Today, I’m thrilled to bring you my most recent conversation with Susan Halla from Make It Mid Century. Susan is an absolute treasure trove of knowledge when it comes to period-appropriate choices for your home, whether it’s mid-century modern or mid-century modest.
Mid-Century vs. Mid-Century Modern
We kick off with a bit of myth-busting around the terms “mid-century” and “mid-century modern.” Susan beautifully analogized it to the difference between a square and a rectangle: mid-century modern is mid-century, but not all mid-century is mid-century modern. Think of mid-century as the broader era, spanning roughly from 1945 to 1975, encompassing a variety of styles from faux colonial to streamlined modern. Mid-century modern, on the other hand, is a subset with its own unique flair—think clean lines, large windows, and funky rooflines.
We delve into the heart of what makes mid-century homes so special. Susan shared her passion for preservation, emphasizing how crucial it is to honor the original DNA of these homes. Whether it’s a countertop with embedded glitter or a door that looks straight out of a 1950s catalog, keeping these elements intact helps maintain the historical charm. Susan’s business, Make It Mid Century, caters to those who are more inclined towards restoration, providing materials that look and feel like they’ve always been a part of the house.
Resto vs Reno
And we explore the spectrum of restoration and renovation. While some purists try to restore every detail to its original glory, others prefer a blend of old and new. Susan’s clients often fall toward the preservation end – working on a “resto” that maintains a very period feel. Mid Mod Midwest clients fall all along the continuum, with a slight cluster at the intersection of mid century and modern. We agreed that the key is to respect the house’s original style and materials, creating a cohesive timeless look that is true to the style of the home.
It was such a pleasure to chat with Susan and delve into the nuances of mid-century design. Whether you’re a die-hard preservationist or just someone looking to add a touch of mid-century magic to your home, I hope this conversation inspired you as much as it did me.
In Today’s Episode You’ll Hear:
- How “mid-century” and “mid-century modern” differ.
- Where you might find overlapping traditional and modern elements in the most modest mid-century homes.
- Whether you’re project is a resto or a reno.
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Resources
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Read the Full Episode Transcript
Della Hansmann
The term mid-century does a lot of work on the internet these days. And it has come to mean a lot of different things to different people. But when I think about perfecting an original mid-century home by polishing and maybe upgrading a few of its original details, I think of Susan Hala of make it mid-century.
Della Hansmann
She has dedicated herself to being the resource that people need to make perfect period appropriate choices for their homes, be they mid-century modern or mid-century modest. And she’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of all things period appropriate from front doors to Formica. I can’t wait to share my chat with her with you today.
Della Hansmann
Hey there, welcome back to mid mod remodel. This is a 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 1803. By the way, before we get into this, I have spoken to Susan on the pod before catch that an episode 1411 for more of her background, the slightly frustrated in architecture school to mid-century obsession pipeline that we both have been on, and her fantastic mid-century door and garage door kits plus more.
Della Hansmann
Oh, and among Susan’s other talents and projects. She is an amazing aggregator of mid-century information and inspiration. So are you already on her mailing list, she sends out a truly fantastic first of the month email that rounds up what’s new in the mid-century, community shares deals, museum exhibits, to check out history lessons in detail homeowner profiles to inspire you. And it’s generally always worth a read and reread.
Della Hansmann
This is an email list you want to be on you will start them in your inbox, I do. So pop over to the show notes. They are at mid mod dash midwest.com/ 1803 for a transcript of this conversation, links to pictures and products and the proper place to get yourself on that email list.
Della Hansmann
Okay, let’s get into it. So today, let’s talk about what does mid-century mean. And more specifically, what does Mid-century Modern mean? Because people seem to get those pretty mixed up using pretty interchangeably and they’re not actually the same thing are they?
Susan Halla – she/her
No they are not. I always liken it to Okay, people are gonna hate me because this is kind of a math thing. But it’s kind of like a square is a rectangle. But a rectangle is not a square.
Della Hansmann
Yeah, right.
Susan Halla – she/her
So mid-century, modern is mid-century, but mid-century is not mid-century, modern, Mid-century Modern is a subset of mid-century and mid-century encompasses any kind of architecture that was prevalent during the mid-century period. Right. And I like to call it I spread it a little bit, I say 1945, to about 1975. Just to kind of I still think that’s you know, it’s a little bit on each tail end, there was some modern stuff kind of happening at the end of the 40s. And there was still some cool stuff happening at the beginning of the 70s. So I really liked to encompass those tail ends, too. But there was so much happening in that, you know, just say their 50s and 60s, there are colonial faux colonial, right, our mid-century.
