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Your Flexible, FEEL GOOD Remodel Plan

29 min readA flexible remodel plan is key if you want a “feel good remodel.” Taking the time to set a big picture vision gives you a starting point to edit and pays off in enjoyment at every stage: before, during and after.

Let’s talk about how to plan a feel good remodel. Look, I’ll bet you want a mid mod remodel that looks good.  Everyone does. Me, too! 

It’s pretty doable. There are plenty of remodels out there that look shiny and special when they are done.  You don’t necessarily need the master plan method to get a good looking remodel.  There are other ways to make that happen.  

And some (but not all) of those good looking remodels will actually work well, too.   They’ll make the lives of the people they’re for better, more connected, more comfortable, easier.   

So, if you’re smart, you want a remodel that will feel good to live in when it’s all done.  The master plan process can help you get there.  That’s a big part of what it’s for!  

But making a master plan can also – and this might even matter more in the short term – help you FEEL GOOD about the remodel while it’s happening!  

Feel good before.  During.  And After.  

The wrong way to get a good looking remodel

You see, many people end up with very pretty remodels.

  • But they do it by researching and micromanaging every detail and taking a really long time to get started: slow.
  • Or they do it by driving their contractor nuts, constantly reversing decisions and subbing in one more perfect detail (again and again): maddening and pricy. 
  • They do it by hiring out the design thinking and trusting someone else’s taste: risky.  
  • They do it by paying top dollar to have every detail designed and pre-approved, no matter the cost: expensive.

And none of those ways to plan a remodel are fun.  Or relaxed.  Or introspective.  They don’t feel good for the homeowner (or for anyone else involved).  

(Pro tip: when the remodel doesn’t feel good for people working with you … it gets more expensive.)

For a feel good remodel

In order to have a remodel that feels good at every stage of the process you need just a few things. A “why,” a flexible plan, and the ability to keep on developing it.

You don’t actually need every “i” dotted and every “t” crossed, n order to get started. 

In fact, TOO much rigidity, too early in the process will make you anxious, unable to pivot and miss out on opportunities.

So, if you want a feel good remodel (as well as one that looks good), the secret is flexibility. It’s having options. It’s having the underpinning, the why of what you want to do.

Jodi Picoult said, “you can’t edit a blank page.”

So really, the key to your relaxed master plan process is about giving yourself something that you can edit.

Give yourself the gift of being able to playfully, thoughtfully modify your plans as you go along.  

Your feel good remodel is going to be pleasant at every stage, even while you wait to take on the next remodel project.  

Quick design tip for…snug bathrooms

Do you need to make the most of a really snug bathrooms space? Don’t limit yourself to just what’s happening on the floor. Work to make the most of your bathroom.

Think about how you can:

  • Mount storage or the vanity from the wall.
  • Add in a slender storage space in the form of shelves on the wall or shallow cabinets set into the wall.
  • Run a low shelf around as much of the room as you can, six or eight inches above the counter height, to capture the lotions, the toothpaste, the night, drinking glass.
  • Hang your lights from the ceiling.

In general, the more you can choose simple and unfussy finishes the less cluttered the space will feel:

  • Choose a glass shower enclosure.
  • Get everything up off the floor, or as much as possible. Choose wall mounted cabinets, maybe even a wall mounted toilet.
  • Try to have nothing live on the counter.

If you’re not big on bathing in the tub on a regular basis, you might want to remove the tub from the foot front of your bathroom and go for a zero transition shower this can often help a small space feel bigger.

Find all my best bathroom update tips right here!

House Feature of the Week: Jack and Jill Bathrooms

This week’s house feature is Jack and Jill bathrooms—those shared bathrooms that connect two bedrooms. They’re a classic mid-century feature, and they come with their own set of pros and cons.

On the plus side, they’re efficient and can save space, which was a big deal in mid-century design.

Resources for a Feel Good Remodel

Check out these past episodes on the benefits of a flexible, feel good remodel process:

Prepare to Pivot with a Master Plan

How to actually ENJOY your remodel

What comes AFTER the Master Plan: Additional Design Services

Schedules: the Remodel Planning Spreadsheets you NEED

Need more help with your feel good remodel plan?

