At Architect Office Hours: Mixed Era Houses, Fireplace Style Quandaries and Tackling Big Layout Changes

70 min readReady to Remodel students have the chance to get questions answered – live – every month during our Architect Office Hours. And once in a while, I open up the opportunity to a wider group!

Movies love to show architects creating away at a drafting table or sitting picturesquely at a cafe, sketchbook in hand. It’s romantic, this vision of a endlessly creative mind conjuring beautiful buildings from some eternal, internal well.  But *SPOILER ALERT* no one uses a drafting table anymore (except throwbacks and nostalgia lovers). In fact, I do all my sketching on a tablet.

There is another major element of architecture that is seldom shown in the movies…

An architect spends A LOT of time answering questions.

I answer questions emailed in by my clients almost daily. I answer questions from students in Ready to Remodel every month at office hours. I pick up a few queries from my instagram DMs every week.

And once in a while I hop into a zoom and hold an open office hours for anyone with a question. I held an open office hours just this week…and the questions were fabulous! So, I’m sharing it with you!

Want even more … here’s a snippet of one of my student only calls from several years ago!

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Resources for this episode

Architect Office Hours

Ready to Remodel students have the chance every month to get questions answered during our Architect Office Hours.  

The Ready to Remodel program provides a number of opportunities for students to help me get to know their home – the Facebook group, periodic workshops, and monthly calls provide space to share information. And the better I get to know your home, the better equipped I am to answer your questions. This is a really deep benefit of group coaching. 

Folks bring all sorts of questions to these monthly sessions. From style questions (what kind of interior replacement doors will work in my home), to technical questions (should we relocate our furnace?), to larger planning questions (given our home and budget, how should we phase our renovation?). 

Everyone in the Ready to Remodel program has access to these resources and a monthly opportunity to touch base with an architect (that’s me!) about their project.

I dig deeper by asking follow up questions, pull up example projects, grab my tablet to do a little sketching and share favorite links and resources.

It’s one of the most fun days of every month!!

And today I’m sharing some of my favorite recent Architect Office Hours Questions with you!

In Architect Office Hours Episode 2208, you’ll hear:

  • How to tune your remodel to a house built and expanded over eras.
  • Ways to upgrade a fireplace facade.
  • When to call an engineer.

In Architect Office Hours Episode 1206, you’ll hear:

  • About the power of listening to other people’s remodeling questions. 
  • How high to hang your pendant lights above the floor AND from the ceiling.
  • Where to go for a great replacement mid-century exterior door.
  • Strategies for weighing future needs against current needs in a renovation plan.

And you can always…

Read the Full Episode 2208 Transcript

Della Hansmann  00:00

Yeah, this isn’t the episode I plan to share with you this week. But as it happened, the open architect Office Hours call I hosted Monday was such a wealth of great conversation, I realized I needed to make it available to more than just the great folks who showed up live.

Della Hansmann  00:13

So we got into everything from technical questions about structure for additions to comparing advice from different subcontractor specialists when they all disagree, to what you can do when some fool in the past painted your time capsule kitchen bone white, and how to moderate the cost of new built ins, plus when you should or should not replace your original windows that still have the storms these office hours calls are always amazing.

Della Hansmann  00:35

They have community spontaneity and the ability to hear other people say your problems out loud, so you know you’re not alone. Hey there. Welcome back to mid mod remodel. This is the show about updating MCM homes, helping you match a mid-century home to your modern life. I’m your host, Della Hansmann, architect and mid-century ranch enthusiast.

Della Hansmann  00:54

You’re listening to Episode 2208 before I share the call, I want to tell you that I heard the same story from two different mid-century homeowners in the same day on Monday, two people actually calling in on a zoom from different hemispheres of the globe with the exact same story that I bet you will find extremely familiar too.

Della Hansmann  01:16

That’s because I hear it again and again and again as I talk to mid-century homeowners, and I’ll spoil the end. It’s part of the reason that I created the way that I work with clients today, the mid-century Master Plan method. Here’s how it goes. A person, a mid-century homeowner yourself, perhaps, realizes that something’s got to give the kitchen is too small, too dowdy, too poorly, remodeled by the last person, and it needs to be changed. So what do you do? Well, you start going through the phone book looking for contractors.

Della Hansmann  01:46

This is a metaphor, of course you’re Googling. But to quote one of the two folks who shared their story with me Monday, every single contractor they talked to had the same flip book of pictures of kitchens done over in HGTV white not what they were looking for.

Della Hansmann  02:01

Okay, so maybe the problem is design. Instead of going straight to contractors, then you turn around and you start looking into finding a designer, you probably find a lot of interior specialists who offer start to finish service that may be priced as a percentage of the contracting work that will eventually be done. And this, while it feels more comprehensive, is also so expensive, and at the same time, doesn’t quite feel like it’s hitting that mid-century moment you’ve been looking for. There’s still a lot of all white kitchens in the example books.

Della Hansmann  02:33

So this journey of option one, looking for contractors and realizing they don’t understand what you’re asking for and can’t give it to you. And then talking to designers option two, and realizing that it’s really expensive, it’s going to be more than you were asking for, and it’s still not quite giving you the thing you wanted. There needs to be some secret third option, right?

Della Hansmann  02:53

That is the search that had brought both of these folks to my door, and it is the problem that I have been working to solve for the last well depends on you count it six years, maybe eight years, maybe my entire life, trying to find a way to get design into the reach of regular homeowners, people who look and sound a lot like me, millennials, perhaps people buying their first homes, people buying modest mid-century ranch houses, and that is the secret third option, a mid-century master plan, the Master Plan method, following the step by step process of asking yourself, what’s most important to you, becoming a somewhat expert in your own home, nailing down your mid-century style, testing out options.

Della Hansmann  03:40

And Then having something easy to document so you can show to contractors or even designers who are going to help you carry the process out. That is the antidote to the perennial problem of what I was talking about last week on the podcast with the kitchen remodeling industrial complex, which is always pushing us to do more, to do something that’s on trend, to do something that’s going to be disposable. So I just It tickled me.

Della Hansmann  04:04

I mean, I was glad to hear the story from two different people, because they had both found their way to the Master Plan method, and I am now feeling happy that these two folks are separately going to be able to make better choices for their house to have the resources, the process, the mental space, the reassurance that they need to now get a good result.

Della Hansmann  04:23

But so many other people out there hit Option One or option two and feel like they’ve got to choose one of those two options. They either have to just let a contractor do whatever is on their mind in their vision board or hire a designer at great expense and still not necessarily be able to articulate the mid-century nature and maybe even the personal desire of what’s going on.

Della Hansmann  04:44

One of the things we talk about in this call that you’ll hear on the recording is that sometimes when you ask a designer for everything on your wish list, they’ll respond by giving you a project that’s a little out of scale and out of budget. And the master plan method is also designed to help you. Right size your goals, so that you can get as much of your dream project as you can, but still for a process, for a price point that you can really afford.

Della Hansmann  05:09

So I just feel like the timing of this is perfect to remind you that on Saturday, I will be hosting a live class where I walk you through every step of the mid-century Master Plan method and also absolutely celebrate the kind of decision making that not only highlights what’s glorious about your mid-century house, puts in mid-century charm that maybe was never there in the first place, if it was particularly modest, and reassures you that you’ve come to the right place, that the people around you are all solving the same problems, struggling with the same challenges and sharing the same love for mid-century that you have.

Della Hansmann  05:43

So that’s the experience I want to share with you by playing this recorded open architect Office Hours call for you today. And it’s also the experience that I know you will have if you show up on Saturday. So are you already signed up for the live master class I’m hosting Saturday? This is going to be, ooh, what are dates, the 27th at 11am Central. If you’re not free at that moment, by the way, you can absolutely still participate in this class. What you should do is sign up for it anyway, so that I can send you a link, not just an invite, but a replay link as soon as it’s available. And if you sign up for the class and then reply to the confirmation email with the fact that you won’t be there, available live, and you have a question you would have asked me in the Q and A after the class, I will add it to my list, and you can watch your answer in the replay.

Della Hansmann  06:30

If you’re sorry if you’re listening to this office hours call and you’re just wishing you had been there. You had signed up for it. You heard about it in time. You were free on Monday. Then I’ve got some fantastic news, because at the end of the live master class I’m giving Saturday, I’m going to stick around and answer every question that everyone has about what we covered in the class, about the Master Plan method, about the specifics of their of your home, the process of planning a regret proof remodel, and if what you really want is a regular opportunity to come to the architect Office Hours calls that I host for my ready to remodel students every first Monday of the month.

Della Hansmann  07:05

Well, then I’m also going to be talking to you about ready to remodel at the end of that class. Yeah, I’m going to try to sell you on ready to remodel as a great solution, but come to the class for free information anyway, for a party celebrating mid-century joy, and for basically everything I understand and believe about the process of planning, excellent, tailored, timeless mid-century remodels for homes from modest to magnificent.

Della Hansmann  07:30

Whether you are a brand new mid-century homeowner just unpacking boxes and getting yourself sorted out, or someone who’s lived in your house for years, decades, maybe, and are just now realizing that it no longer suits the way you want to live your life. Or perhaps it never did. And now you’re trying to break out of the rut and the solidity of your vision of what this house is.

Della Hansmann  07:51

I’m going to have advice for how to start thinking by asking the right questions and then where to go and how to go about finding the right answers for you and for your home. Please come to this class. It is one of my favorite live events to host. I do this no more than twice a year these days, because it does take some time and energy to put it on, and I would love to share this energy and enthusiasm with you on Saturday.

Della Hansmann  08:15

Okay, you can sign up for that class, by the way, if you haven’t already, at mid mod midwest.com/masterclass that’ll take you to the sign up link, or if you’re listening to this episode in the future, you already missed the live event. It’ll take you to an evergreen replay that you can watch on your own time. Because ready to remodel does have a time sensitive element.

Della Hansmann  08:34

We’re going to be kicking off an intensive session. People are going to join all at the same time. There’s going to be energy around it. Some of our existing ready to remodel students will get fired up in this process, and we will create a mid mod re, Mod Squad that’s going to meet twice monthly through the end of the year for maximum planning effect and energy and support to just keep you moving towards your goals, but also ready to remodel, an evergreen program that’s always there, because I know that sometimes when you need advice and you need energy to move forward on planning your home, that’s the moment you need it.

Della Hansmann  09:06

So if you’re listening to this in the future, Hi, how is the future? I hope it’s simmered down a little bit, but one way or another, this is going to be a really good focus on what’s positive in our lives. Moment on Saturday, you can find the transcript of this office hours call this whole episode at the show notes page mid mod midwest.com/ 2208 and without further ado, I’m going to take you right into this really, really fun live event that was hosted on Monday.