Della Hansmann
Absolutely. The whole, like Lenin endeavor, those are all just as commodity. They had a few modern types later, but they’re trying to make little saltbox cottages out of simple square shapes. But absolutely, exactly.
Susan Halla – she/her
And in a lot of those houses that were just like super plain on the outside, you might find something that’s like kind of zoomy modern little touches on the inside. And that belies the fact that they are from that era, when you might not necessarily know it.
Della Hansmann
Or they can end up being kind of cottage twee on the inside with a little scrollwork over the kitchen sink and pieces like that. The beaten wrought iron handles in the kitchen hardware. And yet on the outside you read it as more modern, even if it was early, modern or simple, modern. So well, so before we get into the hows and whys and wherefores, do you have a preference? Do you personally feel like you’ve got a favorite or that you kind of play favorites among the different sub styles of mid-century design?
Susan Halla – she/her
I don’t I love them all. And I actually wrote, I have a book that you can download from our website that talks about all the different genres. And it really points out the details of each genre. And I think each area has its own specialties and its own things to love about them. Really, my hatred starts to get towards the modern and we’re talking like tract home none. Yeah, not an architect. So that’s much later than mid-century.
Della Hansmann
I mean, you go from a set of simple details into it’s just gone so simple that there is no detail and that I think is that transition zone of I conservatively I would say 65 is the end of the period, but it can go into 75 as long as whoever was building the house or designing the object was still kind of pulling in those more playful details from the mid-century era and the more minimalistic gets, the more sort of, yeah, then we go into the 80s back home that has no inherent style.
Susan Halla – she/her
It’s just right, exactly. And I think it’s sort of like fashion, clothing fashion where on the coasts, you might have gotten demand a lot earlier than you did in the Midwest. And then it’s other than the Midwest takes it, it takes longer to get out of that, too.
Della Hansmann
That’s so true. I always tell people to think about the boundaries of mid-century from their era, and I, being house focused, I tend to think of it as when does the building, boom, postwar occur? And stop. So when was their industrial, you know, success time. And that’s kind of the moment the two decade period that defines mid-century houses. But you’re right, there’s also sort of how did trends trickle down from TVs and magazines down to sort of what’s your, what you’re putting in stores, what’s been stopped in lumber yards and, and the little details that show up in a neighborhood, even if it’s not designed by the same person.
Della Hansmann
I’ve just discovered a detail in my own neighborhood. I’ve been in this house for, I don’t know the answer off the top of my head, let’s say six years, it’s probably more now. But time constraints. And I just realized that all the houses in my neighborhood that aren’t super fancy, which and it’s like medium fancy for this neighborhood, it’s a builder basic neighborhood have double hung windows.
Della Hansmann
And I’ve always sort of thought of double hung windows as not my favorite mid-century style. But they all have a very thin division between two panes of glass and both the lower sash and the upper sash, which means that instead of two almost squares, they’re a stack of four long, wide rectangles, and it gives them so much more elegance. And I noticed it in one house. I was like, Oh, that house has its original windows. And I’ve been looking around. I think it’s every single house. I think it’s the type of window they stocked at the local lumberyard. Honestly, the default.
Susan Halla – she/her
Right? So the rectangle, is, gives it that mid-century feel lovely.
Della Hansmann
And I feel like people lose so much when they replace those with even they’re like I have a double hung window. I put it up double hung window, what could I have done wrong? But it doesn’t feel the same? Because it doesn’t have that. That pattern anymore, anyway. Yeah. So just like what are the default details that have trickled down stack style wise, fashion wise? I think that’s a really useful way to look at it.
Susan Halla – she/her
Right, exactly. And it’s cities versus in the rural areas and things like that. So it all it. It’s that’s why I kind of widen that timeframe a little bit.
Della Hansmann
I think that’s fair. Yeah. And there, we also get a little precious I think about decades, like with fashion, you’ll tell yourself, you know, exactly what was the fashion for the 90s. And when you actually look it up, it was only really the end of that decade that had that iconic, like the denim shape or color or something like that, that we associated our memory with 10 years. Fashions don’t generally last 10 years. Right? At home styles. So marvelous. So when you’re looking at a house, I’m thinking about houses, but when you’re looking at anything? Do you feel like you want to categorize it before you want to respond to it? Or how do you think about that distinction between mid-century and mid-century modern?
