Pretty Little Things, Mid-Century-Modern Style

We’re at the point in our renovation where it looks like nothing’s happening, but there’s a lot of activity going on at our Rancho. As we speak, Ikea cabinets are being assembled and installed. Drywall and wood is being finished in preparation for the painter, who threw up a couple of big swatches this morning for us to admire and critique. (We think we’ve got our colors—inside and out—pinned down, but we want to be sure.) I guess what I’m trying to say is that we still have no beauty shots of the house to show you. So to quench your thirst for mid-century-modern gorgeousness in the meantime, I’m going to share some photos of goodies I’ve picked up—just for our new house—at various area haunts.

I’ve been long-obsessed with the mid-century-modern aesthetic and have collected furniture, art, ceramics and the like since the early 1980s, so we already had a houseful. All we really needed for our new house was bedroom furniture. But when I went looking for it at estate sales and specialty stores, other items ended up following me home. Here’s a taste:

One of the first things we picked up was this delicious pair of teak lamps with their original (super-cool shades). We got these at inretrospect on “Retro Row” in Long Beach, which is one of our favorite places to shop, because the people who work there are fabulous, the selection is huge and the prices are just where they should be.

Another inretrospect find is this Frederick Weinberg Etruscan horse—something I’d wanted to own since the first time I saw one decades ago. It’s pictured next to a Ben Seibel bookend that I picked up at an estate sale for a cool 10 bucks! These babies usually sell for at least $350 a pair, so at that price, I was only slightly sad that I didn’t get its mate.

My latest estate sale find—and one of my all-time favorites—is this ceramic centerpiece/bowl in the form of a golden ram, which I think is breathtakingly beautiful. This gorgeous piece was in a home filled with high-end Danish modern furniture, ceramics and art. Store owners from Retro Row were snapping everything up all around me, but they had no interest in this little guy. I have no idea why, but I’m glad they left him behind. I’ll treasure him forever.

A more utilitarian estate-sale pick is this Danish modern Salton bun warmer, which looks brand new. I love it. I’m gonna use the heck out of it, for sure.

And yes, we did get some bedroom furniture: these two, small matching dressers and a pair of delicious nightstands from Trebor Nevets, also on Long Beach’s Retro Row. Gorgeous, no? They’ll look great with the headboard I found at an estate sale last weekend. Now all we need is a “highboy” dresser!

An Expert's Take on Mid-Century Modern: Meet Nate Cole

In my last post, I provided a brief rundown of “dos” and “don’ts” when it comes to renovating a mid-century-modern home—or any home, for that matter. But before you can renovate a super-cool pad, you have to get one. And that’s where a cracker-jack real estate agent comes in.

Nate Cole

To land our Rancho, we worked with Nate Cole at Coldwell Banker here in Long Beach. We met Nate several years ago at an open house at one of his listings in Rolling Hills Estates—the Mitchell residence, designed by Case Study House architect Calvin Straub. Not long after that, we ran into Nate at an open house at one of his Rancho listings. We liked his style. And we liked the fact that he’s based in Long Beach and specializes in mid-century-modern properties. So when we were ready to buy, we knew Nate was our guy.

We thought it might be interesting to get a real estate agent’s perspective on looking for, purchasing, maintaining and just-plain loving a mid-century-modern home. So we sat down with Nate for a chat. Here’s how it went:

RR:    How long have you been a Realtor, Nate Cole?

NC:    Nine years.

RR:    What made you decide to go into real estate sales?

NC:    Architecture. I was always obsessed. Everywhere I went, I went wanting to know what was out there. I also wanted to work for myself, to be self-employed. And it sounded fun!

RR:    You’re a fan of the mid-century-modern aesthetic, no? For how long, and why?

NC:    I was probably turned on to it through mid-century-modern furniture. I think a lot of people are. I started to understand where it all fit in, the context of it. I was in my early 20s. I was always interested in graphic design and interiors. I realized I’d been around it al lot. You start to notice what you’re drawn to. I went from not really paying attention to it to being fully immersed in it.

RR:    Don’t you own a fab mid-century home yourself?

Nate Cole's totally bitchin' house, designed by the great Ed Killingsworth

NC:    I do. It was designed by Ed Killingsworth, a Case Study architect. His [own residence] is in the Virginia Beach Country Club near me and his office is right around the corner from my house. His stamp is all over Long Beach. I was very lucky to have Ed Killingsworth at my house the day I closed escrow, along with the original owner, and a friend there filming it.

RR:    I’m jealous, Nate Cole. When we were looking for our house, you told us about other Long Beach neighborhoods, aside from The Ranchos, where we might find a hidden gem. Refresh my memory.