Della Hansmann  09:40

Marvelous. Everybody’s here. I think everybody has a question. We’ll see if anybody else shows up. I’ll just get started though, because we have lots of questions and an hour to get through them. Welcome. This is architect office hours. Call with me. Della Hansmann of mid Ma, Midwest, I generally. Hold these calls for a group of student homeowners who are planning their own remodels. But since we’re we are just getting to know each other, I’m going to follow the general introductory format that I use on that with a twist, because we are just getting to know each other. I always begin with a bit of business.

Della Hansmann  10:15

I will just mention to everyone that’s here. I think you’ll find it interesting. I’m giving a workshop on Saturday planning a mid-century remodel to fit your life and budget. That workshop is part encouragement, part the method to my madness, partly the secrets to getting a successful mid-century remodel underway, and I venture to say a good time guaranteed to all. We’ve been doing them about I do them live about twice a year for the last, I’m gonna say five years now, I think.

Della Hansmann  10:49

And they’re just a wonderful opportunity, much like this evening, to get a bunch of people on the same zoom who really care about mid-century houses, not unrelated to that, starting in October, I’m about to be hosting a mid mod, remod squad within my ready to remodel program, and that is the venue in which I typically host these architect Office Hours calls. I hold them monthly to support the students inside that program so that they can come and ask me their questions. But that program is also guidance. It’s on demand, lectures, lessons, examples, guides to take you through the steps of the master plan process.

Della Hansmann  11:24

It is an evergreen program, so people can join it when they are ready, but every now and then, usually when I host a free, live class, we have a group of people that all join at the same time, and then we kind of have that cohort go through the program together and feel a little bit more togetherness because you’re planning a remodel, if you’re thinking about your house, you may spend a lot of time feeling kind of alone about it, and so it’s really nice to just feel like there are other people who are sometimes struggling with the exact same challenges you are, or as we often find on calls like this, within the students, someone who’s already experienced a particular challenge and can provide their own personal insight, as well as my advice, or seeing people who are a little further down the process, both can be really wonderful and lovely experiences.

Della Hansmann  12:08

So that’s item of business number one. Item of business number two is the mid modern model podcast. I usually give a little forecast of what’s coming up, coming soon. On the podcast, is goal setting for a remodel. I think of this as this is a long term prospect. Planning a remodel is not going to happen overnight. Having a remodel done is not going to happen overnight. But even the planning itself can be a very lengthy process.

Della Hansmann  12:33

So finding the thread that’s going to pull you through it is something I personally find very interesting question. And so I’m going to be talking about that on an upcoming episode. It’ll either be this Thursday or next. I haven’t quite decided the order for the next two episodes, so we’ll see.

Della Hansmann  12:47

And then I’m going to do a really nerdy deep dive into the Sanborn fire insurance maps, which were created originally after the insurance business of America basically went out of business when all of New York caught on fire at the same time. This is like, you know, I’m gonna still have to do my research, but this is more than 100 years ago, probably now, and so they had to start making some plans. This feels very relevant impression to where we are today, where we’re having more and more challenges in the insurance industry. And it also affects the way our zoning laws work and the way our setbacks and building regulations work. So if you’re here for the history nerdery, we’ll be covering that.

Della Hansmann  13:24

Then also It’s come to my attention. I’ve never explicitly done a podcast on siding for MCM houses. I have talked about it to individuals. I have specified it for countless clients, but I have never done a podcast on the topic. So stay tuned for that one.

Della Hansmann  13:25

All right, before we get into the questions. One more thing I like to do is a little pep talk, a homily, if you will. That’s broader. And today I think I’m just going to give you a preview of what will be discussed on Saturday, which is a quick overview of the master plan method. Today’s questions are all about tactics. People are coming with a specific thing they want to know. I’m going to try to give you a specific answer, but I can’t give a really specific answer responsibly, honestly, without circling back into some of the deeper understandings of what you’re trying to get out of your own model and the Master Plan method, for me, is the process by which we always come back to the deeper underlying reasons that we would choose a particular answer if you’re not familiar with it, it is summarized in five ds that you follow roughly in order.

Della Hansmann  14:28

The first one dream gets to your why? What are you trying to get at the feeling, the vibe, the experience, the life that you’re trying to create with changes to your house. The second one discover is about the house itself, structure, materials, history, remodeling, background might have something to do with budget. Certainly has to do with the zoning code. It’s about the sort of the how and the what of what’s going to happen. And then there’s distill. This gets to the mid-century materiality of it the combination of a two. Materials you’re going to choose for every individual person who likes mid-century in air quotes, they mean something else.

Della Hansmann  15:07

We all mean something a little bit different. We’ve got a different core memory of a grandparent’s house or a TV show, a place we once were that seemed particularly cool. We mean a different level of trying to create a preserved museum versus trying to update something that feels well-chosen and blended and not anachronistic. So finding where you are on the spectrum of sort of when and how much is really important part of that process. With those three predesigned steps out of the way, we can consider options, and I file those under the D of draft. And this really is important to me, as you’re going to see, when I answer questions today, there’s never one answer, there’s always multiple options.

Della Hansmann  15:46

So I always want to explore possibilities before I get to choosing something. And this really comes together with based on all the three predesigned pieces we’re juggling, what could we consider and finally develop? It’s not an answer, it is a direction, and it’s sort of spiraling, always inwards towards the last thing you choose to do on your house, which is probably not going to be the last thing that ever happens to your house, but I think of develop as the phase where we set priorities, we focus budgets, we maybe do an order of an operations. It’s always still a little bit open to a necessary pivot in the right moment, if things change, we can take all of the work we’ve done before and go forward, and that ultimately is what I want for everyone to get out of design.

Della Hansmann  16:31

I think too often we look at a picture in a magazine or design is provided to us by an expert, and it can feel very rigid. There’s only one answer. There’s only one product. This is the only cure that’s unrealistic and it is very brittle when it meets contact with reality. So my goal is always to have all the backing of why you wanted to do what you wanted to do, why your house led you to make the choices you’ve made, how you were trying to create it happened all the options you considered, and then finally, where you’re going from here.

Della Hansmann  17:03

So I encourage you all to tune into the workshop I’m giving on Saturday. Catch the replay if you happen to miss it, or if you’re not free on the weekend, because I will be framing all these specific questions, we answered today under that larger umbrella of Master Plan thinking for mid-century houses. Okay, that was kind of a fast pass through the business. But we’ve got a bunch of questions on the list here, and I’m just going to take them in the order that they came in, just checking that everybody is here to have them.

Della Hansmann  17:31

So the first one came in from Mary. Mary, are you here? Do you want to come off mute and we can, I can interrogate you a little bit more about your house in a very friendly way, very friendly way. Hi. Hi there. Okay, so first of all, just reframe your question, and I will say, Okay, so you’ve been in a 1962 tri level for 25 years, and it’s time to remodel the original kitchen. You’re in Ann Arbor. Oh, I have done this a couple of really fun projects in Ann Arbor. That’s fun. So to gain space without the expense of a full-fledged edition, you’re considering a cantilever solution, about 22 inches to the edge of the roof. Eve. And you ask, have others done this? Are they happy with it? Okay, fabulous. Short answer, yes, that can work. And then long answer, I have questions and caveats, so I’m actually going to do exactly what I said I would. I’m going to come back to the why, what’s going on in the original kitchen? Too tight of a layout. I’m not surprised if that’s true. Tell me a little bit about the situation.

Speaker 1  18:32

Yes, too tight and no workspace. There’s no surface area, okay, yeah,

Della Hansmann  18:39

well, and that’s super common mid-century kitchens are strangely light on work surfaces. They tend to have, you know, a row of cabinets that are engaged to a wall and have upper cabinets in front of them. So I will say there’s a couple of rules of thumb when you’re thinking about a push out a cantilevered edition. The first one is to check it’s going to work best if you’re going in the direction of your floor joists.

Della Hansmann  19:01

Do you know from being in the basement? Do the floor joists? Yes, you want to push out. Okay, excellent. And then there’s a light rule of thumb, which is, it’s good to have at least three times as much joists still inside the house continuously as your push out, which at a 22 inch, you should also be just fine on that. From a design perspective, rather than an engineering perspective, I have more questions. You’d mentioned pushing out to the edge of the roof. Eve, is that exactly 22 inches?

Speaker 1  19:32

Yes, and that would it? It might actually go out 20 and give an inch or so at the edge yet of you know.

Della Hansmann  19:41

So that’s still it’s still a fine idea. I have a couple of things I would want you to consider before you decided on it. The first one would be the loss of the roof hang from a functional perspective, because roof overhangs protect the siding from wear and tear and blowing winds, not from everything, but from a lot.

Della Hansmann  19:59

Yeah, and so you want to think about what, what else are you doing to protect the siding in this you’ll be, you know, having new siding in a framed out new area. So will it be particularly water and weatherproof? How will that work? It will also, you’ll lose a little bit of shading. If you’ve got windows in that wall, you probably will. Why would you not take the opportunity to add more windows? They won’t have a shady overhang unless you add some other kind of shade structure, or unless you have seasonal natural shade in the form of deciduous trees, for example, you’re also going to have an esthetic loss with the loss of the roof overhang.

Della Hansmann  20:35

There is a sort of a natural hat brim effect to having a roof overhang that we have learned to appreciate in buildings that makes them feel a little bit more tied together. So when you lose that, it’s not a disaster, but it can feel a little bit less graceful, especially if it’s pretty broad. If you’re just pushing out for, say, eight to 10 feet of the width of a kitchen, you might choose rather to try to blend that.

Della Hansmann  21:02

You might choose to emphasize it. You might choose a contrasting siding color or pattern there, since it’s going to be new, might have a lot of windows in it, but you might also think about some sort of projecting trellis style shade structure that’s going to a guard the window from the sun a little bit, but B provide a visual anchor to that space. You might also think you’re wise to think about a moderate cantilevered extension from your saving on foundation point of view.

Della Hansmann  21:31

You might also think about, though, adding a little cross gable to your roof and projecting the roof out over it to solve those previous two problems, so you get the siding protection and you get the esthetic sort of tied together nature, obviously, price point is going to come into this. Is that worth it? It will not win you anything interior, square footage wise, but it might give you a building performance edge, and it might also be important esthetically, what direction, um, towards the street? Does this kitchen potential push out face?

Speaker 1  22:01

So this is facing the backyard, okay, and it does face the West. So we get this really bright, late afternoon, early evening light. But we think we’re going to do a slice of a cliff tree. Window above that will be stained glass. Oh, beautiful. That would maybe cut down on some of that super bright sunlight.

Della Hansmann  22:23

It’ll cut down a bit, yeah, with Western facing light, sometimes the only solution is shades. Because, you know, particularly at the end of the year, it’s going to come in almost horizontally, so no amount of overhang is really going to is really going to guard against that. That answers a couple of my questions.

