This week, I’m sharing a Best Of episode on tackling one of the biggest remodeling myths I hear from clients—”I need to save up all the money before I can even start planning.”
I get the urge to save before you spend. But for home remodels, I argue that planning is step one. Dreaming up your ideal remodel, researching materials, and sketching out your vision are the essential “prep” steps that will shape a budget that fits your goals. Planning now can actually help you save more efficiently, so by the time you’re ready to start, you’ll have a clear picture of what’s next.
Quick Design tip for your…tile search.
Listen in as I answer Anna’s question about replicating a beautiful mid-century tile for her bathroom project. I share tips on how to find materials that are affordable, style-conscious, and authentic to your mid-century home.
Mid Mod House Feature of the Week
The Whole House Intercom
An iconic mid-century home feature and a lovely nod to mid-century design ingenuity. Whether you remember using one at your grandparents’ house or have seen one in a time capsule home, these systems highlight the techno optimism and forward focus of the mid-century era.
Resources to help you set a home remodel budget
- Missed the live Masterclass last weekend? 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 on in the Facebook Community for Mid Mod Remodel
- Find me on Instagram:@midmodmidwest
- Find the podcast on Instagram: @midmodremodelpodcast
Waiting to save up BEFORE you plan your remodel? I hope you’ll take this the right way when I tell you … you’re doing it wrong.
I know … you’re being responsible. You’re waiting to plan util you’ve got the budget in the bank. But … ACTUALLY it’s more responsible for you to plan your remodel now, before you have the budget for it than to blindly save for years and then start planning. Let’s talk about why.
Starting to plan when you feel ready to start remodeling is too late for a satisfyingly speedy process. And Saving without a plan is actually pretty unrealistic. So if your question was: Della, how can I plan before I have my home remodel budget saved up?
I’ll ask you this, how could realistically budget when you don’t yet know what you want to do?
If you want a great home remodel budget – you need a great plan for your home improvement projects. Don’t wait another minute to get started! Enroll right now in Ready to Remodel and join the current cohort of fellow mid-century homeowners who are going to be planning great remodels for their homes!
Read the full episode Transcript
Della Hansmann
Now, if you are holding off on your remodel plans, even the planning part until you saved up just a little more money or maybe a lot more, this seems so responsible, so reasonable, so logical, and it is so wrong. Look, if you’re a practical person, for any major purchase, you save first and then buy the thing. So you probably think you should do the same for your remodel, save first, then spend.
Della Hansmann
Nope, because the real flow of events goes like this. You want a thing, you determine you have the money or save for it, and then you buy it first you want it. And the thing that you want a vacation, a car, AV or sports equipment. It’s more than just its category. It’s specific. You want a top of the line product, or maybe you don’t.
Della Hansmann
Maybe you think that the new release has a bad feature, and you actually want a different, older version, one that works better for you. You want a particular vacation, a place, an amount of time, vibe, and you’ve done some research and planning to figure out that want. Then you save or keep saving and finally, do what you want. This is true of Home Improvement Plans too.
Della Hansmann
So if you’re waiting to start the remodel until you’ve finished saving, well, in my opinion, the start of the remodel is the planning, the research, the figuring out what you want and why, and that part should start long before you finish saving. In fact, I think it could start right now.
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 ranch enthusiast. You’re listening to Episode 1904 and here’s what’s going on in mid mod remodel world right now. Last weekend, we held a live master class the planning a mid-century remodel to fit your life and Budget Master class.
Della Hansmann
I only get to do this a couple of times a year, and it was so much fun to give it live again. Last weekend, some really lovely people showed up. We had a marvelous time. And if you missed it, you haven’t missed out, you can still listen or watch the master class.
Della Hansmann
Now I recommend watch because there are lovely slides that I made for you with bullet points and highlights and sketches of what I’m explaining and talking about. But here’s what’s reality. You’re listening right now to a podcast because you like to listen to information, and Lord knows, I have listened along to visual presentations in the past while on a long drive with my phone face down for safety, or while walking Roxy in the dog park, where I can pick up the screen and look if I want.
Della Hansmann
So if you did not get a chance to watch the class, I would love for you to check it out. And instead of pointing you to one of my other existing free resources on mid-century design, I’m going to use our resource snippets segment of the podcast to call out a specific question that came up in the Q and A after the live class, because one simple question submitted in advance by a mid mod remodel listener named Anna.
