The glass-block pool enclosure
“We had tons of animals blowing into the pool every day because the wind comes from the southwest,” says artist iO Tillett Wright , who dreamed up this house–slash–design incubator with Coming Soon cofounders Helena Barquet and Fabiana Faria. An enclosure was needed, but not in any old material. Fabiana and Helena tasked iO with constructing a barrier out of glass blocks, which they’d been dying to use forever. He ended up cementing them together with basic white grout to form a fence along the far side of the pool. Each end of the wall gradually gets lower and lower, like a staircase, until the blocks “disappear” into the ground.
The matching outdoor shower
Let’s not forget the outdoor shower a short walk away. “Honestly, I just wanted to do the outdoor shower in glass brick because it would be like a melting ice cube in the middle of the desert,” says Fabiana.
The built-in sofa
Making a sofa from scratch for the living room was a no-brainer. “We reupholster a lot of furniture we sell; iO likes to build things,” says Helena. After going back and forth on the design a few times, the group settled on a minimalist, Donald Judd–inspired frame, which iO crafted out of Douglas fir. He hired an upholsterer to make the rusty-red velvet cushions, a color chosen to complement the Cold Picnic rug (a Coming Soon mainstay) on the floor.
The concrete tile wall
“We knew we wanted to use Concrete Cat as a tile somewhere, but we weren’t sure where,” says Fabiana. During a discussion about what to put on the wall behind the wood-burning stove to make it fire-retardant, it became apparent this was the perfect place.
The pegboard bed
iO didn’t just make the bed frame out of pegboard. He used the same material for the headboard and side tables, too, creating one massive piece of furniture. “If you’re going to do custom you might as well do built-in,” Helena explains. Pegboard was another material she and Fabiana had always loved for its affordability and eternal stylishness. Plus, given the abundance of Douglas fir in the other room, “we didn’t want everything to look too woody,” says Fabiana.
The rainbow of window shades
“We have colored blinds throughout the entire house,” says Fabiana. “There’s pistachio minty green ones, teal ones, silver ones, pink ones, and bright yellow ones . . . different colored blinds in every room.” It was tough to find the hues they were looking for stateside; they eventually found them online from the U.K. “Our inspiration for each blind was the Cold Picnic rugs that we’d already picked for each room,” Fabiana adds.
The fuzzy armoire
At first, the Coming Soon cofounders dreamed of having an elegant, Jean Prouvé–esque armoire in one of the bedrooms. Alas, building such a thing was going to be too expensive. It was back to the drawing board to think up something fun, but budget-friendly . . . like a shaggy blue wardrobe that could be a member of the Muppets. It all started with an outlandish piece of furniture in the Coming Soon store. “It’s covered in green shag, it’s probably the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen, but it’s unreal,” says Fabiana. “It’s amazing,” Helena agrees. “Ever since buying it, we’ve been like, ‘That needs to be done more,’” Fabiana goes on, so they asked iO to mimic the idea for Coming Soon Land. A lengthy Internet search for colored shag carpet ensued until they found a baby blue one they liked, which iO glued to a basic armoire from Wayfair. “I have to give Helena a lot of credit,” he says. “She comes up with something completely batshit insane and it ends up looking really cool.”
The cork-covered movie room
After adding a door to the den in the house, the trio knew they wanted it to be a place where guests could lounge around and watch movies. For ultimate coziness, they decided to cover the floors, walls, and ceiling, a process that iO declares was a total nightmare. (It took four different contractors to determine how to apply the ¼”-thin cork sheets without them cracking.) “We finally figured out that if we glued the cork to plywood and then drilled the plywood into the wall, it would work,” says iO. A massive daybed takes up most of the screening room. “You can actually sleep five people on it,” says iO. “It’s two mattresses plus a strip of custom-cut foam. Kalen Kaminski of [Upstatecustom] made the fabric cover.”
The pink plaster bathroom
The floor-to-ceiling blush Venetian plaster bathroom is all thanks to Helena and Fabiana’s friend Brian Robles , who happens to be a talented plasterer. Brian spent four sweltering days at the house working practically nonstop. “He custom-mixed the color and did the entire thing, including the ceiling,” says iO.
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