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FAIR WARNING: This post may tug at your heart strings, send you into a moment of nostalgia or summon the memories of time spent with your own grandfather. Read on, friends. Read on!  We just completed the installation of a very special piece! Our client's grandfather owned a bowling alley during his years & she holds many special memories (along with a chunk of one of the maple hardwood lanes.)  The maple later served as her grandfather's workbench after he retired. Now that his grand-daughter is in the throes of a remodel, she commissioned us to create their new fireplace mantle out of this treasure. So much history!  We purposed to leave some of the more precious details that link her grandfather to this piece so our client can revisit all of those special memories with a glance at her mantle.  (The mantle was constructed in the same way we create our floating shelves so that if they ever find themselves needing to move, it can easily be removed and either continue serving as a mantle or repurpose as a unique floating shelf.)  We wish their family many years of stockings hung from this mantle & reminiscent stories told around this fireplace. We were honored to be a part of this project. ♥
We'd love to help you with your next heirloom - it's what we do! Modern Heirloom Designs
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We're pleased to bring this live-edge slab to marketLAUNCH in honor of our fallen heroes on this gorgeous Memorial Day! We think live edge tables are particularly beautiful because of how they keep the original lines of the tree trunk along its edges, portraying the wood in such a way that it remains naturalistic and in a raw state. Live edge wood became popular in the 1940s by George Nakashima is now used for a variety of furniture, like tables, shelving, benches, etc. The best part? This table is read-to-go and can be delivered/installed immediately. To read more, visit marketLAUNCH at www.rootsdesigncompany.com/wood.html Come visit us in the Scout Lighting & Design Goods showroom!We're so honored to be under the same roof with some of the TOP TALENT in the Texas Hill Country: Scout Lighting & Design Goods, Direct Natural Stones, One Market, The Gathering Table Co. JVW Design & many more! We all prepped hard for the Open House on May 4th as it crept closer & closer and the payoff was huge! We had a WONDERFUL time enjoying sips from Spicewood's own El Gaucho Winery, and delicious morsels (and I am serious - this was some of the best food I've ever tasted) from Lyukum Cooking Lab! After the guests left, a little after-party broke out - music & dancing was most certainly involved & it was a wonderful crescendo for a spectacular Open House! The comraderie among these artisans and designers has been such a lift to our hearts & we're couldn't have asked for a better event!  If you weren't able to make the Open House, be sure to stop in - you won't want to miss bringing some of these touches into your own home or office! I certainly plan to incorporate these beautiful pieces into our home!
Talented designer, Tara Camp of Scout Lighting & Design Goods called upon Roots Design Co. to fabricate sturdy floating shelves with the look of reclaimed wood. The objectives were:
 This is the backside of the 8 ft. shelf.  We've lovingly dubbed the hardware our Root System. In this case, a picture is definitely worth 1000 words! After the shelves were constructed, we took to some rustic methods of raising the grain and creating the effect of re-claimed wood. We kept the stain process simple, leaving warm, honey undertones with a weathered gray. Finally, we used a satin polyurethane to help make the shelves a bit more pleasing to the touch and added a layer of protection to the wood/ease of care. These shelves came together rather simply, but the biggest blessing was in how easily they installed! In spite of prepping myself for quite an ordeal (based on the length of the shelf) but it wasn't bad at all! Seriously! All I had to do was hop up on a ladder near the window, hold my end of the bracket at the right height while he screwed into studs. When the root system was in properly, I held my end of the shelf nice and high and we slid the shelf onto the root system in unison. There was a "YAY!" glance exchanged at the top of those ladders!  Here's that 8 ft. shelf installed!  A set of three balance the space nicely.    love the light & beautiful touches in this gorgeous home. Tara Camp did some stunning design work and there are so many things I'm smitten with in this house. We wish this family many happy years in their new home & we were pleased to share in this project with them.
If you're considering including 'Deep Roots' floating shelves in your space, pop over to our Project Questionnaire & brainstorm with us a little. It doesn't cost a thing to just play around (grins) and on top of that, we'd love to get to know you! Let's let our creative sides play off one another - it's one of our favorite things to do! In the meantime, be sure to check out Scout Lighting & Design Goods website or even peruse their Facebook page for some impressive & unique pieces unlike any other. When I spoke with Tara, she mentioned how much she loved the hunt (hence the name Scout!) When someone truly loves what they do, it shows through in every aspect - and that is absolutely Tara with Scout Lighting & Design Goods. Lucky Lab Coffee Co. makes an amazing cup of coffee - I've personally had their cardamom infused campfire latte & it took my love of latte to a whole new level! We were excited to work with Lucky Lab (not only because we share a fondness for labrador retrievers) because what they were in need of would cause us to grow through the challenge of incorporating many trade skills into the culmination of their newest piece. First & foremost, this coffee bar needed to conform to City of Austin Food Cart permitting regulations - the list is quite long, so we'll spare you the details of that particular challenge. We would need to
   We truly enjoyed working with Lucky Lab Coffee Co. on this project & look forward to future projects with them - along with more lattes!
Be sure to pop by Lucky Lab Coffee Co.'s Perry Brooks location at the corner of 8th & Brazos! They're serving up coffee, breakfast tacos, pastries and more!