Della Hansmann
Hi, Anna!
Della Hansmann
About how to find and replicate a beautiful tile she’s seen and loved in her workplace ended up just morphing into a really juicy pep talk on how to select and manage the budget for mid-century materials and how to create a mid-century effect with modern materials.
Della Hansmann
I’ve clipped that answer for you here, but if you want to check out the whole master class, go to mid mod, midwest.com/ready, and you can see it in its entirety. Watch it on your own time.
Della Hansmann
Anna had asked about; how do I find this tile? She took a picture of it’s in the basement of her workplace, and she would love to do something similar in something similar in her bathroom. I don’t know the source of this specific tile, but I would recommend you hit a couple of the suppliers, like fire Clay, Clay house, H, A, U, S. I have a list of mid-century tile suppliers on my Instagram. There’s also, it’s all inside of ready to trade model.
Della Hansmann
But what I would say is, actually, this is a style guide question, and it’s not necessarily, where do you find this specific tile, but to note, what’s going on with it? Why is it so beautiful? Well, one, it’s in a stack bond pattern, rather than a subway tile arrangement, where there’s an offset between them like a brick wall. They’re stacked in a grid. They’re also set up so that there’s very little contrast between the tile itself and the grout between it. So in a in a sort of a HGT flipper update, this would be white tile, shiny, bright white, and it would have black or dark colored grout to make a bigger contrast.
Della Hansmann
Here, it’s very neutral. It’s not creating a really loud effect of the pattern, but the pattern is visible. It’s subtle, but it’s there. The other thing to note about this is, again, if I zoom in a little closer, it’s a matte finish. Mid-century houses lean into matte finishes. So you want to think about, how can you find a sort of a handcrafted tile? Again, not a cheap option. But look at fire clay. Clay house.
Della Hansmann
They have. There’s a little bit of variability in the stain here too, and it’s got a matte fired finish, and it’s slightly irregular around the edges. Those qualities are going to help you find a tile that is very close to this one. Oh, Heath Ceramics is another great source.
Della Hansmann
But rather than think about specific sourcing, I want you to think about what are the qualities of this tile that you’re seeing here, the proportion of it, the way it’s arranged, the finish of it, and. A is it a factory finish color or a little bit more of a Han color? All of those things are going to help you to nail down something that’s quite similar to this in finish. And also it’s just beautiful. How much it’s in the same range as this lovely wood where, again, wood into a house.
Della Hansmann
This is a bit of a darker, more walnutty finish. I would guess that this workspace was done in the late 60s or early 70s, but it’s gorgeous, and I really hope you can track it down, but those are some of the places I would start. Rather than saying I’ve got a specific answer for you, I’ve got a range, and honestly, a range of answers is better because it’s going to let you tune the budget of the way you solve this problem.
Della Hansmann
You might even be able to find some seconds or some returned or something. Once you know what you’re looking for, you can start hunting and bargain hunting for something that’s going to meet the criteria you’re looking for, rather than this is the product. I must have.
Della Hansmann
A lot of people who see a magazine project would write to the person who did that remodel and say, What was your source for this tile? And then they would feel they had to buy that tile from that source, or the project wouldn’t work.
Della Hansmann
But this approach, what are the qualities of what it looks like, is going to get you a lot closer and also hit your budget. I’ve been working on an episode about how to make sure you are in control of your remodel and your budget, rather than the other way around, the budget is in control of you and your remodel, but I have intentionally pushed it to later in the season.
Della Hansmann
Apparently, today is I’m on a roll of playing you snippets you should not miss TM, because the substance of this episode is actually one I recorded in August 2022 what I really want you to know right now today, especially if you’re on the fence about really getting started getting serious.
Della Hansmann
Or conversely, actually letting yourself have some fun with the remodel planning process and doing that by joining the ready to remodel program right now, so you can be part of the remod squad cohort that’s about to begin. What I really want you to know is that you can and should plan your remodel before you have saved up the full cost that you expect it to be.
