What should you do to get ready to sell a house built in the mid-century era – a house built back in the 1950’s or 60’s?
Should you rip out a tired kitchen? Quickly tear off that old, beat up siding and replace it with some easy care vinyl?
No, please don’t.
One of the saddest things that can happen to a mid-century house is that the current owners jump into a bunch of unnecessary repair work right before they sell it in the misguided idea that that’s what future owners will want.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Don’t make un-necessary changes
Instead, let me make your life easier. Do less. Because there is someone out there searching for your parents’ time capsule house.
Here’s a checklist of how to get the house ready to catch that person’s attention…and then move on with your life.
see a house from the 1950’s as a time capsule
Mid century houses may be a little worn out by time but they have hidden qualities. They have higher quality building materials and are sturdier than modern homes. Let any original features shine.
You may feel pressure to “modernize” before listing, but I’m here to tell you: don’t!
The beauty of a mid-century home is in its original features and charm. Start by clearing out any unnecessary items and giving the house a deep clean. These homes hold a unique appeal for those who love their quirks, so keeping those intact can actually make the property more attractive. Do relatively little.
Yes, it’s tempting to overhaul that vintage kitchen or replace old appliances, but remember that future owners will have their own vision. For major systems like the furnace or water heater, repairs are fine if they are essential. But in many cases, buyers who love mid-century homes, will appreciate the house as-is or prefer to customize these updates themselves.
Find a real estate agent who agrees
Choose a real estate agent who understands and appreciates mid century homes. They are going to help you “pitch” the home’s age as an asset and match it with someone who will WANT it for all of it’s existing features.
A good agent can help frame the house properly in the listing and take the right photographs.
The right agent can save time, money, and help get a good return on the house.
Get the house ready to sell in 4 steps
First, clear it out
Declutter the house to show its potential to new owners. It is common real estate wisdom to remove personal and decor items from a house that is staged for sale. In the case of getting an elderly parents’ home ready to sell it may be wise to remove all the furniture too. Let the house speak for itself. Let potential buyers visualize how they will fill it up with their own style that may be more vintage or more modern than what’s there now.
Then, clean it up
Clean thoroughly to make the house more appealing and to highlight original features.
Deep cleaning can make original surfaces look better without replacement. Murphy’s oil for woodwork, fresh paint on painted surfaces (but NOT on anything that has never been painted before), and freshly waxed floors can do wonders.
Make the house shine as a blank slate for the next owner to visualize.
Make (a few) Repairs
Undertake judicious repair work, focusing on necessary mechanical system repairs like a new furnace or water heater. If there are any dangerous flooring, stair or hand rail issues … address them.
But don’t do too much. Some repairs can be left for the next owner to handle. They might be able to bundle a replacement with a new design choice or shifting the layout so don’t steal their ability to get a 2 for 1 win on a project, later.
Edit out non Mid-Century Modern details
Edit the house to appeal more to mid century modern enthusiasts. Consider:
- removing shutters
- removing added details
- removing wall-to-wall carpeting
- refinishing original hardwood floors
A great level one update with great impact, but not too much permanence or expense? A quick front door facelift. This simple way to add curb appeal without a full renovation. I recommend swapping in a brightly colored, mid-century mailbox and matching the front door to it. This small upgrade provides a welcoming pop of color that invites potential buyers inside.
The Grandparent Rule and Mid Century Home Appreciation
If you have a hard time seeing the appeal of your parents’ home, that’s ok. You don’t have to love everything about it for someone else to find it charming. Part of what you’re missing might just be … time.
Mid century homes are now seen as quirky and cool, while 80s and 90s styles are out of date. A few decades ago, the prized home style was closer to the victorian era. Then there was a craze for craftsman cottages.
I call this the grandparent rule – older styles become more appreciated over time.
Mid-century homes have an inherent quality and craftsmanship simply by being of their time. They were built with old growth wood and skilled craftsmanship.
Quick Design tip for your…front door
This might be my favorite tip for folks facing overwhelm, homeowners who aren’t quite ready to for big projects and to add some serious curb appeal without serious commitment.
This checklist is a guide to help you confidently update your front door so that it greets you, your guests and neighbors with a style that reflects your own!
