I'm loving these new mid-century modern pillows that I found over at Modern Materials Design. Sometimes you just need a nice simple pillow with a good texture. To get them just right the folks over at MMD actually sent a piece of the fabric from an original time period chair and had the factory reproduce the nubby texture we all love and remember. The polyester/wool blend is soft, but not too itchy.

  

The pillows are available in 9 colors and 2 sizes to encourage mixing and layering. They are available in the authentic red-orange, chartruse, gold, brown, black, retro blue, red, cream, and orange. Sizes are 20" x 20" and 12" x 20".

Available from Modern Materials Design $27 - $39.

There's nothing I like more than a good sale, and this one could prove to be the most epic of the year. Due to some unexpected rezoning Modern Materials Design has to move out of their warehouse. While they look for a new location they need to clear out all of their inventory, which means everything is 50% - 80% off. If their last sale was any indication the best deals will go quickly. The sale starts this Friday.

Hours: 10-6 Tues-Friday and 10-4 Saturday (Saturdays starting March 7th)

Location: 800 North 350 West (North side of building)
              Downtown SLC
              Slightly hidden, but worth the search!

If you're not local, don't feel bad. You can still pick up some good deals online at their website.

Make sure you tell them Grassrootsmodern sent you, and post over at Utahmodern.org if you got a amazing deal!

A lot has been going on over at Utahmodern.org the last couple of weeks. Tristan of Mid-Century Mod-ification felt the effects of the recession when he lost his job as an architect in a two partner firm. As luck would have it he was able to get a job doing contract work for Hunter Douglas, which has some pretty cool projects. Tristan were pulling for you and hope it turns into a full time gig!

Carina of Mid-century Modern Utah fame started up a blog and mused about Ethan Allen, shared some photo's of a sweet MCM home in Provo and announced an opportunities for locals with a MCM home to get some professional photo's taken for free. Any takers?

We've also had some more great people join our little community. If you're in Utah, love design and haven't signed up yet, head over there and sign up today.

I have been scouring Craigslist and other local online classifieds for a long time now to see if I could get any deals on kitchen appliances. As luck would have it, we were able to find what I think have been some pretty great deals. Most recently we found a built in GE Monogram refrigerator that was listed for $1,500 due to several dents and scratches put in it during a move. While that sounds like a lot for a dented fridge, retail is more like $6,000 so when I talked him down to $800 I knew I couldn't pass it up. All the panels need replacing, and to buy them from GE would cost another $2,500, but I have a hunch the guys at Interior Renovation can do it for a lot less. I'm just glad we didn't have to haul our old fridge back upstairs.

In our last kitchen we had a 30" Bosch gas cooktop. We loved the gas, and swore that we would never have anything else. We do a lot of cooking at our house, and the two things that we didn't like about our Bosch were having to remove the grills to clean up after a night of cooking, and the 30" size. When we heard about induction cooktops, it seemed too good to be true. They are way more energy efficient than both gas and traditional electric, they have temperature control as good or better than a gas cooktop, and the glass top makes them easy to clean. The one downside is they are expensive. Our Bosch put us back $600, while the 36" Gaggenau we chose for this kitchen cost a shocking $2400. It was the one big splurge for our kitchen and I think it was worth it. There are quite a few induction cooktops out there, but to me what sets the Gaggenau apart from the others is the removable puck. The big dial used to control the temperature just sits on top of the glass and stays in place by a magnet. Burners are selected by sliding the dial in their direction, and then twisting to get the temperature you want. I love the tactile feedback of turning a dial compared to a touch control for the temperature, and the fact that it just sits on the surface means it's simple to remove for cleaning.

Check your local Gaggenau dealer for pricing (we got our for just over $2400)

After a couple weeks delay and a lot of help from our friends at Interior Renovations, our countertops are finally in. I think I had mentioned before that we decided to go with a product from Trespa called Top Lab Plus. Its a laboratory countertop or in it's technical terms, a high density phenolic resin. It is fairly similar to Richlite or Paperstone, which are considered low density phenolic resin countertops, only it is harder and not necessarily green as the paper content is neither recycled or from sustainably harvested forests. The advantage though is the cost. We decided to do a thin 3/4" counter after some inspiration some pictures over at Henrybuilt. Our cost was $15 a square foot plus shipping which put it up to around $20 a square foot. While you can cut the Trespa with a normal carbide tipped skill saw, I chose to send it over to Interior renovation to have them do most of the cutting. They actually had it all done on a CNC and then just finished the edges with some very minimal sanding. Needless to say, we were very pleased with the end result.  