It's been awhile since we've updated things here, but there's a really good reason for that! We have officially moved out of the house we were renting in Lakeway & are now living on the land in our old converted Eagle tour bus complete with all the necessities (sacrifice is part of making the dream of mortgage-free home ownership come alive, so no complaints here. We also want the kids to look at things like this as more of an adventure so they'll be more likely to step off and live their dreams into fruition. So basically we frame this as "it's like living in a long, skinny apartment!") I (Jessica) am past the halfway point in my pregnancy, so there's a little extra drive to get to work on this house & bring baby home to a more suitable abode. Kevin and I took an installation class with Nudura some months ago & are grateful for the ongoing support of this exemplary company, especially now that we're stacking the forms. From now on, we'll refer to the concrete forms as ICF blocks (Insulated Concrete Form blocks.) I've got some pics to really give you an idea of how these suckers work...  This is what the inside of the ICF block looks like. The re-bar is part of the structural support which is pretty sweet; the inherent quality of concrete is that once it is cured, it becomes self-supporting!    Be sure to stay in touch! if you'd like to see updates in your e-mail inbox, just scroll to the bottom of this webpage - on the right you'll see an invite to subscribe to our newsletter. We really hope you'll take us up on this - we'd love to get to know you!
 ___________________________________ PERSONAL PROJECT ___________________ Have you seen the movie "War Room?" It came out a couple of months ago and even kicked "Straight Outta Compton" out of top spot in the box office! I got to see this movie alongside my grandmother, mother and daughters - four generations holding hands across 5 seats in the theater that day. That movie is part of a special memory I hold dear in my heart. Well, one of the amazing lines was when a couple of prospective home-buyers was walking through a home that was for sale. The gentleman homebuyer entered a closet off of a bedroom - walked out - walked back in. When his wife and realtor inquired as to what he was doing, he observed "Someone has been praying in here." The realtor agreed and explained it had been the owner's prayer closet. The gentleman responded that it was "like it's (prayers) been baked into the walls." I loved that his character was able to sense that. Anyhow - while Kevin & I have been dreaming and planning all the details of this house, we've gotten encouragement from my mother (who lives in Virginia.) She came up with the idea that we could use some decorative crosses (that she's enjoyed for years but needs to release since she is in a season of life where small chotchky-like material possessions are weighing her down.) She thought it would be pretty sweet to somehow tie them into the ICF walls just before pouring the concrete. In my brain, it immediately synced with that line from War Room (with concrete inherently thermogenic, they may be "baked into the walls." I love this creative idea - thanks, Mom! So today, we set out to get those gorgeous crosses inside the walls! (We tied them with tie wire into the ICF webs.) Wanna see?
And then the concrete pump truck arrived to fill our walls with concrete!    Pretty simplistic, isn't it? There's one guy holding a controller that determines the direction of the boom, as well as the speed/on/off (you don't see him - he's on the other side of the house closer to the pump truck.) And then there's the guy you see here, directing the hose exactly where it needs to go. And here on the left, you've got a closer view of the pump hose and boom. ICF requires a specific consistency that is vibrated into each crevice - not too much, not too little.  A picture is worth 1,000 words. This window buck's concrete will be vibrated & troweled smooth. (This is also one of the bucks in which we hung a cross.)  Kevin is one dedicated general contractor - and I'm one happy camper!
That's right. This family of 5 is scheduled to become a family of 6 this coming February! I'm 15 weeks pregnant as of 8-17-2015! The kids are elated! Kevin & I are thrilled - we've so enjoyed the kids over the years and adding to our little tribe is going to be great fun! The whole family thinks another little boy would be pretty sweet, but we're excited to welcome whoever God has planned, boy or girl. This news has caused the homestead project to jump into overdrive - that's for sure! Last Tuesday, we became the proud owners of a SLAB! Kevin and Hunter did pretty much EVERYTHING themselves over the last couple of months - they were getting sick and tired of dirt work even though they typically enjoy running the machinery. You may be wondering why the sprinklers are on - OUR SLAB! Well, when Kevin was in school (U.T. Austin) he studied engineering with an emphasis on concrete engineering & learned exactly this practice - 'wet curing.' Given that this slab is built on solid limestone rock, it made this the perfect slab for wet curing (no concern of erosion beneath or around slab.) Wet curing reduces surface evaporation of moisture that the paste (portland) needs in order to hydrate to its strength capacity. I'm excited - I'm learning while this whole adventure is taking place - so are the kids!
. . So we thought we'd put in a garden and begin supplementing our grocery budget - AND figure out how this gardening thing works. As a family, we joined the Not-So-Secret Homeschool Garden & helped manage our own section of the garden & took Composting 101 at The Natural Gardener in Austin. We had them deliver a truckload of their special dirt blend & here we are - time to get started. We managed to grow a little something over the course of several months - my favorite was the zucchini squash! It's fabulous for grating up tiny and sneaking into meatloaf to get an extra veggie in!
We've been sitting on a little piece of Spicewood Texas for awhile. We've had campfires with hobo dinners. We've managed to drag a 1977 Airstream Landyacht up a hill on raw land. We've created our version of mommy/daddy date night with Madam Mam's takeout, a truck & a view. And now we've chosen a site where we'll build our home and raise our babies! We're so excited about this land & all the possibilities it holds. We know it will take time - lots of time & plenty of money, but the time will pass anyhow & so will the money. May as well see if we've got it in us. Here we go!  That's little Gigi and her Daddy!  This is the spot we chose.
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