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Know This before Updating an MCM Home · Mid Mod Remodel

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: We aren't the same people our parents and grandparents were, so it stands to reason that we might need to tweak their houses to make sure they work as well now as they did for their original owners.
• 0:10
  Hey there.
• 0:11
  Welcome back to Mid Mod Remodel.
• 0:13
  You're listening to season one episode three.
• 0:15
  This is the show about updating MCM homes, helping you match a mid-century home to your modern life.
• 0:21
  I'm your host, Della Hansmann, architect and mid-century ranch enthusiast.
• 0:25
  Our last episode got into the history of the MCM ranch.
• 0:29
  What came before and what influence has added up to make a ranch, what it was on the day it was built.
• 0:34
  Today, let's talk about what has changed in the generations that have passed since those mid-century ranches were constructed.
• 0:40
  We aren't the same people our parents and grandparents were, so we need to tweak their homes a bit to make them facilitate a modern lifestyle.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: The big takeaway here is that life has changed in the intervening five, six or seven decades since your mid-century ranch was planned and built.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: That means making some changes to your home is not just okay but necessary.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: The secret to a great mid mod remodel is to be well informed about the history of your house, understand why it is the way it is, and then make your choices with a long view in mind.
• 1:11
  Focus on what really matters to you and you'll end up with a home you love, and avoid having to later regret remuddling errors made to your house.
• 1:19
  This is a concept I'll return to again and again.
• 1:22
  With the right planning and forethought, you can navigate the complexities of a mid-century remodel and end up with a home that retains its original character and charm, but is freshly tailored to the way you live.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: This is something you can accomplish on your own, if you're willing to invest the time, energy, research, and self education, but you don't have to do it alone.
• 1:40
  This whole season is actually sponsored by my answer to that problem.
• 1:44
  I created the Mid-Century Solutions Package, a design starter kit to help you focus and prioritize your mid-century update.
• 1:51
  If you're planning a mid century remodel, you can learn more about that design package on my services page.
• 1:56
  As always, you can find detailed show notes at my website, the notes for this episode or at midmod-midwest.
• 2:03
  com/003.
• 2:03
  Are you sensing a trend in this naming convention?
• 2:06
  Anyway, we've talked about the stakes in a mid mod remodel.
• 2:10
  The win is ending up with a charming home that sings its history but works for you.
• 2:14
  The potential loss is pouring yourself into a remodel that damages MCM features you'll regret later.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: This is often described as a remuddel, a remodel that hides or destroys the original design idea.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: I've also heard it called a remangle.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Either way it CAN happen, and it certainly HAS happened in the past.
• 2:31
  I recently asked my Instagram community to share some of the best upgrades they've made to their MCM home.
• 2:36
  I had got a variety of responses, but the one that made me wince in sympathy was from Angela Nickerson of at@midmodernmama who said"the 1980s threw up all over our 1958 atomic ranch.
• 2:48
  We are slowly peeling back the layers and instilling an MCM aesthetic." Best of luck to her.
• 2:53
  Other people had more positive stories to share.
• 2:56
  A couple of people cited pulling out carpeting and putting in oak floor, or refinishing, hardwood they found underneath carpet as one of the most valuable things they could do.
• 3:05
  Several other people talked about their bathrooms@mellyb68 said she restored, did not gut her pink bathroom.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: The Jetsons of@ theatomicsupperclub said the plumbing in their two main baths had to be replaced, which meant pulling out the original tile.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: They actually recreated two mid-century style bathrooms in their place- one with pink and the other with soft blue and Aqua.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: They are preservationists extraordinaire.
• 3:30
  Amanda Pfizer of@ afiesler said her 50s ranch had a lot of beautiful combed plywood that had been painted through the years, and it was impossible for them to strip the paint from all the grooves so they actually sourced new combed plywood from a mill North of San Francisco and stained them to match the original, or what they thought the original would be.
• 3:49
  Other people are more willing to make some changes to their home.
• 3:53
  Kimberly Hinckle of@kkathello.
• 3:53
  Othello said she gutted her kitchen, but one of her favorite features and so simple was just to put up mid-century style light fixtures around the house.
• 4:01
  Another fix was to change out cheap generic address numbers for MCM styles.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Again, her interest was more in creating a mid-century aesthetic rather than restoring or preserving a specific mid-century thing.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Likewise@modernhomework said they had two different approaches to their front door, and they tore them both out, regraded the front yard, and added a wrap- around corner, concrete stair terminating at grade.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: It was a huge improvement and the first thing you notice when you arrive at the house, so again, they're making a strategic design move that isn't necessarily restorative at all, but is improving their house.
• 4:33
  Other people are still on the fence about whether they're going to go in a preservationist way, or try to make more updated changes.
