A Potter’s HouseA step inside the home of

Evansville Artist David Rosenberg

Why go WI-FI?Going wireless in your home

with the latest technology.

Room Make-oversGo from CHAOS to Cocoon!

march/april 2009VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1

march/april 2009CONTENTS

ON THE COVER

FEATURES

5 A Potter’s House David Rodenberg brings

practicality and art together in his Evansville home.

13 Go Wireless! The wireless age is here.

See how some Evansville residents un-wire their homes!

17 Take Five Make sure the kitchen pulls

its weight with five space-saving ideas.

c o v e r s t o r y

17

Photography by:Photics LLCLocation:

Rodenberg Home, Evansville, IN

TRI-STATE HOME AND GARDEN MARCH/APRIL 2009 3

Find more space-saving ideas on page 17.

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1

March/April 2009

A Potter’s HouseA step inside the home of

Evansville Artist David Rodenberg

Why go WI-FI?Going wireless in your home

with the latest technology.

Room Make-oversGo from CHAOS to Cocoon!

Fresh Ideas11 Herb Appeal Add some kick to your cooking – and

your health! – by using herb-infused oils to liven up pasta sauce or enhance a stress-relieving massage.

All About Style13 Classic Contrast As the first couple of the color palette,

black and white are cool with a seemingly effortless approach.

Room Makeovers22 The Organized Office Do your homework! Transform that

cluttered workspace into a structured spot where your whole family can achieve wordmissing.

25 From Chaos to Cocoon Combat bedroom clutter with seven

tried-and-true secrets from the professionals.

The Great Outdoors27 Spring Training Use the preseason warm-up to

get garden-ready safely.

31 Schoolhouse Rock Greenery is not a given for gardeners

with a yen for something different. Are you ready to rock?

I N E V E R Y I S S U E

4 MARCH/APRIL 2009 TRI-STATE HOME AND GARDEN

march/april 2009

CONTENTS

Cover Story

Potter’sHouse

a

by Jane Morrow Below

avid Rodenberg has brought practicality to art and art to practicality. A ceramic

artist and North Posey High School art instructor who has exhibited his ceramics nationally and internationally, he couldn’t help but add his personal artistic touch to the historic home he and his family have lived in for the past 25 years. From hand-made ceramic floor tiles and brick arches to artwork by friends and family, every room is filled with unique pieces and cherished memories. The three-bedroom, two bath home he shares with wife Barbara, who teaches at West-side Catholic School, and their two cats was once filled to capacity with their five sons and all the friends that come with such a large and busy family. Even while rearing their sons, they managed to serve as active members of the community and still slowly remodel the Harmony Way brick house enlarging the kitchen and dining areas, and adding two bedrooms, a family room, and bathroom. “We did most of the work ourselves so projects tended to take a while,” says Barbara. “David’s brothers – Michael and Carl - often volunteered on projects which helped immensely.” David said that when they started a project that included skills or knowledge beyond his experience, he would “buy a ‘How-To’ book and figure it out.” However, in the past six years, David prefers to design the spaces and hire contractors to do the heavy work. Influenced by multiple European trips to such places as Switzerland, Paris, Germany, and Italy, David’s designs for the house echo an Italianate, old-world ambience with

exposed brick, plastered walls, and earthy colors. The house was built in 1909 by Garfield Koch, a well-known mason, who lived in the house two doors south. According to Margaret Koch, his daughter-in-law who also lived nearby, he built three brick houses in a row, next door to his, for his three daughters - all surrounded by the same wrought-iron fence. That area was known for a while as Koch Heights. The Rodenbergs have the second of these houses. Looking to invest in a rental property, David and his brother Michael bought the house in 1982 from the second owner, Tilly Clement. She and her husband ran a grocery store across the street while they lived there and it is they who “modernized” the house sometime during the fifties or sixties by removing the original glass-front cupboards and transoms, and adding lowered false ceilings. “Most of our work here has been undoing their doing,” quips Barbara. David and Barbara moved into the house with plans to make updates while building a new house for themselves. “After we lived here a while, we began to see possibilities and we just never left,” says David.

Photo: desription to follow. close up shots of the custom-

made floor tiles in the Rodenberg home.

Originally, the Rodenberg’s home was built with one bedroom and a single bathroom on the main floor and an unfinished second floor. As was typical at that time, the house had a living room and a formal “parlor.” The Rodenbergs claimed the parlor as the master bedroom. As their family grew, David finished the second floor of the house adding two bedrooms and a full bathroom. Their youngest son, Benjamin, has the run of the second level which now serves as a small apartment for him. After removing false ceilings in the living room and master bedroom, the plaster in their bedroom was in poor shape. So they carefully removed the original woodwork, which Barbara

Photo: descirption to follow of the three pieces below and fireplace.

Photo: Description to follow. Description to follow. Inset Photo: the exterior of the home

stripped and refinished in the garage. They then added drywall to the room and replaced the newly finished woodwork. After painting, the master bedroom and living room have been restored to nearly original condition complete with the original front door, wood floors, and the original fireplace and mantel in the master bedroom. These two rooms are the only rooms in the house that have not undergone major structural change. Another early project was to add a family room off the kitchen on the back of the house. The then back door off the kitchen would link the two rooms. They suspected that the door had a transom over it originally so they wanted to expose the original doorway. That’s when they uncovered the arched brick.

