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Author Archives: Jane Dagmi

Jane Dagmi

About Jane Dagmi

Jane Dagmi is a freelance writer, style voyeur, and curious observer of the way people live, shop and decorate. After a gratifying tenure at Country Living, she now blogs for Benjamin Moore, Designing Spaces and others, and shares her contemplations at WANTNEEDXOXO. Jane lives in the Ft. Lauderdale area with her two daughters, and when not on deadline, takes on decorating projects, substitute teaching, and searches for good in the world and the people who make it so. Check her out on Google+!
  • Green >
  • From Construction Site to Runway: The Loop Jacket

From Construction Site to Runway: The Loop Jacket

SUSTAINABILITY

Loop Jacket

Final countdown to spring! Time to park the parka and whip out the windbreaker. Don’t have one or looking to buy something fresh? Check out the Loop Jacket, a lightweight, stylish, and eco-friendly windbreaker from Mio Culture. The Loop Jacket is made of Tyvek, DuPont’s high performance weather-resistant plastic sheeting, most commonly seen wrapped around buildings. Mio Culture’s creative director Jaime Salm figured that if Tyvek could protect a home from the elements, then it could do the same for those who dwell within.

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A “Young House Love” Affair

PEOPLE & PLACES
Sherry, John and Clara Petersik of Young House Love

Sherry, John, and Clara of Young House Love

Sherry Petersik is glowing. Her husband John is nearby. Baby Clara, one of the cutest child co-stars of the blogging world, is still sleeping. Since these passionate DIYers usually tackle their projects while their child is sleeping, chances are Sherry is spattered with paint and John is covered with grout.

These lovestruck and talented power bloggers chronicle daily life at Young House Love and relish the afterglow of a challenging, down-and-dirty home renovation project. While many large-scale undertakings have their definite nerve-wracking spousal-patience-trying moments, in the long haul the young marrieds are blissfully committed in sickness, health, DIY success or disaster.

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2020 Alton Road: Prime “Green” in Colorful Miami Beach

ARCHITECTURE
2020 Alton Road

The super green home-to-be at 2020 Alton Road rises nearly 32’ from the ground. With a redesigned property wall and lush landscaping to come, this home site is certain to inspire major curb lust!

At 2020 Alton Road, a home on track to be Miami Beach’s first LEED Platinum residence is steadfastly taking shape. Much progress has been made since our last post, and general contractor Robert Arkin, a partner with Florida Green Home Design Group (FGHDG), confirms that the five-bedroom, five-bathroom eco-luxury residence is on schedule for completion this spring. As of February 1st, the project was tracking 108 LEED points. The entire concrete footprint has already been poured; metal furring defines the interior floor plan; and the supply and return air-distribution ductwork, which ensures a constant flow of fresh air throughout the house, is in place. Next up is electrical work and the installation of Icynene spray foam insulation, geothermal units, and mold-resistant drywall.

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Today’s Toile: Artisans Retool a Classic Fabric

WALLPAPER
Pierre Frey's "Les Travaux de la Manufacture" Toile

Pierre Frey's "Les Travaux de la Manufacture" Toile

Though the word “toiles” conjures up visions of fabric dotted with romantic scenes of maidens, cherubs, pagodas, and military or fabled heroes, the actual translation is simply “cloth.” Toiles du Jouy originally referred to linen or cotton cloth manufactured in the French town of Jouy-en-Josas beginning in the 1760s. Located close to Versailles, the Oberkampf factory manufactured toiles for the royals. Deemed Manufacture Royale by Louis XVI and Legion of Honor by Napoleon, Oberkampf toiles were extremely popular.

In The Decoration of Houses (1897), 19th-century tastemaker and co-author Edith Wharton notes the 18th-century French transition from heavy dust-collecting silk brocades to washable, simpler toiles. She describes the pattern: “Absorbing the spirit of Chinese designs, the French designer blent mandarins and pagodas with Italian grottoes… and French landscapes.” She continues, “The little scenes were either connected by some decorative arabesque, or so designed that by their outline they formed a recurring pattern.” Toiles were often printed in one color on a neutral ground, but not exclusively.

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Household Hints: Vintage Trading Cards with a DIY Theme

PRESERVATION

I am a casual collector of vintage paper goods and assorted ephemera. My stash includes vintage dictionaries and encyclopedias, postcards, baby scrapbooks, and handwritten recipe files. Recently, at a Saturday morning yard sale, I scored a different type of collectible—a Wills’s Cigarette Picture Card Album filled with 50 “Household Hints” trading cards.

I was curious about my $2 find and thus launched a Google rampage. I learned that “cartophily” is the hobby of collecting cigarette cards, and so that makes me a very part-time cartophilist. Cards, originally used to simply fortify packages of cigarettes, later became vehicles for advertising and artful trading cards. W.D. & H.O Wills, a division of Imperial Tobacco, was the first tobacco company to issue sets of cards. In 1895 “Ships & Sailors” inaugurated the card craze which lasted until the early 1940s.