Della Hansmann  22:36

Yeah. One other thing to think about is, for the simplicity of construction, you probably want to keep plumbing out of that cantilevered space, because it’s going to be a little bit of an insulation hassle, and you’ll have to run the lines in through the thing. So if there’s any way to have that just be work surface and not, for example, anchor a sink in it, that might make your life slightly simpler. But of course, the layout solution will be driven by more considerations than just that. What else is on your mind about this that I can answer before I have to move on to the next question.

Speaker 1  23:07

No, those are great considerations. And I think just imagining not having an overhang out there is important to kind of anticipate, and how, how are we going to feel about that? So thank you.

Della Hansmann  23:19

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is. It is a little bit of a loss, but it might well be worth the tradeoff. And there are other like I say, you might even think about a shade trellis. I call it a shade trellis, but really more of an esthetic thing, just to bring back the hat brim of the roof overhang,

23:34

something to think, right? Thank you. That’s great,

Della Hansmann  23:37

Excellent. Well, thanks for asking this really good question. Okay, so I’m going to move on to Erica, a raised ranch from 1970 with sort of a mid-century colonial or mid-century traditional vibe that had been a time capsule up to 19 oh, 1912 2012 and then something happened. So you’re looking to pull it back into a more timeless state with a sort of a mid mod fusion in 1960s 70s vibe. I’m not going to read the whole list, but I’m sorry. Am I  mispronouncing your name? Is it? Ericia, Oh, is she not here? No, you’re here. Can you unmute and uh,

Della Hansmann  24:14

Okay,

Della Hansmann  24:15

hi there. Okay, great. Lovely to meet you.

Della Hansmann  24:18

Erica.

Della Hansmann  24:18

Erica, okay, um, marvelous. Okay, so you have a bunch of good items on your to do list that I can’t fully go through, but basically your main problem is that the cabinets, which were once lovely original probably pine, have been painted, and so now you’re looking for solutions to work with that. You’re also going to be replacing light fixtures and bringing wood elements in as many places you can, replace the cabinet hinges, replace the countertop with new Formica. I love all of those things.

Della Hansmann  24:46

Excellent. So you’d ask specifically about, should you repaint the cabinets in a new, non HGTV white color, maybe green, and you’re worried a little bit, because there is a there’s a trending moment for green cabinets going. On right now, you’re right. I would say two things to that. First off, it could certainly work. And I think even though there’s a bit of a trend moment happening for green, if you pick your green right, it won’t look trendy, because it’ll be maybe tip more towards the 70s avocado, and it won’t feel as on trend, and therefore will never feel as off once the sort of Merry Go Round goes back down. No, it’s not what it is. It goes around in a circle. Ferris Wheel. Ferris Wheel. Thank you. Right. I would suggest, though, have you tried stripping the paint? Have you done any little test patches?

Speaker 2  25:39

I haven’t the countertops or the cabinets were painted professionally, and so the finish is mostly intact and very on there.

Della Hansmann  25:50

Okay, well, that is a bit of a dent I might try. I might take, like, the inner side, or somewhere kind of out of way. I might try stripping it, because a good strip. You know, the kind of stripper where you, like, put a plastic film over it and leave it for a while and take it off. People have had amazing results with that. And then you could restain and get back to your original wood grain, which would be the win. It’s labor intensive. It is chemically nasty, it’s stinky. So it’s a it’s a process.

Della Hansmann  26:18

Not everyone is going to be up for. You could also compromise. I noticed from the photos you shared, which I’m going to not share photos in this call, because we got to keep moving, but I noticed from the photos that you shared that it’s kind of there’s some uppers and some lowers. You could choose, for example, to just like, only strip the upper cabinets and then paint the lower cabinets green, for example, and focus your attention on just a limited area, or even just highlight one specific space.

Della Hansmann  26:46

I also noticed there’s a slab panel door in your kitchen, and that might be another thing that you could try stripping to get back to just bring the original wood grain back into play a little bit. That said, I think your instinct to paint the walls, the ceiling and the existing painted trim all the same color, white. It’s the best compromise when you’ve lost original finishes so you’re going in the right direction. The other question you’d asked was, it’s a little dark in there, and your only one window faces north.

Della Hansmann  27:17

So for that, I would suggest sticking to the lighter end of the green, although a good reflective surface on the cabinets isn’t going to it’s not going to darken the space that much. I would also suggest you absolutely look to add under cabinet lighting, and you don’t even need to hardwire that in these days.

Della Hansmann  27:35

You can get, you can get from any big box store, good quality LED lights that you might have to operate with a remote. Or you can sometimes have them wired to or remoted to a switch that’s wired in the wall and looks like a regular switch, and that’s going to make a world of difference. It also might be worth thinking about cutting in a light tube. Light from the sky, if you don’t have a floor above, is tremendously valuable in a kitchen in the daytime.

Della Hansmann  27:56

The other thing I would just volunteer and being the only person who have seen those photos, I’m just talking out of my hat a little bit here, but there was clearly once a wooden valence over the sink that guarded probably a fluorescent tube light, which would have been awful, but I might think about bringing back that wooden valence and putting an LED light behind it, instead of the smaller light that’s currently over the sink, which is probably a recessed CFL or something like that. And I would then extend that wooden valance beyond the edge of the sink to whatever there used to be built ins or something on the left hand side of the sink.

Della Hansmann  28:30

And if you could tie that in, that might also be a place if you choose to not do any stripping on the original, now painted cabinets, to bring in one new wood grain piece of cabinetry that’s over there, and have it sort of tie across at the valence edge, so that could be another place to bring wood grain into the kitchen for anyone else who’s suffering from you once had beautiful wood grain, and it has been painted. Restoring what you had is always worth a shot. But Erica, you were absolutely on the right track with just bringing other wooden elements into the space, and sometimes that is good enough. Do you have other color questions that are still pondering?

Speaker 2  29:08

I don’t think so. It’s probably going to be just a little bit before we get to the paint. So we’ve also thought about like a harvest gold, or maybe some kind of orange. We like a lot of color, but I also don’t want to get something that’s like too crazy, because we have a lot of bright artwork and colorful furnishings and things like that in the house.

Speaker 2  29:31

So I kind of like the walls and everything to be sort of neutral for that and I’m really struggling because we just moved into this house, our last house, we were able to do a beautiful remodel with maple flat slab cabinets and beautiful Formica, really. It just turned out so well. And people, when they would come over, were like, is this new or is this original? That’s the question you want, right?

Speaker 2  30:01

Yeah, that’s kind of what I would like to have again, you know, but we just don’t have the budget or the effort or the time right now to put into this. But it’s so bad, as you can see from the photos, that I just we can’t handle it like I need to do something with this kitchen.

Della Hansmann  30:16

Well, you know, Far be it from me, but I do kind of think of yellow as a neutral. I think sometimes, once something is painted, it’s a little bit like hearts has been broken in the card game. Like now you can go ahead and do something. So I feel like you could just go ahead and say these cabinets have seen some things, and now you’re going to make them a feature, not a bug, and really get it back.

Della Hansmann  30:43

Get away from the HTTP white, which is just going to be your most it’s bland. It doesn’t show them off to good effect. And I think that the green and harvest gold both have going for them, that they’re warmer, which is what you lose when you lose the wood grain in a in a kitchen or in any built in scenario, is part of it is the texture and the patina and the interest to your eye of the actual grain, but part of it is just the warmth of that amber Shellac color that they were obsessed with in the mid-century era. So yeah, if you’re looking for a permission slip to paint your kitchen cabinets yellow, I say, do it and then send me pictures.

Speaker 3  31:20

Okay, that sounds good.

Della Hansmann  31:23

All right, marvelous. Okay, I want to spend more time on each and every one of these, but I’ve got too many of you, so I’m just going to keep flying along. My next question is from Leah, okay, and you said you’ve got a built in 1956 looks traditional with a gable roof. Mid-century house an addition on the back from 1972 looks Mid-century Modern with a flat roof. You’re doing an exterior renovation keeping Usonian red.

Della Hansmann  31:47

Ooh, I love it, but for the time to be restained and repairs for woodpecker holes. Okay, great. So, all right, you had mentioned you’ve got a longer story I’m going to summarize. But basically, it sounds like you’ve been thinking about this for a while. You’ve been looking for kind of good advice, and you have worked with a local architect who’s proposed a lovely but really intense set of brand new kitchen built ins, built ins all over the place.

Della Hansmann  32:13

And now your specific question was, do I know of affordable mid-century cabinet manufacturers or custom cabinet makers in the greater Chicagoland area who make circular, recessed, integrated poles and affordable, formaldehyde free options.

Della Hansmann  32:29

Okay, so the first thing I want to say is I’m sorry you’ve been finding this process so stressful, and I can totally sympathize, because, yeah, taking on what had been a time capsule house and planning big changes for it can be overwhelming to speak to the millwork question specifically you had mentioned in your longer question that you’d also run this past several contractors who were saying it was probably just going to go over your stated budget. This is you shared the plans that the other architect had designed. Do you want to chip in on this?

Speaker 4  33:02

Yeah, only, only one GC has seen it so far. So what happens when we first bought the house, we started with GCS. I was reading one of your articles about how a typical, what do you call a typical middle class remodel goes, but just you’re starting with the GC, and I felt like nobody understood me.

Speaker 4  33:17

Every GC that I had, like two or three come right after we bought the house last fall, they wanted to give me craftsman this and big old trim and all the and vinyl and vinyl siding and vinyl new windows. And I was like, Oh no, no. I got so overwhelmed, like, nobody understands me, and they’re asking for all these expensive changes that I think it will everything up. Yeah. So then we, like, got overwhelmed, mulled on it. We’re in the, like, you know, tornado of being on Pinterest and me and my husband trying to figure out.

Speaker 4  33:40

And then finally, like, a few months ago, we hired a local architect and said, like, we want to kind of revive this mid-century house, but we need it to open up because we I have a big local family, so it’s a small house, but there are regularly 10 people over at my house. My sister lives across the street. We needed that kitchen to get bigger, right? And so the architect proposed a few different things, and we really like the design now, but when we met with the first GC to see the design, which was Friday.

Speaker 4  34:01

He was like, I, you know, with your budget, I don’t think you’re going to be able to afford all this mill work. And I started trying to understand, like, what are the cost drivers of millwork? Is it the localness of it, the type of wood, surely, how much of it there is? Like, how can I see if he’s just saying this one line, which is a higher end line that he carries, yeah, Chris cabinets. But is it just that I need a lower end line, but trying to figure out how to approach trying to make this new millwork affordable?

Della Hansmann  34:27

Yeah, okay, absolutely. So you’re right. This is I, oh my gosh, I literally was having a call with a potential Master Plan client today who told me the same story. And it is. It’s the story here constantly, of what we think when one remodel is you call up, you pick up the Yellow Pages, metaphorically, you get the internet, and you call all the contractors in the area. But that does lead to your HGTV remodel.

