CHEZERBEY

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bathroom sconces

Phew! It’s been a busy week! We had a bunch of family in town for Avery’s birthday and are now playing catchup. I’m working on a party recap post, but wanted to first share this little switcheroo project that Kyle completed a few weeks ago.

So, remember this bathroom follow-up post from last November when we talked about replacing our failing sconces? Yep, well…8 months later:

No more sad, broken lights! We finally pulled the trigger and bought two new sconces from local lighting company Resolute. There are a few options for the shade, but we opted for the opal one which has a nice, diffuse light.

The fixtures have a wide face plate which was helpful in covering the existing electrical boxes from our previous sconces.

If these fixtures look vaguely familiar it’s because we have a similar sconce in the loft and reach lights in the kitchen (all from Resolute). Despite the vast selection of lighting out there, it’s surprisingly hard to source simple, well-designed fixtures and we find ourselves going back to Resolute again and again (on our own house and Studio Zerbey projects).

It’s a small change, but the space feels so much better now. Of course, now I want new towels and a new shower curtain (we’re using the same ones we bought when we remodeled nearly 5 years ago!). Anyone have a recommendation on great towels? I’ve been somewhat disappointed with the last few sets we’ve owned and am hesitant to invest in another so-so option. (We loved our current ones, but they’re a bamboo blend and have lost a lot of their original softness.)

We designed our bathroom so that the accessories would be the color in the space and I’m ready to try something new!

office organization

It’s been nearly a year since we finished the loft. Ahh, such minimal beginnings…things sure have changed!

The loft is now Studio Zerbey headquarters and where Kyle spends his days (and sometimes, nights). (In this post, I talked about the importance of having our own spaces.) Although I usually work from the dining room table, we try to keep all of our shared resources in the loft. And by resources, I mean stuff. Over the past few months we’ve accumulated office supplies, code books and building up our material samples library. The space was quickly becoming overcrowded and needed some serious organization.

So, even though I probably bad-mouthed the IKEA Expedits in an earlier post, we desperately needed some low shelving to hold books, building codes and our backlog of magazines. Of course, the Expedit was the perfect size and so I caved, overcoming my beef with its chunky proportions.

With the magazines relocated from the white IKEA Stolmen units, we freed up enough space for our material sample library. We’ve tried to go digital as much as possible, which primarily means forgoing physical product binders that are clunky and have to be updated frequently by product reps. But, there is something about being able to look at a physical sample of a tile or piece of wood siding that you just can’t get from a website or photograph. We often do mock-ups to try out different stains or paint colors and so having a collection of physical samples to share with clients is critical.

Besides, it looks pretty. (And boy, oh boy am I glad the loft is not Avery accessible! Samples go boom!)

Here’s a snapshot of Kyle’s workstation on any given day. We buy a metal paper tray for each new project – it’s getting a little Tower of Pisa, but I suppose that’s a good thing. 🙂

Ok, now let’s move downstairs.

Here’s a photo of our stair cabinet (aka fauxdenza) from two years ago. At the time, we used it as a bookshelf, mail holder and collector of random things. It has pretty much stayed in this configuration until a few months ago, when my “office” began to take over.

Here’s a typical Instagram snapshot of my work zone. (Yes, I’m rocking two laptops. As much as I wanted to fully switch to a Mac, I’m using our old Dell for Autocad. It’s not ideal, but I’m convinced switching back and forth between the two will help stave off dementia in my later years.)

During the process of organizing the loft, we moved most of our architecture resource books upstairs and did some major purging. Now all of our books fit in the fauxdenza. I have mixed feelings about this because I generally like to have books on display and am convinced that hidden behind closed doors, they will not get read. (A theory that has been proven mostly true so far.) Moving the books also freed up space for more work clutter, which wasn’t ideal either.

So, more purging and reorganizing. As part of our babyproofing efforts, we decided that it was probably not a good idea not to store our liquor in the fauxdenza. So I did some kitchen shuffling and carved out enough space for the booze in the cabinet above the pantry. (Having recently watched the last season of Mad Men, we also joked about how now that we’re self-employed we should totally have our own bar cart by the couch. But again, the idea didn’t seem to really mesh with creating a safe environment for our daughter. Avery, make me a gin and tonic!)