Della Hansmann
This was true then, and it is true now, and it’s what I want everyone who’s ever thought about a home improvement project to believe making a change to your home does not cost a specific amount of money. In order to improve your house, you could gut it completely and transform everything about it with entirely new materials and a whole lot of labor.
Della Hansmann
Or you could tweak one or two places and still transform the way you experience being in the house on a daily basis with a relatively small shift that costs a relatively small amount of money. The two are not synonymous, but you get to choose where on the spectrum from one to the other you are aiming.
Della Hansmann
Now you are not and I am not in control of the cost of labor and materials at any given time, but you can control, and I can certainly help you choose. What are the things you want to change in the qualities of your house? You want to modify it in order to love it more? And that might mean shinier, new materials, or it might mean the quality of daylight that comes into the house or their way there is or is not a place that supports having guests over easily, or to spend more time with your family at a particular time of day.
Della Hansmann
Or even to have a designated spot to get clutter out of sight in a way that removes a recurring disagreement with you and your partner. Most people determine how much they’re going to save for a remodel by either a looking at what they have in their bank account right now and thinking about how much longer they’re willing to save and then saying, Okay, I have x and I want a kitchen remodel, so I’m planning to spend X on my kitchen remodel, or they’ll try to Google what is the average cost of a kitchen remodel in the US today, or maybe in my state or in my city.
Della Hansmann
But you’re not trying to do an average kitchen remodel, and you will not be able to Google the cost of creating a space to have comfortable guest time in your household or hiding the clutter that makes you disagree with your partner, or even necessarily the specific mid-century material upgrade that you want that’s not going to come up in a first level search.
Della Hansmann
That takes more research, all of which is to say you want to plan what matters to you, what you’re trying to accomplish. How big of a project it is. If you can break it apart into phases or not, before you start throwing money into a particular part of your bank account to save for a remodel.
Della Hansmann
So as always, you’ll find show notes with a transcript of this episode, with a link to the master class, with pictures of the mid mod house feature I’ll talk about at the end of the episode at the show notes page. In this case, that is mid mod, midwest.com/ 1904 All right, here we go.
Della Hansmann
I get it. If you feel like you need to save first and plan Second, it makes sense you feel like you can’t start planning without knowing or having your home remodel budget in the bank account.
Della Hansmann
I hear this so often, but I really believe the opposite is true. I’m not saying money is no object. Plenty of my clients feel nervous even to tell me what their budget is. In their mind when we get started, they’re worried. I’ll use that number to figure out what the most they can pay is and charge them that.
Della Hansmann
Now it’s possible, in a worst case scenario, that could be the outcome when you’re talking to a contractor, but really, most of the people in the building. World, and certainly designers are here to try to give you the result you asked for, not to jack up the bottom line to see what is the most you can pay. And if you’re trying to set your home remodel budget in a responsible way, you don’t want to get in over your head.
Della Hansmann
So look at it like this, you can’t realistically budget without a plan of what you want to do. If you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish in your home improvement projects, you won’t be able to assign dollars to remodeling projects in any realistic way. It can be hard to be objective about something as substantial as your home remodel budget. So let’s micro size this. Let’s look at it on a smaller scale.
Della Hansmann
What happens if you walk into a target with $100 in your pocket? Probably as you go through the store, you’re going to encounter a whole bunch of fun things you could spend your money on. You’ll see snack food, Home Goods, gardening supplies. The odds are you’ll spend every cent of that $100 or possibly more. It could be a very dangerous thing to do.
Della Hansmann
A much better approach is to think about what is the thing you wanted or needed from the store. Ideally, have done some research in advance so that you know which of several brands might be the best what kind of scale of product you really need. Is it actually in the store before you make the trip. Knowing some of these things will help you make a more informed decision. I’m a big fan of the personal budgeting software you need a budget or YNAB. This is system that works a little bit like other online financial tracking apps like mint.
Della Hansmann
Basically, it asks you to think about the dollars that you have in your life right now and assign tasks to them, choose what you’re going to spend your money on based on the money you have. It also helps you plan for the future. I use it to budget for my remodel projects and also to track spending in all the parts of my life. I use it not only to track that spending, but to plan it.