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Transporting Eames

ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY
Eames House Living Room LACMA Exhibit

The recreation of the Eames House living room, with 1800 original objects, is on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art till June 3, 2012.

Bobbye Tigerman, assistant Curator of Decorative Arts & Design at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), is on a post-installation high. The last five years of her career, along with head curator Wendy Kaplan, have been spent visiting libraries, museums, and octogenarian and nonagenarian California designers in order to piece together the most comprehensive retrospective of California mid-century design to date. “California Design 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way” features 350 objects spanning categories of home décor, fashion, sports, advertising, and architecture. Paramount to the exhibit is the faithful recreation of Charles and Ray Eames’s twenty foot-high living room from the iconic 1949 Pacific Palisades home also known as “Case Study House 8.”

Flickr-Dystopoe Eames House Exterior

The colorful exterior of the steel-framed Eames House

The house was built as part of Art & Architecture Magazine’s post-war Case Study Program, which sought to build low cost, high quality, mass-producible homes with readily available industrial components. Though largely glass and steel, Lucia Dewey Atwood, the Eames’s granddaughter, notes that the living room had a “wonderful loving warmth,” a vibe attributed not only to the characters who dwelt within, but to the use of off-the-shelf components in thoughtful and beautiful ways, the connection of the interior space to the outdoors, and to the more than 1800 handmade objects and folk art accumulated over 39 years.

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2020 Alton Road: Setting Sights on Greenest Home in America

ARCHITECTURE
2020 Alton Road foundation

Completion of the stem walls on top of the grade beams at 2020 Alton Road, Miami Beach, FL.

The construction of 2020 Alton Road, a 3,200 square foot, single-family residence in Miami Beach pursuing a LEED Platinum rating is well underway, and the ground floor has just been completed. Before the concrete could be poured, however, a series of preparations were made and underground systems were installed all in accordance with the rigorous guidelines of the LEED for Homes green building certification program.  

According to contractor Robert Arkin and developer Matt Lahn of the Florida Green Home Design Group, at this point in the process, the 2020 Alton Road project is tracking high marks. With respect to the Home Energy Rating System (HERS), the house has a 92% projected energy efficiency rate.

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Get Jet: The 747 Wing House

ARCHITECTURE | REPURPOSING

David Hertz Wing House

There is a new residence in the Malibu hills constructed mostly from an old airplane. Consisting of a main house and six auxiliary buildings, the 747 Wing House is an innovative example of sustainable architecture created for a client who requested a unique home with great curves and a green bent.

Santa Monica architect David Hertz, who helms the Studio of Environmental Architecture, designed a sleek and environmentally responsible dwelling by using post-consumer waste in the form of a retired Boeing 747-200. To minimize land disturbance, Hertz chose to reuse some of the 55-acre property’s existing foundations and situate the buildings so as to maximize natural light and air flow, and to achieve the finest possible sight lines.

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  • Interior Design >
  • An Interview with Mark Diaz—Miami’s Hot “Design Star”

An Interview with Mark Diaz—Miami’s Hot “Design Star”

PEOPLE & PLACES

Photo: Jane Dagmi

I sat down recently with Mark Diaz, the second runner-up in HGTV’s recently concluded “Design Star.” After watching Season 6, I was eager to meet the talented man who always looks so very ‘GQ’ on the show, sporting his signature ski cap, Wellies, and tool belt. Naturally, I wanted some juicy gossip, but Mark is still under contract and could not dish. Still, he had plenty of good things to say about his first major cable television experience.

Auditioning for “Design Star” wasn’t exactly Mark’s idea, but after several friends coaxed him, Mark drove 14 hours from Miami to reach the casting call in Atlanta. Pressed for time, Mark completed the application by copying in transcripts from assorted phone conversations that his girlfriend helped to transcribe. By the time Mark arrived for the audition, it was almost too late, but with a smile and gentle plea, he managed to charm the receptionist.

Though a tad disappointed by the final results, placing third did not dampen Mark’s winning spirit. With “Design Star” host Tanika Ray’s words, “Sorry, Mark, we will not be producing your show” fading into memory, Mark is confident he will have a show down the road, that he will build his own home, and that he will launch a community program that engages at-risk youth in the world of design.

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“DIY True Value Stories”

PEOPLE & PLACES

True Value launches a Facebook web series chronicling the progress of its three DIY contest winners. 

True Value Facebook "DIY True Stories" screen shot

Thick black paint spattered over walls. A mysterious shrine. Overgrown hedges crawling with the unknown. Dingy wallpaper. Brown carpeting c. 1970. These are just a few of the design nightmares plaguing the homeowners starring in True Value Hardware’s new web-based series, “DIY True Value Stories”. Over the course of three months, three DIYers will chronicle their home renovations on the company’s Facebook page.

True Value, one of the leading home improvement and hardware retailers, solicited submissions of DIY projects last July. Judges then evaluated the winners based on a 25-point rating system that included such criteria as demonstration of need, adherence to assignment, and creativity in presentation. Three winners were selected from over 150 entries. The prize: $2,500 toward each DIY project plus advice from local True Value experts.

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