Della Hansmann  34:51

So the thing about millwork is it’s always going to be expensive. There’s a couple of ways to modify the cost of millwork. The first one probably. Is just to pull back on it. Think about prioritizing certain areas where you need it and other areas where you can get away with more simple storage. There are other ways to think about sourcing. I would say you definitely want to source from different millwork cabinet shops in your area. So it may be that each contractor you talk to has a specific relationship.

Della Hansmann  35:24

In some cases, they may have a one to one of full like a fully negotiated deal, but they only work with one person. In others, they may be willing to bid a couple of options, and that’s worth looking into. There can be dramatic, like 10s of 1000s of dollars of price difference between a full house of millwork from one place or another.

Della Hansmann  35:42

You might source that are. You might source custom mill work that comes from a little bit further away, like, for example, you’d asked about Chicago land, but I would turn my attention away. I would like turn your back on Chicago and look to Indiana for you know, just lower overhead costs. Not we’re not looking for anyone who’s abusing their employees, of course, but just places that are able to have a lower cost of doing business.

Della Hansmann  36:07

To pick out Indiana specifically, there’s a lot of you might think about going sort of outside of you wouldn’t put mid-century into your search term necessarily, when you’re looking for cabinets in Indiana, because there are a lot of shops out there, or not even shops who are doing really beautiful like Amish or Mennonite craftsman work, who are doing Victorians and craftsman houses and much more detailed things that can turn their attention to slab cabinets and produce truly stunning work and will if given a couple of visual references of what you’re looking for.

Della Hansmann  36:40

The other thing you can do is go in the complete opposite direction and look for something that’s a bit more flat pack, if you’re willing to consider it. Doing IKEA cabinet boxes with semi-custom fronts and door and drawers can be a reasonable solution. I actually Googled before answering this, and IKEA does not promise to be completely formaldehyde free. They just say they don’t use it in their processes, but they feel like it’s not preventable. I don’t know how much I want to take that with a grain of salt, but that can be really effective. There is a particular company, since you mentioned, recessed, drilled out cabinet pulls.

Della Hansmann  37:16

There’s a company called plica, P, L, y, k, e, a, that started in the UK, but now has American suppliers and they do plywood based door and door fronts, and they do that kind of gorgeous, recessed pole. So there are some, there are some different avenues to Google around there, but I think probably it’s going to be a combination of both finding turning down the cost level on per, you know, per unit of your built ins, and also maybe phasing or compromising a little bit on scale.

Della Hansmann  37:51

This is always a great moment. You’ve been working with a designer looks like they’ve done some lovely things. But if I can critique my own profession, I think we tend to take a wish list from a client and try to answer all of it, and, you know, out of a desire to please, but it can easily go over budget when we do it that way. And so this might be a chance for you to kind of take a master plan approach and recheck your overall priorities. Think about, sort of what are the most important pieces to you, and can you phase or step back or sort of put more energy in one part of the house and less in another part of the house to get it to compromise with your budget?

Speaker 4  38:29

That totally makes sense. This is very helpful. I’m going to look into like pikey and like you said, even like maybe Amish in Indiana cabinet makers. One question that came to my mind when you thought about Amish, because why I tend to gear towards Chicago, since we’re so close, is because when I do search online, the prevalent styles in Indiana tend to be this more traditional example on a website is something I like. Every time I open a website, I’m like, no, no, that’s not it, right?

Della Hansmann  38:51

But I will say, I will pick this up very specifically. I had a wonderful experience on behalf of a client of mine in Central Indiana who they had already started a contract with the design build firm that they loved the relationship with, but they just could not get them to understand mid-century until we came in and did a master plan for them, at which point we showed them the visuals that they were looking for, and they produced the most beautiful mid-century, modern built ins that I’ve seen in a project of my own.

Della Hansmann  39:17

Just absolutely glorious, like the grain match was divine. So they just, you know, and they actually really got into it. The team that was working on it had a lot of fun doing the work. They just didn’t really know what it was beforehand. They hadn’t encountered it. They’re not reading atomic ranch magazine, so they just need some examples. And so I wouldn’t necessarily say only because the examples in someone’s photo book are only traditional in the past. Means they can’t do something modern for you, and you think

Speaker 4  39:46

that something simple, like a circle pool, isn’t something that a mill worker would be like, Oh, that’s too complicated to do. That’s a pretty simple thing. I mean,

Della Hansmann  39:54

the thing about modernism is it actually is pretty hard to do, right? But the level of craft. That you need to do craftsman or Victorian, right? Is the same level. So, yeah, taking pictures and say, Can you do this? Would you do this? Would you find this fun and that, I think, is a conversation that’s worth having to make all of the changes that you want to have and happen for your budget. Awesome.

Speaker 5  40:16

Thank you. Yeah, excellent, marvelous.

Della Hansmann  40:20

Okay, oh, you’d ask another quick question. Very quick, the painted wallpaper you’d asked, there’s painted wallpaper in the house, and you had, I’m just going to reinforce what your general contractor said, which is, I would not recommend drywalling over that. That’s going to create layered issues. In a worst case scenario, it might be take off the drywall or plaster and replace it with new but you can still strip drywall that’s been painted over. It’s just a little bit harder so that that might be worth

Speaker 4  40:47

you can still strip wallpaper that’s been painted Yeah.

Della Hansmann  40:50

Okay, you might need to find if you’re going to DIY it, you have to score the paint so that the stripping chemicals can get underneath it again. This is going to be stinky, and I’m apologizing in advance for any of that. Vent properly, but modern Better Living Through Chemistry if we can manage it.

Della Hansmann  41:07

Okay, that is all right. That’s only for questions. Okay, I’m gonna keep going. We’ve got, we’ve got Alexis, a ranch house built in 1958 with cedar signing somewhat symmetrical U shape. If you look at it from the air, wouldn’t call it modern, though. There are no real modern elements around it. It’s light on trim, has pseudo clerestory windows in the living and bedrooms.

Della Hansmann  41:27

Okay, I am going to need to show a picture here, because your question is that you’re stumped by what to do with the fireplace in the formal living room. Scoured the internet and I can’t find anything like this. I’m not sure if they did some kind of renovation to it over the years, but I’m struggling to how to give it more presence in the room, and I am going to find your question and screen. Share this.

Della Hansmann  41:52

Ooh, am I yeah, I am. It’s just going to take me a minute. There we go. All right, are you available to answer further follow up questions. Alexis, if not, I’m just going to look at this picture and guess at you what you might ask. But if you want to come off mute, if you’re here.

42:14

Oh, sorry, can you hear me?

Della Hansmann  42:16

Oh, yeah, now we can hear you.

42:18

Okay, thanks.

Della Hansmann  42:21

Okay, so this is your fireplace. You’re right. I have not seen anything much like this. And what I would tell you is that I think that this looks original to a mid-century traditional house, but I don’t know this being the brickwork, which is in a nice little stack bond and goes around. It’s a double fireplace, or I guess it’s a fireplace with a little wood storage area, right? I suspect that this black marble ish sort of hearth extension that’s in front of it, and then possibly also this little bit of tile nosing that goes around it may have been added at a later date.

Speaker 6  42:59

Okay, yeah, there’s like a slate. I don’t know if you could see in the picture, but there’s slate under the horse extension. So it’s like they put that, like polished stone, like directly on top of the slate.

Della Hansmann  43:11

I wonder if it cracked, or if they just decided this reads very like 2004 to me.

Speaker 6  43:20

But, yeah, and yeah. So I just am, like, at a loss as to what to do. And I think it’s I realized, it’s because everything I look at, like the fire box, like, is completely flush with the wall.

Speaker 6  43:37

And so I don’t, you know, usually when you see this, it’s like the chimney, like, sticks out, and there’s some recesses on either side, or something to, kind of like, put, you know, furniture I could place. But, like, I don’t know if it was like this originally, and what did people do originally to, kind of like, decorate around it, I guess, or, you know, or would it have ever had a mantle, you know, that projected from the wall. I don’t know.

Della Hansmann  44:02

It certainly might have, although I think in this case, it looks like, I think you’re right. I think this slate piece underneath is probably original, and it was just a relatively minimalist item because it’s also got these, you’ve got hot water heating pipes panel running along right up to it. So I guess here’s my question, what is your Is it a functional fireplace? Is it your goal to help it perform better as a fireplace? Are you just looking for more of a visual anchor in the room? Visual?

Speaker 6  44:32

I mean, it is functional. It works really just more visual. We don’t. It’s a fairly large room, and we don’t. We have, like, a, you know, TV room, a family room, I guess so I don’t, it’s not that I need storage. It’s not that I need, you know, there could be a projection from the wall that takes up space. I just, and I don’t want to do something that’s like making it something it’s not, you know, but also just, it’s a little, I. Boring.

Della Hansmann  45:02

I guess it does. It does feel a little unanchored in the space. I agree. And I think probably my instinct would be, I’m if it was my fireplace, I might try to take back off this little decorative bullnose border, unless, unless it pleases you, in which case absolutely leave it. But I think part of what’s going on with this is I can see that you’ve got a big, symmetrical, centered piece of art over it, and the first thing I would do is unbalance this. I would shift that to one side and put something else underneath it and try to get a more of a diagonal visual effect across the room.

Della Hansmann  45:38

If you were to, for example, put something like a mantle over this mid-century. Fireplaces often don’t come with mantles. They don’t necessarily need them. But if you’re looking for that, I would again say your instinct with that is to sort of start it on one side and let it dramatically overhang on the other side. Got it this isn’t, this isn’t ever going to respond well to symmetry or to sort of kind of give it a formal order in the room, it needs to be a little bit more activated. You could also do this just with paint, for example.

Della Hansmann  46:08

So if you want, let’s go back to this image that’s got the more of the whole thing. You could create kind of an accent panel in a finish, could be in a tile, could be in a faux brick, if you could find a glazed brick, they kind of picked up some of the vibes of this. You could have it come all the way up to the ceiling, or just in a bigger piece, and again, I would just unbalance this square, and I think that’s instantly going to make the room feel more active, and then the other pieces in the room can respond to it, whereas right now, it kind of feels like everything wants to sit around it and pay homage to the fireplace, but there’s the rest of the room doesn’t quite do that with windows on one side and doors, right? So break out of the prison of symmetry, and I think you’ll feel like you’ve got a lot more options.

46:51

Perfect. Thank you. All right,

Della Hansmann  46:54

Marvelous. Well, relatively straightforward. Well, a simple and then wide ranging answer for a complicated little puzzle here. I’m going to break out of my screen share. Thanks for that one, and we’ll pop onto the next question, which is from Lynn. We’ve got a side split MCM house in Ontario Canada, built in the late 60s, early 70s, finished in 72 by the original owners. The lower level is walk out built on a concrete slab that extends to an exterior patio.