Della Hansmann
When I have purchased something using the YNAB process, I always end up feeling more satisfied, more confident, more happy in that purchase than I do when I sometimes just pull the trigger on something out of what I think of as disposable income. When you apply this thinking back up to the scale of a remodel, a lot of people will say, I have $40,000 and I want to do this home improvement project.
Della Hansmann
There’s actually no real relationship between that amount of money and the work they want to do other than that’s what they have and that’s what they want. It’s not a very realistic way to plan because it’s not based on research about what is available in the market right now. What are costs for labor and materials? What is the scale of the project they have in mind?
Della Hansmann
The other thing it doesn’t do is ask you how much of the project that you decided you were going to do with this amount of money, perhaps because you did a little bit of googling to see average cost of x, type of remodel is really what you want in your life, rather than just thinking it’s going to cost you about $40,000 to do a certain specified project, and therefore you can’t even start thinking about that project until you’ve got $40,000 in the bank.
Della Hansmann
It’s much smarter to start thinking about what you want to change in your home, researching, developing, pulling together a master plan for that work, talking to contractors, falling out, real world, current pricing and timelines, all while figuring out what exactly you need to save, and by Exactly, I mean what you think it will cost, plus at least a 10% overage, 20 to be safe.
Della Hansmann
And then making the plan happen at exactly the scale you have predicted. This is such a better way to end up with a remodel that actually fits the budget you have, and to have a great emotional outcome, since you’d like for your home to be based on what you wish for and to get started right away, so that by the time you save that money up for your home remodel budget, you don’t have to begin the planning process and the waiting in line for contractors and the material supply line process, etc.
Della Hansmann
Essentially, if you’ve been holding back on your remodel plans because you don’t have the money in the bank, yet that’s a perfectly normal situation to be in, but I don’t want that to stop you from starting the dream process now. Instead, master plan everything you hope to do for your home remodel now and budget for it accordingly, then start or continue to save the money you need to make that actually happen.
Della Hansmann
There’s also the question of timing. As I was saying you don’t want to wait until you start dreaming about your home improvement projects, until you’ve saved up everything you might need to start making those changes, because planning takes time. Getting on a contractor list, take time. So start that dream process before you’ve saved even $1 for the job, and then use the dream, use the specificity of your master plan as your motivation to save faster.
Della Hansmann
It’s so much easier to put money away for something specific than a vague future plan to update the kitchen. You could actually think of yourself as saving up enough money for one handle, for all the cabinet handles, for your dream faucet, for the work of replacing a faucet, you could begin to break it down that specifically, you can also use the dreaming process to save yourself money in the budget.
Della Hansmann
If you take out the time to suss out what you really want to get out of your model, not just what you want it to look like, or the number of rooms you want to modify, or the square feet you want to add, you may find that you can brainstorm less costly ways to achieve the same result. If what you dream of is a bright, well connected kitchen, then.
Della Hansmann
What you really might need is just a handyman to install a new window, remove some upper cabinets and open a wider connection near the rooms you might have talked yourself into marching into a kitchen store saying $40,000 and easily spending that entire budget on a set of new cabinets and counters for the existing space, the end result would be a kitchen that’s shinier and newer but has the exact same issues as the original one.
Della Hansmann
So bottom line, don’t limit yourself to the bottom line. Dream first and set $1 value on what you plan to do once you’ve really figured out what you want, perhaps this episode really spoke to you, or maybe you know someone who’s been holding off on remodeling plans and you think they could use some encouragement and advice, send this episode to them. This might be the exact kick start they’ve been waiting for to start their process of dreaming.
Della Hansmann
My friends, dreaming up your remodel plans is free, and making sure you spend some time dreaming before you lock in your plans might just save you significant dollars from your home remodel budget. The master plan process isn’t meant to be an everything on the kitchen sink additive event.
Della Hansmann
It’s meant to help you figure out the exact right remodeling choices to improve your life, make the most of the house you’ve got and match your home remodeling budget. So one more time, if you’ve been hemming and hawing and waiting until you feel 100% ready to have contractors start demolition tomorrow before you start on your planning process, you are slowing yourself down artificially, and actually you risk taking on a more expensive remodel.
Della Hansmann
It’s always better to research and soul search before you spend so this is your invitation to start on that remodel planning process before you spend too much time saving up your home remodel budget.