Mid Mod House Feature of the Week
The Carport
The carport is a really simple concept, rather than house for your car, it’s a little shelter. A carport might be open on all four sides, or just one lacking only a garage door, but it’s meant to give you a covered area to get in and out of your car, and for your car to stand in when you’re not using it, without having to fully enclose and condition a space.
Here are a couple of my fav modern carports and the (possibly) OG carport that Frank Lloyd Wright designed for Usonia 1 – the Jacobs house.
Listen Now On
Resources
- Grab the Front Door Facelift checklist!
- Take a peek at my Mid Century Front Door Pinterest Board.
- Find great mid century-friendly front door resources at:
- Missed the live Masterclass last month? Catch “How to Plan an MCM Remodel to Fit Your Life(…and Budget)” in replay!
- Get the essential elements of my master plan process in my new mini-course, Master Plan in a Month.
- Want us to master plan for you? Find out all the details with my mini-class, Three Secrets of a Regret-Proof Mid Mod Remodel.
And you can always…
- Join us in the Facebook Community for Mid Mod Remodel
- Find me on Instagram:@midmodmidwest
- Find the podcast on Instagram: @midmodremodelpodcast
Read the Full Episode Transcript
Della Hansmann
What should you do to get a house built in the mid-century era? That’s the 1950s 60s or 70s, ready to go onto the real estate market. Should you rip out a tired kitchen, quickly tear off that old, beat up siding and replace it with some easy care vinyl? No, please don’t. One of the saddest things that can happen to a mid-century house is that the current owners jump into a bunch of unnecessary repair work right before they sell it in the misguided idea that that’s what future owners will want.
Della Hansmann
Instead, let me make your life easier by advising you to do less. There is someone out there who is looking for your parents Time Capsule house. So today, I’m offering a checklist of how to get the house ready to catch that person’s attention and then move on with your life. For regular mid mod remodel listeners, I’ve also got a pep talk on how to take ownership of your front door, and a fun little mid-century history snippet about car ports and why you might want one. I will link to some pretty images that might persuade you.
Della Hansmann
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 1906
Della Hansmann
Now, before I get into advice for people who are trying to get a mid-century home off their hands, here’s a little note for my regular listeners, if you live in a mid-century home and you’re not planning to put it on the market because you love it and you want to stay there for the long haul, then you’re more than likely listening to this episode because you’ve got some remodel plans, some home improvement ideas, dancing around in the back of your mind.
Della Hansmann
I want to tell you that this is the perfect week to set your 2025, remodeling plans in motion by reaching out to work with mid mom, Midwest. Now, I know you’ve been putting it off for a while, but let’s make it happen. Here’s what I want you to do. Go to our website right now and check out the page that is labeled, work with us.
Della Hansmann
You’ll find it in the main drop in menu. There. You can read all about how the Master Plan process works or watch a helpful and motivational explainer video I made for you about the process. And then you can click on the orange button that says, Apply to work with us.
Della Hansmann
This is a simple form that asks you easy questions about you, your house and what you wanted to do to make it better. Hit, send. I will get right back to you with a scheduler to set up a zoom call so that you and I can chat about the project and make sure you’re a good fit for mid modern remodel, and that we are a good fit for you. If all goes well, we could be slotting you into our design calendar for early 2025.
Della Hansmann
But don’t wait too long. We’re booking projects now that probably won’t be coming back to their homeowners finished until February or March. So shorten up your wait time by getting your name in our design cube right away.
Della Hansmann
All right, I’ve chosen our design tip this week very carefully for this episode, because this is one of the things that I actually would recommend you think about changing on a home that you’re responsible for before selling it, but it’s also one of the best place to start making positive changes to your mid-century home.
Della Hansmann
Regardless how long you’ve lived in it and how long you plan to the front door, it is never the wrong time to turn up the mid-century style on your door and the area surrounding it immediately. So if you’re wondering where to even begin on making a real change to your mid-century home, but also one that doesn’t tie your hands and lock you or somebody else into a lot of future decisions, this is where to begin.