Della Hansmann  47:23

This house was built at a time when there was no building code and there is no vapor barrier under the concrete slab pour. So here’s the question, we are removing two layers of wall to wall carpet. This is where I got stuck. This is wall to wall carpet on top of other wall to wall carpet. Lynn, are you here? Can you verify this? Oh, she might not be. Lynn, you’ll have to get this. I’m gonna email you about this because, oh my god. Okay, so All right, two layers of wall to wall carpet. The mind boggles.

Della Hansmann  47:57

But here’s the real question, you’re looking to make the space feel a little warmer Canadian winters. That is totally reasonable. And you want to add, okay, one of the ways you’re thinking you do this is by adding a layer of insulation between the slab and the new flooring service in such a way that the flooring won’t fail. The lower level does not have moisture issue right now in floor heating would be cost prohibitive, bummer.

Della Hansmann  48:19

That was one of the things I was going to suggest, but you got to do what you can. Um, so you basically are getting contradictory advice from different flooring companies who are all kind of Rebecca amending their own thing. I’m going to summarize basically one group of people is saying, don’t insulate, put a laminate or a vinyl click plank, or glue down sheet vinyl or wall to wall carpet, and then just put area rugs on it for a warmer feel underfoot.

Della Hansmann  48:42

You don’t like that advice, because, you know for a fact that’s not warm. The other group is saying, use an insulated product, such as dry core. I will get back to that in a moment, and then put a floating floor of cork, vinyl or laminate on top of that, leaving edges open around the rooms for a little bit of expansion and contraction and contraction and any kind of humidity, but they warn that if you put heavy furniture on top of that, it might pin the float floor so much that it could still buckle in a humidity change.

Della Hansmann  49:12

So first, I’m going to speak to the broader issue of this we often find as homeowners that we go to subcontractor specialists, particularly people who specialize in one particular type of a product, like their flooring guys, but they only install laminate, click Lock or vinyl, LVP, what have you. They’re going to recommend their own product because they want to make a sale, and also probably because they like their product, because that’s what they do all the time. I encountered this phenomenon first when I got my start in architecture, working in sustainability design, and it would drive me absolutely well as an architect who was just trying to get everyone to build more environmentally friendly houses.

Della Hansmann  49:50

And I’d go to an energy fair, and each and every single one of the sales reps for the different types of solar panels, solar thermal panels, geothermal. What have you would all be telling everyone who came to their stand that they had the only viable product, and everything else was going to be built at a loss, and it was a terrible idea, and you really just needed geothermal for every single house in America.

Della Hansmann  50:10

And I can tell you for a fact that geothermal only really works well if you’ve got a really big field and you’re doing a really big area, it’s great for like taking down the cost of a corporate office. It’s not a very good solution for residential other things are and it’s good for other things anyway, this phenomenon of everybody wants to sell their product to every single person who comes to their door really irritates me, and it makes the world very confusing and murky for us as homeowners who are just trying to get good information and like compare apples to apples.

Della Hansmann  50:38

So for lots of better advice, I would say come talk to an architect, because we don’t have a dog at the time. But you can also go talk to just anybody that you’re paying for their advice and not their product. I would talk to a local building inspector anytime you’re having a quandary like this, and you don’t have me on hand. In this particular case, I am just going to allow my own biases to kick in and say, I don’t think putting wall to wall carpet over an un vapor barrier to slab sounds like a good idea.

Della Hansmann  51:07

And I really don’t like roll out laminate. I personally have put dry core insulation in my basement. Dry core, for anyone who’s not familiar is, this is a specific product. It’s a comes in panels that are like almost two foot by two foot, and you click them together, they have an OSB engineered flooring on top and a raised plastic hard bottom. That means that moisture can always move around underneath a little bit if you need it to which is great for not trapping moisture underneath a sealed surface.

Della Hansmann  51:36

So I probably would, as a friend, recommend you the same solution I chose for my own basement, which is a dry core sub floor and cork for maximum insulation and foot friendliness on top and then an area rug on top of that. I would also argue that if you pin your flooring down with heavy furniture on top of an area rug, there’s still actually a little bit of room for slippage, which could solve the problem that you were being given by camp two of your flooring installers, I think in this case, for a Canadian uninsulated slab house, I’m going to recommend you add all the insulation you can.

Della Hansmann  52:13

And I particularly like dry core or a similar product that’s not just an insulation barrier on top of the floor, but has that little air gap, which is going to do a lot, not just for buckling, humidity, expansion and contraction, but also to allow any moisture that may ever gather in. For example, when will you encounter that? Most you’ll probably get moisture accumulating on the floor in the summer, when the slab itself is cool because of the ground temperature, and you might have warm, moist air flowing through the house. If you aren’t running an air conditioner, you might get humidity condensation on that floor surface underneath your finished floor, and that’s when you really want an air barrier so it can move its way back out again.

Della Hansmann  52:54

If you haven’t already listened to it, I just did a very nerdy, rambly podcast on the topic of thermal and moisture control in mid-century houses that I think you’ll find useful, but yeah, generally speaking, I’m going to lean you towards Yes. Go ahead and do an insulation and an air barrier or an air movement surface underneath your flooring, and then I will put in a bid for cork, because I think it’s fabulous and it’s also less toxic than vinyl. But you could go ahead and do any kind of interlocking engineered floor at that point, and since I don’t think you’re here, you don’t have any follow up questions, so I’m gonna leave you with that.

Della Hansmann  53:34

Okay, so then we’ve got Michelle, how are we doing on our list? Hi, Michelle, okay, great. We’re doing excellent. We are kicking butt on this list. Michelle, you have a 1928 hunting cabin, approximately 600 square feet added onto in 1955 with a mud room that’s sort of a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom added again in 1970 another bathroom and a tower office lookout. Cool. So it’s a mishmash of different eras. The exterior says cabin.

Della Hansmann  54:04

The interior has knotty pine siding and ceilings and mid mod, nod. So your question is, what to do in a situation with this sort of historical palimpsest of styles? Say, really learn to appreciate the mid-century. You’re a podcast listener, hooray, and you’re looking for inspiration to address both of the areas and a feeling of consistency. So are we looking in your zoom background at this very cabinet question right now? Yeah, well, I would say, how much of 1927 is still there? Or do you feel like it’s been pretty thoroughly overlaid by the 50s?

Speaker 7  54:45

I think the whole outside looks like a 1920s cabin, and the windows like the windows from the original rectangle, are like those cabin windows. Oh, okay. You know, but it’s still kind of got some mid mod, just because it’s like, whoever did the walls, it’s got some potential. It’s like, not symmetrical anywhere, like there’s not even a door that’s symmetrical.

Della Hansmann  55:14

There’s a lot of going on there. I think this really tips into the sort of can do DIY, early 50s, mid-century vibes. So if you’re looking for esthetic precedents to follow, I would go hunting for, you know, the very early advertising, literature, um, Better Homes and Gardens, sort of 1948 up to 19 5060, uh, like 5657 there’s also, you’ll find a bunch of it’s more sketches than illustrations, but Popular Mechanics from that era as well.

Della Hansmann  55:51

By the way, for everybody here, if you’re not already aware, there’s an amazing resource through us mod, I’m typing it in right now to check us modernist.org dot org, yes, yes. They have a collection, a digitally archived collection of vintage architecture magazines that you can scroll through and take screen grabs from. It’s a wonderful resource looking for inspiration like this.

Della Hansmann  56:19

So I would say, when you’re starting to accumulate your style guides, Michelle, you’re looking for pieces that you probably don’t need to add wood, but you want everything you do to play nicely with the wood that you have. You want to think about what is the language of metal that’s already happening in the house, and probably stay within that at this point, rather than trying to change everything. You might find that there are some inconsistent pieces that you want to switch out, but as you make new choices, I would always be tying them back to the sort of one of two things, either the majority rules, material that’s happening in the house, or your personal preference out of anything that exists there already, which you can then lean on hard enough to weigh the votes and make it the majority.

Della Hansmann  57:06

But I think the most important thing you want to do is think about setting up your style guide so you’re inside of ready to remodel already. I would go and take the workshop on more than a mood board, which anybody can actually grab for yourself. It’s like, I think it’s $19 outside the program, but it’s easily available to you inside the program. And follow that through, you can technically do it in two hours, but probably, if you really deep dive into it, it’ll take you longer than that and start to just build out that, that collection of materials, wood, grain and stain, metal, a couple of color materials that you’re going to come back to again and again.

Della Hansmann  57:47

You did also ask about how to how to work with people who are not necessarily the mid-century world. And I will actually give the same advice I’ve given already a couple of times on the call, and that’s just to have a collection of visual examples that you’re sharing with people at a first meeting, or maybe even emailing them a word of guidance on that.

Della Hansmann  58:07

However, I will say, when you’re reaching out to contractors, when you’re communicating with anyone, it’s important to understand kind of what their information acquisition level is, and their preference for communication detail. So if you’re working with me, for example, you cannot give me too much information about your house. I always want to know more. I want more pictures. I want more photos. I want more examples. But a lot of people can get overwhelmed by too much information.

Della Hansmann  58:32

And as a general rule, without stereotyping, I will say that the type of human being who becomes a general contractor tends to be kind of a practical focus on the thing that’s in front of them, type of person who doesn’t want a lot more information than they need right now. So this is where it’s really important for us as master planners to curate and to have a couple of key things that we’re gonna share, probably bested on face to face, so that you can kind of read the mood and see how much response you’re getting from the person that you’re talking to. If they’re like, oh, yeah, more or I don’t quite get it. Can I see another one? Then you’ve got more examples to show them.

Della Hansmann  59:05

But if they’re like, Uh huh, yeah, got it, then you can move on to the next thing. So I think setting up a visual style guide is going to be your step number one for moving on from here. And I don’t think you’re going in the wrong direction. I think this, this vibe you’ve got going on here absolutely plays nicely with the kind of finish it yourself basement project that was happening all over America. Anything with Pickwick pine paneling in that picture will have other elements in it that you can use in this house very well. I see that you did actually ask another question, but I’ve got another person’s question I want to cycle through before I get to that, and then we’ll see if we’ve got time to come back to that in the last few minutes of the call.

Della Hansmann  59:47

So last submitted question came from Ken, and actually it is, it is seven questions, so we’re going to have to pick one or two of them. But Ken, are you here on the call right now? Maybe, maybe not. All right, I’m going to read the backstory right now. We’ve got a house built in 1969 a prairie style, Midwest mid-century ranch on an acre and a half up to the mid walk Milwaukee River. This house has been thoroughly expanded, renovated, modernized over the years. The facade is totally covered in a Wisconsin land and stone veneer laid in a random ashlar pattern.

