Goodbye and Welcome

Okay, I'm doing this.  First off, this is not really good-bye at all, it's just the end of the first act. For the past 3 years I have been burning my fingers with hot glue, camera hanging around my neck, cobbling together what is now an archive of over 450 posts, many of which capture my children in sweet, well-lit moments, growing older before my eyes. Poppy Haus was the project I created to help stay engaged with the outside world while getting them through their early years at home, a period of time for me to consider my next professional step. What began as Make-Do, a little blogspot journal, quickly grew into the Poppy Haus before you today. It's become so much more than I imagined it could ever be, and I've become more of a blogger than I ever originally intended, going to conferences, leveraging social media, working with brands. In the end, it's the writing, photography and working on composition, color, styling that are the true joys of my day. I will continue to do them, but this little spot on the interwebs is moving forward.  

For the past year and a half I have been training in interior design, taking courses, volunteering my services, interning, and working with small project clients. I kept plugging away with Poppy Haus while I figured out my next move. And now here we are. 

Today I am so very proud to announce that I have started Make+Haus.
This will be the new online home for the blog, a portal for my interior design and styling services as well as the future bulletin for camps and classes which will be offered starting 2015. Over the weekend Poppy Haus will disappear into the ether, but you will find the full archive including this post and a fresh offering at my new home www.make-haus.com which will go live by the time you wake up for Monday morning coffee. Thank you as always for reading.

Okay, gotta go do so much work.  Goodbye and Welcome. xo, Heather 

Sketching Skills

My two favorite tools are a sharp pencil and a pad of gridded/graphing paper. Whenever I set out to make anything, be it a tiny clay deer sculpture or a floor plan, I make a sketch. It helps me work out my ideas and get down to details. I'm a visual thinker, and both of my kids seem to be as well, so I supply them with their own pads of graph paper to plot out their ideas.  The grids have helped Wylie with scale and consistency while he learns to write his name, and Jasper has used it to make comic books, and has recently started drawing pictures in perspective. Armed with with these simple tools it's pretty amazing to see what they come up with... 

The other day my little lady friend Ella came over (you might recognize her from the weaving project) to check out the new children's architectural book series featured last week. I enlisted her to help me work out a few details for a new class I'll be teaching (more on that soon) where we'll need to know a little about drawing in plan view(2-D) and perspective (3-D). She was really interested in Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, she loved how his house was built into the natural environment. Using the grids on the page, she sketched out her own design built into nature, a two story tree house, complete with a tire swing. I hope she builds it one day... 

No. 5

We did it.  The house is dark as night, the yard is landscaped, and the deck is up. I thought I'd share some pictures of the new and improved front of the house.  It's like a dream driving up to it now.  We settled on Benjamin Moore "Gravel Grey", which actually had a little less blue in it than some of the other colors I had in mind. In some lights it looks pure grey, in others it looks a bit navy. The trim is "White Dove" and for the door we thought it might be fun to do a pop of color in "Yellow Finch", which has a bit of a green undertone, and picks up on a lot of what we are growing in the front garden.

Our plan is to let the fences gray out a bit more, then seal it before the rainy season. The landscaping should more than double in size by this time next year (seriously, I can't wait).  Here's a reminder of where we started.

We hung the new house numbers, mailbox, and wall sconces.  I put in a fall fern garden on the front porch in some tall galvanized planters from CB2.  

After a lot of debate we actually chose these jelly jar style sconces for over the garage and as a a porch light.  I wanted something really understated, and everything that I was liking was really too expensive.  These sconces are under $10 each.  For $30 I figured I could change my mind later, but now that they are up, filled with clear bulbs, I think they look pretty sharp.

We are still finishing up the siding on the deck.  The cable rails are up, fascia board is in place, so all that is left to do is to enclose the storage area with finished fence boards and seal the thing.  Building this deck was the best decision we could have made, it completely changed how we use our space. I'm out there everyday.  More on that soon...

A New View

Hi, it's me. I'm crawling out from under a pile of wood to bring you a renovation update. Over the past few weeks, the narrow 40" x 40' balcony that flanked the back of the house has been dismantled, piers dug out, and a new structure, both functional and beautiful has been constructed in it's place. Here's the story of our deck...

This is the before picture, taken a few days after we moved in. With a sweeping southern view of Petaluma's Cherry Valley and the Sonoma hills, the deck was barely deep enough to fit a chair without touching your feet to the railing.  A narrow staircase cut across the back side of the house, blocking a lower bedroom window, and an overgrown patch of ivy was tightly knit into the ground below. That was reason enough to rethink the deck, but then there was the problem of the side yard stairs, and the drainage system that we lovingly refer to as "The Roman Aqueduct".  The stairs lead from our front yard gate down into the backyard, and give access to the crawl space on the side of the house. They are slopped and the treads are very short, making them dangerous and a total eyesore.  

When I first started to work on a design for the deck I was stumped on how to make it bigger without losing a ton of yard space to a new stair case off the front, cutting off the same bedroom, only worse, and the conundrum of making the current side stairs more functional, and covering up the ancient drainage that would cost a million dollars and a lot of jack hammering to redo. Then I stumbled upon this picture...