Susan Halla – she/her
Yeah, I think I categorize it first. Because especially like, if I have a customer who is trying to add a new door to their house, for example, or they’re asking, I just get customers that call up and say I just I need some advice. And I’m like, Okay, I’ll give you some advice. And I want to know, like kind of what the era of their home is first, because I’m not going to put say a sink that’s the kind of the double bowl with wide drainboards in either side. Very 1940s. So I’m not going to put that in a 60s house.
Susan Halla – she/her
Now you as a homeowner may really love that. And I may have no say because it’s your house. But I like to try to think okay, so in the 60s or like getting to the late 60s, we might even talk be talking about colored sinks that are like a green or a yellow kind of that harvest gold getting into the 70s with a hoody ring that’s, you know, in a Formica countertop, that sort of thing, versus somebody that’s back in the early 50s they may still have that dream board or maybe that dream boards only one side or maybe it’s a countertop is made of linoleum. I mean, that would be kind of early 50s.
Susan Halla – she/her
So just kind of getting a venture on the era of the home helps. And then also the style in which the home was like you’re not going to get something totally trippy in modest house. But you’re not going to also get it but you are going to get some more modest things in a like more high style mid-century house because you’re going to see some of those, like your basic pink bathroom, even in a modern house, but that’s what the bathrooms gonna be.
Della Hansmann
Right there. Was there always sort of upper and lower boundaries for were these sort of adventurousness that the scale of traditional the modern even within mid-century goes, depending on that the decade it was built in. How much has been meshed with sense? So your instinct though, seems it, it feels like you’re talking from a place of preservation, you want to match new choices to the original DNA of the house pretty precisely. That’s your, your preference.
Susan Halla – she/her
I guess that is my precedent preference personally. And I think the type of clientele that making mid-century drawers are the people that are trying to restore their homes, versus update their homes. So that’s, I think it’s a learned reaction from that too.
Della Hansmann
But I think it’s never a wrong place to start. And some of my clients are looking for more of an update and upgrade than they are to put it back exactly how it was. But the thing that I hold firm on is that we have to feel like we’re at least creating a familiar relationship between what’s going on in the house. So we need to have some commonality of shape, or material, or have some kind of design DNA that is connected, even if we’re not putting it back exactly how it was, or preserving it exactly how it was. We’re sort of listening, what it was, right,
Susan Halla – she/her
I always say it’s like, when you see somebody who has done something in their house that is like, you can peg it and say, That’s the 2010s, waterfall countertop, whatever, then it’ll update itself in just a couple of years. Whereas if you try to speak the language of your head that your house is saying, it’s going to always feel appropriate, and like it goes and you’re not going to try to be tricked chasing trends is what I like to say, exactly, yeah.
Della Hansmann
And we may or may not be able to achieve the actual I can’t tell if this is original, but it’s always fun to have people kind of walking into the space and wonder and certainly if they know you’ve made a change, then I’ve helped to want to make a change. I don’t want them to know exactly what decade that change was made in. I want it to feel mysterious, which comes from time back to the house.
Della Hansmann
So one more thing before we wrap up. If you had to just off the top of your head list the subcategories of mid-century what do you what do they mean to you? What would you sort of look at when you’re tagging details in a house or houses? Well,
Susan Halla – she/her
modern is always easy to tell because it’s got like huge windows, it’s got funky overlapping or kind of dipped in roof lines, things like that. A more modest house or even something that might not be of the style of a modern, it’s still going to have it’s going to have deeper eaves, it’s going to have slightly lower roof lines, it might have been a long gated brick that you might see, it may have if it still has its original door, it may have a funky door. Those are all things I would look at and even or it may have the windows maybe even like the steel casement windows, with the individual panes in it things like that, that you’re going to see.
Della Hansmann
Are you thinking about a renovation for your house or a restoration? What is the difference? Let’s get into it. Is there a better or a worse one of these two? Or why would you choose one or the other? What do you tend to help people do in your work?