Della Hansmann  1:00:21

Okay, so we’ve got seven questions. I’m going to start from the top. The roof is going to need replacing in three to four years. Would I recommend the roof be replaced with three tab or dimensional asphalt shingles? That’s an easy answer. I would recommend dimensional asphalt shingles. I think they’re more interesting than three tab. I would also recommend a metal roof, but I know that there are price points there.

Della Hansmann  1:00:43

So if you’re looking for asphalt, I think that the quote, unquote architectural style shingles cost slightly more, but last better. All. All shingles never really last as long as they’re warrantied for, but they last slightly better. They look more interesting. I think they’re a better product. Then you’d ask that the secondary bedrooms have the original single pane double hung windows with exterior storms that are functional in good condition. Should you replace them with new energy efficient double hung windows? I would say no.

Della Hansmann  1:01:14

Um, if you’ve got original windows that are still performing, they aren’t broken, they aren’t air leaking, and they aren’t whistling. I don’t think it here’s what it depends on your goal. If your goal is perfect human comfort, you might get a slightly better result with a newer window. They’re often slightly better on air seal they require let you don’t have to go put storms on them and off them twice a year. So they’re slightly easier. But if we’re thinking about the energy efficiency balance like in the universe, the cost of the materials and the labor and the transport that go into making brand new windows and throwing old windows into the trash, I don’t think that that comes out in the wash for quite a long time.

Della Hansmann  1:01:56

And unfortunately, these days, it doesn’t necessarily come out in the wash before you’re re replacing new windows, especially if you’re feeling a price pinch on this, if you’re thinking about replacing an existing, functional wooden window with a storm with a new vinyl window, I think that’s an environmental loss, um, and performance wise, yeah, some modern replacement windows have a lifespan of, like, 20 years. So I don’t, I don’t recommend it if you’re looking for more warmth.

Della Hansmann  1:02:24

I would say adding insulation on the inside with insulated curtains is a great way to start. Also, I just think storm windows are cool. So if you’ve got your, if you’ve got your original storms around and you don’t mind putting up and taking them down, stick with that. That’s a choice I would have made for my own home, but the previous homeowner trashed the original windows and put in final replacement, not my favorite, but I’m not going to re replace them, because that’s just more landfill.

Della Hansmann  1:02:52

Next question, a large band of double pans, picture double hung, picture windows in the living room fog up, indicating a seal failure, obscuring the view of the backyard. Should these be replaced with new windows? Okay, this is a great question, because this is where the math starts to tip. If you’ve got blown seals on the interior of glass, you might be getting into a situation where you want to replace because that’s a daily experience issue.

Della Hansmann  1:03:17

However, if those are the original big picture windows in the backyard, before I would replace them, before I would call, this is a phone book issue, before you call the window replacement company in the phone book, call a local glacier and see if you can repair those windows. No window replacement company will ever talk to you about window repair, but it is possible, not in every situation, but at least in some situations.

Della Hansmann  1:03:43

And the only person you’re going to hear about that from is a glazier. So call a glass company, not a window company, if you are specifically worried about the blown air seal on specific windows in your house. Fourth question, you replace the flooring in the main living areas, kitchen, dining living with six inch wide plank engineered oak hardwood and travertine tiles in the family room, but there’s old carpeting in the bedrooms. Should that be replaced with something other than carpet? Should the flooring be identical in all rooms? Do you know what’s underneath the carpet? Oh, wait, when was your house built? 69

Della Hansmann  1:04:17

Okay, never mind. There’s always be under there. I was gonna say there might be hardwood under bedroom carpeting. Because that is a crazy thing people used to do back in the 1950s is they would put in well in history nerd divergence in 1954 the major US companies who had been using nylon for more munitions, figured out that they could use nylon to make wall to wall carpeting, and they were like, hey, America, you are not living a full life unless you have nylon wall to wall carpeting in your house.

Della Hansmann  1:04:44

And America said, You’re right. We’re not give it to us, and they put it over the two and a half inch strip flooring which was beautiful, which was everywhere, which was the builder basic default in American Housing before that, and in some cases, for those of us who have our houses built before. 1954 we have original in excellent condition, protected from the decades, wood floor underneath nylon wall to wall carpeting that somebody’s grandparent thought was really cool. That’s fun when that happens, but that’s not your situation.

Della Hansmann  1:05:14

So I would say it does not need to be consistent if you like carpet in the bedroom, if it’s come lot of people like to wake up and put their bare feet down on carpet. That’s fine. I don’t think you need to necessarily. If your choice is six inch wide, engineered plank, white oak hardwood, I think you could easily go with carpet.

Della Hansmann  1:05:35

The only thing I would say needs to be wood in the bedroom is if you’re going to do like, an actual hardwood and hardwood but I think, I think you can go ahead and do a wall to wall carpet in there if you want to, that said, if you want to do a solid surface floor, I love or if you want to do an engineered floor, I love cork.

Della Hansmann  1:05:50

Cork is also very foot friendly, and you can put area rugs on it if you want the carpet feeling in your bedroom. This is the Office Hours episode where I talk about cork flooring and how much I love it, natural, antimicrobial. I have it in my bathroom. It’s been around in some mid-century houses, since the mid-century. It holds up really well. The only people I have heard have qualms about it are folks who have installed relatively new cork from possibly suspect companies and have dogs with large, scratchy fingernails or toenails.

Della Hansmann  1:06:18

Rather, they’ve found that it doesn’t always hold up with the surface the way they want it to. For that, I would say, make sure you go with the natural colored cork, rather than the kind of cork that’s been painted millennial gray. Do we have time for all of these? I’m going to answer your last question, and then we’ll call it good. The seventh question was, what is the definition of open concept in a mid-century context, it seems real estate agents listings and residential home builders use the term very loosely. That is so true.

Della Hansmann  1:06:48

So the thing about mid-century is open concept wasn’t really a term that was applied to it at the time. It’s something that sort of gets it’s an HGV TV term that gets reapplied to mid-century. Because mid-century was not necessarily about being open. It was about being more open than houses that had all of their structure happening internally, hidden inside the walls, and also houses that were designed to be containers of space that were separating different levels of formality, different levels of gender, different levels of service versus served space in a house.

Della Hansmann  1:07:20

And in the mid-century, we start to have the preponderance of houses being built are more modest in scope. They’re not meant to have in house staff during the day or at night, and they’re meant to be kind of visually assessed and kept an eye on by one, we’re going to say, housewife, during the course of the day. So they needed a bit more through lines, and also the modernist architects who were sort of pushing big design coming down from the top that was percolating into the sort of builder boom of that era, were talking more about post and beam structures. They were talking about connecting inside to outside spaces and also interior spaces to each other.

Della Hansmann  1:08:00

So we tend to have mid-century houses that have relatively private, defined bedroom and bathroom areas, but a lot more connection between a living room and a dining room being basically in the same space, maybe with slightly different proportions, and then a connection to the kitchen that’s more open. Maybe it’s an open doorway. Maybe it’s fully open. That’s a bit more of a gray area, depending on the era. So open concept basically just means we blew out a lot of interior walls in the remodel, or it’s often used to describe the kind of condo which is built in a high rise building that has major structure at the outer corners and a few inner column lines. So there’s just nothing that really has to break it up.

Della Hansmann  1:08:39

And nobody did what I think in turn, if you’re asking about it in sort of a should way, I think you can absolutely embrace mid-century design, materials, finishes, fixtures, and not enjoy having your kitchen sink on display to the front door. The level of openness that you want to have between the spaces in your house is personal, and this is why I would circle. I’ll circle this all the way back around to the mid-century Master Plan method, and ask, what is the end goal? Not what rooms do you want to do in your house, but What feeling do you want to create in your house?

Della Hansmann  1:09:15

Is it a place where introverts can all kind of get away from each other and like down cycle at the end of the evening, or is it a place where everyone is tossed into a mixing bowl of a social area so they can talk about their days and reconnect with each other and fire each other up? Are you having big extent family groupings? Or is it a place for just one person to recharge these kind of questions, or maybe two people to recharge together, but separately?

Della Hansmann  1:09:38

These are the kind of questions which are more important than sort of knowing that something is open concept or not that leads us perfectly, even though we’re slightly over time. To Michelle’s follow up question, which is about weight bearing walls that go away. So I want to answer that one too, because this is just sort of a point you in the right direction question you’d asked. Who do I consult?

Della Hansmann  1:10:00

About weight bearing walls that could go away a structural engineer is steel better for long span with no posts, I imagine I’ll have to leave some posts. What are cool ways to integrate those posts? So I want to answer that question in several ways, yes, if you’re knocking out major lines of structure, even, I would recommend getting an engineer on hand calculating the way that roof loads are going to come down, particularly in a house that has been added on to multiple times, is a job for an engineer. They’re good at it, they like it, and they will do it for a simple flat fee.

Della Hansmann  1:10:30

But I would also caution that it’s more complex than a simple matter of bearing and load, because we don’t just want to find, like, what’s the maximum open span we get, which is the math that an engineer will do. We also want to think about what, what spaces are we dividing, connecting? And so this is a place where my instinct is often not to create the widest opening that I can, but to create some sense of openness, and then sometimes to not disguise a column, but give a column more meaning by giving it some friends.

Della Hansmann  1:11:06

So I might say you can’t just scoot you if you if you have a space that’s currently being supported by four evenly spaced columns, you can’t just slide one over and have no problems happen. You’ll have to do something with the beam above. But you could, for example, create a larger headed opening, and then put in one post so you don’t have too much depth of structure. You don’t need too hefty of a beam. Or you could go to steel.

Della Hansmann  1:11:29

Steel is more expensive. But if you have to have a column, rather than just having one lone column standing there, kind of being in the way of things, I might create an anchor point for a piece of built in cabinetry, or a place that you could put furniture up against by having, say, three of the same column in a row. Three is better than 2456, you can, you can put more of them. If the column itself is not a wildly expensive material, multiplying it out will always make it feel a little bit more purposeful, a bit more like its screening two spaces from each other, rather than just holding up the ceiling.

Della Hansmann  1:12:05

So, yeah, I would also think about you could pair a column that’s doing structural work with some slats made out of the same material that sort of have the same width, but a thinner depth, same depth, but a thinner width, depending on which way you’re facing. And then give that again, give it sisters. I would do the same thing, not only in interior space, but often you’ll have one post holding up a corner of a porch at the front of a house.

Della Hansmann  1:12:30

And the instant way to add charm to that situation is to not remove that post or decorate that post, or try to turn it into craftsman, something with a whole bunch of rounding pieces, but just give it to friends the exact same style, and suddenly you’re moving your eye in a direction. It’s a little bit more interesting. You’re just giving it some purpose. So yeah, we’ll flow from what is open concept into how do we make bearing walls go away any I’m running out of steam here. This has been really good. I’m talking so long I need to take a drink of water. Anybody have a final question or a thought, a comment, something you want to share a revelation from today that would be really fun. Go for it.

