chairs

dining set, before

Last year we found an 8-piece dining room set (one table, seven chairs) at one of our favorite antique stores for a good price. We decided we liked the "mid-century modern" look for this house, so when we found this danish-style dining set, we bought it. The upholstery on the chairs was a Native American-style print which fit just fine with the house but wasn't something we really wanted. The Native American motif in furniture is cliche in the Southwest and, in my opinion, dishonors a rich culture by appropriating sacred symbols for the sake of trendy decor. In any case, we bought the dining set with the intention of reupholstering them someday in something funky and colorful.

danish chair, before

We searched far and wide for "funky and colorful" upholstering fabrics with little luck. I was surprised to discover that most of the fabrics available featured bland, muted colors, flowery prints, and basic stripes or checks. Online searches didn't yield much variety, either. The few fabrics I did like were way too expensive—about $20/yard.

Then last month, we discovered the textiles at IKEA and it wasn't long before I found a fabric I loved. When we got home, we had an upholsterer come over and give us a quote for upholstering the chairs. It would cost about $700, which was nearly twice as much as what we paid for the whole dining set! Thanks to the internet, we got online and watched some videos on do-it-yourself upholstering. Michael bought some foam and some tools for the job and set to work. So far, he's upholstered five of the seven chairs. I love the new look how well it fits with the house—colorful, funky, and modern.

danish chair, after

dining set, after (photo by Emma Graham)

luna rica for sale

photo by Emma Graham

Luna Rica has been fully renovated. Unfortunately, I didn't get much of a chance to document the process, as every day I would come home from work and something new would have been done. Michael works hard, starting at 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. and working till about 6:00 p.m. I love coming home and finding some new surprise.

We put the house on the market last weekend and today will be the first open house. My friend Emma came over yesterday with her SLR camera and spent three hours photographing the house. She has a keen eye for detail and captured the house fabulously. I only wish we had had a few clouds in the sky to soften the light for her. She took over 400 photos which I will sort through and post soon.

photo by Emma Graham

In the meantime, here are some photos I took last weekend with my own little compact camera.

modest fame

Rumford fireplace in the kitchen

Michael and I were in California recently and had a chance to meet the architect Alex Riley at his home in Napa. We appreciated the opportunity to ask him some questions and learn more about our home's building process and history. He generously showed us around his home and studio and shared some photos of our house during the building process.

One of the questions Michael had was regarding the two fireplaces in the house. They are tall and shallow with a beehive-like design. Mr. Riley explained that they are Rumford fireplaces, which are the most efficient at heating up a room with minimal heat lost up the chimney and minimal smoking. They are beautiful fireplaces. The one in the kitchen reminds me of an 18th century kitchen hearth. Mr. Riley built a little nook in the kitchen where one can sit in the winter with a cup of coffee by the fire.

We also learned that our home was featured not once, but three times in Architectural Digest. The first article was published in March 1986. We have a copy of this issue, but I found the article online at the website of Roger Harned, the man credited for the interior design in the article. You can view the article here.

The second article, published in August 1986, featured the home on the cover of the Italian edition of Architectural Digest. Mr. Riley had a copy somewhere in his studio but was unable to find it while we were there. I've done some research to try to find that issue with little luck. I did find a copy had sold recently on Ebay Italy and e-mailed the vendor to find out if he can find another one for me.

The third article was published in a special edition "The AD 100 Architects" issue in 1991. Mr. Riley was named one of the top 100 architects in the world (alongside Frank Gehry and John Lautner, two other architects we admire) based on his design of our home. I found a copy of this issue on Ebay and we are eagerly waiting for it to show up in our mailbox.

floor plan

Luna Rica Floor Plan (click image)

This is to give you an idea of the layout of the house. The concave part of the house faces south. What I love most about this floor plan is how everything is curved or rounded; there isn't a single square room in the house, including the closets. This is a design that Michael has attempted to create in the past but had trouble figuring out. One problem with circles and curves is that it's challenging to maximize the use of the space. It is difficult to furnish a round space and curves take up more room than squares.