Susan Halla – she/her
I tend the clients that we have tend to be wanting to do more of a restoration than a renovation. But I think of renovation, restoration is kind of a timeline, kind of like this is going to be controversial. But gender is kind of a spectrum, right. And so renovation restoration are kind of two sides of a spectrum of what are you going to do and there’s people that are going to be purist restoration.
Susan Halla – she/her
And then there’s going to be people that are kind of in the middle because there may be some modern conveniences that they went like, there are people that are going to go through and they are going to find the 1962 stove that was originally specified with their house and they are going to restore that stove and they’re going to use that stove to cook.
Susan Halla – she/her
And then there’s going to be people that are like, No way. I need a stove that has modern conveniences, whatever. But you know, as long as it looks okay with the house. That’s cool. So I think people tend to lie somewhere more in the middle or my people tend to lie somewhere from that left side to the middle. But I don’t have as many people that are looking to like walk into Home Depot and walk out with a brand new, really ugly sink base and countertop.
Della Hansmann
And that in a way well. So I think it’s interesting there’s some time there timeline, there’s the spectrum of you know, fully preserve it to my mind, I’m rid of everything, update it to change it so much to make it really modern. at the Home Depot. I feel like it’s a little bit of an outlier. It’s just like you don’t care and you’re not interested in quality. But from my client base, we don’t tend to work with the most preservation of preservationists because that ends up I mean, it’s a labor of love and it requires you to make some compromises in the way you actually just live, live your life day to day in the house.
Della Hansmann
But we do work with people who want it to look at close to the original as possible. I’ve had clients who have fully sourced like Facebook marketplace, a set of toilet sink, shower tub, and then recreated a full color block bathroom, sometimes multiple times in different rooms in their house, which I adore. And then we also have people who come all the way over to the end of like, we really wanted to feel pretty contemporary. But still to pick up the material language of a mid-century house.
Della Hansmann
We, I personally, for our business, draw the line. And if you want to go beyond that, if you want to take it to like it’s just, it’s a lovely modern box, but it’s got nothing of the mid-century left in it. I can’t stop you from doing that to your house. But I’m also not gonna help you. So that’s sort of our we’re in the middle and the sort of fuzzy middle of that.
Della Hansmann
And I think you took more towards the early to put it back. And but you are so well equipped to do that. I’m not sure everybody that’s hearing us chat right now knows what it is that you do. So what are the some of the ways that you help people put their houses back?
Susan Halla – she/her
So my elevator speech, when anybody asks me what it is that I do, I say we design and manufacture materials for restoring the century homes. So my goal with this business has always been trying to provide materials that people are looking for more on that spectrum of restoration of a home. So that may be one of the things we have is that old laminate countertop that has the little glitter embedded in it, we even just came out with a brand new product that has a star pattern within the glitter in it too.
Susan Halla – she/her
We have kits that help people make a new front door, a new old front door, but you have then a new front door, but it looks like it always belonged to your house and it’s not plastic and it’s not. You know, glass. Not leaded glass, not one of those. I was thinking it reminds me the Barbie Dream House from the 1970s because that’s what I had. But those ones with the big oval leaded glass in the middle of the door because I think that’s what the Barbie Dream House had. So but those are just not mid-century appropriate or just the half fanlight you wouldn’t ever find that except maybe a mid-century house that was from a more of a colonial revival. See, tell us in our other conversation. Right about mid-century versus mid-century modern.
Della Hansmann
Yeah. No. There are so many different areas and you have great kits and materials and supplies to help people sort of pick the moment they’re aiming back for and then make it make it happen. Make it mid-century.
Della Hansmann
I think it’s an interesting question too, because people a home is a personal, you know, it’s not a museum. And in fact, that’s a phrase I hear from people all the time, we want to make it look like mid-century, but we’re not trying to live in a museum. But I do think that you can, you can work hard and sort of pull those pieces back together.
Della Hansmann
If you know where to find some of the missing pieces. If you can find the laminate for the countertop, which people don’t think about lambda for their countertops, and of course, do whatever kind of countertop space you but I have my original laminate countertops and they are bomb proof, they do not show best if I let a little bit of toast grid add up on them. You can’t tell unless you’re looking really closely. I don’t put hot surfaces down on them. But they’re you know, water spills, they just they do the job.
Della Hansmann
And they have that lovely little sort of like, bump up at the counter edge. So even when I pour boiling water on the counter, it doesn’t end up on my feet. It’s great. So yeah, I think the more that we can give people the tools, the resources, they need to put things back and where we can benefit from those nice design insights that people came up with in the midst, right.