• 4:39
  I got a message from@postandbeamva who said they wanted to know my thoughts on open versus closed kitchens.
• 4:45
  They were wondering should they preserve their original design in the house they just bought?
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Should they open it up?
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: The ended"we have to decide by next week!"
• 4:53
  The point is sometimes you'll end up making changes that are exactly what the original homeowner would have done had they had the idea or budget, or you could choose to make yourself into an amateur preservationist and try to restore the house to its exact original glory, but other people are going to choose to put a 2019 spin on their home and just go from there.
• 5:10
  Here's the thing.
• 5:11
  In the end, your house is for you.
• 5:13
  You get to make the call about what's an appropriate attitude to take when you remodel, how much to preserve, how much to change.
• 5:19
  I want you to have decided based on your feelings and preferences, not based on what was available, easy or what some contractor advised in a hurried moment.
• 5:27
  To that end, it really helps to have a strong internal sense of your own style.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Awhile ago I put together a style quiz which you can find at midmod-midwest.com/ stylequiz.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Take it, and figure out where you fall on the midmod remodel spectrum.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Are you in it for the mid century or the modern?
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: The vintage or the revamp?
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: It'll categorize you into one of three camps: A modern mid-century fan, a person who wants to take a little bit of column a and a little bit of column B, or a hardcore preservationist.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Of the people who've taken the quiz.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: So we've got about 40% full- on'I like modern with a mid-century flavor'; 40% like myself in the middle who are making a fusion effort; and about a quarter of the people are full-on vintage preservationists.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Each of those styles has something to argue for them.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: One way or the other, you're going to end up with a home you love- if you have made all the choices based on your own thoughts and well-researched preferences.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about then versus now.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Some things have changed, and some things have stayed the same.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: In 1950, everyone was experiencing a huge housing crisis.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: That actually sounds pretty familiar.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: People were naming their babies.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Doug and Susan.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Thirty percent of women worked outside the home, and women did 92 percent of all cooking in the house.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Now fast forward to today, 2019.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: People are most likely naming their kids, Aiden and Anna, and we are experiencing a huge housing crisis, but at this point 62% of women work outside the home, and women cover only 67% of the cooking.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: I kind of feel like that number should have shifted more, but that's not what this podcast is about.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: In any case, that ties into the kitchen, which is one of the most obvious places and sort of points of conflict in a mid-century home lived in by a modern family.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Because the classic ranch kitchen is a command center for one person- mom- who multitasks through the day from that space.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: That was an era when cooking took longer.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Think about brisket, roast, stews simmering.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: It was necessary to have a comfortable functional space to hang out in for a long period of time.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: It was a little hemmed in, often enclosed in a separate room to itself, even in a more open concept house.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: It would have a small range- probably with no vent hood.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: T here w ould be a sink looking a t a kitchen window.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Wall-engaged base cabinets with wall cabinets above for storage.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Kitchens w ere also through areas, so they often connected to the backyard, directly to the garage, or maybe out to a mud way or breezeway that w ould connect to the dining living room part of the house.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: They might also be an access point for the basement.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: In my house, there's actually a door that goes into one of the bedrooms, the nursery bedroom so that mom could keep an eye on the s tew an also check on the baby at the same time.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: But the way we use our kitchens has really changed.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Cooking requires less time now that we can pop things into the microwave or throw together a collection from blue apron.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: But we've turned our kitchens into a social hub.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: They need to hold more people, more cooks, at one time.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: They also need to be a hangout spot.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Now that we don't have one person alone with a baby and a radio for company, we can turn the kitchen outward to the house, as well as inwards to itself.
• 8:35
  In a classic mid-century kitchen, almost all of the work surfaces are going to face a wall, maybe a window, but basically they face away from the room, which is fine if you're working alone in a space.
• 8:46
  But when you're working with someone else, and you turn your back to them in order to cut on a cutting board or stir something on the stove- that's actually a very unfriendly attitude.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: A multiple cook kitchen, or even a one-cook kitchen, where other people are hanging out with the cook, you want to have some work surface where you can face another person or face the room.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: That means a peninsula or an Island.
• 9:07
  If I'm designing a kitchen from first principles these days, I want it to have a lot of counter height work surfaces but almost no wall-mounted cabinets.
• 9:14
  I think we should condense our storage into full height cabinets in limited areas which gives us more clear wall space, more space to have windows, and more space to look out at other people.
• 9:23
  Whenever I get a chance to, I want to turn work surfaces in.
• 9:27
  Prep services would be an Island, not a wall-engaged counter.
• 9:31
  The main thing to remember though is that your kitchen is a very personal part of your house, so you need to make a choice about whether you want to do a full-gut remodel to bring it into 2019.