We finally have a functional kitchen, but we still have a ways to go before we are really done. We have the tile backsplash behind the cooktop to do, the hood, and the whole north wall. I think that our next project will be using some of the leftover Trespa to make a matching dining room table.

Just in case any Salt Lake City locals had forgotten, there is a warehouse sale going on over at Modern Materials and Design. If you haven't already had a chance to check it out, make sure you get over there. Sheri tells me that they are still putting out new stuff, so if it's been a while since you've been there, it might be worth checking out again.

It's been another great week over at Utahmodern.org with some wonderful contributions from our members. Laine of Interior Renovations is on a roll after making a kids desk last week. This week he made a full sized desk that has a nice contrast of stainless steel and wood. Make sure you drop by and let him know what you think of it. He's always looking for feedback. Jory shared some more of his great eye for art and talks about what Wassily Kandinsky and Chalupa's have in common. I also posted a video of a remodel in a downtown loft that looks like something more out of So Cal than Utah. Last but definitely not least Preston signed up for his free blog and shared some ideas about sustainable design.

2008 was a big year for us hear at Grassrootsmodern. Like the year before, we experienced a huge growth in our reader base. A special thanks to everyone for spreading the word about the website and helping fuel the affordable modern revolution. Our most popular posts of 2008 were;

1. Dwell Studio comes to Target
2. FreeGreen Modern House Plans
3. Conduit Fence
4. The last bathroom update - from our old house
5. No Baseboard Details - from our new house

In addition to our normal content of 2008 we also had a wildly successful Affordable Kitchen Contest with close to 20 entries and over 600 votes. Not only did we get to see some beautiful affordable modern kitchens, it also gave me some great inspiration for our own kitchen remodel (which is getting close). We are planning on doing an Affordable Modern Bathroom Contest in 2009 and possibly others. Stay tuned for more details.

We also saw our little family grow in 2008 when Capree joined us as a blogger. She has been delivering up some quality content and brings a fresh new angle to Grassrootsmodern. In 2009 we also plan on bringing on a few new bloggers. If you are interested, make sure you drop us a line and let us know. Good writing skills and a passion for affordable design are required.

Besides running Grassrootsmodern we also branched out a little this year and started up Utahmodern.org for the locals that have an appreciation for modern design. It's only been up for a couple of months now, but we have seen a slow but steady growth of our little community over there. If you live in Utah, make sure you stop by and check it out.

It's been a busy week over at UtahModern.org this week. Ron from the Green Ant announced that he will be moving his store downtown, Laine blogged about some new affordable modern doors that he finished up, and Liam blogged about the great deal he got at Ikea on some Sorbo doors. I also posted about a great local modern warehouse sale that is still ongoing. The rumor on the block is that there are some great deals to be had. In addition, our introductions group is starting to pick up. If you are local, make sure you head on over to see what else you have been missing.

Growing up my grandparents had a sweet fireplace similar to the one shown above. I have always wanted one for an outdoor fireplace in my back yard. While this is probably one of the sweetest deals I've seen in a while, I am afraid that we are going to have to pass on it. If anyone else is local, and looking for an awesome fireplace this is your chance. Price is $300 OBO and it includes 20ft of piping.

via Utahmodern.org Classifieds

Available on KSL.com for $300 obo

Over the weekend we were able to get the rest of the painting done, and install our white rubber flooring. We purchased our flooring from Big D flooring, the local Roppe distributer. While there is nothing really unusual about rubber flooring, they looked at me really weird when I asked for it in snow white. A quick call into Roppe confirmed that we were doing something a little out of the ordinary. They said that they had never done a floor tile in snow white before. While I have a hard time believing that, I do know that the floor turned out nice. Some of the seams turned out a little more visible than I had hoped for, but we haven't given it a good cleaning yet, so it may improve. The install went pretty good. It basically consisted of spreading down some glue with a notched trowel and then setting the tiles in place. To finish things off I rolled the whole floor with a 100 lb floor roller. The bad news is that I was too tight with my measuring, and we ended up 3 tiles short. Luckily all the tile under the cabinetry is in place, so it won't hold us up at all. Rubber flooring available from your local Roppe dealer for $6 a square foot plus install. The kid approves.

We've been watching the classifieds for a while now to see if we could get any good deals on some of our kitchen appliances. We finally had some good luck the other day when we stumbled across this Siemens Avant Garde hood for only $450. It's 36" wide and normal prices are well above $1,000, so we feel like we got a pretty sweet deal. I actually really like the minimalist shape of it too. We have drywallers coming in tonight to patch up the whole kitchen, hopefully they will be done by this weekend. We will probably start painting and putting in our Roppe rubber flooring sometime next week. Things are finally starting to come together. One of the last things on the list is to order our countertops. We decided to go with laboratory counters from Trespa. At a quoted price of $15 a square plus fabrication, you just can't beat the price.