With the alcohol relocated, this allowed me to dedicate one shelf for my own office supplies, leaving only a few random items on the counter. Admittedly, it now feels too sparse. Functionally, the fauxdenza is a perfect catchall or temporary holder. Stuff to go up to the loft gets stacked by the ladder and items to go to the basement on the other end. The ceramic bowl serves as Kyle’s catchall for, well…everything that would typically go in a purse. Aesthetically though, the counter space is hard to style. The low height limits displaying anything too large, but it’s not quite tall or deep enough for records or larger books. (Looking back, it’s amusing to think that we thought we’d mostly use it for a buffet for dinner parties – a scenario that has yet to happen and probably won’t since it’s easier to just use the island.)

So, maybe I’ll move some of our design books back up and I’m on the lookout for something to replace Kyle’s bowl (preferably something with a lid!). I know it’s only a matter of time before Avery will be yanking things back off so maybe I don’t get too invested?

Organization! I took four boxes of books to a consignment store to get to this point. It was hard to let them go, but as we’ve been in a pattern of acquiring stuff these last several months I’ve been trying hard to also get rid of the things that were just taking up space.

So here’s my mini office cabinet. For now I’m sharing the space with my cookbook surplus (I’ve relocated my favorites or more frequently used ones to the open shelving in the kitchen). The two binders on the bottom left are filled with recipes torn from magazines that I’ve collected over the past ten years. Every once in a while I try to think of some genius system for organizing it all but that has yet to happen. (In my idealized fantasy world I would cook my way through every recipe, typing up a card (with beautifully shot images) for the ones that pass the test.)

Finally, I can’t leave you without an obligatory dog/baby photobomb. I took most of these photos yesterday afternoon and had to work around my little helpers.

media bench

We finished the media bench and it’s not even April yet! Actually, we were 90% done a week and a half ago, but we kept on tweaking. You know how it goes.

The bench itself is made of two fir 2×10’s. Kyle took them down to OB Williams one afternoon where they ran them through the jointer and sander so they could be fit together without any wonkiness. (Our process photos are sparse, but it was a similar (although much simpler) to the office desk.)

Once the boards were back home in the shop, Kyle biscuited them together and applied a few coats of SatinThane. (He also added a radius to the outboard edge to make it a bit more baby-friendly.)

Once the bench was ready, it was go time. We put Avery to bed then emptied out the space (and did a celebratory high-five that we were finally, finally getting rid of the last of our college furniture).

(Sorry for these crappy iPhone photos.)

The media unit is an IKEA Besta box.

In lieu of legs, Kyle used the cutoffs from the 2×10’s to create a solid wood plinth. (We actually ended up moving the plinth closer to the face of the cabinet and adding blocking behind for extra stability.) The bench sits on the Besta unit on one end and on two IKEA Godmorgon legs on the other (the legs have metal cuffs that hide the plastic adjuster). The span is only 4′-6″, so the 1 1/2″ thickness of the wood is adequate. Our original design was to do a wall-mounted unit but we realized that it would be better to be able to pull the unit out in order to access cords, etc.

We went with glass doors for the Besta unit, but did our own window film to downplay the components (yet still allow our remotes to work). We used this film, which is the same thing we used at our back door.

Bam! (I now realize I should have taken some “action” shots but Avery was napping and Kyle and Bailey were at the hardware store when I took these. Next time.)

Although Avery wasn’t crawling when we wrote the last post, your comments about keeping the records out of reach convinced us to go ahead and make it happen and to use the space for toy storage instead. (Good thing too, as she is now all over the place.)

The subwoofer sits under the bench and we put the protective cover back on (even though it doesn’t look as cool). We still need to add a cushion and although I’m sure we could have easily had a custom one made, in a moment of lets-just-get-it-done we ordered this one from West Elm. It’s meant for outdoors but the color and size was right so we’ll see.

Ahh…new bench, new storage, new TV.

Yeah, we’ll get to that.

