Modern Home Tour

I am closing on my new home in Florida in less than one week and I left the state.  I needed to be in Ohio for a weekend.  I am so very excited to be moving into a beautiful home in Florida, but lest I forget, I already have an incredible home in Ohio.  I am taking the time today to take you on my modern home tour.  When we downsized and moved here my husband said he wanted to live somewhere “sexy”.  We took our unit in this fifty year old building to studs, a complete renovation.  In anticipation of moving into my lovely coastal style home with a wrap around porch, I have been so focused on cottage and coastal style furniture and design that I forgot about my perfectly lovely modern condominium.

I feel so incredibly blessed to have two homes where I can style and decorate in completely different ways.  I think a transitional or traditional interior is probably my favorite, particularly a coastal style, but that may just be because that is the new space I will be working on.  This condominium, however is in a mid-century styled building and with a nod to mid-century and sleek and modern lines, this is the way I chose to design this space.  I have to take a moment to tell you about this console table in the foyer.  This is actually a very solid table originally built as a sofa table out of MDF and then covered in dusty rose formica.  Some of you are old enough you will remember the popularity of dusty rose.  It matched my navy blue and dusty rose sofa!  Since then it has been covered with wallpaper, stripped and covered with crumpled up paper and painted black, then white (to simulate a leather surface), stripped again and now has been wallpapered again to match our latest decor.

Our last home had brown walls throughout which was fine because we had extensive floor to ceiling windows so it never felt dark.  When we bought here, I knew I wanted one color on the walls throughout.  Working with a great designer we chose these lovely grey walls.  My husband and I are experts at repurposing furniture from one home to a next, so almost all of the furniture we have here was from our previous home.  It did help that our previous home was a mid-century ranch home.  That gave us a great base for designing our space.

The kitchen was an entire “gut’ job so deciding on the kitchen cabinetry was a challenge.  This home is in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, which is not exactly a hotbed or modern cabinetry and furniture options.  I found so few options, and most of those were outrageously expensive.  I was going through the Home Depot one day and stopped by to browse the cabinet choices there.  I was amazed to find these beautiful sleek cabinets from Martha Stewart for Home Depot!  I showed them to my designer and we both agreed, this was the look I was going for.

One of my absolute favorite things in the kitchen is my vent hood.  I found this when I was looking at those astoundingly expensive kitchen cabinets.  I didn’t buy their cabinets, but I got this hood!  I love how it almost totally disappears when not in use.  It is over my induction cooktop, which is another one of my loves!  When I watch home shows when people are shopping for a home and keep talking about how they “must” have a gas range, I just say to myself, they have never cooked on induction!  It is so fast and responsive, it is a joy to cook on.

I featured this bar cart once before in a post on how to stock a bar cart.  We hadn’t decided where to put the cart at that time, but it finally found a home on this wall.  It took several shopping trips to decide what to hang above it, but the hubby and I were so happy with the idea of these pair of aluminum stag heads instead of just another piece of artwork.  If you look to the left in the photo you will see that we currently have an antler chandelier that has been painted white hanging over our dining table.  That will eventually be replaced when I find the perfect chandelier, but until now, it complements the stags’ heads beautifully.

This weird little niche had to be left in the condominium because of various building inspector requirements and I was really in a quandary as to what to do with it.  The thick frosted glass makes the top durable enough to set out food or beverages, or just to display flowers or plants.  The picture of the Walt Disney World monorail is one we have had for ages.  We honeymooned at Disney’s Contemporary Resort, so this has special meaning to us, and the colors fit so well in the new place.  The niche on the floor was another challenge.  I searched the internet for hours looking for something to tuck in there.  I finally came up with the idea of buying some old bowling pins and was going to paint them all a solid color.  When they arrived and I opened the box I noticed the pins were white with their red rings and blue labels and the nicks all over them from use were gray.  This picked up all the colors in the picture above, and all I had to do was place them in their formation and I was done!

Of course my favorite thing is the incredible view.  This was taken on a hazy afternoon, but the skyline of Cleveland has never looked so incredible, especially when it twinkles at night.  I have realized this post has gotten way too long, so I will feature the rest of the condominium including the bathrooms and bedrooms in an upcoming posts.  I would love to hear from you and see your favorite things about your home!

I will be sharing this at the following link parties:  Pam’s Party & Practical Tips – Dare to Share | The Charm of Home:  Home Sweet Home | The Scoop | The Creative Circle