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Features of a Midwestern Ranch You Should Recognize · Mid Mod Remodel

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be talking about what I know best, which is the builder basic Midwestern ranch built by the millions across the country.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Hey there.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Welcome back to mid mod remodel.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: This is the show about updating MCM homes, helping you match a mid- century home to your modern life.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: I'm your host, Della Hansmann, architect and mid-century ranch enthusiast.
• 0:21
  You are listening to Season 1, Episode 4.
• 0:24
  Last week we talked about how life, and what we need from our homes to live that life, has changed since the mid-century ranches were built.
• 0:31
  Today we're talking about what a Midwestern mid-century home looks like, and how you can get to know your own home well and thoroughly.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: The takeaway here is that knowing the history and typical features of mid-century home in your own area will help you make good decisions as you work on your home.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Knowing what's neat about some of those original features and also the history and the reasoning behind how they were built will help you identify what's rare, cool, quirky, or valuable about your home.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: And in other cases, it will help you know when something about your home isn't that important to its overall character and you can modify it with a clean conscience.
• 1:06
  Remember we've already talked in Episode 1 about how the owner of a mid-century home has an extra challenge in their remodel.
• 1:12
  People like you and I are swimming upstream against a tide of HGTV style trends that don't necessarily mesh well with a mid-century home and certainly don't take a long view of what will last over time.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at you painted brick! Note: If you want to know more about why painting the brick on your mid-century home is probably a terrible idea.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Check the show notes for more detailed opinions.
• 1:36
  Following current trends while updating historic homes is how we got all those horrific eighties kitchens hacked into our charming atomic ranches.
• 1:43
  We are better than that folks.
• 1:45
  To avoid this outside pressure, you need to be the expert in your home remodel.
• 1:50
  You make the decisions and you lead your own design and contracting team to the end you want.
• 1:54
  I'd like to give a shout out to a wise member of the Instagram Mid Mod community@charlottemidmod who commented last week,"Only you know how you live and what's going to function best for you.
• 2:04
  Aesthetics are important, but function matters a whole bunch too." You're so right,@charlottemidmod.
• 2:09
  I couldn't have said it better myself.
• 2:11
  This is why you need to be in the driver's seat when you're planning a roadmap to your remodel.
• 2:18
  This season is sponsored by the Mid-century Solutions Package.
• 2:21
  If you're planning a remodel and need some help, getting to the kernel of what will make the best improvements to your home and enhance its Mid Mod character, check out the mid-century solutions package, a starter kit to help you focus and prioritize your Mid Mod update.
• 2:34
  You can learn more about the package on my services page.
• 2:37
  Now, this episode is going to involve a lot of describing how mid-century homes look and work.
• 2:42
  If you're looking for more info or just for pictures to illustrate what I mean by hipped roofs and Pickwick pine paneling, you'll find the show notes on my website, the notes for this episode at www.midmod-midwest/104.
• 2:55
  All right, so let's get right into the defining features of the Midwestern mid-century ranch.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Now if you live in another part of the country- out West, on the Eastern seaboard, or down South- you probably have ranches like the ones I'm going to describe and you also may have other much more common house types from the mid-century period.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be talking about what I know best, which is the builder basic Midwestern ranch, built by the millions across the country.
• 3:18
  First I'll mention that there are a number of other variations even within the Midwest.
• 3:23
  You'll find the occasional jazzy flat roof, mid century home or even something more adventurous like a dramatic a frame or the very rare butterfly-roofed house which has two roof slopes pointing down towards the center to form a valley.
• 3:37
  That's not very common in places with snow loads like we have.
• 3:40
  Your most typical(built in the millions from one sea to another) ranch is going to be rectangle or L-shaped with a low-slope, triangular roof.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: It's going to have three main parts of the house: a garage, a main living area, and a bedroom area.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: It might possibly be an L-shape, but it's more typically just a simple rectangular form.It has that low-slope roof in one of two variations:either a gable end or a hip roof.