• 9:42
  If you want to do that in such a way that's going to reflect some of the mid-century style choices, even with new materials, or if you want to stick with your exact, original kitchen, preserve it as is and cook in it as a mid--century person would have done.
• 9:59
  You can also find a middle ground between those two, and each of those choices might be the right one.
• 10:04
  So much for the kitchen.
• 10:06
  Let's talk about garages.
• 10:07
  The early ranches were built for a newly car-based world.
• 10:10
  They were laid out in neighborhoods with lower densities, spaced further from the city centers, and the garage was prominent feature of the design of the house.
• 10:18
  But at the same time, that garage was often not connected directly to the house, or a simple single car garage, or just much smaller than a modern homeowner might expect to fit modern-sized car.
• 10:31
  So you do need to address this.
• 10:34
  I don't think people in mid-century homes should just be parking their cars on the street for the rest of time, but you want to fix it in a meaningful way.
• 10:41
  Look at your house specifically.
• 10:43
  Do you have a breezeway that you can absorb into your house space and use to connect to your garage?
• 10:47
  As I have done?
• 10:49
  Do you have room in your lot to expand a garage.?
• 10:56
  And can you do that in a way that would make i t a little bit less prominent or dramatic, rather than just smacking a two-car garage onto the side of your house?
• 11:04
  There are a lot of ways you can think about strategizing the connection between the garage and the entry.
• 11:10
  While I'm a big fan of updating front doors, and a front door is a huge part of the way guests will enter your home, most modern homeowners are going to enter their house through the garage access point.
• 11:22
  So when you're updating your garage, you want to strategize your family entrance.
• 11:26
  I'm not generally a fan of the laundry/mudroom, but if that's the only place you can put your laundry on the main floor- do it.
• 11:34
  Washers and dryers have become smaller, quieter, and more efficient.
• 11:37
  They shouldn't necessarily be banished to below grade.
• 11:40
  And again, this speaks to a change in lifestyle of the h ome o wners since the 50s.
• 11:45
  When you had one partner staying at home all day, those chores that could be part of the rhythm of a whole day or week, now need to fit into a morning, evening, or weekend routine.
• 11:54
  So having easy access to laundry facilities is paramount when you're trying to streamline modern life in a m id-century home.
• 12:01
  The third area of problems are bathrooms.
• 12:05
  Now in a way a mid-century bathroom has all of the features- nothing less or more than a modern bathroom does.
• 12:13
  It's got an indoor toilet, it's got a basin sink, it has a mirror placement over the sink, and it probably has a shower in a tub set up.
• 12:23
  There's nothing there that needs to change to drag it forward into modern life.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: At the same time, mid-century bathrooms are often extremely modest, There's often just one in a house, so it tends to be more focused on a family-style design, like a tub in every bathroom unless it's a half bath.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: If you add a master bath, you could choose to have a walk in shower- a m uch more modern way to keep on eselves c l ean a n d u pdate.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: If you're going to work on your mid-century bathroom, you're going to have to make some immediate choices about whether you're preserving original fixtures, tile, etc., or whether you're taking those things out.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: it's hard to salvage things like tile.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: You could probably save and reuse your original fixtures.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Again, it's a personal choice, and I think it's goi ng to co me down to style, but it should also come down to flexibility and functionality.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: So make sure it's still actually working for you.
• 13:20
  And again, to pop back to my great Instagram example, even if you have to take out all of the plumbing of an existing bathroom, you can choose whether you want to update it in a modern style, or you can do like@atomic supper club and basically create a new, old bathroom- a classic pink tile, and a new update to your house.
• 13:44
  Now one more area to think about in a mid-century house in the Midwest is that it almost certainly has a basement, and that basement may either be unfinished or it may have been finished and actually an intervening period.
• 13:59
  I would generally recommend, if you're thinking of updating your home- before you consider an addition, see if you can re- occupy some of the space in your basement.
• 14:08
  Any Midwestern house is going to have one, a California ranch won't, and if you do have a basement, it should be upgraded.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: It should be basically upgraded both from an environmental point of view: Is it insulated?
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Is it comfortable,?
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Is it water resistant?
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: I have very strong feelings about how one finishes a basement.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Now if you are a vintage preservationist, you can go ahead and get yourself Pickwick pine siding(it may be a little hard to track down), and do that sort of knotty-pine f inished basement, which is great.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: But if you are trying to do a slightly more modern update, I recommend that you make sure that the basement is finished to the same level of quality and f inish detail as the rest of the house.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: You want to bring in natural light.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: You want to connect it to the rest of the, house.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: And you want to finish it with the same kind of flooring, wall surfaces, ceiling surfaces, and lighting that you have going on in the rest of your house.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Then it can really become an occupiable part of your space.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: And it's another reflection of how modern life has changed.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: The first mid-century homes were really trying to get rid of formal, seldom-used spaces.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: So they had one family gathering space: the living room.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Later in the mid- century period, people tended to have two spaces: a multipurpose room/rec room, and a family room.
