Part of my design process was looking at a HUGE number of contemporary house designs to stimulate ideas for all aspects of our house. I have quite a stack of modern house coffee table books decorated with a splendid display of post-it notes. There is Modern House, Modern House 2, Modern House 3, 100 Modern Houses, 100 More Modern Houses, Bride of Modern House, Son of Modern House, 20 Top Contempory Architects, inumerable single architect monographs, etc. etc. 
We appear to be in good company as these books are filled with stunning designs of architects' own houses or commissions for their parents, siblings, or uncles--likely because no regular client would let them push the envelope so far. What was so overwhelming was trying to synthesize and integrate all the disperate ideas that I liked and make them my own.
Ellen told me about one of her fellow architecture students at Texas A&M, John Paul Dunn, who used to admonish, "you can't wear all your Christmas clothes the day after Christmas". I laughed out loud at this and it became a useful mantra to remind me that just because I like a design idea doesn't mean I need to incorporate it into our house. Design ideas usually start the conversation rather than end it. I've said earlier in this blog that some of the best ideas on this house have resulted from problems and budget constraints and in retrospect this should have been obvious because you are forced to look at things from a new perspective and you must work as a team and spend more time to find a solution. The fabulous project gallery at the East end of the bridge emerged when we couldn't fit the bathtub where we wanted it when the bathroom was located there. A new and better pocket door arrangement at the guest pod grew out of Orange County's building permit rejection of our initial plan (I lost some sleep over that one but now I embrace problems!). The wonderful decorative cedar ceiling all the way under the bridge grew as an extension of our cedar canopy over the dining table which we put in to make the dining area more intimate in the double high space. The list is long and the design keeps getting more refined. This week's struggle is with millwork. The bid has come in way over budget and we have been scrambling to simplify the designs. The most successful approach has been to look for off the shelf products that can substitute for or integrate with our custom designs to lower the overall cost. IKEA came to the rescue again in a few areas but one of the exciting finds was BLUDOT. They are based in Minneapolis and make fabulous contemporary furniture--very reasonably priced and several notches above IKEA. Ellen and I first saw this stuff at the Walker Art Center gift shop and logged it away in our brains until we were looking for just the right cabinet to replace the custom unit in the guest loft. Enter the maple and powder coated steel MODU-LICIOUS 3. We were able to incorporate two of these side by side, modify the knee wall height and eliminate an all custom cabinet. That also drove completely simplifying the headboard ($145 from IKEA) and wood cap in that area and saved several thousand dollars. We now feel like we have a better overall design in the guest loft. We also found a simple beautiful steel micro-bookshelf from BLUDOT called TOTEM that we are integrating into our entry instead of going all custom--again we think it will be a cooler end product AND save money.
You can never solve a problem at the level at which it was created. You have to go to at least one level beyond.
- Albert Einstein
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