Podcast Archives - MidMod Midwest

You don’t need to keep a tub for resale value.

27 min readYou don’t need to keep a tub for resale value. In fact, about half of my clients don’t.

So much of the advice out there about home improvements is focused on the bottom line, treating your home as a commodity.

And sure, remodeling always has a cost. There are financial factors involved.

But I firmly believe that return on investment and resale value are the absolute last things you should be thinking about when you plan a change to your home. Hear me out.

If you’re planning on selling your mid-century home soon, leave it alone. Don’t do anything to it.

If you’re planning to stay, you are better off focusing on what will make the house your home.

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INVISIBLE benefits of design thinking: it’s more than tips and tricks

25 min readThat depends on your house. And how you want to live in it.

When I talk about design ideas for mid-century house updates, I’m often sharing aesthetic solutions:

Details for built-ins that shift them from looking to contemporary,
Paint colors and combinations that flatter mcm brick,
Hardware and fixtures that feel timeless,

And, often, I’m also talking about clever layout solutions.

Space planning ideas that connect and multitask. Simple ways to shift a floor plan to make the most of an existing snug footprint. I love focusing on both aesthetics AND problem solving with design.

I’ve been having some real fun lately pulling together a video series of Mid Mod Remodeling case studies that include good aesthetic AND layout problem-solving tips for mid-century homes. You can check those out below!

But as I prepped each case study, I was reminded of something else.

The design process is super valuable, too.

And going through a master plan design yields HUGE benefits for the homeowners I work with. Benefits that go beyond what the final remodel will look like.

AI is NOT Your Mid-Century Design Friend

35 min readYou may already use AI to get input on many areas of your life. And you may feel like the convenience outweigh its many negatives. Maybe. But here where we talk about making right choices for your home, let me assure you, you will not get good advice or even peace of mind about your design options by asking AI.

To paraphrase a meme I saw recently, Hey, y’all don’t ask ChatGPT. Make friends with a nerd.

And I am so, so happy to be your mid-century design and remodeling nerd.

I’ve been irked by AI for a while. It seems like it is over promising and under delivering. And I’m always kind of on the lookout for more information to corroborate my opinion.

The Washington Post recently ran a top of the page headline piece titled something like, “Can AI Do Your Job?” The very first example they gave was, can it do the job of an architect or a designer. And the short answer is, “nope.”

On their very first example they asked it to create a digital floor plan based on a hand drawn floor plan. And it was literally just supposed to recreate a hand drawn sketch as a digital floor plan. The human version was very tidy and annotated with dimensions. The chat version? Just a bunch of rooms labeled. AND with a bizarre relocation of spaces, including a bathroom surrounded on three sides by corridors. Certainly not a useful replica and in no way an improvement.

Why is AI so bad at being a designer? And even worse at helping you plan a remodel for your mid-century home? I have thoughts.

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The Mid Modness of a Neo-Mansard Roof with Atom Stevens

35 min readThe neo-mansard roof is as polarizing as an architectural feature can be.

Mansard roofs belong along a street in Paris or maybe on an 80’s vintage Burger King, right?

Yet, a slew of mid-century architects seemed to independently decide to give them a try in residential design during our favorite decades. Why, though? Why?

Today, I’m talking that over with our favorite mid mod house historian, Atom Stevens.

In Today’s Episode You’ll Hear:

What exactly IS a neo-mansard roof?
Who made the mansard roof a thing?
Why was there a neo-mansard moment in the mid-century?

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University Hill Farms Historic District

27 min readThe University Hill Farms neighborhood is one of my favorite parts of my home town and in today’s episode I’ll be your tour guide!

What’s the best mid-century neighborhood near you?

I don’t just mean the spot with the best mid-century homes.

What’s the best neighborhood?

Now MCM houses all tend to exist near schools, parks, libraries, churches, office buildings and more from the same era.

But while the mid-century years are my absolute favorite for housing design, they weren’t always the best for urban planning.

For one thing, it kicked off our national car-centric planning era, and we’re still in it. But there are some winners.