And you can always…

Read the Full Episode Transcript

If you want a feel good remodel process, no matter how big or small your project is, no matter if you’re doing it all in one go or in many bite sized projects, you’ll need to plan ahead, taking the time to set a big picture vision will pay off at every stage.

It will give you flexibility in the face of unexpected circumstances or expenses or life changes. It will give your remodel a polished appearance, even if you take it on over the scale of years and it will, it will just feel more relaxed. So today, let’s talk about the reasons behind and the process of an easy plan for a flexible, feel good remodel. It’s possible.

Hey there. Welcome back to mid mind remodel. This is the show about updating an MCM home, helping you match a mid-century home to your modern life. I’m your host, Della Hansmann, architect and mid-century ranch enthusiast, and you’re listening to Episode 2011.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about different scales, different speeds of transformative remodels lately, planning to comprehensively change every part of your house in one fast paced go like one of my current master plan clients is about to or to take on a series of carefully divided step by step phases, this year, next year, the year after that, or even tackle your house one powder, bathroom, DIY project at a time.

I fully believe that the small investment of a little big picture thinking at the start can speed and smooth your whole way, and it will make you more flexible to deal with all of those complexities of construction, unexpected changes, or just what your life looks like. Plus, as I said at the top, it will ensure that your project looks more polished. Whether it takes you one year or 10, the Master Plan process is the secret to success.

Now I know me saying this feels a little bit like with a hammer in your hand, everything starts to look like a nail, but that’s so that doesn’t feel apt. It’s too aggressive. It’s more like the Leatherman pocket tool that I carried around on my belt all through high school because I was on the robotics team.

Oh yeah, I was quite the little nerd, but that thing could fix just about any problem, and a master plan does the same thing. It isn’t a hammer. It’s not going to smash your problems. It’s a multi tool, a focus for your ingenuity, the thing you need to deal with any situation as it comes up. If you’ve been thinking, you might like to start the Master Plan process, and you’ve been putting it off for a little while, make it happen now, here’s what I want you to do.

Head over to our website and check out the page that’s called work with us. It’s right in a tab at the top. You can read all about how a master plan works or watch the helpful motivational explainer video recorded about the process. And then you can just click on the orange button that says, Apply to work with us. It’s a simple form that asks you a few easy questions about you, your house and what you want to change about it, what you like about it too, and then hit send.

We’ll get right back to you with a scheduler to set up a zoom call so you and I can chat about your house and your vision. I’ll make sure that what you are asking for is a good fit for our process, and you can figure out if we seem like a good fit for you, it’s just a conversation about your house and your plans. But if it all goes well, we could be sending you some fun design homework and scheduling your kickoff meeting for April.

But don’t wait too long. The projects we’re booking now probably won’t be coming back to their homeowners with all the T’s crossed and all the i’s dotted until May, maybe even June, depending on how long it takes for you to make decisions about the options we present. So now is the time to get started on your master plan. If you want to get started on some projects in the near future.

Let’s see one other item of business before we get started. Oh, yeah, the YouTube channel. So about a month ago, I revived the mid mod Midwest YouTube channel, which had one super embarrassing video from 2019 on it that I took down. Although I should, I should make that again. It was six great reasons to love your mid-century home. All accurate. I stand behind them, but also, oh my God.

Now I will never show that video with anyone ever again, but I’ve been putting up some more pep talks about kitchens and why you should avoid trendy choices in your mid-century home, and how to stick strong to your principles don’t let anyone else make bad choices for your house. But I also realized that the podcast can find a home on YouTube as well. It doesn’t have any fancy graphics to go with it.

But if you prefer to take in your podcast in YouTube form, or if you have someone in your life who prefers to listen to YouTube videos in the background rather than an official podcast, then you might want to recommend mid mod remodel to them in that medium. We’ll put a button on the website to get you started there.

For our resource of the week. Let’s talk about bathrooms. We haven’t done a bathroom design tip in a while, and today I want to talk about making the most of a really snug space, which let’s be honest, if you’re dealing with the existing footprint of a mid-century bathroom, you’re probably dealing with a pretty snug space. Don’t limit yourself to just what’s happening on the floor. Work to make the most of your bathroom.

Think about how you can mount storage or the vanity from the wall, hang your lights from the ceiling, add in a slender storage space in the form of shelves on the wall or shallow cabinets set into the wall. You can also use a lot of visual tricks to keep from making a small space feel smaller, like cutting off your views with a shower curtain, a glass shower enclosure, she seems to share the space of the shower compartment with the rest of the room.

