Good Books: The Perfect $100,000 House

This book is at the top of my Thanksgiving weekend reading pile.

The Perfect $100,000 House chronicles a former Dwell magazine editors trek across the country, searching for a thoughtfully-designed, well-built home that is (gasp!) around $100,000. Along the way she meets several architects, builders and designers that we've talked about on this blog.

Here is a little review of the book on the Design Within Reach site that first caught my attention.

Fab Find: My Favorite Console Table

I've wanted a cool console table since we moved in, but we're recovering from the house purchase and landscaping, so I refrained.

However, I learned a while back that Storehouse was going out of business. And they just happen to have my absolute favorite console table ever. I'd link to it, but their site is no longer, other than the front page.

Therefore I avoided going there like the plague.

Then my friend Kelly, otherwise known as THE DEVIL, came into my office and reported that she had made a visit, and they indeed had my console at 30% off. I still resisted.

And a week or so later, she came in and told me that it was now 50% off. So we drove out there on a lunch break. She bought one too.

I absolutely love it. Nice thick glass with a glass shelf for just at $300. You can't beat that.

P, the partner, liked it so much that I didn't even get in trouble! So, it was meant to be, me and my console table.

Landscape Complete. For Now.

The first (and most costly) part of our landscape is complete. The fence/wall is installed and functioning beautifully.

Here's a before:

And the after:

At first, the wall seemed a bit monolithic and the new courtyard area seemed a bit tight. That was just an immediate reaction, however, to the change. Now that we've had a little time for it to settle, we love it.

It isn't flashy.

It is, we think, appropriate. The houses in our mini-hood all have concrete block walls, so this isn't a new design element that we've all had to get used to.

And the wired portion of the fence will be completely covered with a pale yellow-blooming jasmine, which will be a nice scented touch in a small garden. Can you spot all the critters?

The installation is quiet, which is important to us at home. We want a restful outdoor space. And the shadows on the wall, created by the shifting sun, are a nice textural bonus.

We'll eventually remove a great deal of the lawn and gravel, replacing them with hardscaped seating areas and planting beds. We also definitely want a larger water feature with more room for fish. Gobbles and Nibbles, our fantail goldfish, have requested more swanky quarters.

Meanwhile, our dogs are thrilled to be able to lay in the sun for hours and our cat can sit on the garden bench and listen to the birds.

Behold the cuteness:

And the fatness: