Arlen in the background putting the trim on a recessed light.

The Art Moderne is really taking shape and all of the little details I have been sweating are coming together one by one. The inside is just about finished and we took the first load of ‘staging’ furniture over today. Nothing brings out a house’s personality like some well chosen furniture and accessory pieces! I get these ideas for how something should look, and then I’m just a driven crazy person until we can pull it off.  The overall look and feel of the interior is exactly as I had hoped – it is a small house, but it has a very spacious, almost loft-like feel.  The laundry room is nothing short of amazing.

The breeze block wall in our back yard – during last winter’s beautiful snow storm.

Inspired by the breeze block wall in our own back yard (photo above), we decided the Art Moderne needed  one to jazz up the appearance from the front and give the huge side patio a little privacy.  You see concrete block screen walls all over town – usually attached to midcentury office buildings (the 7777 Mongtomery Rd. buildings in Kenwood have them and there is a cool one near the intersection of Paddock and Vine).  I did an extensive internet search to try to locate the blocks and happened upon a very cool website highlighting these cool walls in Vegas ( http://veryvintagevegas.com/category/decorative-concrete-block-designs/ ).  I was even more determined to find the blocks somewhere nearby.  Finally, after several phone calls and a near find in Centerville, we located a bunch of very cool block (‘new’ old stock, I suspect) at Wilson Concrete Products in Middletown – I could hardly believe our great fortune!  On Friday, Arlen took the seats out of the van and headed to Middletown.  Two hours later, he was back at the house and had dry stacked the wall to get the visual:

A partial mock-up of our screen wall. You can also see the new garage door (finally)! Try finding a ‘plain’ garage door without panels or fake wood grain. The garage door people look at you like you are crazy!

The finished wall will be the entire width of the patio and the height of the house, and will be painted to match.

Pretty cool, eh?  Arlen and Trent will work on installing the wall this week, and will paint the face of the wall the same light grey as the house.  It will look as if it has always been there – but really, it’s just one more little detail that is pulling this mod look together.  My next project (after I finish scrubbing the grout and polishing the tile in the bath tub) is a midcentury mailbox re-do.  Stay tuned for more info later this week……and the house should be ready to hit the market next week (after some extensive landscape work…).  $129,900.  Interested?  Let us know!