On the other hand, if you are truly dealing with a limited amount of elbow room, you might not want to have a barrier of glass there. You might choose to have a shower curtain that stands open so you literally have space to lean into the shower compartment. In general, the more you can choose Simple and unfussy finishes. It will help a small area feel less cluttered. Let’s get into a couple of specific strategies.

It can be really helpful to get everything up off the floor, or as much as possible in a small bathroom in particular. So choose wall mounted bath cabinets, maybe even a wall mounted toilet if you want to replumb for easy maintenance and more spacious feeling with any modern bathroom, getting fixtures up off the floor as much as possible also makes it easier to clean.

I highly recommend a wall mounted or at least a compact toilet. Toto is one of my favorite brands for a modern update and a wall mounted sink cabinet. Or if you do want your base cabinet to go all the way to the floor, consider angling it backwards. This is going to be a bit of a custom design or a custom build, but it’s definitely a mid-century detail. That way you get more counter depth at hip height, but less of the floor area is taken up. You get a bit more foot room.

Speaking of counter space, it’s probably at a premium, so it’s helpful to run a low shelf around as much of the room as you can, six or eight inches above the counter height, to capture the lotions, the toothpaste, the night, drinking glass, and any other thing that might otherwise clutter up the counter on a daily use basis, so you can spread out and make a mess there for makeup moments or hair care or a bunch of first aid supplies without feeling that they’re you’re taking up the space of the things that live on the counter.

Try to have nothing live on the counter. You can also build storage into the walls. It’s a great way to share the space with other rooms. If you niche storage right into the wall cavity itself. Plus, if there’s a little bit of a void at any point in your floor plan between the way that rooms Connect, you can take advantage of a bigger space to get a bit more of a floor to ceiling storage cabinet. Some of that might be open storage, but the more it can be closed away behind doors that can still easily swing open, the more the room will feel tidier and cleaner.

If you’re not big on bathing in the tub on a regular basis, you might want to remove the tub from the foot front of your bathroom and go for a zero transition shower this can often help a small space feel bigger. If you have enough footprint to stand in a glass shower enclosure, makes it look like you’ve got more space over in the shower. But don’t rule out the possibility of a shower curtain that mostly stands open so you could actually lean into or step into a zero transition shower space.

This is also most helpful for privacy, for Max shareability of a hall bathroom used by the whole family or by several kids. It can be useful to try a couple of things. One, you might separate out several of the components if you can put the toilet or the shower into its own compartment and think about tucking a public sink into a bedroom or Hall access space that allows for multiple people to use the whole concept of the bathroom at once without using the same space.

The Bradys did it best, and I’m actually going to talk about Jack and Jill bathrooms as a subcategory of that concept at the end of the episode. But even in a single unit bathroom, this might be a place where, if multiple kids are using the bathroom to get ready for school every morning. Having a shower curtain instead of glass can mean that someone can run in and grab something they forgot, a watch on the counter, or just brush their teeth or check their hair while another family member is in the shower with a curtain closed.

It doesn’t mean that the whole bathroom is off limits. This, of course, depends on your family’s definition of privacy, on age, on gender, on all sorts of things, but having a shower curtain makes that viable, whereas having a glass shower enclosure makes it a little bit more of a pushing of boundaries.

So glass surrounds are your best if you have the bathroom to yourself for as long as you need, and shower curtains make a bathroom a little bit more shareable. They also work better for parents who are supervising small kids in the bath trying to get inside of a glass enclosure or take care of needs through it is less pleasant, and reaching around the edge of a shower curtain works a lot better for that situation as well.

So don’t forget to tailor the bathroom choices you make to the needs of your own family. It’s going to be a little bit of a challenge. A mid-century bathroom needs to be full of clever space planning tricks, because it’s often very small, but done, writing can be a beautiful and practical part of your home update. So whether you’re starting from a mid-century original bath or one that’s been updated in the wrong style since your home was built, you’ll want to choose carefully to make the right choices for your small space.

For more tips, in fact, five more tips on making great choices for a mid-century bathroom. Grab my mid mod bath update essentials guide. It’s a free PDF you can get by going to mid mod midwest.com/bath or, of course, the show notes page for this episode.