The dining room which is the centrally-located room and truly the heart of their home includes four such brick archways into other areas of the house. Twelve years ago, the Rodenbergs began a project to enlarge their eat-in kitchen to the north turning a window in that wall into a doorway. David uncovered the brick exterior wall and arched the top of the window opening to match the first arch. They hired contractor Rob Johnson to apply a plaster finish to the walls and paint them a deep honey color. For several years, David attended the University of Evansville annual summer ceramics workshop in New Harmony, under the direction of Les Miley. “As part of that, we studied kiln building then built and dismantled several kilns. That’s where I learned how to build sprung arches and I applied that to the brick archways in the house.” At that time, their children were school age and David rallied everyone to the family pottery studio behind the house to make floor tiles for the new addition. Each family member decorated at least one of the 168 red

floor tiles for the new room. Later, when the bathroom was annexed into this space, David matched those tiles. “We mostly store our dishes in here,” laughs Barbara. “We have so many!” That room now contains a wet bar and their large collection of hand-made dishes, china, and antique glassware, all displayed in an open cupboard. “I’ll see something I like or have an idea of something that might make a fun serving dish and David will make it.” Some of the unique pieces displayed include a 22-inch round platter, Japanese shino glazed tea and rice bowls, and a fish-shaped serving platter. The room also holds a self portrait of their son Daniel, assistant farmer at Seton Harvest, a community-supported agriculture project sponsored by the Daughters of Charity. Daniel is also a painter and photographer. And David isn’t the only family member to contribute to Barbara’s collection of dishes and serving ware. Barbara also displays a collection of china that her maternal grandmother, Mary Bernadette Spalding Clements, hand-painted as part of the fine arts curriculum at Mount St. Joseph

We didn’t know it at the time, but brick archways would become a trend in our home,” grins David.

“

Photo: description to follow, mention the son’s self portrait and brick arches, perhaps pottery plates etc.

24 MARCH/APRIL 2009 TRI-STATE HOME AND GARDEN

Academy, a boarding school for girls just outside Owensboro, Kentucky, which Barbara and her mother also attended. In their bedroom hangs a horizontal painting of white roses by her grandmother. “It’s called ‘Yards O’ Roses’,” says Barbara. “This was another art project at the school; she painted several of these; my sister also has one.” As their brood moved out of the house, the second bedroom downstairs was divided into a walk-in master closet and a master bath. Designed by David, the large bathtub area is separated from the rest of the bathroom; in this way it can serve as a guest bath by closing and locking the adjoining door. In the bathroom hangs one of Barbara’s most cherished possessions, her “Book Club Wreath” which holds memorabilia from her 20-year membership in a book club with whom she calls her “very dear friends.” Included on the wreath are such delightful keepsakes as a small envelope containing miniature book covers of each of the books they read in 2006. One of the members, Barbara Liffick, printed these mini covers along with the first line of each book and a list of the club members that year.

Just five years ago, David decided to add on to the south of the eat-in kitchen and actually move the entire kitchen workspace into that new space allowing the whole center room to function as a dining area. For this, David designed the widest arch in the room to connect the two spaces.

TRI-STATE HOME AND GARDEN MARCH/APRIL 2009 25continued on page 26

catching up on news and stealing each others’ chairs,” laughs Barbara. Even with large crowds, dinner at the Rodenbergs’ is served from handsome handmade casserole dishes and bowls, and eaten off of exquisite handmade plates. “Every couple of years I make a few more dishes to add to the collection and to replace any that were broken,” says David. However, he no longer makes ale mugs. “For a while I liked making ale mugs similar to those used in Europe during the 15th century. But they proved to be too fragile, you can’t toast with them,” he laughs as he heads to the kitchen. Tonight David and Barbara will prepare dinner for six starting with antipasti followed by salads, fresh bread, and a shrimp scampi cooked in champagne, butter, and garlic. All will be served in hand-thrown bowls and on handmade plates. The wine will be served in glasses. “Some things just taste better in glass,” says David winking. n

Photos by Photics, LLC

26 MARCH/APRIL 2009 TRI-STATE HOME AND GARDEN

In the new kitchen, contractor Steve Fritz installed all new appliances and cabinetry along with electrical outlets just above the tops of the cabinets. “The installers thought I was crazy,” said Barbara. “But I wanted to plug little white lights up there and use the top of the cabinets for displaying some of our many trinkets.”

The contractor matched the wood floor in the addition as close as he could to the original wood floor in the dining area but the new and old floors still didn’t match up. After nearly a century of traffic, the dining room floor was clearly more worn and darker in color. Barbara decided to refinish the original floor and whitewash them both in an effort to make them blend. Still unhappy with the rough edges around the perimeter of the room that sanding leaves behind, David free-handed a red border and green vine around the edge of the dining room floor thereby hiding the rough edges and creating a visual separation from the new kitchen floor. Now the dining room can easily accommodate their still growing family; with two daughters-in-law and five grandchildren, their home is a hub of activity. Two of their sons, Andrew and Daniel, live just around the block from them (and next door to each other) on Wimberg Avenue and are both renovating their own historic homes. Their eldest son, David, instructor of music at University of Southern Indiana, bought the original 19th century 10-acre Rodenberg farm on Rodenberg Court, an easy one mile walk from David and Barbara’s house, where he lives with his wife Shawna and their five children, a herd of goats, and assorted chickens. They are slowly renovating their home. Son Aaron and his wife Amanda have completed the renovation of a home on West Indiana Street. A typical evening at the Rodenbergs has family members coming and going in the house for a cup of tea, to borrow something, or to drop something off. Barbara says, “When the kids are all here at once, we usually bring another table up from the basement - I have plenty of chairs - so we can all sit down together. I love to set the table with the vintage table linens I’ve collected from flea markets and antique shops.” Often the house is bursting with company - Barbara and David both come from large families. For Christmas dinner, the Rodenbergs hosted over forty members of Barbara’s immediate family. “David and I both love to cook so we love entertaining. Everyone brings wonderful food and we all wander around with plates and talk, just

A POTTER’S HOUSE continued from page 25