I've been working on a little side project for a while now, and after a lot of procrastination I am finally calling it ready for the public. UtahModern.org is a community based website dedicated to modern living in Utah. While it does have it's own blog featuring local shopping, architecture, art, homes, events and classifieds the real point of the website is to grow Utah's modern loving community. You can sign up for your own UtahModern blog like ModFab.UtahModern.org or just join to create your own profile to be able to connect with locals with similar taste as yours. While it's just in it's infancy now I have some big plans for the site.

Head on over to UtahModern and let me know what you think.

I have a friend here in Salt Lake City that has the same vision of modern that I do. He thinks that the prices being charged for the majority of stuff are way overpriced. Where we differ is that he actually has the skills and the resources to do something about it. He recently started playing around with making some contemporary doors. In an effort to avoid just copying someone else style, he has been playing around with mounting a 1" piece of glass perpendicular to the door surface. I took a look at this door last week, and it looks amazing. The one in this photo is actually an interior door, but they also had an exterior door in the works. While talking about exterior doors, we both wondered. What do most people feel is affordable for a modern exterior door? Give us some feedback in the poll below. Also what do you think of the door? Hate it? Love it? Come on we can take it.

For more info about the door, check out modfab.utahmodern.org.

Ryan is a guy after my own heart. His kitchen remodel involved tearing down a couple walls before putting it all back together again. The ASTRAKT red really brings some nice color into the kitchen.

We tore down two walls to open the kitchen to the dining room and living room and moved the sink from the wall where the refrigerator is. Ikea Abstrakt cabinets in red were chosen to bring the color into the room instead of through paint. To save on costs we installed laminate countertops and purchased all of the appliances (Thermador and Bosch) from a discounted retailer. The backsplash are bamboo pulp tiles from Inhabit and the lights over the island are from CB2. The main idea of the remodel was to provide more countertop space as well as room for storage.

Approx price: $8,500

The second entry to day should be no surprise for regular Grassrootsmodern readers. The entire construction of Salt Lake's affordable modern home "Lucy Ave" was blogged about here. I have actually had a chance to see this kitchen in person, and it is beautiful. In case you missed it the first time, here is a little more info from Jacob.

Our primary money savings is attributable to the cabinets. Ikea as we all know are a great value and make modern an affordable option. We chose the Abstrakt to try to give our kitchen a more minimal look. Anything else would have been too busy as we do not have any symmetry in our kitchen. We were also able to get a special deal on appliances. We were able to get higher end appliances for the price of what ordinary appliances would have cost. We also did not spend much on countertops. Countertops are probably the most expensive material in most homes. We may upgrade them later but for now the laminate is just fine. We chose a black granite sink that was about $275.00 and has held up very well. Doing it mostly myself also saved a lot of money too.

Approx cost: $10,000

Before After We have two Salt Lake City entries today. The first is a great bungalow update on a budget. A little fresh paint and countertops give this kitchen a whole new look for not a lot of money. They are currently trying to choose between rubber floors or natural linoleum.

While our kitchen isn't quite finished yet, I figured I'd throw it into the ring anyway. We bought a 1920's bungalow with some really nice original woodwork throughout the living and dining room. The kitchen, however, was in serious trouble. It was ugly and non-functional. There wasn't enough storage, counter space or even a place for a fridge. Because of this and our very small budget, my focus was on making it a usable kitchen with some modern touches. I did all the work myself, including the plumbing and electrical upgrades. Since we couldn't afford to replace them, we painted the original cabinets and added some inexpensive unfinished oak ones to match, moving the sink and creating more work space. New dishwasher and appliances, counter tops and hardware really livened up the space. The cost estimate includes what we are planning on spending on the much needed floor. We are currently torn between a natural linoleum and rubber tiles.

Approx cost: $2,400

This whole week I am blogging over at Design Sponge. I'm so excited because Grace at Design Sponge has been such an inspiration for me over the years, as well as a great resource for affordable goodies. At first I couldn't even think about what I could share with her readers, since she is much more of a design expert than I. After a lot of pondering I though I would share the story of our remodel at our last house. So if you aren't familiar with the story, or just want a quick recap, make sure you check out my guest blog all week at Design Sponge.

Thanks Grace for the opportunity to share!