• 4:10
  The gable end is the most easy and cheap to frame- a simple triangle that just extends along the entirety of the roof.
• 4:17
  These houses don't perform quite as well under wind loads or snow loads.
• 4:22
  Wind can catch that end triangle edge of the roof and lift up on it.
• 4:27
  So another improvement on that would be the hip roof, which has a sloping element on all four sides.
• 4:33
  It's more stable in wind and snow and you can run a gutter to manage rain runoff around all the edges.
• 4:38
  It's more complex and expensive to build- which is why it's slightly more rare from the early mid-century period.
• 4:45
  Now,I talked about how these houses are typically a single rectangle or an L.
• 4:50
  If they've been added onto- if you have a C-shaped plan or a Z-shaped plan or an S, that's probably because some part of the house has been added onto over time: a n added rec room or an increased garage.
• 5:01
  These houses were intended to be added onto.
• 5:05
  Their simple structure and form makes them very easy to remodel and put on an addition.
• 5:09
  1.
• 5:09
  The single-story construction just means everything is a little bit less complex.
• 5:13
  2.
• 5:13
  That stick built, 2X4 framed, rather than post and beam, means you don't have to do a lot of complicated engineering.
• 5:19
  Each new part of the house will support only itself, rather than needing to tie into an existing, calculated, engineered structure, and.
• 5:26
  3.That roof structure, particularly with a gable end, it's very easy to throw a cross gable on and add it into the structure of an existing gable roof without needing to recalculate the whole house- or even necessarily to re-roof it.
• 5:39
  Although typically when someone puts on an addition like that, they'll end up recladding the entire roof so that the whole thing matches and ages together.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: For an example of this, I've got a great distillation of my own area, and all of the different house shapes you can find a two-block radius of my own house.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: I know, based on aerial photos of when these were built, that each and every one of them was originally no more than an L shape.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Now we have infinite variety of different gable additions that have been added on in the intervening generations.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: It's kind of a fun exercise you can do for yourself with just your phone and your Google maps.
• 6:17
  The structure of the house in the Midwest is typically held up by framed walls rather than the post and beam structure that is more common or at least somewhat common on the West Coast variation of the mid-century house.
• 6:29
  The cladding of the walls is most typically going to be wood with a little decoration of brick or stone.
• 6:36
  Much more rare is a fully brick-walled house, although you'll find regional variations.
• 6:42
  That most common siding will be a wood-clad house, and it'll be wide eight inch boards of Cedar in horizontal-lapped format.
• 6:49
  There will usually be a bit of vertical siding- usually right by a front door, often around an area with a picture window in it.
• 6:57
  That would be probably a tongue and groove panel system.
• 7:01
  You might also find that there'll be a decorative knee wall area which has stone or brick.
• 7:07
  This helps with the ground-hugging, elongated character of a mid-century ranch.
• 7:12
  You'll also find a wide variety of window shapes on a mid-century house, but the rule of thumb is that they're going to be more horizontal than they are vertical.
• 7:20
  So rather than a lot of double-hung windows, one or two per each room, you're going to find a big picture style window in the living area and bedrooms will have probably one vertical egress window.
• 7:31
  If they have a wall facing the street, they might just have a strip of high windows that give visual looks out, while keeping privacy for people on the inside who might be changing without bothering to pull a curtain.
• 7:45
  That living room picture window has a variety of forms also.
• 7:48
  It might be a grid of smaller panes, sometimes 3X3 or 3X4, that are all fixed, or it might have some operable parts- an awning window hinging at the top, or a hopper, hinging in or out at the bottom.
• 8:02
  Mine are pretty basic builder, a set of picture windows in the living room.
• 8:08
  It is one fixed large window in the center, flanked by two narrow double hung windows.
• 8:13
  I should note that mine are replaced.
• 8:15
  They were replaced probably about 10 years before I bought the house.
