof.

Postpostnote: Here's one. Had a friend have an architect bail on their project for a better and bigger one! At least said architect didn't charge them for services rendered, but my pals were still out their time invested up until that point.

Postpostpostnote: Another one of the architects told me that it would probably cost 25 percent more to build our house today than last year. I find that more believable  than the 50 percent more quoted by one of his colleagues. Still kind of a shocker, though...

review: Swanx cabinetry

The funnest person we had the chance to work with while building the house was Michele, owner of Swanx. Not only was she great to collaborate with (I truly felt like we worked as a team), but her ideas and design and decorating thoughts were spot on (even when they didn't seem like it at first; I learned to trust the Swanx: she knows what she's doing). And she's a hoot to boot!

The kitchen and baths came out awesome, and she even did the built-in cantilevered-off-the-wall bedside cabinets, which came out cooler than we could have ever imagined. Oh, and she also did the buds-n-suds room adding the pizazz of lights in the uppers. She does more traditional (and transitional) kitchens as well but was perfect in our Modern project.

Highly recommended!

The Fertility Window

I sometimes like to surf local real estate. One of the joys is seeing terrible photography (What was that agent thinking?!?!) and terrible decor (OMG!!!). This chap has the same interest but one-ups me by sharing it with the world via "Terrible Real Estate Agent Photographs". And here's a doozy: The Fertility Window!