Della Hansmann
You’ll start by changing just two things. One, switch out the mailbox, choose a brightly colored mid-century style mailbox. I like modbox USA as an example, but basically, if you just do a Google Shopping search for modern mailbox or mid-century mailbox, you’re going to find a couple of great options. Once you’ve done that, take the new box to the paint store and have them color match the exact color of that box to a paint color. Get a quart of that paint, take it home and paint the front door the same color.
Della Hansmann
By tying those two elements together, the front door and the mailbox, you are going to be giving the house a statement. It’s just going to be an eye catching little detail. It doesn’t really matter what else is going on around the house, if the siding is tired and needs work, not your favorite color, any other details in the landscaping that need a tune up, a cheerful, brightly colored mid-century front door and a matching mailbox are going to make a statement that says somebody who lives here cares.
Della Hansmann
And for anybody that walks up to the house to come into it, they’re going to be confronted by a cheerful color that’s going to make them think positive thoughts. So this is a great way to just get started. To get yourself out of a deadlock, to get yourself moving, or to put a little bow on any landscaping or cleaning up, or basic maintenance tidying you’ve been doing around the house.
Della Hansmann
This is something you can really change that does not lock you into anything else. In the future. You could do a siding project in the future. You could paint the whole house in the future, when you have more time, when you have more money, other projects, you might hire someone else to take care of.
Della Hansmann
But this is something that anybody with a modicum of DIY energy can get done, and can get done relatively quickly, a little ordering and planning ahead and then taking care of it in a weekend. This is a great tune up the house for spring. Wrap up the house for.
Della Hansmann
Wall, get the house ready to put on the market. This is a choice you can make at any time. It’ll always be the right choice. So if you would like more tips on how to make good choices for zazzing up the space around your mid-century front door, I have a checklist, the mid mod front door facelift checklist, and you can grab that at mid mod midwest.com/front
Della Hansmann
door. It’ll tell you how to go a couple of steps further than just door color and mailbox, but that’s your starting point that you’re jumping off from. So let me know if you’ve already done this, and if you are thinking about doing it, then I encourage you to go ahead and get started ASAP.
Della Hansmann
As always, you’ll find that link as well as our show notes with a transcript of this episode, plus our upcoming design feature and some photographs of that. Everything You Need to Know about working with mid mod Midwest or following up on the advice in this episode at the show notes page, mid mod midwest.com/1906
Della Hansmann
All right, now let’s talk about how to prepare a time capsule mid-century house for sale, or frankly, how to prepare a house that has been remodeled a couple of times and just sort of been lived in and loved and been a family home for one or several families since the 1950s or 60s right through to today.
Della Hansmann
It might have a 90s kitchen and vinyl siding on the outside, but if it has any original mid-century features left, it has the potential to go to someone who really appreciates those mid-century features. And if it doesn’t, it’s likely got the bones, the structure, the layout of a mid-century house. It’s in a mid-century neighborhood. It’s easy to see this house as being just bland, small, old, out of date, but I want you to see this house differently, and I want you to prepare it for the market accordingly.
Della Hansmann
I’m going to give you several pieces of very good news. One, I’m going to tell you to do relatively little, save you time and energy and money. And two, I’m going to tell you that this house might not seem special to you, but it is special to someone else, and if you can connect with the right people, you can hand off this house to good value. You can make it a family home for another couple of generations, and you can get a good return on your parents’ investment in living in this home.
Della Hansmann
I’m assuming this is, in general, the story I hear most often is an elderly parent needing to turn their house over their kids, putting it on the market and moving on with everybody’s lives. So perhaps the first and most important thing you can do is to find a real estate agent, find someone who specializes in, who likes, who appreciates mid-century homes to help you prepare to sell it.
Della Hansmann
Too often I run into house that I personally see as charming, as beautiful as a resource, as amazing. And I notice it because it’s got a for sale sign on it. It’s on my dog walk route. Or maybe I pass it on my running route. It’s in the neighborhoods that I drive by. And I want to know what’s happening on the inside of this house that I have loved the outside of for so long.