• 15:21
  Now, we still aren't living in an era of formal living rooms, but I think the distinction may not just be about formal entertaining anymore.
• 15:28
  Modern people might want to have two living spaces to try to restrict the TV from getting into all parts of their life, or it might be about making a separate space for kids or for a teenager to hang out in, or for one member of the family to have a particular hobby space.
• 15:42
  So it's definitely something to think about.
• 15:44
  A multipurpose room, a rec room, a basement space.
• 15:48
  It's something that, it's not necessarily the mid-century moderns wouldn't have wanted it, but they couldn't afford it.
• 15:55
  So this might actually fall into the category of doing the thing that the original owner would have done, had they had the idea and budget at that time.
• 16:03
  There are also some aspects of housing technology that have really changed since the mid-century period.
• 16:08
  There are a few dangers to be aware of- most prominently asbestos tile and glue, and lead paint.
• 16:15
  Also partly an outdated approach to wiring.
• 16:18
  If you have asbestos in your house, you want to remediate that at your earliest convenience.
• 16:24
  If it's asbestos tile or acoustic tile in the ceiling- as long as you're not touching it, it's not hurting you.
• 16:32
  But you need to be aware of it.
• 16:33
  If you're going to do any remodeling- make sure that it is removed or sealed i n properly.
• 16:38
  Contact, a licensed remediator to handle that.
• 16:41
  If you have lead paint in your home, this is something you can test for.
• 16:45
  I have created content on t he subject before.
• 16:47
  I'll have links in the show notes to a video chatting about lead paint, also blog posts, which have resources for how you can both deal with it yourself or find an appropriate person to deal with it for you.
• 16:57
  But one way or another, it's not worth joking around on.
• 17:01
  Lead paint exposure and children can have life-long detrimental effects.
• 17:06
  And it's very bad for adults too.
• 17:08
  So this is not even something that people didn't know about in the mid-century period.
• 17:14
  It was just that big business was successfully lobbying that these issues were not a big deal.
• 17:18
  Now we know better, and we have to deal with them.
• 17:22
  Mid-century wiring i s probably okay- as long as you're not changing anything, but the minute youplan to update something, do budget for updating your wiring to modern electrical standards.
• 17:32
  Particularly in places like a kitchen, y ou're kitchen outlets are definitely not going to meet code if they are original s ince the mid-century period.
• 17:39
  Other areas of house technology that had been improved over time include windows.
• 17:44
  Again, I would not recommend just coming into a newly purchased mid-century vintage house and tearing out the windows to replace them.
• 17:52
  Old windows can actually perform pretty well with proper maintenance, especially if you're still using and have the original storm windows.
• 17:58
  But if you're updating, be aware, we have much better window insulation technology.
• 18:04
  You can also improve your windows simply by adding insulated curtains.
• 18:08
  This is a big deal in the Midwest, certainly- where we talked about heat gain in the summer and heat loss in the winter.
• 18:12
  You want to control for those things.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Likewise, with whole house insulation, we've really just upped our game.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: We have better wall insulation techniques, we have better attic insulation techniques.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Often the rim joist in a basement of a mid-century house won't be insulated at all.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: That means that you've got only a layer of 2x4s and a layer of siding keeping the outside temperature away from your basement.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: That's an easy DIY fix or something you can hire someone to fix for you at a reasonable rate.
• 18:39
  Again, you don't need to go tearing out all of the drywall in your house so that you can put modern insulation into your walls.
• 18:45
  But if you're making changes or replacing wall surfaces in any room, make sure you take the time to add energy efficiency to your list as you go.
• 18:53
  So that's a little overview of what has changed between then and now when we're talking about mid-century vintage homes.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: In next week's episode, I'll be enumerating some of my favorite features common in mid-century ranches.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: We'll talk about maintenance, layout and finish details and get you all set to recognize what's really great about your mid-century ranch.
• 19:15
  As always, you'll find links, images, and a summary of everything I've just covered on my website at www.midmod-midwest.com/ 003.
• 19:23
  If you have ideas to share or questions about your mid-century home remodel-, drop a comment in the show notes, or find me on Instagram.
• 19:29
  I'm@midmodmidwest.
• 19:31
  To take that style quiz, you can go directly to midmod-midwest.com/stylequiz, or find a handy link in the show notes.
• 19:39
  I'd love to know where you fall on the spectrum when you get your score.
• 19:42
  Tag me on Instagram or drop me an email to let me know what kind of mid mod fan you are.
• 19:48
  Catch you next week, mid mod remodeler.