Like I said, the process of planning a feel good remodel, a really flexible remodel, has been on my mind lately as I’ve been working with homeowners at different scales and really with very different speeds in mind for their process. But the same principles hold true that if you have the framework of a good, solid plan, which doesn’t necessarily mean every detail hammered out in advance.

But does mean that you’ve done some important thinking on your priorities and on the possibilities and focused yourself a little bit, you are so much more able to respond to situations as they arise, even changes in your own energy, changes in the economy, changes in your budget, changes in availability of a particular material or a crew of workers that you were hoping To count on, whatever comes up along the way, you can meet that moment and still have a feel good remodel when you are working from a really flexible playbook, from a master plan.

And the nature of a master plan is flexibility. It is a document that constantly develops. That’s why the last step of the five steps in the master plan process. Dream about what matters most to you, discover what’s going on with your house, distill your personal style, draft options, and then develop your master plan. That last one develop is inherently an ongoing process. It’s not fixed. It’s not set in stone or even necessarily inked hard on paper. I like your master plan to be a digital document, really, but it allows you to move forward.

And when you’re in a hurry, which a lot of people tell me they don’t have time to plan, they just need to get started. Ooh, if someone is looking me straight in the eyes, when they say that, I have a really hard time controlling my face, because that concept is such a recipe for disaster, I just can’t even tell you.

But that’s not the point of this episode. The I think the inspiration for this episode really came from listening to a wonderful, lazy, genius podcast a couple of weeks ago. As you know, I am such a Kendra Adachi Stan, and I highly recommend her wonderful most recent book, the plan.

But she brought some of her particularly self-compassionate energy to a recent episode number 407 of hers on how to create a flexible weekly plan. This is, by the way, if you struggle with organizing your life, if you are a work from home person, or you run your own organization, like I do if you’re a parent with small kids, if you’re managing any kind of chaotic group of energy, including just your own, I recommend you check out her work, her podcast, and that episode in particular. But the thing she said that rewrote my brain chemistry for that particular morning was a quote from Jodi Pico, which is that you can’t edit a blank page

That makes sense, and it’s something I come across in writing and written work and putting my thoughts together all the time. When I’m creating this podcast, for example, I very rarely sit down and just start to ramble at you. I often have a draft or an outline. I don’t follow that outline religiously. You can hear me ramble a little bit right now, but you need to have something down, if only to be able to adjust it.

And this is actually sometimes the most valuable process of the master plan, not that you won’t end up following some parts of it, not that some of it won’t turn out exactly as you envision. But even if you don’t have a lot of time to dig deeply into it, to perfect and polish your master plan, even if you’re planning to get started on something right away, the shortest, the fastest, the most efficient possible version of a master plan process is still going to set you up for success.

And then you might be much more dramatically adapting it as you go along, because you didn’t get a lot of time to develop it, but you’ve got that physical, or maybe digital manifestation of your thought process that you can respond to, that you can adapt to, and the feel good remodel part of that is you’re pivoting from a base of solidity. I talked a little bit about the process of planning a remodel you can pivot from back about a year and a half ago.

If you wanted to get more into the depth of that, you should check out episode 1302 of the mid modern model podcast pivot with a master plan. I think that’s the most recent time I talked about the dichotomy that most people think they have to choose between of hiring an architect to detail every single element of your plan, and if you don’t have time to do that, or the budget to do that, then you just call a contractor, tell them what you want, and cross your fingers and hope for the best.

But there is a middle ground that’s less expensive, frankly, that’s less expensive. Of design time to do a master plan process, either with me or on your own, that’s very inexpensive. All it takes is your own time and energy. But. It’s also less expensive to go with a flexible Master Plan process, rather than the traditional design every detail, put it into a contract, pitch it to a contractor, let them tell you what it’s going to cost, and then agree to it, or possibly AX a few pieces of it to make it cheaper.

It’s much less expensive to have a flexible master plan, and it’s going to give you a more feel good remodel process, because at every different point you can pivot. You can always pick and choose a la carte elements. And even though at some point you will work a contract or you will set up the overall goal of the process, you haven’t kind of, you don’t begin with your vision of everything you could ever dream of and then have to chop things off of it.