Della Hansmann
And when I go to an open house day and have a chat with a real estate agent who’s selling it, they don’t seem to appreciate its value at all. They may not know or use the word mid-century when they describe the house that they’re trying to sell to other people, they’ll say, yeah, it’s a project, or Yeah, it’s a blank slate, or Yeah, you could, you could really
Della Hansmann
the lot has a lot of value. And I’m looking around and seeing woodwork and old growth structural timber and plaster work and cute vintage light fixtures. I’m seeing a house that somebody else would scream and cry and dance for joy to get, and this person is giving me nothing.
Della Hansmann
They’re not pitching it to me at all. So I’m kind of walking through the house seeing a diamond in the rough, seeing a secret deal. Now in this case, it’s great for me. It’s great for me. It’s great for anyone that I can connect with the house. If I, you know, throw it in my Instagram story and say, Hey, Madison, people, somebody come love up this mid-century house that needs you. That person is going to get a steal on the house because the people who are selling it don’t know what they’ve got.
Della Hansmann
You might agree. You might look at the house that you are currently putting on the market that was built in the 1950s and 60s. Perhaps your childhood home and see that it’s tired, that it’s worn out, that it looks old fashioned and dated, you might like something different.
Della Hansmann
Or perhaps you’ve come around to you’ve heard the word mid-century thrown out on the internet. Perhaps people you know and love, perhaps your kids think it’s cool, but you have a hard time really seeing it. And that’s that makes a lot of sense. That’s relatable my own parents, when I found and purchased a 1952 ranch house, a mid-century house, quite a modest one, for my own first home purchase, and then turned around and founded a business of remodeling and highlighting the features of mid-century homes.
Della Hansmann
They were puzzled. They did not see the charm. Now I haven’t in this case, I have turned them around. They’re my parents. They love me. I speak to them about this all the time. I’ve gotten them to see it. But when they walked into this house, they saw their parent’s homes. They saw something that was boring, tired, out of date, and this is absolutely.
Della Hansmann
Typical. I think of this as actually a truism of human life. I call it the grandparent rule. We tend, in general, to think of the style of our grandparents as kind of vintage and cool and quirky. Perhaps it’s not cutting edge, but it has some innate charm, but the style of our parents is just out of date, old fashioned,
Della Hansmann
worn out, not nice. And so this is why a lot of millennials think of mid-century homes as quirky, cute and vintage, while we completely turn our back on the houses and the styles of the 1980s and 90s. So that’s the grandparent rule. This is it comes in. Basically, As things get older, they become more and more out of date, and then they sort of swing back around and become vintage, quirky and cool. In my childhood, in the 1980s and 90s, the style that people were fixated on was a kind of Victorian farmhouse.
Della Hansmann
They liked dark oak, they liked wallpaper, they liked overdone upholstery, or overstuffed upholstery. I’m putting pejoratives onto it because, again, grandparent rule. It’s not my grandparents, it’s my great grandparents, and it doesn’t appeal to me as much. But then, as time goes on, the mid-century era has aged into the grandparent rule as well. The other reason people have really come to appreciate mid-century design is not just that two generation skip, but the inherent quality in these houses.
Della Hansmann
Mid-century, homes are well built of good materials, with great design, and they have some irreplaceable qualities that I want to quickly highlight the value of for you. If you’re in the position of wandering around looking at your parents’ house, wondering who could ever want to live here again, allow me to tell you that you probably already know it’s in a great neighborhood. It’s close to city services, parks, schools, churches, libraries and more.
Della Hansmann
Mid-century houses were built in mid-century neighborhoods, and they were developed in sort of a single family home zoning area, but in a time when it was important to have little pockets of accessible features all around a mid-century house, they are also incredibly sturdily built, whatever you may think about the style, the mid-century era was the last time in American history that we had access to old growth wood and the craft of plastering, woodworking that was done in a way that wasn’t built in factories, wasn’t pre manufactured in most cases.
Della Hansmann
And basically every house that’s been built since the mid-century era has been built with lower quality labor and lower quality materials. That’s not to say that no one can build a sturdy home today and that there is nothing that could be done to do in new construction, but the just general, typical nature of a mid-century house was that the pine that makes the two by fours that support the walls of a mid-century house is completely unlike the pine today, it is old growth, dense grain, stronger, lighter, harder than you can find for love or money in a lumber yard today.