We also decided to go ahead and move the turntable to the cabinet as well. We bought this pull-out frame (with shelf insert) which works perfectly. (We intentionally left the handles off the doors and have catches that we’ll install once Avery figures that one out.)

The next dilemma was that we couldn’t fit all of the media components on one side to allow record storage on the other. Our stupid cable box was gigantic and taking up too much room so Kyle spent one morning haggling his way to a newer (and significantly smaller) version. “It’s for our child’s safety”, was the tagline of the day. Our xbox is on the other side still and we use it primarily as a DVD player. We’ll probably eventually swap it out for a small blu-ray player. (The small black box on the left is our all-in-one receiver that we use to watch TV, stream music and listen to the radio.) We also left the masonite backing off of the Besta unit for cord management purposes and to allow better ventilation.

We also removed the clunky plastic cover on the turntable. Good riddance, I say! We have noticed that it’s easy for the turntable pull-out tray to catch on the door if it’s not opened all the way so we’ll probably add a tiny bumper to protect the window film from getting scratched.

I looked high and low for modern/fun/affordable toy storage options and finally landed on these felt bins from Land of Nod. These are 11″ cubes – they had 18″ versions that I preferred but they were slightly too tall. Now that the smaller ones are in place, I think they work fine. (We have to preserve a bit of space between the toy storage and subwoofer for an existing heat vent.) The bins come in other colors but we liked the yellow the best (I originally got aqua but it was much greener in real life than on the website).

So, the TV. Somewhere in the process Kyle bought a new TV. (My mom was in town visiting and I must have been distracted.) Ok, really I just like to give Kyle a hard time about it for being such a guy. 😉 We bought our old TV 4 years ago off Craigslist so the acquisition wasn’t terribly unreasonable. For those of you that have been following us for a while, you may recall that the original plan was to make the downstairs bedroom a media room and avoid a TV upstairs altogether. Maybe we’ll do that eventually, but we noticed that we’ve used the space a lot more since moving a TV in there (it used to be in the nursery when that was a flex room). We’re trying to keep the TV off around Avery, but most of our viewing time is after she goes to bed so it usually works out.

As part of our baby-proofing efforts, I had bought some anti-tip TV straps before we purchased the new TV. But they’re not all that attractive and the backside of the TV is actually somewhat visible so Kyle ordered this crazy wall mount that not only secured the TV but it has an adjustable arm so the TV can be rotated to an optimal viewing angle. Also, the base that came with the TV was an ugly chrome thing, so…win!

I also had concerns about Avery eventually being able to tip the speakers over so we installed these straps to the speakers and wall.

Done! Besides the cushion (which should arrive this week) we also would like to add some type of art piece above the TV. We’re thinking something organic or free-form so it’s not a rectangle sitting above another rectangle, you know? No idea what this piece of art would be, but we’ll keep an eye out.

All in all, we love it. It’s amazing how it changes the feel of the space and Avery has already logged some quality (supervised and supported) window seat time. This area of the house has always felt the least finished so it’s nice to finally remedy that.

happy new year + coming up for air

Hello!

Phew…between the holidays, travel, work and Kyle and I both getting sick it’s been a busy month. I had plans to do a 5-month Avery post (didn’t happen) a 2012 Year in Review post (oops) and a post about our trip to Oklahoma. So, here’s a conglomerate catch-up post to kick off 2013!

We thought this would be the one year where Avery wouldn’t mind sitting on the old man’s lap. She’s normally an easy-going kid, but apparently being hungry and tired and seeing Santa was a recipe for disaster. But it was hilarious and we took lots of photos anyway!

Or perhaps she was too overstimulated from the raucous carousel ride beforehand. There’s a tiny “amusement park” in my hometown that mostly caters towards the under five crowd. They were open the weekend before Christmas for festive train and carousel rides and photos with the big guy. I spent some quality time there in the 80’s so it was fun to take Avery (even though she was really too young to get it).

Avery and her cousin Holly (who is 5 months older) also had some quality bonding time – hanging out on the rug, making big plans for the future.