You can assemble your goal and then it’s designed to be pulled apart into multiple phases, if necessary, or sort of what you can afford and what you can add on later or to prioritize. These are the areas that actually matter the most, because the Master Plan process begins with your why, with what matters the most to you. At any point you can return to this is the driving force of this project.

We’re remodeling this house for longevity because we want to stay in this house for our entire lives. Or we’re remodeling this house for the family togetherness that we want to have with our little kids now grow up into teenagers and a stable base for them to come back to over the years.

Or we’re remodeling this house right now to be the place where we can live our child free couple complete experiences, and where we can be the landing pad for all of our friends and extended family to come and stay with us, to really host so whatever the why is that drives you to make a change in your house, when you can return to that you can flexibly find the alternatives that affordably meet that goal, and it works so much better than if you’ve locked in every single detail and then you find out it costs too much.

One of the other tripping points of the traditional architectural process that always used to make me feel like it was so out of reach for most people was that while you could start with a budget goal in mind, you kind of needed to let go of the entire concept of budget. You were going to state everything you wished for, and basically you needed to be operating from a point where budget did not matter, because it didn’t matter what the bottom line was going to be. You wanted all those things, and you were going to get them.

Now, for some people, that is a viable way to plan a remodel, but it’s certainly not the way I budget for my projects, and it’s not the way that most of my clients feel about their remodels, either. So if you want a much more flexible, free form availability to pivot on a dime process, a master plan is going to work better than the traditional schematic, design, design development, construction, document construction, project management process, which, again, has its benefits, is lovely if that’s the lifestyle you’re living, if that’s what you can afford, but I hate to think that your options are that or nothing.

They are not. There is a middle ground, and I want people to have it. And when we talk about a feel good remodel, it also means feeling good during the remodel, particularly if during the remodel is a long time, if you’re breaking your apart, remodel apart into multiple phases that may last over years. Then for a feel good remodel, you want the ability to feel good over the years of the process of getting it done, and every month, remodel is going to have complexity. Is going to have unexpected costs, is going to have missing materials. It’s going to have the requirement to change the plan in middle of the process.

Maybe your life has changed. Maybe your scale has changed, maybe the economy has changed. But even though many of these setbacks are inevitable in the process of a remodel, they don’t need to mean that everything has gone wrong. I recorded an episode about a year ago, last fall, on how to actually enjoy your remodel, and you can find this. I think it’s episode 1401,

from September 2023 if you’re scrolling back through your podcast feed, but how to actually enjoy your remodel walks you through. Yeah, there’s going to be some inevitable setbacks. I give a little bit of a remodeler serenity prayer. Know what you can control and what you can’t and be prepared to match your expectations to reality.

But the power of a flexible master plan means that you can keep a playful attitude throughout the process. You can problem solve from your plan. Select something that fits your style guide, but is up or down the pricing range, choose to focus on a different room first, to again, to come back to what matters most and feel really satisfied with the priorities and the choices that you made.

This is absolutely possible, and the Master Plan process is going to help get you there. This came up most recently for me, just earlier this week with my fastest moving client right now, she is. Planning a complete gut remodel of a house. It’s actually already underway. They were doing the demo before we finished our master plan design even, and she’s hoping to move in before summer.

This is again, it’s an aggressive timeline, but I don’t think it’s completely unviable. And she’s really flying through the necessary decision making phase that comes at the end of the master plan package process, and right before you sort of lock everything down with your contractor, all of the different specifics that develop from your style guide on this particular project, I’m working beyond the scope of our traditional Master Plan package, because that’s what she’s asked for.

And I’m actually always available for a client once you’ve completed a master plan with mid mod Midwest. If you want more assistance, I’m around to help strategize with the contractor for the best results. To add more detail, more clever built in concepts, more sketches of different parts of the house, to pick out the perfect mid-century light fixtures, finishes, even furniture. I don’t want to get into our additional services package right now.

This is actually something that’s only available to our completed Master Plan clients. But if you are curious about that, you can check out podcast episode 1207, what happens after the master plan where I kind of walk you through some at that point, recent projects where I had gone beyond the Master Plan scope to help clients solve every problem that comes along. So in this case, she’s currently in the process of nailing down all of the finished choices.

