Fear

This is where the end of the carport steel locks into the steel post.

Pat, the 57 year old boy, horsing around on our carport's skeleton.Carport skeleton on the left, Tom, Elspeth and Pat in the middle.

Trellis skeleton on the right.

At what point does a handwritten note from the bank cease to scare?

It was just an invitation to a real estate investment seminar, whereas we're gambling big time that this house is going to all work out.

The steel was delivered yesterday; because we're terrified of what COULD happen. This steel is the stuff that will hopefully keep our cantilevered carport from crashing down into the ground, our picture windows in place and the trellises on the ends of the wings fly without fail.

The original Rosenbaum house in Florence, Alabama didn't have steel structural support and it leaked like a sieve. The 800K renovation corrected that problem. I hope this house doesn't cost that amount. I'm pretty sure then a handwritten note from the bank WOULD be bad news.

Happy Birthday PV

Morticia would like these

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S79829370

Our floor color ended up being more of an orangeish/brownish with a hint of red, which I actually like better than the Santa Fe Red Mr Wright used.

I had been worried that our greenish/teal oriental rug in the living room would mean we'd be living in a perpetual "Christmas mode" but this will be fine. It also means that we had to rethink the kitchen cabinets and we opted for the brown/black cabinet drawers and doors, which also means we saved nearly half of what we planned to spend down there because our first choice was, of course, the most expensive. And at IKEA, you can opt for drawers rather than shelves inside the cabinet. One of my sisters, BB, has drawers rather than shelves and I have coveted them for years...

I don't know what Frank would think of black cabinets in the kitchen, which he refused to label kitchen in his blueprints, preferring the term workspace.

I find that whenever we talk about doing anything, we spend an inordinate amount of time wondering if Wright would approve of it, and even though he's not here to give his opinion one way or another, we are just like his paying clients. We want to respect his work.

On our tour of the Rosenbaum house in Florence, Alabama, we were all marveling on how tiny the furniture was. It turns out that Wright designed all the furniture for what he considered an "average" person-5'8 1/2"-exactly his height. This would have been fine, except that the Rosenbaums, both mother and father and their sons were all tall... Julia Child tall. But, they used his tiny chairs, squeezed their basketball player thighs under the low dining table and never thought twice about it. When asked why on earth they just didn't get furniture more suitable for their frames, Mrs. Rosenbaum replied, "Mr. Wright wouldn't like it."

I don't think I'd be uncomfortable for 50 years to please the man, but I would like to think he didn't hate the choices we're making.

There goes the neighborhood

Last spring we visited Pat's sister in Alabama. Although our "overt" mission was to visit with family, our "covert" mission was to tour the Usonian which is just down the street from her house.

In 1939 Stanley and Mildred Rosenbaum of Florence commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design their home. Here's the website.

http://www.wrightinalabama.com/

What the website doesn't show and what is difficult to understand unless one spends time there is that this one house radically changed design in this small college town, which is spitting distance from Helen Keller's homestead.

Before the Rosenbaum house, there were the normal sort of homes in that area for the times. After the Rosenbaums built their Usonian, just about every house in the neighborhood was influenced by it. Pat's own sister lives in a house with a dining/kitchen area directly derived from the Rosenbaum's. Her house was designed by the firm of Bar and Tune.

A quick walk through the neighborhood is a lesson in the evolution of the modern ranch house from the 1930's through the 70's. I am amazed SOUTHERN LIVING hasn't done a piece on it yet, because of all the wonderful neighborhoods they could highlight, this is unique in the south and almost unknown.

It's not all Tara and Twelve Oaks down here you know.