Unless there’s a wedding or other family event, Christmas is the only time of the year that I see all my siblings (minus one brother and might-as-well-be-sister-in-law, who are living in Italy). We spent one evening around a bonfire at my parent’s house, sipping beverages and talking about where we should get a (theoretical) family cabin. Maybe a cute place by the beach or a cabin in the mountains? We evaluated where we all live or might someday live and realized that the most geographically central location was…Oklahoma. Hmm.

We had a little scheduling snafu this year with our air travel so Avery and I ended up flying separately from Kyle. I was a little nervous at first, but she did great! (See, she’s all “I got this, Mom”.) After carrying/wearing/holding her for 9+ hours (love that non-direct flight!) I think the only thing that suffered was my back the next day.

By the time I was feeling up to doing Avery’s 5-month photo shoot she was already 5 1/2 months old. So that didn’t happen. But I did take some photos on the actual day at my parent’s house. She’s much more animated now, grabbing everything and acutely aware of her surroundings. She will be six months next week. NEXT WEEK! I’ve honestly felt that time has gone by at a normal clip since she was born, but the jump from 5 to 6 months went by way too fast. (I’ve also been meaning to do a baby product/gear follow-up since things have changed quite a bit since our last one at 2.5 months!)

Oh, 2012 year in review? How about a written summary instead:

-Converted the loft to an office.
-Went to the Grammy’s in LA.
-Started finishing out the basement.
-Won our category in Apartment Therapy’s Small, Cool contest!
-Converted the flex room to a nursery.
-Landscaped our front yard!
-Lost our kitty, Felix. =(
-I left my former firm.
-We had a baby 3 days later!
-Kyle finished the basement bedroom during part of his paternity leave.
-Started Studio Zerbey.
-Kyle left his former firm to join Studio Zerbey.
-Work, baby, work, baby, work…

So what will 2013 bring? Aside from growing our business, we have some more house-related projects in mind. For one, the bedroom. (I know, the room we gutted and remodeled 4 1/2 years ago!) The bedroom was the first space we remodeled and it’s never felt quite right. Oh, but we’ve got ideas. Perhaps we’ll also finish the basement? We renewed our building permit again (for the final time?) so there is a ticking clock. Maybe the backyard? It’s winter so the only one who really goes back there now is Bailey, but I’m sure when spring rolls around we’ll get the itch.

Happy New Year from the Zerbey’s, feels good to be back!

his + hers home offices

Living in a small house is one thing, but working in a small house is quite another. But hey, if anyone can figure out a good way to balance the two it should be a couple of architects, right?

Yeah. In terms of how our business is structured, we first established two basic rules: maintain our own projects and our own work spaces. (This is key!) Although there are only two of us, we more or less operate in the same way as a larger firm. Kyle and I both act as our own project managers, but share resources and collaborate when there’s a time crunch or we need to bounce ideas off each other. We even have Monday morning staff meetings to discuss what’s going on for that week. (Ok, sometimes we’re in our pajamas.)

Here’s another thing, we don’t divide everything 50/50. During the remodel process we learned that we work better together if tasks are allocated by what a person is interested in or good at, rather than “you install that half of the tile and I’ll do the other half”. (The same applies to doing laundry or paying bills.) It’s not for everyone, but for us it means we’re a lot more efficient when it comes to getting house projects done. Now that we’re small business owners, we apply the same strategy to Studio Zerbey.

Focusing on each of our strengths means we also have different needs when it comes to workspaces. For now, I’m working part-time and taking care of Avery, so it made sense for Kyle to take over the loft and for me to have a more mobile work station (aka the dining room table). Originally we thought about setting up my office in the basement, but the idea of schlepping around baby gear and toys (plus the baby) made that idea less appealing. We keep all of our shared resources in the loft (printers, office supplies, books, etc.) and so far it’s working out well. Everything is wifi so if I need to print something I just send it off and by the time I climb up the loft ladder it’s sitting there waiting for me. With this setup, we’re not staring over each other’s shoulders but we can easily ask each other questions or listen to the same music. (Small house win!)

And I like that we each have our own identities: Kyle with his PC and Aeron and me with my MacBook and Eames. Ok, we’re both terribly cliché, but in our own special ways.