She’s got her style guide, and we love all of the sort of visual language of the project locked in. So now it’s time to take it further, using a document that I always share with my master plan clients, a template finish schedule. If the word schedule to you only means putting something on the calendar. In the context of construction, a schedule is a spreadsheet which documents all of the material choices for the project.

Every fixture finish appliance, and in her case, piece of furniture gets documented in one specific spot so it can be agreed upon, so we can get the price locked in, so we can know exactly what product should be purchased. And again, this is Oh, this is turning into such a grab bag episode, but I talked more specifically about schedules for your mid-century home remodel planning spreadsheets for a mid-century home is the name of the episode, and that one was episode 804 from way back in February 2022, but with her, we are going through the schedule process right now.

She’s starting to make those actual choices. And the reason this came up for me at all was that she’d written me an email worrying that she was going in the wrong order. Which thing was the most important to pick out first. But right at this moment, we’re ahead of the game. This is the goal of a master plan, by the way, to make your choices before they are necessary.

So right now, it does not matter what order she chooses plumbing fixtures or light fixtures versus tile, and I was able to tell her confidently, follow your bliss. This is the feel good remodel process, because we’re still ahead of the game on design before construction, because we’ve got the floor plan that tells us where things are going to go, because we’ve got views. Because we’ve got views that tell us what kinds of finished materials we might choose.

You know, the bathroom sketch shows that we’re leaning towards globe lamps suspended from the ceiling for the vanity light fixtures. And because we’ve got the style guide, which gives us our material palette, all of that is already, if not, fixed, set again. It is a page that is ready to be edited. We can pivot from there. We are flexible around that. So now we can go in and lock down all of the other details in whatever order.

Feels good. She can research the things that are most exciting for her and the rest of the things that need to be addressed. Will cycle up to the top of our list, and we’ll make sure we catch all of them and get them all decided and locked down in the finished schedule before it’s necessary to know. But this depends on having the master plan in place. If someone reached out to me at the start of their remodel process and said, Hey, I want to do a compromise of remodel of my entire house, and I know I want to change the layout, and I want to do a full finish override, and all I want to talk to you about right now is picking out the specific kitchen appliances and tile.

I would roll my eyes so hard that would be such a mistake to fixate on those micro details before thinking about the big picture. But now that we’ve got our master plan set, we’ve got all of our other ducks in a row, it gives the freedom of a relaxed and flexible process. There is a timeline, but we are coloring within broad lines here. T

here’s not a specific order in which products need to be picked, because we’re in the product picking phase and we have our general information all set. No one is confused about what the look of the house is going to be. So we can have some fun picking out the specifics.

So that’s true. To give her a feel good process for a fast remodel, but even more so, it might be true for a feel good process in a slow remodel. I had two conversations with different clients, well, a client and a student recently, both of whom are planning much longer term projects, and in both of those cases, thinking about something that.

Might not be done until five or even 10 years from now, the chance to get to a bigger move in the kitchen, making major changes, changing of the layout for better flow in the house, to create the sort of dream host welcome come on in head, straight out to the deck, scenario that they are looking for. But just that’s not realistic for their budget and for their life stage and for their energy right now. Instead, they’re starting on smaller projects that are more urgent, that are more DIY able or self-manageable, and that fit into the budget that they’ve got saved up and affordable right now.

But at the same time, in both of those cases, it was the kitchen that was probably going to be punted to the end of the big picture to do list that’s fine. A kitchen should only really be your first project if you have a really solid plan and you’re doing everything at once, or if it’s the sort of core project and all you want to do afterwards is sort of cleaning up the details.

I’m a big proponent of, especially for a DIY or a self-managed, divided up process, doing a couple of smaller areas, first, before you get to the kitchen, let your style guide settle, let your skill set develop, let your communication skills and your budget expectations and your sense of the chaos simmer and get more concentrated before you tackle a big project like the kitchen. So they’re not in a bad place. But I also, in both of those conversations, I didn’t want them to just think, okay, the kitchen is 10 years from now, so we don’t touch the kitchen for 10 years.

If you’re waiting 10 years to do your big dream kitchen remodel, then this is where, again, a feel good remodel feels good right away. So this is where actually maybe one of your first or second priority projects is to do some cosmetic upgrades in that space, whatever the space you’re leaving, if it’s the owner suite, maybe you actually invest in adding one more daylight window or some better bedroom furniture, furniture conversation next week.