• 8:18
  But looking at other homes in the area, I think it's a pretty typical arrangement.
• 8:23
  When updating your windows, pay attention to the style, and think about the materials when you replace your windows.
• 8:30
  This is a huge opportunity to improve the insulation and air seal of your house because modern windows are technologically superior to the vintage ones.
• 8:38
  But please don't replace your windows with one that have the faux m ullions with all o f the little divided lights made in little plastic grids that snap into the front.
• 8:47
  Try to avoid the cheap-out choice of going with vinyl.
• 8:51
  Vinyl i s a terrible material for the environment.
• 8:54
  It's really, really dreadful for the workers who have to manufacture it.
• 8:57
  So I highly recommend that you invest in wood windows, possibly with a metal cladding on the outside for ease of longterm maintenance.
• 9:05
  Another mid-century standout feature is going to be the front door.
• 9:09
  If your house has an original front door, you may have some fun arrangements of windows, or lights as they're called.
• 9:17
  In my house, most of the door is solid, and at the top at eye level there are three vertical windows, about four inches wide by 12 inches high that slant down in the little slope.
• 9:28
  That's very common for this area.
• 9:30
  Another common front door type for this area is a stack of three squares, which are kind of fun because they're sort of a view out for standing height, adult child and dog.
• 9:41
  I find those super charming.
• 9:43
  If your front door has been replaced with something historic-ish, for example, a big oval of cut glass- I apologize for the decisions of people in the past.
• 9:57
  I do recommend that you replace that with a mid-century appropriate front door because the front door is the first impression of your house and really important to the overall street character.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Switching out vintage front door for a faux-historical one is one of the most heinous mistakes that people have made to the outside of ranch houses.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: (Second only to replacing your wood cladding with four-inch wide vinyl horizontal strip- my nightmare.) If you have had a sad replacement on your front door, I recommend that you look into replacing it with either a new one in a mid-century period style, or check out your local restore for vintage doors that someone else may have mistakenly removed from their home that you can salvage.
• 10:37
  When we're talking about the interior features of the house, we have to start by recognizing the exterior because many mid-century homes have a tie-in between their outside materials and their inside ones.
• 10:46
  For example, if you have a brick or field stone knee wall on the outside of the house, you may find that you have the same brick or field stone on your fireplace or extending into your entry.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: If so, preserve that.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: It's a really fun call back to the idea of indoor-outdoor flow in mid-century houses.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: In a California house of high design, you might find an entire backyard wall of glass that you can throw up in sliding doors and just flow from the living room out to the patio.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: In the Midwest, what you might have is the same kind of brick on the front of your house and also in the entry hall.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: It's a bit of a comedown but it's having the same effect and playing up that same idea, so stick to that and enhance it.
• 11:25
  You're also going to find wood everywhere in a mid-century house, and this wood will be of higher quality than you can reasonably find today.
• 11:33
  It was cut from old growth forests.
• 11:35
  Even the pine will have a denser wood grain.
• 11:38
  It will be noticeably heavier.
• 11:39
  If you have to take any old framing out of a house and hold it up next to a modern 2X4, you'll feel the weight in your hand, and you can see the density of the woodgrain when you look at the cut ends.
• 11:49
  You'll find that in the excellent structure, but you might also find it in narrow hardwood floors.
• 11:55
  If you're lucky, you'll have existing hardwood floor in your house from the original date and it might even be hidden under later added wall-to-wall carpet.
• 12:03
  If you want to learn more about this, I have a detailed blog post that talks about it.
• 12:06
  I will link to it in the show notes.
• 12:08
  You'll also find wood trim(hopefully on painted), but it has been, you can think about stripping it.
• 12:14
  It will have beautiful grain underneath.
• 12:16
  You'll also find plywood and wood panel throughout the house.
• 12:19
  This is a perfectly period-appropriate material, and I encourage you to think about keeping it if it's in an all good shape.
