To the left are some “before and after” pictures of the wall that separates our kitchen and living/dining room.

The wall was originally solid but someone cut into it to add shallow cupboards.  We didn't care for the cupboards, but we loved the wonderful grained panelling which is also on the fireplace wall at the other end of the room.

This was a major design challenge. We thought about just replacing the grained wall with dry wall but hated to lose this original design feature.

After several years of asking everyone we could think of, we determined the wall was made out of sandblasted plywood.  We subsequently learned that it could not be duplicated.

Modern plywood is not made in a way that can be sandblasted to bring out the grain the way it was in the fifties, so there was no way to replace the wall.

What to do?

We turned to our local artist/contractor John Mueller.  We begin tossing around the idea of filling the openings with repetitive bas relief designs ala Frank Lloyd Wright.

We had seen a house in Atomic Ranch with detailing of this type on the exterior.   However, the particular design did not lend itself to our trio of wall openings.

Then Anne chanced to look at Pam Kueber's wonderful Retro Renovation blog the very day there was a post about Dave's mid century modern wall panels.

Bingo! John took the basic pattern Dave had used and modified the dimensions to work in our openings.   Sculptural artist that he is, he also added several layers of depth.

The panels totally pull the room together.

We love them. Thank you Dave, Pam and John Mueller!

Interestingly, Anne really didn’t like the floor when we first bought our home. It’s quite a contrast from hardwood floors!

But then we found our dishes!!!

As previously reported, we spotted our dishes in an antique shop in Portland soon after we bought our home.

Anne said, “They match our floor,” and we bought them.

That purchase turned the tide. We began decorating around the black, and Anne now loves the floor.

Gary always did.

Assumably, our floor is Armstrong vinyl composition tile, the kind they’ve been making forever. You can see a picture of our dining/living room flooring to the left. Compare our close-up picture with this Armstrong product. We first thought the floor was original. However, the previous owners of our home told us they had the floor installed to replace worn out wall- to- wall carpeting which was also not original. As a side note, we may love the floor but we have not been pleased with the heavy chemical smell of the Armstrong floor care products which came with the house. A lucky accident with Murphy’ s Oil Soap is giving us hope that this product touted for use on wood may actually work as both a cleaner and a polisher for our floor when used in higher concentrations. Does anyone have ideas for “green” cleaning products that might be even better for this type of floor?

]]> http://www.midcenturyhome.org/2008/04/23/about-that-floor/feed/ 11 http://www.midcenturyhome.org/2008/02/12/virtual-tour/?&owa_medium=feed&owa_sid= http://www.midcenturyhome.org/2008/02/12/virtual-tour/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2008 01:35:19 +0000 Anne & Gary http://www.midcenturyhome.org/2008/02/12/virtual-tour/ Below is a short video tour or our living room/dining room/kitchen.

To start the video click on the small triangle at the lower left of the viewing window.

We didn’t want to buy something new. Modern dining room furniture tends to be over-sized. Plus, we’ve found that furniture from the era tends to settle in and feel just right in our home.

And, we needed to find the set in Eastern Oregon so we didn’t have the challenge of how to get it home.

We finally found something!!!

We were so pleased when we found this mid-century dinette set at Classic Consignment Furniture in Baker City. It fits the space perfectly, has an extra leaf, only cost $125.00, and the whole thing fit in the back of our station wagon.

The chairs have the original Virtue Brothers label (Chair 674) on the bottom. They were a large manufacturer of metal dinette sets including the classic red, green, or yellow marbleized sets with chrome legs.

We’re glad they also made a few sets with black metal legs. Actually, we wonder if the table and chairs are parts of different sets. The table has gold metal in addition to the black and seems to have a slightly different style. Our table is similar to the one in this ebay posting , just rectangular instead of round.

If anyone knows more about the table or chairs, please comment!

And, if you live in the Eastern Oregon area we would strongly recommend checking out Classic Consignment Furniture in Baker City. Their prices are very reasonable and they often get in mid-century modern pieces.