If it’s the kitchen, maybe you’re keeping all of your original layout and cabinets, but you choose to invest in a temporary new set of counters, certainly, you can go ahead and replace all the hardware, and that might even be one to one cyclable into your updated remodel in the future. You could, even if you know the exact layout of your future kitchen cabinets, and you know you’re going to have a few more drawers and a few less uppers.

Buy a couple of extra pieces of hardware so that when you switch them off the existing cabinets and onto the new ones, you’ve got the right pieces in place. This is the see down the road, headlights, brights on view that a master plan can give you but one way or another, the flexibility to know what the stages of your process are going to be to suspect what right now you and next year, year, when you for future, you are going to take on the master plan.

Process gives you that feel good remodel feeling that sense of there are things you can control and the things you can’t control, you will be able to deal with really flexibly, but you have the ability to enjoy it from start to finish, and that’s really my goal for you, is a feel good remodel, whether you’re taking on little tweaky changes or a big, aggressive transformative process to repair a remodel or a flip or to upgrade a time capsule into something that’s just as mid-century charming but suits your lifestyle better, that feel good.

Remodel process is important for the big ones, for the for the get it all done, folks. I don’t want you to feel miserable for a year until you get into your actual finished project. But maybe even more important for the people who are planning to take their remodel in phases, because I don’t want you to run out of steam in the middle. I don’t want you to compromise on that last big project, the kitchen, and let a contractor come in and do a hack job, because you just got burned out on making decisions.

I want you to build the endurance, the muscle, the skill set of a remodel like you’re building up your mileage for a distance race and feel stronger and better and happier at the end of it, because you’ve been working in a consistent, in a manageable, in a feel good remodel way the whole way along. And the secret to a feel good remodel is flexibility. It’s having options. It’s having the underpinning, the why of what you want to do. But really, it’s about giving yourself something that you can edit.

A draft of your project. A draft of your vision does not have to be fully realized in every aspect, and it does not, should not be fixed. It should be like jazz riffing on a melody you enjoy. I don’t really enjoy jazz, so I don’t know why I chose that metaphor, but basically, you want the ability to playfully, thoughtfully modify your plans as you go along, to pivot and be flexible, so that you can meet every moment, even if the moment right now is waiting between one project and another while you save up your time, your energy, your attention again for the next phase and the true feel.

Good remodel is going to be pleasant at every stage, even while you wait to take on the next remodel project. Maybe part of the feel good remodel process there is choosing some great mid-century furniture to fill in the gaps now and in the future. I’ll have more for you on that next week, and if you missed last week’s episode, don’t forget to check that one out for our mid-century house feature of the week.

Let’s circle back to bathrooms. Let’s talk about the Jack and Jill bathroom. And in this I’m talking about a couple of variations, typically a Jack and Jill just means a shared bathroom that is divided between two bedrooms, instead of one that is accessed with one door from a hallway or a public space. Sometimes that means two bedroom doors opening straight into a single room that contains a toilet, tub or shower and vanity.

At other times, it means each bedroom has their own vanity, sink and mirror, but they share a tub, toilet room between them. A twist on that one is that each bedroom gets its own vanity and toilet room and there’s a shared shower room. Sometimes both bedrooms open into a communal vanity area that’s more public, and then there’s single access to the tub toilet room, which makes it more private, and they’re for less likely to host an unexpected walk in.

And perhaps the most shareable, let’s call it safe version, is a semipublic, shared vanity space with two separate compartments off of it, one for the shower and one for a toilet, often with a tiny sink. This means the least amount of someone having to wait for a fixture that’s not even in use because the room it’s in is occupied now.

Jack and Jill’s are certainly more fixture efficient than everyone having their own private bathroom, and more shareable than just having one bathroom for the household that everyone has to take turns in or be in at the same time, but they do require a lot of careful floor plans, space planning, a lot of extra doors and circulation space and logistics.

What if one bedroom user locks all the doors for privacy, then walks away and the other bedroom user is out of luck? I did a master plan for a house in my own neighborhood a couple of years ago that had an interesting arrangement of a whole bedroom wing with two bedrooms on each side of a central hallway, so four in total. The hall itself had a central spine of a double wide, long closet down the middle and at the end a pair of toilet, sink rooms that each had a window.