NC:    Alamitos heights—just in from Belmont heights—that neighborhood is pretty chock full of mid-century. Park Estates is, too, but it has association rules about pitched roofs—all the Neutras and Killingsworths have pitched roofs—not something those architects would normally have done. Los Altos—some of them had architects doing custom homes and others were designing tracts like Eichlers—La Marina Estates, Bixby Knolls, Virginia Country Club. The mix is kinda’ cool there. There are Green & Green, federal style, Spanish, mid-century modern—all right next door to each other.

RR:    What advice would you give clients who are seeking mid-century homes?

NC:    Don’t be stubborn about size. Of course you have set bedroom and bathroom counts you need to have, but a 1,300-square-foot house in The Ranchos can feel more spacious than a 2,000-square-foot house that’s a traditional style.

RR:    What are the pitfalls of owning a mid-century home?

NC:    Maintenance. Upkeep. The beams, to infinity. Beams that stick outside the house like at The Ranchos. There’s a lot of upkeep to keep from having water penetrate them and getting dry rot. Flat roofs. If you’re doing work on homes like these there are design aspects and components involved that mean you have to stand there and watch. You can’t just let the contractor go to work. You have to stand over them and make decisions.

RR:    What’s the upside?

NC:    Endless. It’s a way of life. A way of improved life when you’re in your house and you forget to go outside because you feel like you already are. I love it. You become accustomed to living in a house like that. Then you get into a space that’s bad and when you get back into your house it’s, like, ahhhh. You just love it. It’s always evolving, how you live in it. You notice things even years after you moved there. You see how well a space works. I think it’s hilarious when you hear that modernism is out of fashion. I think it’s silly that people look at interiors and houses that way.

RR:    For someone who’s looking to buy (or sell) a mid-century modern house, what should they look for when shopping for a real estate agent?

NC:    Someone who has experience in dealing with homes like these and who knows how to reach the type of people they need to be presented to. Also how to present them. Now it’s so much about how it’s seen online and how it’s presented. Even the way it’s described and, of course, the way it’s photographed. You want an agent who understands what you want, too, if you’re on the buying side. There are a lot of things—it’s not about what I like, it’s about what that person likes.

RR:    Anything else you’d like to add?

NC:    It still baffles me that there isn’t more of a premium on mid-century-modern houses—that really great architecture isn’t given the same kind of premium as art. You’ll see an auction for an object of art—a painting or sculpture—and it sells for an astronomical price. Then there’s a home that you can live in and it doesn’t command that same kind of premium. It’s a piece of art, a piece of history—a piece of design history—and it should be worth more, I think.

Do This. Don’t Do That.

We’re still plugging away. So much is done, but there’s a lot more left to do.

Our Bedroom

There’s drywall up where there were once sad little two-by-fours. The tank-less is in, and so is the furnace. The floor’s down and most of the grinding’s done, but the terrazzo’s still got to be grouted and sealed.

Still, there are no kitchen cabinets. No usable bathroom. No finished place to sleep. I look forward to prettiness, big-time. So while we wait—and fret—we thought we’d pass on some hard-earned wisdom.

Poor Little Kitchen

We’ve never done anything like this before, and we’ve learned a lot about the right way to go about doing a remodel on a mid-century house. More importantly, we’ve learned what not to do. Along the way, there were red flags—big ones—but we didn’t see them right away, because we didn’t know what to look for. So we’re passing along what we’ve learned to our readers, which they are welcome to take or leave alone. Ready? Here goes:

• Do hire a licensed contractor. The first contractor we hired wasn’t. Big mistake. The fellow we’re working with now is licensed and came highly recommended. So while we’re a long way from the finish line, we’re sleeping a lot better now.
• Do check your contractor’s license. You can look up any contractor on the California Department of Consumer Affairs website to make sure he/she is licensed and that his/her license is current. Do it. There are a million reasons why you should.
• Do get at least two or three bids for your various projects. And don’t assume the lowest bid is the best bid.
• Don’t take someone’s word for something if it doesn’t feel right to you. Being told you don’t need a permit and you’re not so sure? Find out by checking with your local building department. The Department of Consumer Affairs website has a lot of useful information to help guide you through your project. Why not take advantage of it?
• Don’t go forward with anything that doesn’t feel right to you. Follow your gut. We averted disaster because we didn’t allow our first contractor—who tried to keep us from involving an architect—to push us around. We did hire an architect, who hired an engineer, who kept our house from falling down when we opened up our wall.
• Do shop around. You can almost always find a better deal on fixtures, appliances or materials, especially if you pay cash. Estate sales are a great place to find hidden treasure. And we love the Habitat for Humanity Restore.
• Do keep all of your information in one place. We assembled a three-ring binder with sections divided by project (different rooms, HVAC, opening the wall, paint colors, etc.), and additional sections with quotes/contracts, budget, receipts, and the like. Color samples, swatches, countertop samples, appliance specs, etc. are also in there. We take this notebook everywhere we go. That way, if a question comes up, we have the answer at our fingertips.
• Don’t let your budget get away from you. Keep track of all expenditures, large and small, in a spreadsheet or with software like Quicken. It’s those little $50 or $100 purchases that will get you—they add up when you’re not looking.

