Private Quarters
Bathrooms with peach and brown sinks, toilets and tile. Brown kitchen appliances. One of Atlanta’s Northcrest neighborhood’s many mid-century modern homes showed all the signs of being built in the 1960s. It was exactly what Dawn Valdez wanted: a home to update while keeping the mid-century modern style was so appealing.
“My dad always tells me that I should have been a teenager growing up in the ’60s instead of the ’80s. He thinks I would have loved it,” she said.
She and her husband, Tim, renovated the home, bringing in their own flair that included adding a tiki bar in the basement.
Snapshot
Residents: Tim and Dawn Valdez. Tim, 40, and Dawn, 39, work in software development in the financial services sector; Dawn also is an artist/painter - her work is available at www.artezoid.com and at Modern Now Gallery at Studioplex in Inman Park.
Location: Atlanta’s Northcrest neighborhood
Size: About 2,300 square feet, four bedrooms, three bathrooms
Year built: 1965
Year bought: 2006
Contractor: Tim Malcolm of Malcolm Services
Renovations: Remodeled the kitchen and bathrooms, added the tiki bar in the basement, added a courtyard and extended the lower-level roof to create a screened-in front patio.
To expand the master bathroom, they moved an existing closet to another wall, which enabled them to have two sinks and more space overall. The lower-level floor tiles had asbestos, so they removed them and added a heated tile floor. They discovered original hardwood floors underneath the carpet on the upper level. Kitchen updates included taking out a wall and adding a peninsula, redoing the cabinet doors, updating the hardware and installing new black quartz countertops, a tile backsplash and appliances.
Unique reuse: The original shower door glass was power washed and cut down as inserts for kitchen cabinets. “It’s a glass texture and design that you couldn’t find now,” said Dawn, who estimates that it was a fifth of the cost of buying new glass.
Cost of renovations: About $60,000
Architectural style: Mid-century modern. “It just seems so simple, yet classic. It never goes out off style, which is what I love about it,” she said.
Favorite architectural features: The flat, low-pitched roof made of tar and gravel, and the original interior tongue and groove wood ceilings, which had not been painted.
Interior design style: Mid-century modern
Favorite home décor and furniture stores: City Issue in Inman Park, Kudzu in Decatur and ZGallerie, as well as eBay, Craigslist and ArcadianLighting.com
Collections: The home features Dawn’s artwork as well as pieces by Shag (www.shag.com), a Southern California artist who created a mural at the Georgia Aquarium. Tim collects tiki-themed ceramics and artwork. Dawn has a small collection of six footstools from the 1950s and 1960s. “I love them because they’re fun,” she said. “They’re old and original and just so simple, but they add a lot of character to your design.”
Favorite outdoor feature: The fenced courtyard, which they added to create a new front entrance. They drew inspiration from Joseph Eichler’s homes in California, which incorporated the courtyard into the design, Dawn said.
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