Bingo. Instead of making two sets of stairs, we could deck over the top of the existing side stairs and enclose the area under the side deck with horizontal fencing to create extra storage and access to the crawl space and bedroom fire door.  With this design we would gain more direct access from the front yard to the back, leading straight to our kitchen, and we'd gain an extra westward facing perch to watch the sunset from, not to mention the wide, hangout staircase that does not block that bedroom. We could now use this part of our yard for a massive raised vegetable garden and the under deck shade structure for lounging and eating on hot or windy days. And so it began...

Keeping it in the family, we hired Adam's brother Ben of Jennings McCann Construction. On the crew is my other brother-in-law Brian, Adam, who had a few weeks left of summer vacation and a jr. crew member in Jasper, who helped mix concrete and carry wood. In one day the deck was completely dismantled. Within the week we had the deck structure.

And here we are two weeks in. Over the next few days the fascia boards and cable railing system will be installed, and then we're having the house painted, at which point we'll have to start eating ramen for dinner every night until we begin the interior remodel. Stay tuned for the big outdoor reveal soon!

The Front Yard- Part 2

I thought I'd give a little update on our front yard project.  We've made some serious headway!  Gone is the icky chain link fence, and dead grass patch, we've replaced it with drought resistant landscaping and a set of new side fences. Remember this?

Granted it looks extra bad, because I took the before picture on an overcast day, but really, it was sad even in the sunshine.  We hired a landscaper to come in and they knocked it out in 3 days. We opted to have the yard done by a pro this time for the sake of time and ease, and also to make sure it was done right, as we needed to install irrigation and put in a lot of plants. Now that we have a a grasp on landscaping and access to the soil vendor, we plan to work on the massive backyard ourselves over the next few years. But in three days here's how they did it:

I LOVE the fences.  They did exactly what I hoped they would do. The horizontal slats lengthen the the line of the house, and add privacy to the backyard.  I'm planning on letting them gray out naturally, then sealing them when they get to the right hue. The garden is designed to be big and wild, low maintenance and drought tolerant. We planted in groupings, varying in height and shape to give it a truly natural look. The landscape cowboy, Owen, has assured me that the plants will double in size in the next year, and be full grown in 2 seasons. All of those low lying puffs of chartreuse lemon and lavender thyme will spread along the path to soften the lines and cover the vineyard mulch.  The feather grasses will shoot up and create a natural border, the artichoke will fruit, the lavender, yarrow and grasses will start to dome and fill out, and the olive bushes will form a soft hedge. Most importantly, the Japanese maple will get taller and fuller to block our neighbor's side yard. I'm incredibly impatient watching plants grow, so I'm glad we moved on this project first. 

We still have a lot to do, but the exterior already looks so much better.  Right now I'm focusing on switching out the outdated finishes like the mailbox and the house number, and I'm on the hunt for the perfect wall sconces.  I want the house to feel clean and modern, but it must also blend well with the other houses on our street, because we are on the curve of a cul-de-sac and therefore a bit more exposed in the front. As we only have one house number I went big, no Neutra numbers for me. Both pieces are from CB2, the house number is substantial at 7.5" tall in modern Arial font, and only cost $10. Like Neutra numbers it's made from polished aluminum, but it's got some texture to it, which I like. The mailbox is heavy duty, made from powder coated iron, with exposed welding lines. I like the idea of doing mixed metals outside to keep it casual.

The next big project is painting.  Adam and I evaluated how much time and effort it would take to paint this place ourselves and had to admit that it wouldn't be worth it.  I've met with a few local painters and we've hired one to come do the honors late July/early August.  Stay tuned for the great color debate.  Let's just say, it's going to be deep and dark, to make the garden pop and the house recede.  The weird color blocking is going away, as are the out of proportion decorative shutters. 

I'll leave you with a pretty picture of my favorite flower in the garden, Romneya, a poppy varietal which grows several feet high in a grove of paper petals and pom poms. When I pull up to our house and see it, I smile. Grow garden, grow.

Le Parker

If you've been reading this blog over the years then you know I have a fondness for The Parker in Palm Springs.  There's just something a little magical about it for me, as if Wes Anderson and Jonathan Adler got together and had a hotel. It's a place that is dedicated to the art of  lounging, decked out a bit like Megan Draper's Laurel Canyon home, a mix of boho textiles, mid century furnishings and amazing mood lighting. This past weekend I finally got to spend a few days on hotel grounds to really take it in when we celebrated our 10 year anniversary. The magic of The Parker is the way its cut into several different secret environments, paths lined with overgrown mimosa trees, palms and grasses carve out hidden passages to swaying fields of hammocks and circles of butterfly chairs. Inside it's cut into conversational spaces framed by hanging rattan seating and womb chair nooks. At night it is enchanted, lamp lit and mysterious. I took notes. Lots of notes.  We have our own groovy project to design, and an ever growing collection of vintage chairs, and lamps to weave into the mix.  Now if I could just get my hands on a wall hanging like this...

Look at all this lighting.  I'm such a sucker for a dimly lit room. Which reminds me of this hilarious essay by David Sedaris.  

I'm also a sucker for this guy.  Happy Anniversary Adam Jennings, you handsome devil.