Speaker 2  1:13:16

Uh, so to the window question. I don’t remember who had asked that. But at my last house, we had original windows, and I want to say seven of the seals were broken. Three were slot windows, and then two were just like your stand up and it comes down. They and we got a glass company to come out and replace the glass, and it was so affordable, yeah, well.

Della Hansmann  1:13:44

Oh, I’m so glad to hear that. Well, this is, I mean, it’s actually pretty hard for people to think of, because when something’s wrong with your window, you look up window in the phone book, but it is often just a matter of replacing the glass. And it doesn’t need to be, as you say, just glass. It can be a sealed vacuum glass piece so you can get insulated glass. It is sometimes even possible for people who are worried about single pane windows. This is more complicated, less likely, but possible.

Della Hansmann  1:14:10

If you’ve got single pane original windows, and you wish they were double pane, talk to a glazier before you talk to a window replacement company, you might be able to change every window in the house for much less cost and construction, demolition, throwing away all the trim on inside and outside, damaging the siding, just a whole bunch of rigmarole, if you can just replace the glass.

Della Hansmann  1:14:34

So maybe that’s our that’s our little mid-century master plan. Win of sometimes the answer is, do less, and isn’t that wonderful? I want to thank you all for showing up today. This was so much fun. I love a chance to sort of popcorn ideas and answers to people. And if you think I ought to do this more often, I don’t know, send me an Instagram DM or I made an email about it, put. Of persuade me. I’ll try to persuade my operations manager that it’s a good use of our time.

Della Hansmann  1:15:05

But also, if you enjoyed this, we would love to have you. We would love to have you join us and Michelle inside of the ready to remodel program where we do this every month, and actually, coming up in the next remod squad, will be doing it every two weeks, first Monday of the month and third Monday of the month from now until December, so plenty of chances to get your questions asked and also to hear other people’s questions asked and share your own personal experiences, which is so valuable.

Della Hansmann  1:15:33

Thanks, Erica for validating that I really appreciate it. I’m gonna let you all go now, but I hope to see you on Saturday, and if not, if you’re not available, like there will be a replay available to check that out. And it’s been such a pleasure to have a little glimpse into each of your mid-century homes. I wish you the best in your journey of remodeling them.

Speaker 5  1:15:52

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you,

Della Hansmann  1:15:55

Marvelous. All right, take care.

Della Hansmann  1:15:58

Well, that covered a lot of ground I probably talked even faster on that call than I do on this podcast, where I constantly leave sticky notes over my desktop computer reminding me to speak slowly and have a relaxed demeanor as I share every popcorn idea, I have about mid-century choices and how to make good ones for your house.

Della Hansmann  1:16:18

But I do think that there is value in finding not only my enthusiasm, but the enthusiasm of everybody that submitted a question to this office hours call all of these people are our kindred. We are all a mid mod, remod squad together in the broader sense. And if you’re looking for more community, if you’re looking to find advice from and for and with other people who love their mid-century homes as much as you and I do, then I absolutely encourage you to show up for the live event I’m hosting Saturday the 27th.

Della Hansmann  1:16:49

This is three days from time of air at 11am Central I’m going to be hosting an hour long class which will walk you through everything I have learned and believe about really well tailored plans for remodels for mid-century homes developed over helping hundreds of other mid-century homeowners to plan well for their own homes.

Della Hansmann  1:17:08

That’s going to be Saturday at 11am Central and then after the hour long class, I will stick around and answer everybody’s question about the process, about planning, about finding contractors, about specifics of your house, from structure to esthetics.

Della Hansmann  1:17:23

So if you’ve got questions you’d like answered, come and ask them at the live class. I would love to see you there.

Read the Full Episode 1206 Transcript

People like to imagine that an architect spends all their time at a drafting table or sitting picturesquely at a cafe sketchbook in hand. Movies are responsible for this nonsense. But spoiler alert, no one uses a drafting table anymore unless they love nostalgia. And I do all my sketching on a tablet. It’s a blessing and a curse. But there is another way that architects do a lot of our work.

We put a lot of time in answering questions. In fact, sometimes the most efficient way to get an answer out of an architect is just ask them a question. And that’s why the next three episodes are going to focus on the questions I regularly answer for my clients, my ready to remodel students at architect office hours and you. Today I’m sharing some of the questions and answers that have come up at recent Architect Office Hours calls.

Hey there, welcome back to mid mod remodel. This is the show about updating MCM homes helping you match a mid-century home to your modern life. I’m your host Della Hansmann, architect and mid-century branch enthusiast, you’re listening to Episode 1206. So today, I’m sharing some adapted Office Hours called answers more on that in a minute. And next week, I’m going to share some of the design support I’ve given past clients as they follow up on their master plan design packages.

I bet you’ve got some pressing design questions of your own. And wouldn’t it be nice if you could just ask a friendly architect about your remodeling puzzle? Whatever was on your mind. Well, you can get your questions answered right here on the podcast. Go to the link in the show notes and submit your design question. And we’ll toss it onto the pile for the episode two weeks from now. An architects asked me anything. Submit your question right now, so you don’t forget, or any time before Sunday, May 7. And I’ll answer it in the episode that goes live on May 11.

Go ahead and submit a question for the Ask Me Anything on the show notes page at midmod-midwest.com/1206 where you can also find a transcript of everything that happens today plus some links. I’m going to mention some linkable things in this episode, so go check it out.

Of course, if you have a lot of questions for me, you might just want to enroll in ready to remodel and get a chance to ask me whatever’s on your mind every single month, because that’s what we do at the Architect Office Hours call. I wanted to give you a little insight into what happens at our regular monthly Architect Office Hours call within the ready to remodel program today, because our next call is happening on Monday, May 1. So if you’ve been on the fence about joining ready to remodel, then you might want to act right now.

You can join not just the program but be there live on our next office hours call and get your most pressing questions answered. Face to face.

As you probably know, the core of the ready to remodel program is a step by step guide through the masterplan method so that you can apply it to the update of your own home. It has bite sized video lessons that all take less time to watch than this podcast takes to listen to. Or you can listen to the lesson since we have a lot of students who join us based on loving this podcast, you can treat the core content like more mid mod remodel and just listen along.

Each lesson takes you through one small step one bite sized piece of the master plan method. And it has a workbook and other resources to help you get all your design ducks in a row. Then there are a lot of other bonus resources, micro workshops on finding time to plan budgeting, managing your contractors, and more in depth design workshops that take you through the Master Plan method applied to specific parts of the house like the kitchen, the patio or decks, exterior updates in general.

We’re going to do one soon on owner suites this summer, and of course the style guide workshop that we just did. But one of my favorite ongoing resources to help keep my students on track, keep remodel plans moving forward and just keep tabs on how everyone’s going make sure they’ve got their questions answered is the regular monthly Architect Office Hours call.

Now in the early days, I would do these weekly for a set amount of time we would start a cohort. And I would do seven weeks of calls or 12 weeks of Architect Office Hours calls. But it ended up just feeling like it wasn’t enough. Most people don’t fast track their remodels quite that way. And they need an ongoing support.

I realized the best way to help people remodel right was to offer a monthly design support call the Architect Office Hours call every month forever. I really look forward to these calls. They are so valuable. They let me get to know the homeowners and the homes inside the program deeply. 

And it’s a great chance to really give yourself the gift that goes on giving because the more you participate in these calls, the more you show up for every call or submit a question even if you can’t show up live and then watch the recording of it. The more you share your updates in the Facebook group and ask your detailed questions, the more I get to know your home, and the more I can answer the underlying questions that you have. This is part of the really deep benefit of group coaching, which is the model for the Architect Office Hours calls.

And I’ve benefited from this enormously in my own business coaching. I’ve had years of professional training and how to design homes. I have a master’s degree in architecture, but I had a lot less education in how to run a business in the modern economy. So I’ve been lucky to be part of a wonderful program for small business service providers. That includes lessons workshops, and you guessed it regular group coaching calls. I can’t tell you the number of times the question I asked my business coach turned out to be supremely relevant to someone else on the call.

Or when I heard my own concerns, fears, worries, hopes and questions reflected in the question someone else brought to the call that I hadn’t even thought to ask. I bet you might feel some resonance the same way with one or two of the questions I’m about to share. So by the way, the following questions are a recap of what I’ve said in recent Architect Office Hours calls, not a replay of the recording. And that’s for a couple of reasons.

One, I didn’t ask my students for permission in advance to share their voices with you. And we do typically start with quite a bit of back and forth where I get more from them than the original submitted questions so I can get to the heart of the matter. Also, often, I grabbed my tablet and do a little illustrating while I answer that doesn’t play as well to a podcast audience. Plus, these generally take a little longer each one than one of our podcast episodes, and I wanted to share three stories, three topics with you today. So here is an abbreviated audio only version just for you.

Alright, here’s the first question. We’re getting ready to order new lights for our living space. Since our ceiling is sloped, we’re wondering if we need to order the rods of the same length, therefore making the lights hang at different heights from the floor, or order rods that would accommodate the slope, so they hang at the same height from the floor. They hang at different heights now, but we don’t think that was intentional.

This is such a great question specific and universal both. First, I’m going to share the follow up questions that I asked the homeowner and that was, where are the lights in your space over a stairway by the entrance. And I wanted to confirm that they were not over the stairs going up. We didn’t have to worry about headroom, they were actually over the stairs going down.

It was a split level stair that turns in the middle. They might be in the view line as you stood an upper level stair and looked out over the room with a large, elevated ceiling, the sloped ceiling, but they wouldn’t get into your headspace. And my second question to the homeowner was how do you feel about that great room space? This I actually already knew based on our previous conversations, and that’s that it was a beautiful, glorious, lofty space during the day, but not as cozy as it could be at night.

Here’s my answer. As always, it does depend, there might be a reason to have angled lights. But in your case, I think that your goal is to use light to define a space not just to illuminate it. So you’ll want to hang your lights at the same height, and at the lowest possible height you can get away with and still have head clearance. So they create a lower an artificial ceiling effect at night. Why on the other hand, might you want them to go up?

Well, if you were trying to emphasize the height of the room to emphasize the angle ceiling. Well, in that case, you might use them in conjunction with a ceiling angle to draw your eye upward. Or if what we knew was that you were going to enter into a vestibule space and the space at the top of the stairs where the lights are, was where you ultimately want everyone to go.

If that was your main living hangout area, then you’d want the lights to angle up to guide you up to that space. But in fact, what’s at the top of those stairs is your sleeping areas, your bedrooms. And what’s at the bottom of the stairs is your cozy more dead like kitchen.

Now, you don’t need to set the lights up to lead yourself up to bed, you’ll go upstairs naturally when you need to brush your teeth to change your clothes to turn in for the night. So focus on using the light not to keep you from tripping over things in the dark to eliminate the space, but to create a sense of space that’s cozy and closed in and to make a different space in the same room in the day and night.

