Technology's Closet

One of the (many) benefits of designing my own house was getting to put in things that I always wanted: a huge kitchen, two washers and dryers, all the bedrooms on one floor, a powder room that wasn't practically inside the dining room (don't you hate that?). One of the aspects that my husband really cared about was a place for all the tech stuff. You know, the cable box, the DVR, the router, the stereo, sub-woofer, wifi... Did that sound like I know what I'm talking about?

Between the living room and the dining room we wanted to create a sense of separation yet still keep it open. On one side (the left) the elevator shaft juts into the space, so we just mirrored that same size on the other side (the window wall) and brought the ceiling down a bit overhead to give it a sense of compression, like it was supposed to be that way.

Here is the wall on the left:

It's not done yet, but so far we added a giant triptych of a sail boat, and my grandmother's table (which is dramatically under-scaled, I know). On the other side, we have "hidden doors".

They open up to reveal this:

As you can see there is a ton of electronic equipment. (One day I will organize all those wires, promise). We also store our folding chairs there for when we extend the dining table and need to seat 14, and our high chair for when babies come to visit (ours still needs to learn to sit up first before she will make use of it). This is also the spot with the cable box, the alarm controls, lighting control panel, and the phone/data panel for the entire house. It's a man's dream room. And it allows us to have this massive TV with no furniture under it, no wires and no boxes visible, something that both of us are happy about.

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A Tale of Two Fireplaces, part two (the nitty gritty)

Here are the functional fireplace accessories. You know, the ones that enable us to actually have a real fire, not just the pretty ones on the mantle (those are coming soon). See how we got here with this post.

The grate inside is from Amazon (find it here).

The tools are also from Amazon (here). Gosh, I love Amazon Prime. The free two-day shipping, especially for heavy items, makes my heart sing.

The screen is from Restoration Hardware (here). We love the industrial look, plus it's easy to move, the handles and screen don't get hot when there is a fire, the prefect blend of form and function.

For the kitchen fireplace, we have yet to buy a grate. My husband wants one "just in case" which makes no sense to me, since when will we need to have a fire there? If the heat goes out (which it already has), the house is built into the hill enough, and we get enough southern and western sun during the day, that at night it only got to 62 degrees inside. Plus we live in Northern California, not exactly expecting snow, or single digit temps any time soon.

I played around with what to do inside the fireplace box. I liked things like this:

From here

But once I read more about them, I realized it would just harbor spiders, dust, cobwebs, the tiny plastic fruit from Hi Ho Cherry-Oh, Barbie shoes, etc. So I tired this look:

I apologize for the photo, I took it without trying to focus on this particular detail. It is a collection of branches that my husband brought in from the upper hillside in our yard, then tied together in a teepee for with some Tiffany blue ribbon. Plus I added two sprays of cinnamon branches from Trader Joe's, just for the olfactory effect.

I was OK with the whole look, but had been dreaming of a pretty, feminine screen. Something that I wouldn't have to take down the minute our new baby started crawling and trying to shove the branches into her mouth. Here is my inspiration.

Horchow "Golden Circles" Fireplace Screen

But at $625 it was too expensive, plus it doesn't actually have a *screen*, so it wouldn't be useful in our "just in case" scenario. So I narrowed the options down to two screens, both from Pier One.

Cercis Fireplace Screen

Fireplace Screen with Amber Details

I let my husband choose. I think he did a great job, especially since we were in Pier One with 2 preschool aged kids, a seven week old baby, and did I mention it was January 2nd? Apparently that is the new Black Friday, because even at 10am, the store was packed, everything was on sale, and my kids were in love with every shiny, sparkly, glittery, smelly object in there (which is pretty much everything).

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