Della Hansmann
And there was a level of craft and experience skill that went into the construction of those houses. You can just typically assume that a mid-century house is very, very sturdily and well built. And then there’s style. The mid-century era was a house ideal of small but practical. They’re not too big, but they are right sized. They’re casual. They have living spaces that connect together. They have, even if they’re modest, windows that look out to the street and connect to the backyard.
Della Hansmann
They’ve often been added onto in practical, loving ways, with little screen porches and push out additions, and they have the potential to be added onto in a way that a tract house built in the 80s or 90s was meant to be as big a house as anyone could ever want, and hard to add on to, because of its structure, because the trusses in the roof and the engineering and the way its foundation is kind of complex and poured but A mid-century house was meant to be the smallest house you could get away with, but easy to add ton to over time.
Della Hansmann
This is a great feature for anyone who’s trying to make a home their own, trying to tailor it to themselves. And these houses, largely because they’re built on one level, in most cases, are also perfect for aging in place. This is why you’re in the situation you’re in now.
One of the most common ways for a house built in the 50s or 60s to change hands is for one person or couple to move into a house way back when, raise a family in it, have that family leave the nest, continue to work there, go into retirement and stay in the house, aging in place until they are no longer capable of living there alone, and then, as they go into assisted living or pass away, their adult children are tasked with clearing the house of a lifetime of memories and objects and putting that house on the market.
Della Hansmann
Now, from my perspective, from the perspective of someone who adores mid-century houses in all their original glory, this is a really risky time for the house itself, because tired, energetic, busy adult children putting their parents’ house on the market, and well-meaning realtors who don’t get mid-century design trying to help that process go quickly and get the best price for it, are very much in danger of making unnecessary and irrevocable choices for the house that will actually diminish its long term value, slow down the process of selling it and waste every.
Della Hansmann
One’s time, money and energy. Now, when you walk around a time capsule house and you’re not a fan of mid-century design, it’s easy to see 70 year old cabinets, flooring, trim and walls and think that the house needs maybe a complete overhaul before anyone else would want it. But that’s not true, and it’s not true for two reasons. First, any changes you make to a house before selling it have the potential to damage or destroy its original character, something that someone else would actively value. Those original cabinets that you think are tired might be repairable or lovable by another person.
Della Hansmann
But secondly, even someone who’s not necessarily planning to buy the house and live in it as a time capsule, someone who’s going to want a house eventually that’s more updated, whether in mid-century style or any other it’s impossible for you to plan changes to the house that are going to perfectly suit that person. Any choice you make to replace a broken or battered item on the house, new fixtures, new finish, new appliance. These are general choices. They’re choices that you are going to have to assume someone else might want.
Della Hansmann
They’re likely not to be the most luxurious or expensive or long term choices, because you’re trying to put in something practical and then move on, get the house off your hands. But even if you did make the largest possible investment, there’s still such specificity in a remodeling choice. Believe me, I know this is my job, you can make a choice that pleases you and could please someone else, or it could just as easily turn them right off.
Della Hansmann
At best, a person who buys a house that’s just been fixed up might grudgingly take it on, thinking, all right, well, they just remodeled the kitchen, and even though I hate the waste, I’m going to have to bite the bullet and tear it all out and do it again because I don’t like that color, I don’t like that tile, I don’t like that layout. At worst, they’ll be put off from the idea of throwing away new things you’ve just attached to the house and pass it by any change you make to a mid-century house with the goal of improving or updating, it has as much potential to turn away a new potential buyer as to draw them in.
Della Hansmann
So okay, what can you do? Here’s the short version. What I recommend you do after you’ve found a realtor who likes your mid-century house, to give you some advice and help you walk through this process, is first clear the house, then clean it, then repair and possibly slightly edit it. Okay, I’m gonna talk about each of these things in more detail. Step one, clear the house. Declutter.
Della Hansmann
I mean, actually, take everything out of the house. It’s a rare mid-century homeowner that lives in a house in a true Time Capsule manner, with all of their original furniture and decorative choices intact. My grandparent’s house was actually a true time capsule to the 1960s and it may be responsible for the early love I had for the era, even before I had done deep research on its many fine features.