In the Thick of It

Now we’re at the scary part. We can no longer afford to rent the house nearby and pay the mortgage, so we’re moving in at the end of the month, come hell or high water. We’ve given notice to both the landlady and the contractor. Today is the 20^th, which means we’ve got 11 short days left, and our house is essentially gutted.

There’s a floor, thank God. Well, almost. Since our house has more square footage than we were told when we bought it—normally a blessing—and the terrazzo tile we bought at the Habitat for Humanity Restore has less square footage than we were told when we bought it, we ended up about 100 square feet shy. We ordered more tile, but it’s still not here.

Right now, everything is tiled except the laundry room (formerly the master bedroom closet), the “master” bathroom and the bedroom closet. Wet grinding has been going on for days, which generates a layer of wet, pale-gray goo over the entire surface of the floor. This, as one might imagine, makes it difficult to envision anything pretty at the end of it all. Luckily, Grinding Guy swiped off a section so we could see what the finished floor will look like. Heaven. Pure heaven, my people. Next comes grouting. Then one more grind, then sealing.

Last time I checked (last night) there wasn’t a kitchen. There was some plumbing for an island and some framing for some cabinetry. There were some Ikea cabinets, still flat, in boxes, in the garage. (We still haven’t gotten any drawer/door pulls, by the way, because Ikea discontinued the ones we wanted. Ikea likes to discontinue things we want.)

Both bathrooms are all torn up. They both have tubs, which is nice. Neither one has a toilet or sink. One has a wall that’s . . . well . . . gone, which is unnerving, at best.

What was once two, small “Jack & Jill” bedrooms and is now one, big bedroom—which will be our bedroom—has a closet with no means of hanging clothes in it. Conduit snakes through one end of said closet and it’s missing its ceiling. Speaking of ceiling, there was some damage to the tongue-and-groove ceiling in this room, which had to be repaired from the roof down. So there’s a big hole up there, through which one can see the sky. I said “unnerving,” right?

Money-saving Tips for a Retro Reno

Renovations are expensive. When it’s important to be true to a certain aesthetic—in our case Cliff May’s mid-century modern—you want to do things right. And when you’ve got champagne taste and a chardonnay budget, getting the biggest bang for the proverbial buck takes tenacity, savvy and creativity. A little dumb luck doesn’t hurt either.

Case in point: Not long after we bought our Rancho and moved into our rental nearby, we visited our local Habitat for Humanity “Restore,” which is essentially a thrift store for builders. And what did we see right out front? Seven pallets of polished terrazzo tile—my dream floor—for about $1.25 a square foot! We snapped it up. It’s installed and being ground as we speak.

That was luck. Now for tenacity. When we were at the appliance store choosing a wall oven, I was drawn to the only one on the floor that had actual knobs instead of a digital display panel. Seemed like a good fit for a 1953 kitchen, right? Turns out I’d found myself a Thermador “Professional” oven, and I wasn’t about to pay $4,000 for an oven when it was knobs, not performance, I was after. So I went on a hunt for something with a similar look at a more reasonable price. I spent hours on the Internet. I found a Kenmore that looked adorable for less than half the price, but the reviews were dismal. I found a handsome Viking, but it was still too pricey. I called appliance outlets on a daily basis. I got myself on email mailing lists. And then . . . success! An outlet in Torrance had a discontinued Viking model that looks just like the current one and cost about half as much as the Thermador. Even has a cute little retro-looking clock/timer. Mine! Should be installed next week.

We’re also installing reasonably priced, glossy-gray Ikea cabinets, which we think look great. Even though we’d missed a recent cabinet sale in the spring, we’d heard whisperings of another coming up in July. Could it be true? If it was, we had to wait to order ours until sale time, but we knew Ikea staff are forbidden from discussing upcoming sales before the company makes an official announcement. So again, I scoured the Internet. I found a blogger who seemed to be in the know who said a sale would begin on Independence Day. So I called the local Ikea’s kitchen department. It went like this:

Me: I’m calling about the sale that starts July fourth.

Sales Clerk: Uh-huh?

Me: Do we know yet what the discount structure is for cabinets?

Sales Clerk: Not yet.

Me: Do we know if the sale will be both in-store and online?

Sales Clerk: Probably both, but we don’t know yet.

Me: When will you find out?

Sales Clerk: They don’t usually give us any information until a day or two before the sale starts.

Me: So, like, July second or third?

Sales Clerk: Yes.