Today I want to talk about the history and qualities of one of my favorite parts of my hometown, the University Hill Farms neighborhood. If you’re Madison local, it’s the area around Hilldale mall, and it’s great by several measures. It’s even a historic district inventoried in the National Register of Historic Places.

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Yes, your Mid-Century house is historic! With Scott Sidler of The Craftsman Blog.

63 min readI am bringing you a conversation with my favorite expert on caring for historic homes, Scott Sidler, the historic window whisperer.

Do you think of your mid-century home as historic?

Maybe you don’t. After all, MCM stands for mid-century modern.

But I kinda do! These houses are all 50 to 75 years old at this point. That’s getting up there!

Because of that, I am bringing you a conversation with my favorite expert on caring for historic homes, Scott Sidler, the historic window whisperer.

If you know Scott, he has an Instagram handle of @theCraftsman blog. His blog is “the Craftsman blog”. He spends all of his time talking about how to repair windows on craftsmen and Victorian and other historic homes.

So what does that have to do with me, with us, with our love of mid-century?

We may have named our main platform communications for different eras of housing, but Scott and I share the same passionate love for all things vintage.

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Mid Mod Remodel Gift Guide

26 min readI have to admit being a reluctant provider of gift guides. So instead of another listicle with vaguely mid-century-ish products, this gift guide takes a slightly different approach.

The “check your inbox”, “must have gift lists” and “buying guides” we are inundated with right now kind of give me the ick. Especially since we’ve just been hounded by all of the “buy right now energy” Black Friday Energy.

Plus, when I put mid-century gift guide into Google to see if I was forgetting anything as I prepped for this episode, what I actually came up with was a whole bunch of listicles with links to modern-ish products with vaguely mid-century styles that I just didn’t really enjoy scrolling through. After all, as mid-century enthusiasts, we tend to be focused on vintage, timeless things, right? Rather than new things that miss the mark on both quality and style.

So instead of another listicle with vaguely mid-century-ish products, this gift guide takes a slightly different approach. Focusing on experiences, design collaboration, and supporting small, quality businesses rather than succumbing to the urgency of sales. Today I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, that you already know you can gift someone more than an object. But sometimes the “what” of it all is the challenge.

In Today’s Episode You’ll Hear:

When a movie night might be the perfect mid-century gift.
How to ensure you get your picky mid mod connoisseur the perfect vintage find.
Where to find great mid mod inspired stuff for when gifting stuff is the right move.

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Yes, You Can Use the Holidays to Plan Your Remodel!

27 min readUse the holidays to focus your remodel plans.

I want you to use your holiday prep time to plan your remodel.

Okay, Before you tell me, Della, that’s crazy. I can’t plan a remodel right now. The holidays are when I’m busiest.

You’re right. Of course you can’t. You know me. I wouldn’t ask you to make your life harder when it’s already full. But … what if I told you that you could also use this time to focus your remodel planning and make real progress without spending time picking out tile or making phone calls?

Instead, make your future life easier by harnessing all of the satisfactions (and frustrations) that are part of the celebratory times in your house.

Your mid-century house is not up to code

33 min readThe good news? Your home is currently grandfathered into every code statute written and approved after the day it was built.

Let’s get the scary part out of the way first. Your mid-century house, the one you love for its charm and quirks, does not comply with the modern building code.

That’s ok for now. No one is going to knock on your door tomorrow demanding you rewire every outlet in the house.

The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps

Where are all my history nerds? Raise your hands. This week is for you. I’m talking historic maps, digitized collections and crowd-sourced cartography projects. I KNOW!

I was so tickled when a Ready to Remodel student showed up to an Office Hours call a few months ago with so much fresh confidence derived from finding the Sanborn maps of her own property.

Her local permitting office was willing to accept the map she found as proof of a grandfather in the structure that meant they were able to carry on with their plans for a WHOLE LOT LESS paperwork!

Plus, turning up a historic resource had helped her feel confident in her interactions with her local building department and advocating for her remodel plan. This is what Discovery is all about!

I was delighted to hear her name check the Sanborn map collection, because it took me right back to my university days.