The architect resolved this problem by custom-building curved countertops, cabinets, shelves, and desks. We didn't have much furniture when we moved in and fortunately, we didn't need to buy much. And since the space is so unique, we really can't buy just anything to furnish it. This supports our shared desire to maintain a minimalist aesthetic. We prefer to keep things simple and uncluttered, which the space demands.

critters

finch snacking on wildflower seeds

One of the greatest pleasures of living in the desert outside of the city is sharing one's home with a plethora of wildlife. Sometimes the wildlife is mildy annoying -- woodpeckers who drill into the wood planks that extend out over the patios and startle us awake at 5 a.m. -- and sometimes it's an outright hassle -- packrats who gnaw on the electrical wires of my hybrid, causing $200 worth of damage (and thank goodness only that!) But mostly it's an adventure in observing how the non-human animals on this planet get by on a daily basis. We are witnesses to mating rituals and the hunt (or battle) for food, alerts and lullabies, playful antics, and leisure time snoozing in the shade. Every time I look out the windows, I am startled by something moving just outside: a giant lizard on the wall doing "push-ups," a family of quail foraging for bugs and seeds, an owl perched on top of a saguaro at dusk calling to his mate, hummingbirds diving out of nowhere and hovering beside the lipstick bushes as they suck out the nectar. I love that our home has so many windows and it takes so little to be "out there" in nature, away from the noises of the city that keep most animals out of sight.

When I see critters outside doing what they do, I try to grab my little 4 megapixel camera and capture what I can from a safe distance. . .I don't want to scare them away. So far, the baby quail and their parents have successfully eluded my electronic eye. Following are some of the many shots I have taken of the critters around our home.

baby ground squirrels sticking close to home

wild bobcat stopping by for a drink

baby rattlesnake pretending to nap

cottontail bunny lounging on the patio awaiting his mojito

mule deer keeping the hedges trimmed in the driveway

frog warming himself by the patio light at night

discovery

One Saturday morning , I was browsing through the real estate section of the newspaper and saw this ad. I showed it to Michael.

"We have to go check this place out," I said to him as I pointed to it in the paper.

He looked at it and said, "It's out of our price range but it looks weird. Let's go!"

One of our shared hobbies is looking at interesting real estate. We love to see old houses--restored or not--and modern houses with unusual designs. We skip the tract houses and houses that have no character. We like to see how houses are situated on a property, how they are designed and the details that go into making them unique.

After breakfast, we pulled out our Tucson Street Index and headed up Catalina Highway to the road that the house was on. We passed three "For Sale" signs before we found one that had the realtors' names on it. We pulled onto a dirt driveway and wound our way to the front of the house. The first thing I saw was the weird little spire of a chimney which reminded me of something out of a Dr. Seuss book. It was cylindrical and slightly misshapen, like it had been hand-sculpted from clay. Our eyes widened as we took in the great curve of the house, the gray cement, the tall windows and front door. Michael hadn't yet stopped the car and I was already out of it, scrambling towards the entrance. He quickly followed.

We were both quiet at first, then gushing with excitement. This house was stunning. And exactly like something Michael would build, if he had thought of it. We had been married only three months and Michael was already drawing up plans for our dream house. Not being an architect, he had spent weeks looking online for house plans that would reflect our tastes. He found something he could work with and began modifying the rooms, trying to create roundness amidst all the square shapes. I especially wanted a round kitchen, which we occasionally saw in magazines. He already owned an acre lot in town that we could build on, though it wasn't ideal; it was too close to a major road, there were two houses on a hill overlooking the lot, and any view of the mountains was ruined by massive power lines cutting across the foreground. Now we were standing before a house that was one great crescent. As we walked around it, peering into every window possible, we saw only more curves inside. It had a round kitchen. It was perfect.


Michael immediately called the realtor to see if she could show us the house. She couldn't come that day, so we made an appointment for the following afternoon.

From the moment we saw it, I think we both knew this was it. We had been looking for a "dump in the desert" that we could get for a good price and fix up on our own. Though it was more than we had hoped to pay, we couldn't not buy it. Michael did some financial finagling and we made an offer.

From that day on, we acted as if it were already ours. We would go there on the weekends with wine and cheese and crackers and picnic in the backyard. Michael brought a ladder on the fourth of July and we watched the distant fireworks from the roof. We made plans. Two months later, it was ours.