Della Hansmann
But a much more common story is that people simply live through the decades in their houses, and they replace their original furniture with lazy boys in the 90s, a new bedroom set for 10 years ago, maybe in a burst of energy efficiency in the early 2000s they replaced all the bulbs in the house with compact fluorescents that now have a really cool, hard white glow that don’t really suit anyone’s face or make the house feel nice, and they’ve probably remodeled certain parts of the house in various eras according to the taste of that time, rather than in full alignment with the original era of house.
Della Hansmann
All of these things are what they are, but for all of the furnishing and decorative choices, you want to just pull those back out show off the time capsule house to its best advantage by removing all of the existing furniture and objects and let the new owner visualize the space with their own stamp on things. Now there is, of course, a school of thought that the easiest way to sell a house is to stage it full of furniture. But no offense, your parents’ furniture is not the right furniture to help someone see the potential of this house.
Della Hansmann
Staging, in this case, means going all the way and having a professional come in and do the house thoroughly with mid-century authentic furniture and pieces temporarily. Actually, that could be an amazing idea. You might compromise and arrange with a local vintage store to provide you a charming sofa chair, rug and coffee table to show off the living room in its mid-century glory, it would look amazing in the listing photos, but I wouldn’t bother too much with this, because largely you’re going to show the house as a blank slate for the next person to come ahead. All right, that is clearing the house next.
Della Hansmann
Clean it. Thoroughly clean it. Now there is a whole segment of the population that is excited, thrilled to go live in a vintage house, someone else’s old house, and they will revel in the authenticity of original woodwork, tile and fixtures, even if they are kind of beaten and battered.
Della Hansmann
But no one wants to live in someone else’s authentic grime, so deep cleaning all the original surfaces will not only make the house more appealing to a new owner, it might make the features look like they don’t actually need to be replaced. Woodwork that seems tired may shine under a new coat of Murphy’s oil, no matter how house proud, any elderly owner is going to let a few areas of maintenance and cleaning slip. Um.
Della Hansmann
In the case of I’m thinking of my neighbors, next door neighbors, who left their home a few years ago after living it well into their 80s. They hadn’t even been in their basement in five years before the House finally went on the market. So there is a lot of deep cleaning that could be done, and this is really all I actually recommend you do to the house, clear it and clean it.
Della Hansmann
Now, if you want to go further, there are a few things that may satisfy a need inside you to get the house all set to go and benefit a future owner and possibly even help a sale. You can do a little bit of repair and replacing within limits, strict limits.
Della Hansmann
This is where I would say maybe if the House has an aging furnace or water heater, a busted dishwasher, a leaky faucet, or possibly needs a new roof. It might be beneficial to invest in having that kind of repair work done before putting the house on the market, but you could also just acknowledge that those repairs are necessary and build it into your asking price, because the next person might find that they could bundle those maintenance upgrades with a bigger design choice, for example, even something as basic as practical as water heater replacement.
Della Hansmann
The next owner of the mid-century home might have chosen a smaller or larger tank based on their family size and water use. They might have chosen to go energy efficient with a tankless unit. If they were choosing a tankless, they would relocate it closer to the bathrooms.
Della Hansmann
They might also want to relocate the water heater in general, because they plan to change the layout of the basement, and the time of installing a new water heater is the most effective time to do that. In all of those cases, just getting them a new water heater, even a good one, does them no good, and might actually make them feel like the house was harder to modify than they hoped it would be.
Della Hansmann
So I recommend that you do any repair or maintenance work on the house, very judiciously, it’s much more important for the House to seem clean and ready to be remodeled than it is for you to do remodeling work on it.
Della Hansmann
All right, so I talked about clear, clean and repair and finally, Edit. This is one thing you could think about doing, particularly if you are trying to appeal to someone who’s going to love this house for its mid-century features, they’re probably looking for something more mid modern than mid-century vintage.
Della Hansmann
Now there were houses built in the mid-century era that have original features like fake shutters, carriage lamp style, split rail fronts out front that tip the house from the time it was built backwards. More mid-century farmhouse, mid-century Victorian, mid-century traditional. It makes a little less sense that way, which is part of the reason why people looking back now to generations of the grandparent era would like to see something more mid-century modern. They want to see the Atomic Age.