Bingo! So we waited until July 4 to order and saved 20 percent on our already reasonably priced cabinets. Sometimes it pays to be patient. And sneaky.

Another super-deal came about because of my good friend Tom, who knew I was on the lookout for a Dishmaster M76, perhaps the coolest faucet ever made. (Our babysitter had one of these babies when I was a kid. It fascinated me, even then.) Tom sent me a text letting me know that OSH had them on sale, marked down from $189.99 to $98.88! We high-tailed it on down there, and when we made our way to the cash register, the sales clerk behind the counter slid a 20-percent-off coupon to us! Ca-ching! Hello, bargain! What’s not to love?

Renovating Our Mid-Century Home

When we began seriously shopping for our Cliff May Rancho back in January of this year, we’d already seen quite a few examples. Because these homes were built in the early 1950s, a lot of them were in need of more TLC than we were willing to give. Other times, homeowners or, worse, flippers, had updated the Cliff May right out of them.

When we found ours, we knew it was The One. It had been updated, but tastefully. There was an addition between the garage—which faced the street—and the kitchen/living room which, aside from an unsightly fireplace, looked like it belonged. Like most of the Ranchos we’d visited, the original, pony-wall galley kitchen had been replaced with a center-island-based one. (If you’ve never seen an example of an original Long Beach Rancho kitchen, you can find a photo of one here, at the Huntington Digital Library. Just click the “next” link just above the "print" button at the upper-right until you reach the kitchen photos.) Wood floors had been installed over the original vinyl tile. The bathrooms had been updated a bit. And the pony wall between the two, small “Jack and Jill” bedrooms had been removed to create one large, rectangular bedroom. These changes all worked, but it didn’t take us long to decide we wanted to make a few changes of our own. Here’s what we’ve got up our sleeves:

• Creating an entirely new kitchen
• Opening up the wall between the living room and the addition (family room)
• Installing new flooring (terrazzo tile!)
• Replacing the (original) furnace and installing an air-conditioning system
• Removing a second fireplace in the addition
• Relocating the laundry area from the kitchen to the "master" bedroom closet
• Doing some minor bathroom updates
• Installing a tankless water heater
• Replacing a bank of (icky) aluminum slider windows with original casement windows (we hope).

Right now, we’re focusing on the house. Landscaping, including dramatic outdoor lighting (with the exception of some über-cool vintage exterior lights I scored on Etsy), will have to wait until we can save up some more dough. Restoring the birch paneling in the living room and hallway that was either removed or painted over will also have to wait.

To avoid living in a construction zone, we’re renting a house a few blocks away while the renovations take place. The big move-in date is swiftly approaching. Stay tuned as we move forward with our Rancho Romance!

About Cliff May

I can’t remember when I first learned about this neighborhood—the Rancho Estates, commonly referred to as “The Ranchos,” in Long Beach, California. I think I read about it in the Los Angeles Times or maybe Atomic Ranch magazine. It was years ago. But as soon as I knew about it, I insisted my husband, Ric, take me there. It was love at first sight.

On weekends, we’d go to open houses there. I learned that the prettiest Ranchos were designed by Cliff May, a famous architect best known for his sprawling ranch homes. Post-and-beam construction. Open plans. Floor-to-ceiling windows. A seamless merging of the indoors with the outdoors. Gorgeous. I knew I had to have one. And now I do.

So who is this Cliff May? I’ve been asked, so I’m telling, right here in this blog.

Cliff May is widely credited with creating the modern “California ranch-style” home. He was a sixth-generation Californian born in 1908, a horseman, a pilot and a saxophone player. He loved cars and drove fast. He was handsome, too. Most of all, though, he was an architect—an artist, who designed and built more than 1,000 homes and commercial buildings. Cool tidbit? Cliff May was self-taught.

Many of the homes he designed were huge, rambling estates for wealthy clients. (Actress Bea Arthur owns a stunner in Sullivan Canyon.) But he also created a mass-production line he called Cliff May Homes in the early 1950s, which sold affordable designs to builders across the U.S. who produced tracts like the Long Beach Ranchos.

We just missed an exhibit centered on the great Mr. May and his work at UC Santa Barbara’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum, but there are some yummy images that can still be seen on the museum’s website. The exhibit featured a book that’s available for pre-order now (to be released in September 2012) called “Carefree California: Cliff May and the Romance of the Ranch House.” I’ve already ordered mine. You?  By the way, here’s a wonderful L.A. Times article about May, the exhibit and the book.

If you need more—and I did—there’s “Cliff May and the Modern Ranch House,” by Daniel P. Gregory, which has some examples of Long Beach Ranchos in it. The eBay seller I bought my copy from suggested another book: “Western Ranch Houses” by Cliff May himself. I don’t have that one yet, but I think I should. I mean, I have one of his houses. I should have one of his books, right?