This is another of our mid century modern bargain hunting finds.

We found this wonderful retro chair at a garage sale in La Grande for two dollars!   Obviously mid century modern hasn’t caught on in La Grande yet.

The chair appears to be made of some sort of rubber like material.    It does not appear to be plastic.    If anyone could tell us more about his chair it would be appreciated.

As you can see, the chair has a light film over it which may be paint, or possibly from sun exposure.    If anyone knows what might have cause this, and how to clean it up, the information would be greatly appreciated.

Another option we are considering is painting it.    Unfortunately we don’t know what kind of paint would work on this surface.   Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks.

Interestingly, Anne really didn’t like the floor when we first bought our home. It’s quite a contrast from hardwood floors!

But then we found our dishes!!!

As previously reported, we spotted our dishes in an antique shop in Portland soon after we bought our home.

Anne said, “They match our floor,” and we bought them.

That purchase turned the tide. We began decorating around the black, and Anne now loves the floor.

Gary always did.

Assumably, our floor is Armstrong vinyl composition tile, the kind they’ve been making forever.

You can see a picture of our dining/living room flooring to the left. Compare our close-up picture with this Armstrong product.

We first thought the floor was original. However, the previous owners of our home told us they had the floor installed to replace worn out wall- to- wall carpeting which was also not original.

As a side note, we may love the floor but we have not been pleased with the heavy chemical smell of the Armstrong floor care products which came with the house.

A lucky accident with Murphy’ s Oil Soap is giving us hope that this product touted for use on wood may actually work as both a cleaner and a polisher for our floor when used in higher concentrations.

Does anyone have ideas for “green” cleaning products that might be even better for this type of floor?

The window on the left is on the east side of the kitchen and looks out over La Grande and the Grande Ronde Valley. It has one of the best views from the house and makes working at the kitchen sink a joy.

As you can see, two-thirds of the window is fixed frame with the other one third being a casement window that opens outward. On the inside of the casement there is a built-in screen that rolls up like a roller shade so you can get to the hummingbird feeder.

The house has four windows of this design: one in the kitchen, two in the master bedroom, and one in the guest bedroom.

We have discovered you can still have this style window custom made and are considering having two made for our home.

One would replace the window in the third bed room (Gary’s den). We assume this room originally had a window like the other rooms, but the one in this room has been replaced with an aluminum-frame sliding window. Replacing this window with one in the original style should go a long way toward making the house more consistent with its original design.

The picture on the left is what the view from a window in that location would look like once it was installed!

This view seems way too beautiful to waste with a solid wall. The space is begging for a replacement mid-century modern window as well.

If you have been following this blog you know we are huge fans of Classic Consignment Furniture. They sometimes have wonderful finds at great prices.

Surprisingly, this was not a love at first sight purchase. It didn’t make much of an impression on us when it was sitting in the consignment store.

However we just couldn’t resist. We figured at that price if it didn’t look good in the living room we could find a functional use for it in the basement, or somewhere.

When we got it into our living room we were delighted!

Once again our house “spoke to us” and said this furniture was perfect.

Months ago, when we first bought our house, we drooled over modern kitchens in magazines like Dwell and Natural Home as well as in the IKEA catalog.

We considered going that route, but something didn’t feel right.

We are now working with Ben, a cabinet maker at Miller’s, to help us return the kitchen cabinets to their original style.

Stay tuned as we discuss materials, layout, and color!

We didn’t want to buy something new. Modern dining room furniture tends to be over-sized. Plus, we’ve found that furniture from the era tends to settle in and feel just right in our home.

And, we needed to find the set in Eastern Oregon so we didn’t have the challenge of how to get it home.

We finally found something!!!

We were so pleased when we found this mid-century dinette set at Classic Consignment Furniture in Baker City. It fits the space perfectly, has an extra leaf, only cost $125.00, and the whole thing fit in the back of our station wagon.

The chairs have the original Virtue Brothers label (Chair 674) on the bottom. They were a large manufacturer of metal dinette sets including the classic red, green, or yellow marbleized sets with chrome legs.

We’re glad they also made a few sets with black metal legs. Actually, we wonder if the table and chairs are parts of different sets. The table has gold metal in addition to the black and seems to have a slightly different style. Our table is similar to the one in this ebay posting , just rectangular instead of round.

If anyone knows more about the table or chairs, please comment!

And, if you live in the Eastern Oregon area we would strongly recommend checking out Classic Consignment Furniture in Baker City. Their prices are very reasonable and they often get in mid-century modern pieces.

Though the existing cabinets give the kitchen a cozy country cabin look, that isn’t really what the house is all about.

We want to bring the kitchen more into the mid century modern look in which it was originally designed. One thing we will be doing is putting on different cabinet doors that go better with the style of the house.

We are also planning on installing new counter tops. We are still looking around for a material we like but haven’t made a decision yet. It will definitely not be granite.

We are planning on putting an Energy Star refrigerator in the space where the fake bricks currently are and moving the oven under the stove.

The lighting for the room is inadequate but we haven’t figured out what to do with it yet. That is definitely going to be a challenge.

At this point we are still in the “early confused stage” of planning. However, we are to the point where we are ready to have a contractor come out and discuss how realistic our preliminary ideas might be.

Once we’ve talked to the contractor we will regroup and figure out what we want to do next.