Della Hansmann
Let’s wrap up the episode with a fun feature you might be likely to spot in a time capsule, house one that hasn’t been updated much or at all since it was originally constructed, and that is the whole house intercom system. I’m thinking about this one right now because there’s a house down my block that’s getting a full gut remodel at the moment, and I can’t tell from the way they’ve gotten started if it’s going to be something that makes me happy or sad.
Della Hansmann
To be perfectly honest, but I feel invested in it, not only because it’s on my block, but also because when the House last turned over a few years ago, I popped in and went to the open house, and it was so darling. This was one of several houses on my block when I moved in eight years ago that was still occupied by either its original owner or someone who had lived in the house for upwards of 50 years.
Della Hansmann
Everything was original. It had some of its original furniture. The basement had a painted concrete floor a different color, painted concrete block walls and this sort of 60s era wood paneling rec area set up. The kitchen had all of its original cabinets never painted. And on the back wall of the kitchen, beside the sink was this adorable little built in radio and whole house intercom. And it still worked.
Della Hansmann
The realtor showed me how you could push a button and talk to someone in each bedroom specifically, or you could play the radio through all of the bedrooms as a sort of a friendly, or, I don’t know, maybe hostile, wake up call. I suppose that would depend on the station you were playing and the volume you set it to. Now, mid-century, whole house intercom systems are not super common, but they’re not completely rare.
Della Hansmann
This was a fun add on. People really loved because even though we tend to think of mid-century design as retro and cute and vintage, they thought of themselves as the cutting edge of the future. People always do this was the technology they wanted. So mid-century homes that were aiming for a little bit of luxury came with things like a built into the wall record player that could play to speakers all over the house, or doorbell systems that could ring from multiple different doors to different areas of the house.
Della Hansmann
And these intercom systems to prevent you from having to yell so loudly that every neighbor could hear you call everyone to breakfast or dinner today, you might imagine that you could just raise your voice and holler, or you could text someone who very likely has their phone in hand to come up from the basement now, but honestly, a whole house intercom system, and if it still worked, might be a great antidote to keeping your phone on you all the time, a reason to have a time where you set phones aside.
Della Hansmann
Now, of course, you can set up a modern AV system in a house with a wired in stereo system, or the magic of Bluetooth, although there are always some risks to choosing a right now technology to make permanent in your house. So while I love the idea of running conduit or wiring corridors through the walls that can connect spaces subtly, you also want to think about future proofing. In fact, I’ll be doing an episode later this season. I already promised one of our ready to remodel students this topic.
Della Hansmann
So hey, Darien!
Della Hansmann
How to think about including today’s technology into a mid-century house, both to catch it up to the moment and also to think about what might be stable enough tech to last beyond today. But let’s leave it here for the moment.
Della Hansmann
Have you got an intercom in your house? Or do you remember one from your grandparents’ house? Do you love it or hate it? Did someone use it to wake you up in the morning without even bothering to knock on your door? Or is it a really fun tool to play connection between the house.
Della Hansmann
I will put a couple of photos of my favorite whole house stereo systems circa the mid-century era on the show notes page. So check them out and get everything else you need to know about the episode at midmod-midwest.com/ 1904.
Della Hansmann
I’m going to leave you with this wonderful proverb that I love, which is that the right time to plant a tree was 50 years ago, and the next best time is today. The right time to start planning your remodel, frankly, is probably in the past already, but today is always the right time to get started on really getting serious and also fun about your home improvement plans.
Della Hansmann
Asking yourself the right questions, doing the right amount of research, so that you can supercharge your saving so that you can move towards the phase one, or maybe knocking it all off in one big project, so you can feel like you’re getting closer every day to making your house into the home you want to live in.
Della Hansmann
So I encourage you to let the power of groupthink help you make this happen. Join us right now. Inside of ready to remodel, we’re kicking off a new cohort of a Remod Squad. I’m going to be doing architect Office Hours calls starting on Monday.
Della Hansmann
So Monday night, at 6pm central will be the first call, but then we’ll be doing them more than monthly for the next couple of months, because I want to keep that momentum going, and we’ve got a new group of people to meet and learn about their specific house problems and to get everybody ready for a new layout Buster Challenge workshop. So let’s get you ready to remodel. Hope I see you in the group on Monday.