Okay, at the Architect Office Hours I had another follow up question for them. And that was, are there other lights in the house you’re going to be replacing either now or in the future that will be similar to these ones? And the answer was yes, one above our dining table and one similarly by the back door like this is by the front door. That is a great thing to know because it makes it all the more important to have a cohesive plan. You want these things to feel consistent through the house.

Even if there’s no one place you can stand and see all four of those lights at the same time. You want to make sure that you and your guests move through the house and you feel a consistency of design, that the pendants are all mounted a similar height from the floor, perhaps except in the case of the dining table dining table pendants can be mounted a little lower because you’re never going to walk through the dining table like a ghost and bang your head on a light.

But you want to think about each of the pendant lights in the space that has the same shape that has the same purpose, feeling connected to each other because of the category that they all fit into in your mind. In the end, the answer in this case was absolutely clear based on what the homeowner wanted to create a cozy defined hangout, resting space, a place where people come and stay.

If it was a place that people were likely to want to move through, they would choose the opposite answer lights that follow the angle of the ceiling. This is such a fun example because it really shows how one specific question can be made universal or it could go either way, depending on what you need the house to do. It always comes back to the masterplan method, the dream How do you want to live in your house that discover what’s going on? Why did the previous owner make a weird choice probably in the case of what we’ve learned about this house, just not having a good design eye.

And distill what is going on in the house already in terms of anything you want to pick up and keep going on. How are you going to respond to the existing conditions of the house?

Here’s the next question from our Architect Office Hours. We need to replace a hollow core exterior door with something better suited to Michigan weather. “There are so many cool designs out there. How do we choose?”, they followed up to ask.

Well, we don’t need the privacy. The light from the Windows is great on the stairs, but I’m not sure I want to look at the backdoor towards our concrete pad or furniture. What can we do to create a good view line through the backdoor window?

Okay, before we could answer this question, we had a few follow ups. Who would be doing the installation of the new door? What I already knew, actually was that they had a contractor doing a kitchen update for them right now. And I correctly suspected that he could be installing our new doors for them. So in this case, they have more freedom to choose a slightly more complicated installed than if they were planning to DIY the door.

Here’s my answer from Architect Office Hours. The possibilities are so many. First step though for just about anybody in this situation is go to search for retro renovation mid-century front doors. The retro renovation website is a go to for a lot of preservation questions, but it’s perfect for this topic because they keep the go to list of contemporary sources of mid-century appropriate front doors. This will tell you about all the suppliers in the country that have a stock of mid-century style front doors, and where you can go to find out more about them.

You can also go to your local lumberyard and ask them for a list of the catalogs they have of exterior front doors and look through the mid-century options. But there’s still a couple of things to consider. You’ve got options for it could be solid wood, my personal preference, or you’re going to be considering a fiberglass insulated door.

Now I did recently encounter a very adamant handyman replacing a client’s door who said that even though he himself is a woodworker, he just prefers fiberglass for exterior doors. They’re better insulated, better have better dimensional stability. That means they don’t drink or swell in the weather, and they have better security. He honestly kind of persuaded me that this was a good way to go. Although I love the authenticity of a solid wood door.

Once you’ve thought about that, if you’re gonna go with solid wood, you might also think about just getting a simple solid slab door and then getting a DIY double kit from the delightful company make it mid-century and they will sell you trim kits to decorate a front door or even window kits. So you can cut in patterns of rectilinear or round or even fun jaunty triangular shaped windows into a perfectly boring or bland existing door.

Finally, you could go searching through restore or Facebook marketplace and try to find a vintage door. But that does require a higher degree of difficulty on install. Because you’re dealing with both. Whatever may be happening in your not new midcentury house, it may have settled to a slightly non square place. And then you’re putting in a perhaps slightly non square original door, maybe they’re not square in opposite directions, you could start to get into trouble.

When you’re thinking about though the look of the door, you need to return to your style guide – what is your mid-century style – to find the answer. So if you are looking for mid-century vintage, you’re probably going to choose a reproduction of a style of door that was exactly available in the 1940s 50s 60s when your house was built. There are several of these available and go to retro renovation to find them.

You might also be more mid-century fusion and just look for a mid-mod leaning style or modern mid-century and then you just need a contemporary door maybe with a single vertical slash window that just doesn’t look like it belongs on a Victorian house. Hi, everything that was put into the 1980s.

The other thing we needed to check in with this student was how many doors three different doors in three different locations. And they were the front door, the back door leading to the patio and a garage door.

Now the garage door it needs to be fire rated no glass in that. But the front door and patio door need to feel related to each other. They don’t need to match but they need to feel like they’re cousins. So they might need to have the same pattern of windows with the same proportion of Windows or maybe one of them has three small windows at the top and the other has five small windows going all the way down.

There’s finally the question of storm doors. Do you need one? And the answer is even in Michigan very probably not a well installed new door might not need the extra backup security air security of a storm door. But you might still want to have a screen door if you’d like to leave your door ajar when you’re home and let the air flow through the house. So that’s a good reason for a second door unit.

In that case, you just want to make sure that the script the storm door the screen door represents your front door and shape well that it has the narrowest most minimal frame or that the frame you choose works with the door. So for example, if you’ve got that classic mid-century door or four of three square windows stacked over each other, you don’t want to put a Dutch door style stormed over that that only has the top half with glass and the bottom half filled in it would totally defeat the purpose.

Oh, that is the case with many storm door updates on mid-century houses and it always kind of breaks my heart. In any case, this is a question we almost all contemplate at some point, do I need to replace my front door? And if so, how? If you have a hollow core exterior door, this is a question that’s more urgent for you than for other people like my poor student, but they’re about to fix the problem. So they’re about to make their house world’s better with one simple upgrade or with three simple door replacements.

Third question from Architect Office Hours. Do you have any strategies for weighing future needs against current needs and a renovation plan? We know our life and family will change in the coming years. And it’s paralyzing to try to make design decisions, when we aren’t sure what we’ll need in five to 10 years.

Oh, this, I had to share this question with you. Because it’s so universal. We all struggle with how to weigh what we need right now against what we think we might need in the future. And so the very first question I had was more detail. Tell me more about how you fit in your house right now. And what’s going on in this potential 5-10 year change plan.

Now, I wasn’t surprised based on what I already knew about this homeowner to find out. That they’ve just moved from Chicago back to Wisconsin to be closer to family, they needed more space around them. And they wanted to have room to start a family of their own. They both work from home. And they like to host family for midline stays. They’re also worried about if they might be responsible for caring for aging parents in the future, and maybe even hosting them in their house. Then they don’t know how many kids they’re gonna end up with.

Okay, so even though the person who asked this question is a designer, he’s a graphic designer, he’s getting overwhelmed by the scale, which is not surprising, because very few people would ask a graphic design professional to design something that would be equally good for all circumstances over the next 10 years. But we frequently ask ourselves these questions about our house, or we try to.

So this is a struggle, we all face how to prioritize. I started to answer them with a counter example from the opposite end of the age spectrum. I often have clients who are empty nesters who come to me wanting to plan an update for their house that will both perfectly suited to be the little haven for the two of them. And also could hold any number of potential adult children and grandchildren that might come back all at once for some hypothetical magical mythical holiday. But then they tell me their kids aren’t even married yet. And so I always come back to simmer down, it’s fine.

You can put grandkids on the floor in the corner, they like bunk beds, it’s going to be all right. We don’t need to get this kind of analysis paralysis of projecting ourselves into a hypothetical. Now, you can’t quite do that. When you’re thinking of, you know, you want to have a family and a house and you know, your parents are gonna get older and might need help.

What you want to do is think about a couple of really important things, you only need to plan for a certain amount of flex within the house. A quick follow up question I asked them was what’s going on in their basement, and they answered that it was largely unfinished and had some finished areas that didn’t flow very nicely.

This was the perfect answer. For me, this is the Get Out of Jail Free card, because the secret weapon of a Midwestern house is its basement. And this always gives you room to expand pretty easily in another phase of your life if you need to, it could become an in-law suite and overflow space for teens, or just the place that the two homeowners right now retreat to for their work from home space. We’re even for an owner suite as the upper area fills up with kids or other family members. It’s a great pressure relief valve.

So my recommendation on the Architect Office Hours call is stick to a five year planning horizon for your right now plans keep the other variables on ice. So that probably means prioritize preserving space for the two of you to work from home. That’s obvious. You wouldn’t give up an office right now to keep an empty bedroom for potential future kids. And a new baby can sleep in your room two young kids can bunk together while you make plans to convert another space. You might yes want to convert or designate a good guest space family right now could come to stay even for an extended period of time in the near future.

And as for the elder care of aging parents, keep in the back of your mind. If you update a bathroom, maybe choose a zero step or a roll in shower. But you don’t need to go to plan a full mother in law suite right now when you don’t have a specific parent in mind who needs it. It’s actually always easier to remodel your main floor first and then come down and finish the basement than it is to finish a basement first and then put in a nice drywall ceiling. Everything is beautiful. And then you have to come back and tear that out to make room for new bathroom plumbing project above.

So my recommendation in this case is designed with a vision for what you might do for the whole house. But keep the basement on the backburner and if bigger changes come for you down the line you can update the house again. Or maybe you’ll even find it isn’t the right house for those needs.

So there’s no value in getting too far out ahead of your current headlights. Also, if it helps remember that this kind of mid-century house has been adapted for all kinds of family situations over the years. They’re very expandable. They can hold a family with five kids or an empty nester couple or multiple generations all with just a little thinking.

So long story short, focus on tuning the house to your life right now, and then maybe set up your next goal, which sounds like starting a family.

Alright, that gives you a little taste of what it feels like to get a question answered on an Architect Office Hours called. Every month we get homeowners asking questions from every stage of the remodeling process, some just starting out. Some are making discoveries right alongside their contractor or on their own as they DIY as they get down to making realities out of their plans. It is so fun to help me unstick these tricky moments and get a remodel process back on track.

So this is a great time to remind you that there are two ways you can work with mid Midwest. And as a reminder, you don’t need to be in the Midwest to work with us.

You might want to join the ready to remodel program where I walk homeowners through the process of planning their own master plan. And I answered questions on an Architect Office Hours call every month.

If you’d like to learn more about that or just get some in depth information about the Master Plan method. Check out my free masterclass how to plan an MCM remodel to fit your life and budget at the link in the show notes page.

Or let me do the design thinking for you right from the jump. If you’d rather have a mid-century master plan created for your house mid mod Midwest can do that for you. And if you’re anything like me, listening to the questions of other people and hearing the answers has brought up questions of your own.

So head over to the show notes page and submit your question for the Ask Me Anything episode that’s going live in two weeks. Tune in next week to hear some of the follow up questions we get from past masterplan clients and some of the answers too. See you next week, mid mod remodelers.

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