While this isn’t an original Saarinen tulip chairs and table set, this retro table and chair combo does have a wonderful vintage look to it. The set includes a table approx. 45″ long, 35″ deep and 29″ tall and 5 chairs. Overall it looks like they are all in pretty good shape, and at an asking price of $200 they probably won’t last too long.

Available from SLC Craigslist for $200.

It seems like Ikea is all about the three day sales lately. We were out of town for the last labor day sale, but some friends were nice enough to pick up a cheap POANG for us. This weekend is another three day extravaganza. If you were ever wanting to pick up a BILLY bookcase, now is your chance. They are $30 off normal price. The SATER leather sofa is on sale to for $299 which seems like an insanely good deal on a decent sofa. Oh, and did I mention they have free breakfast?
Check out more deals at the Ikea Draper website.

Even though we just bought a house, I still try and keep a pulse on what’s for sale here in Salt Lake City. While homes with modern/contemporary exteriors are still few and far between, there are more and more available with clean modern interiors. A good example is my friend Mark’s house. His family is building a new (super modern) home and selling their old house. It’s in a great neighborhood, and while it doesn’t look like much from the outside, they have done some great work on the inside. For more details on price, square footage, and more photos, check it out on zillow.
House for Sale on Zillow.

I’m off to Diamond Rental to pick up a floor sander this morning. I’ve never actually refinished any floors before, but I have talked to plenty of people that have so I figure it can’t be too hard. I hope to get them all sanded today and get our natural oil stain on. Tomorrow I will be putting on the protective finish.
If everything goes as planned I will be posting on Monday about our newly refinished hardwood floors.
Wish me luck!

We moved in about three weeks ago and now that we are in it has been hard to get the house tidy enough to take photos. I managed to get the kitchen and dining area in good enough shape to get some photos done, finally. The house is nearly all finished and things wrapped up pretty nicely. I will be asking for input in the future regarding some decorating decisions. We have been having a hard time getting our bathrooms completed with mirrors, medicine cabinets etc.
Now that we are in and everything is settled we have many professionals to thank for getting everything finished. Kenner Kingston and Stephanie Kooyman with Architectural Nexus who are awesome to work with and incredible Architects. Garth, Mark, Jesse and Chris with Benchmark Modern for sticking with it and getting things done quickly and within budget. Drew Hicken with Celtic Bank kicked butt and got everything wrapped up with the mortgage. Greg and Al with Premier Metal works did an incredible job and made the stairs and railings beautiful and within budget! If anyone out there is looking for talented people to help them design, build and finance a home (or anything else) should consider these fine people. We were extremely lucky to find a very honest, reliable, talented and dedicated team to build our dream home.
More to come!

-Jacob

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A lot got done Friday! We had plumbers and metal workers at the house all day long. They are both nearly done and will both be back on monday to finish up. Tuesday we have our final inspection. Premier Metal Works did an awesome job fabricating our railings for the stairs, porches and roof top patios. They have been working hard to get their job wrapped up in time for our final inspection. The guys at In-Line Plumbing worked all day today getting our finish plumbing done. We got all of our appliances installed today as well. We are very happy with the appliances we chose. We went with the Jenn Air “Pro Style” series. We were lucky to get a fantastic price on them. We would not have been able to afford them otherwise. Our kitchen is nearly done and it is turning out pretty much as planned. The Ikea cabinetry is the “Abstrakt” series. They are a high-gloss white finish. The blue pictured here is just a protective film that we will remove once construction is complete. We would not have stayed within budget without Ikea in town. Our total kitchen cost including appliances is under 10k! The house should be ready for us to move in by the end of next week!
-Jacob
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It has been a long time since the last update and a lot has happened. We finally got our metal panel installed and we
are very happy with the results. We had some difficulty getting the right color and we ended up settling for our second
choice. It couldn’t have worked out any better. The color we ended up with blends in seamlessly with the windows and
creates a beautiful, dark, monolithic effect. We ended up using a company be the name of Double T siding. They have
been quite quick and reasonable to work with. They will finish on Saturday which is only about five days start to finish.
Alta tile came to do the tile in the bathrooms and did a beautiful job.
Benchmark came and built an incredible front fence, fences are the norm in the neighborhood and we felt a little out of
place without one. Watch for more photos of the fence in the future. Now we just need finish plumbing, heat and railings
and we will be ready for a final inspection.
-Jacob

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I put in some serious late night hours on monday night getting everything clean and today they started work on our flooring. It is a product called Miracote which is a polymer of some sort. This is poured over the gypcrete and becomes the final floor. We tried to choose a color that would look like the most like natural concrete. They are applying three coats total. This will give the interior of the home a nearly finished look. These photos show it as it is drying and the finished product will be much more consistent than what you see here.
As you can see we have functional stairs, finally! Stairs are so much better than ladders. For tread material we used o.s.b. that will get a sanding and a heavy varnish. Benchmark came and finished all of the cedar siding and it looks awesome. They also built our front and back porches and the driveway and sidewalks were poured. We are making great progress. We should be almost entirely finished next week and moving in shortly.
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I thought it might be nice to show some of the details we have been working on lately. We are starting to install light fixtures, switches and outlets. We have selected all of our light fixtures and a few are shown here. It has been hard to make final decisions even on simple things like can-light trim. We are quite happy with our light fixtures in general and feel like we spent the minimum price for lights that we really like. The only fixture we spent more than $100.00 on was the front exterior light and it is our favorite. Shown to the left are some other finish details (click to enlarge). I promised somebody a long time ago that I would show a photo of our window trim detail. There is actually no trim whatsoever but just the metal sheetrock edging that fits in to a small slit in the window jamb. A small bead of caulk will be placed where the window and metal meet. Then the metal edging will be painted the wall color. Also shown is one of the steel brackets that hold our beams together. These were custom fabricated out of a metal similar to the stairs. This will later be varnished to prevent rust.

Jacob

We finished most of the painting a couple of weeks ago. We decided to do it all ourselves to try to save some serious cash. We figure we probably saved somewhere between $5,000-8,000. We did spend a good 12 days at least trying to bust it all out. I figure I logged about 150 painting hours. We still have the rest of the stair tower to paint (too tall to reach without stairs). Many thanks to everyone for the help. A special thank you to Stephanie and Kenner for the great color advice, we are very happy with all of the colors.
Now we have varnishing the windows to look forward to.

Jacob

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