Della Hansmann
They want to see that future forward look from the past. So in particular, a choice that would have appealed to the original owners of the house. Your parents like wall to wall carpeting put down over original hardwood floors. This is something you can edit, remove it, pull that carpet, refinish the floors, and make those original wood floors a main feature of selling the house.
Della Hansmann
This type of editing, not even really replacing, but just removing things can be really effective for a curb appeal update. If you’re looking to bring the house just a little bit more pizzazz, you can definitely think about removing faux shutters, removing any decorative exterior details that feel more vintage, more mid-century traditional, rather than mid-century modern. And if you’re looking for a little bit of advice on a quick, lightweight curb appeal update, I recommend that you also go check out the episode I recorded last year. This would be your perfect mid-century front door, and that would be Episode 1110 so you can go to mid mod, midwest.com/ 1110 to find that advice.
Della Hansmann
But largely what I really want you to know is that you do not need to do much to get your mid-century house ready to go onto the market, whether it is yours that you passing along or has been in the family and now you’re trying to move it to the next family. What you really need to do is leave the house alone, but go looking for the person who’s going to like it for the features that it already has.
Della Hansmann
The most important thing you can do is find a real estate agent who knows the word mid-century and is excited about it. That person is going to be able to pitch the house to other agents to frame it properly in the listing, to take the right kind of photographs, to give you the advice on how to clear it, clean it and repair it to the right extent.
Della Hansmann
This is going to save you time and money, and it’s going to help you feel like your parents’ house, however you feel about its style, I hope you have positive associations with it, and what you probably want for it more than anything, is for it to go to another family that’s going to live in it, love in it, be good neighbors to your neighbors, and make the street where you grew up a really beautiful place to keep living.
Della Hansmann
Alright, let’s wrap up the episode by highlighting a feature of original mid-century homes. For this week’s mid-century house feature, I want to highlight something that most people would think of as old fashioned, out of date and needing replacement. But I am going to ask you a question, are you pro or anti? Carport?
Della Hansmann
The carport is a really simple concept, rather than house for your car, it’s a little shelter. A carport might be open on all four sides, or just one lacking only a garage door, but it’s meant to give you a covered area to get in and out of your car, and for your car to stand in when you’re not using it, without having to fully enclose and condition a space. Now I don’t think I’m quite willing to give him all the credit he would like to take.
Della Hansmann
But Frank Lloyd Wright, Yeah, that guy claims to have invented the carport, and I run past one of his earliest examples of this idea pretty regularly, in the form of the Jacobs house. That is Usonia, one his first Usonian home. For more on the Usonian homes concept, I’ll have to point you to a longer source. I’ve talked about this in the podcast before, and go check out episode 1704 and 1705 for Frank Lloyd Wright generally, and how he connects to and how you can connect him to your mid-century home.
Della Hansmann
But the Usonian homes were his, his mid-century idea started slightly before the official beginning of the mid-century era, in the 1930s in the Great Depression. He wanted to create a small, modest, universal USA or Usonian home. But right now we’re talking about carports. And here’s the short version. Frank Lloyd Wright was a guy who believed that he could and should control how people lived in their houses. By the way he designed them. Houses the Ultimate Big Brother. He once designed what he thought the lady of the house should wear, a dress for her to perfectly coordinate with the home.
Della Hansmann
He had designed, no comment, but he designed a carport. I’m not going to give him credit for inventing it, but he liked it, and he thought it was great idea, because people had a tendency to keep junk in their sheds, in their barns, in their garages, and he didn’t like it if only people had a carport, not a garage. He reasoned they wouldn’t be able to store so much junk because they wouldn’t be embarrassed to let it all be seen from the street. So he created a shelter for the car and called it a day.
Della Hansmann
Now, to be accurate, he created gorgeous shelters for cars. I will put some pictures of the Jacobs house in the show notes page so you can agree with me. You will agree it is beautiful. But that doesn’t mean that you are going to want a carport instead of a garage if you’ve got one. Here’s what a carport does not do. It doesn’t protect your car from the elements completely.