Then there was a through connecting tub shower and storage room in the middle with two doors, one from each side of the double hallway. I can see where the idea came from and the efficiency that it probably offered at the time, but actually what it meant was a super dark tub shower room with no natural light and double hallways, plus the tub shower room was only five feet wide the width of the shower and the two doorways swung into the only foot traffic area, first blocking completely the storage against the back wall when they were open, and also taking up all of the floor area.

So this is fine, maybe for an adult using that tub shower in the shower compartment, but for a family with small kids, which it was who need to hang out outside the wet area while bathing a kid. It was not ideal. Surprise. Surprise, we ended up being asked to change that layout. Unfortunately for my conscience, the baths had already been flipped so we weren’t even tasked with sacrificing original features to make a better footprint for them.

I have also been called in on master plans where the original Jack and Jill layout had already been broken apart into two odd shaped units. It’s always a bit of a tricky floor plan. Okay, I realize I haven’t even named anything good about the Jack and Jill bathroom here, have I? Well, they were innovative. They were meant to be collaborative, collectivist, and they often had very cute public vanity sinks. Plus, they always made me think of the Brady Bunch.

What do you think about a Jack and Jill bathroom? Would you like to have one? What’s your hot take? Have you lived in one? Did you keep it or replace it? Are you living in one? Now, when I did a little cursory search, apparently a Jack and Jill is often a request for new builds. People think their kids will do better with a Jack and Jill bathroom between their bedroom spaces.

And personally, I think my early, mid-century sensibilities, is just it would always be better to have a hall accessible bathroom that anyone in the family can use and maybe requires a little more taking turns. But you know, that’s part of living in a family the Jack and Jill bathroom, I think should maybe have already had its day.

But I’m curious if you have an affinity for it, if you like it, if just thinking about the Brady Bunch makes you smile enough that you would go back and put it in, weigh in and let me know, give me a DM on Instagram, send me a picture of your functional, beautiful Jack and Jill bathroom that you would never take out of your mid-century house, and maybe you can change my mind.

And speaking of mid-century house features, don’t forget to check my Instagram story all the rest of this month for the mid mod madness matchup that’s going to be going on. We had a bunch of new ideas submitted, and I’ll be asking for your vote on which is your favorite, which is the all-time best, most missed. Most Desirable mid-century house feature, then I’ll keep talking about them all next year. Pop on over to mid mod Midwest on Instagram to place your votes.

Hopefully a feel good remodel now feels a little more accessible to you. Remember, if you need help planning the best possible remodel choices for your mid-century home, mid mounted West is here to help. There are three easy ways to work directly with me on your home.

You can schedule a consultation call anytime you need one. In a 30 minute zoom, we can dig deeply into the one or two issues that have you tied in a knot, or do a quick, comprehensive mid-century house audit, take me on a tour and ask me your top questions about every space in the house. We’ll sort out what your next best step is. If you’re looking for more ongoing support to DIY, a great plan for your mid mod remodel that you want to check out.

My ready to remodel program. It not only shows you the step by step mid-century Master Plan process with lessons, guides and workbooks for every stage, but you can show up for my monthly architect office hours. Call every first Monday of the month for a year, and get your questions answered continuously. Submit your floor plan for our layout Challenge workshop and get specific floor plan advice, plus that program kicks off with a bonus one to one mid-century house audit. Cool, huh. Learn more about that program, and frankly, almost everything I believe about planning a great remodel in my free master class, planning a mid-century remodel to fit your life and budget.

Or if you’d rather have me assess your life and your house, prepare layout options, sketch up floor plans and example views and present you with a platter of great possibilities that you can pick and choose from to develop the perfect, Timeless, tailored remodel. Well, then you’re looking for our mid-century Master Plan package. You don’t have to have all your ducks in a row. Let’s just start the conversation. You can apply to work with us by telling me a little bit about your house and your goals for it, and then I’ll get in touch to schedule a chat where we can find out if we’re a good fit for each other.

Find all of those ways to work with us, plus the transcript for this episode and a link to the resources that I’ve mentioned on the show notes page at mid mod midwest.com/ 2011 next week, we’ll be back to talking about fun mid-century furniture choices, and I will be sharing with you some of my favorite designers and styles that you might want to populate in your mid-century home. I’ll see you here next week for that one. Bye.

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