Interior Design

Making our junk shop find of a house livable is our first concern, but even at these early stages we have to make aesthetic decisions. So if you wondering if you’re ever going to see anything on this blog that actually looks steampunk, the answer is yes, in time. Art is definitely part of a steampunk lifestyle, and for me the coolest art is also functional. Which brings us to the subject at hand, the interior design direction we are taking for our home. It’s not really enough to say it’s going to be “steampunk” since the word itself is evolving so rapidly. Our house will also evolve but we need to take stock of the various influences that will define that evolution.

Victorian and Early Twentieth Century
People a hundred plus years ago were enthusiastic decorators who were deeply in love with the opulent, the exotic, and the fanciful. Victorians couldn’t lay bricks for an underground power plant without a few flourishes in the masonry. Look around the Edison bar in downtown LA some time to see what I mean. There is a treasure trove of design ideas from this period. We are particularly drawn to Craftsman architecture and Art Nouveau.

Industrial
One of the biggest mistakes people make when they first hear about steampunk is to think that it is some kind of anti-technology movement. Hell no! We love technology. We hate the way its hidden away from us, like how things work is a shameful secret. We think how things work is cool and want it all exposed. We love big gears, exposed circuitry, pipes of iron and copper. Bring on the soot and the stench of oil! Okay, maybe not in the house for those last two. The heart of steampunk design is the dynamic opposition of the look of Victorian opulence and Victorian industrial technology. There is a good discussion of this on the Steampunk Home.

Shabby Chic
The term “shabby chic” has been seized by some designers to describe white and pink dollhouse-like atrocities, but at its roots it’s a very simple design idea. Let old stuff look old. Worn things convey a sense of permanence. They’re comforting. The trick is to make it a consistent look. You generally can’t put shiny new next to lovingly beat-up without making both look like crap. Since a life based on reuse and repurposing means you have a lot of lovingly beat up things, it’s important to make newer things look lovingly beat up too. That’s where things like distressed finishes, patinas and the like come in. A lot of the look of steampunk comes from these ideas.

International
Steampunk is not just about Victorian England or even Western culture. It is increasingly multicultural. As urban Californians multiculturalism is not something to aspire to but something we grew up with. Our décor will reflect this.

1960s Modernism
That’s not usually a stated influence on steampunk design but here’s a dirty little secret. Steampunks aren’t actually temporal adventurers from an alternate Victorianesque universe. Most of us were actually born sometime in the late twentieth century and this shows when steamers do up their homes. Actual Victorians would think nothing of putting a Persian rug in front of a wall covered with elaborately patterned flocked wallpaper and then putting a heavily carved chair upholstered with brocade on it. Personally when I see something like that outside of a museum I don’t think “wow that’s so steampunk”, I think “a weird old lady with too many cats lives here.”

There is always a modern influence on steampunk design. We have a longtime fascination with the peak of modernism, the 1960s. The sterility of the look no longer appeals to us but the brightness, openness, and pop sense of it will balance the excesses of Victorianism. Besides actual Victorian furniture is an ergonomic nightmare.

We have hardwood floors!

With the help of family and friends we exposed the original hardwood floor of our home in one day, and its in pretty darn good shape. It only needs patching in two small areas and only moderate sanding and refinishing throughout. The hallway and living room are studded with hundreds of wood screws that secured the concrete backing of the tile. I've removed about half of them so far.

The Battle of the Kitchen

Conventional wisdom holds that it costs from three to ten thousand dollars to remodel a kitchen. We have a modest paycheck-to-paycheck budget. Fortunately we also are totally without conventional wisdom! We are taking a What-Would-von-Slatt-Do? approach. Conventional wisdom says that you should destroy everything and buy new, but modern kitchen cabinets are very modular. Which means that if you are reasonably careful about how you take them apart you can reuse, modify and rearrange them. That’s exactly what we are doing. The only cabinet I couldn’t save was the one under the sink that was foul with mildew beyond hope. The reason for that is the drainpipe’s connection to the cast iron line in the wall had completely rusted off. The water from the drain was just pouring into the wall. No wonder the kitchen reeked of rot. It smells much better now.

Mrs. Greyshade came up with a kitchen design on the IKEA website that we should be able to approximate pretty well. We found a corner cabinet at the ReStore that fits the plan. We also have some hand me down appliances coming to us that are in good shape. The plan is to put the refrigerator in the left corner with a dishwasher next to it. The counter will form an L with the stove on the right hand wall where there is already a range hood. Eventually we will use two of our cabinet modules to form small a work island in the middle of the room. We will also reuse the upper cabinets and place them higher on the wall to match the range hood. The main L of counter is the top priority. The rest can be done after we move.

Have I mentioned lately that I've never done anything like this before?

Not Now!

Our renovation budget is now just about zero. You see our ageing Saturn station wagon had to be smog tested and it failed big time. It would take two grand to fix it or we could get a grand from the state of California to retire it. Its got well over a hundred thousand hard miles on it so its going to have to be the later. We need a new car. Its got to carry four people plus cargo and be able to tow our trailer. Its got to be reliable and fuel efficient. There went the budget.

We have a $500 Home Depot gift card from cashing in American Express points. My plumber owes me work because I ended up double paying him (long story), but other than that we are pretty much out of money. Most of the gift card and the plummer's fees are going to getting a new water heater and installing it in a way that will actually meet code.

We will go forward because we must.

Composting Begins on the Estate

I imagined that we wouldn’t start composting until after we moved but a good scavenging opportunity presented itself so I started a pile yesterday. Craigslist had a listing for free bales of straw at Pumpkin Station locations as part of their tear down operation the day after Halloween so I hitched up the trailer just before taking the kids trick or treating so I would be ready to pick them up in the morning. I had imagined nice dry bales that I could neatly stack and have ready for layered mulching. I forgot to take into account how much it rained during October. The bales were pretty soaked and about twice the weight I expected. I’d guess they were about 80 to 100 pounds each. I heaved them on the trailer none the less.

A couple of them were already decomposing on the bottom so I realized that storing them was not a happening thing. So I filled the rest of the space on the trailer with the broken and rotting pumpkins I found in their dumpster and headed for the Estate. Between the two bales, the pumpkins, and some green waste I got from trimming one of our bushing out tree stumps I had a good mix of nitrogen and carbon in large enough quantity to hopefully get some nice hot decomposition going. The white thing on the top of the stack is the shower base from the demolished bathroom that I’m using to help keep moisture in the pile.