Della Hansmann
It doesn’t protect your car from critters. My folks live in the country, and if they leave their cars parked outside too long, the mice eat the brake lines. That’s bad, and it doesn’t protect your car from opportunistic theft. You can’t leave it unlocked in a carport like you could leave it potentially unlocked in your garage. It also doesn’t allow you to accumulate things in the corners the same way that you can in a garage.
Della Hansmann
And you tell me whether that’s a pro or a con, a well-designed carport can protect your car from most rain and snow, particularly if you think about and plan for prevailing winds, and if you have a windscreen in the right spot, it can also protect your stuff, because a carport is often augmented with closed and locked storage cabinets that can also serve as a windscreen. Here’s where I’m going to make an argument for carports. I think that kind of two foot deep, closed and openable storage cabinet can be more effective than just the general jam stuff into the back part of your garage storage technique.
Della Hansmann
By the way, if you want to just make your garage more like a carport, you can do built in, purpose built storage for your stuff, rather than as Hi, I am guilty of this just putting stuff in the back corner and then putting more stuff on top of the stuff on top of the stuff in the back corner until you’ve got a junky back end of your garage. But one more thing to think about is the multi functionality of the garage and or carport, the car first space around our house can also do more service to us than just being for cars. It can be a place for people on special occasions. And this is actually an idea that high end luxury homes have tried to incorporate.
Della Hansmann
Recently, I’ve seen a lot of the model homes popping up on the internet, coming up with either a party or a show garage. This is often a second garage to augment a working everyday garage. The odds are that your current mid-century house garage is not a lovely or light filled or warm or clean enough space to host a party in, but a carport really could be. It could double as a protected patio that is a wonderful place for you to hang out yourself in nice weather or to host friends.
Della Hansmann
It can be easier to keep clean, to experience fresh air, and just generally be a likable spot in your house when you park your car on the street and then when you then when you want to park the house, Park closer to the house because it’s raining or snowing or whatever, then it is a car space. So this isn’t me saying we should all tear off our garages and replace them with carports.
Della Hansmann
My Midwestern heart quails at the thought, but I do think that there can be some benefit if you have a house with a carport on it. Don’t necessarily think that’s something you must change, unless it does not serve your life. If you are thinking about how to add more car space around your house, it might be that what you need is a little more covered car area and rather than entirely enclosed car area, one way or another. This is just another mid-century house feature that works for some people and doesn’t work for other people has pros and cons.
Della Hansmann
And I think this ties in nicely to sort of wrap up our episode of leaving original mid-century futures intact. If you are not the person that’s going to live with them, let the next person decide whether it’s right for them. And if you are the person living in a house with a carport and you love it, I would love to hear from you. So reach out to me on Instagram at mid mod Midwest or send me an email and just let me know that you love your carport, if that’s you.
Della Hansmann
Or that you hate it. You know, I’ll take that news too. I’m curious, but I’ll put a couple of photos of some of my favorite mid-century houses with carports that really augment their style on the show notes page. Be sure to check that out.
Della Hansmann
You can find all the resources I’ve mentioned in this episode, the front door advice, the transcript of everything I’ve said on the episode and photos of fun mid-century carport designs, including one by one Frank Lloyd Wright at the show notes page at mid mod midwest.com/1906
Della Hansmann
Before I let you go, I just want to say I am always ready to talk to you about what you can do to tune up and make a mid-century house your own. Or if you’re looking for some advice on how to get a house ready to put on the market, I’d be delighted to talk to you about that too. I want good things for your mid-century house, whoever’s going to live in it next.
Della Hansmann
So you can always arrange to have a consult call with mid mod Midwest, with me, Della Hansmann, by going to midmon-midwest.com/call and putting yourself right onto my schedule, I’d be delighted to chat with you about whatever’s on your mind.
Della Hansmann
For now, I hope you’re feeling a little more appreciation for the mid-century home you have right now and next week, I’ll be talking about how to make a mid-century house even a little better by improving its insulation.
Della Hansmann
This is actually one design feature that most mid-century houses are lacking in the mid-century era was not a great one for good temperature separation between inside and outside of houses. So I’ll be talking to you about how you can retrofit a mid-century house for the future by improving its insulation in many places and ways. We’ll talk about that next week.