• 12:26
  You might also find Pickwick or knotty pine paneling in your basement, kitchen, rec room, any attic space or garage.
• 12:35
  If so, also think about keeping that at least in part.
• 12:38
  It can have an overwhelming effect to a modern eye, and it's very tempting to follow HGTV and paint it all white, but I recommend that you embrace it.
• 12:47
  I will include a link to retro renovations, amazing survey of Pickwick pine in the show notes.
• 12:53
  Be sure to check it out.
• 12:55
  A mid-century house is also going to be absolutely chockfull of built-in closets and storage niches.
• 13:02
  You might find that you even are lucky enough to have an original room divider that separates your entry from your living room or your living room for your dining room made out of some sort of interesting wood panel.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: If you do, please preserve it.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: If you don't, this is an element that you might be able to retroactively add to your house and increase the mid-century cool factor it wished it had when it was built.
• 13:23
  In terms of paint color, you can sometimes do a little creative excavation to find out what the original colors on your home were.
• 13:30
  This is a place where I think you have complete freedom.
• 13:32
  If you want to go back to the exact color your house was painted when it was originally built- go for it.
• 13:37
  Knock yourself out! If you want to completely ignore that and paint the whole thing millennial gray, I also fully support that.
• 13:44
  You can also look back for vintage color cards and check out what was appropriate in the era your house was built or before or after.
• 13:53
  The mid-century period was actually not the kickoff, but certainly the getting up to speed of planned obsolescence in interior styling trends.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: One of the ways that homeowners were persuaded to continuously buy new goods- even at a time when things were much more long lasting- the refrigerators lasted longer, the wood was of greater quality.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: You didn't necessarily need to replace things, but homeowners were encouraged to start thinking about replacing things by defining fashionable colors.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: So the color trends changed very quickly in the mid-century period: from powder blue and baby pink in the early part of the era to the wild mo d c olors, orange and avocado, that you'll find in the late fifties, early sixties.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: As far as I'm concerned, choose your own adventure here.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Pick colors that speak to you and seem to work in tandem with the other materials in your home.
• 14:48
  So much from mid-century Midwest homes generally.
• 14:51
  But what about the essential features of your home?
• 14:53
  To plan a successful Mid Mod remodel, you need to be the expert in your home.
• 15:00
  It can be overwhelming to hold all of the details of your house in your head, especially if this isn't your day job.
• 15:06
  So to make it easy for you, I've put together a home assessment workbook.
• 15:10
  If you walk through this workbook, which is available free on my website(I'll put the link in the show notes), you can figure out all of the basic information about your home from square footage and major dimensions to roof pitch, as well as digging into some of the history of your home: what year was it built, and its major remodeling history.
• 15:28
  I also have a checklist of the key photos you should keep in your phone so you can show someone at a glance: here's what the front of the house looks like, here are the typical details that I want to respect and preserve.
• 15:39
  With all of these things in hand, you'll be able to answer questions and lead the conversation with contractors, home suppliers, and even a designer.
• 15:47
  Once you take a little time to get to know your own home as well as research other interesting mid-century houses from your region, you will be very well prepared to manage your own mid-century remodel.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening everyone.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: You can find links, pictures, and a summary of everything I've just covered in this episode on my website at www.midmod-midwest.com/ 104.
• 16:11
  In next week's episode, I'll be laying out my three-part framework for making sure your remodel covers all the bases- from retro brass hardware to practical brass tacks.
• 16:19
  Using this concept, you can make sure you're planning holistically and avoiding the potential for expensive surprises that come up during your construction or after you're done.
• 16:28
  And as always, 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 where my handle is@midmodmidwest.
• 16:38
  To download that home assessment workbook, get it directly from www.midmod-midwest.com/ myhome or find the handy link in the show notes.
• 16:46
  Have some fun getting to know your home.
• 16:48
  So long for now.