Susan Halla – she/her
And that’s the whole reason why I started the businesses because I live in a mid-century modest house and I was looking for a new front door for my house and I couldn’t you know, it was like trying to find stuff and then just generally speaking, trying to find stuff, because you can’t walk into big back store and there are there actually I will say I don’t I don’t think it’s me necessarily.
Susan Halla – she/her
But since I started my business, there are now some like doors that you can get very limited designs at some of the big box stores that are more mid-century. So you can see that we’re making a difference. But it isn’t something that you can just go anywhere and fine. And so that’s why we were trying to kind of become a clearinghouse for that type of material.
Della Hansmann
Yeah. And you have you become not just a resource for one thing, but a place people can come and get guidance and a whole host of materials and resources they need to make those more restoration choices. You had actually Oh, where was it? You’d used a great combination of phrases a resto or a reno which I love. And do you so you find people are mostly coming to you for the resto and have it but do you think there’s any advice you would give someone who was thinking more renovation? If they were many resto curious what would you advise them to consider before they made a move?
Susan Halla – she/her
I always advise people that they need to listen to what their house is telling them. Really kind of understand the error of your house before you start doing anything rash to it. Kind of people to do a little bit of research.
Susan Halla – she/her
HGTV has done us all a bad disservice, I believe, because people are now starting to rebel against that whole gray, gray, gray everything and shiplap everything and farmhouse, everything. So thank goodness are starting to rebel. But some people are going to walk into a house and they already have decided before they bought the house that I’m going to make my house farmhouse.
Della Hansmann
Yeah.
Susan Halla – she/her
But you walk into a 1960s mid-century house, and you try to do you do farmhouse and it all like, it just feels off?
Della Hansmann
Yeah, it’s just gluing it to the surfaces rather than listening to the shape of the house or plus to, to thoroughly fine, I don’t recommend this, if you wanted to thoroughly farmhouse in mid-century house, though, you’ve, you’re basically doing a full gut. So it’s so comprehensive, you’ve just made so much work for yourself, if you want to, well, you can’t really go buy a cute old farmhouse everywhere, there’s a lot more mid-century houses than original farmhouses.
Susan Halla – she/her
You can buy a lot of modern variations.
Della Hansmann
80’s nonsense houses and put miles on them if that’s your choice, but a mid-century house comes with some really fun details if you just want to listen to them. So I think that if you’re hoping to make some tweaks, you can maybe preserve or clean up and keep some parts of the house and then modify some of them and you end up with an easier project that feels more cohesive and is more timeless and trend proof. It’s a win, win.
Susan Halla – she/her
And there are just some fun things for mid-century that if you have it in your house, don’t get rid of it like the In Wall thing that you turn around that has your toothbrush and cup in it. Because for example, it’s like that’s a very mid-century thing that you see in some mid-century houses. It’s very coveted. People are looking for them all the time. But it’s close. So it’s in your bathroom, your toothbrushes aren’t out getting germs on them all the time. They’re tucked away, nobody has to see them and they’re not getting old germy. How perfect is that for modern living?
Della Hansmann
This is what you I don’t know, if you’ve looked into this, it might take more manufacturing capacity to put it together. But some of those lines like the rotating hidden toothbrush holders, and they came in sets like the magazine rack and the towel bars and all in a common.
Susan Halla – she/her
Now you just need a phone rack.
Della Hansmann
I mean, yes, yes, I do. Like I will confess that we all do. Why isn’t anybody making that line? Home Depot, I don’t like you, but if you’re listening. Yeah, somebody should be Kohler could collaborate with someone on that or something they do. Right files of fixtures. Couldn’t they do some of those finishes for bathrooms too. But maybe that is on your, your wish list of fun items too.
Susan Halla – she/her
I have lots of fun ideas.
Della Hansmann
What…before I let you go on this one, what is your next step project or maybe your farthest away pie in the sky dream your preference?
Susan Halla – she/her
Our next up project. So our q1 goal was to launch our sparkle star which is our mid-century line of sparkle to star laminate, but our q2 goal and its q2 is fastly, actually we’re in June. So we’re out of q2, but it is in the works of restarting another tile line.
Susan Halla – she/her
So we had been repping a tile line with mid-century colors in it and they were one of the last there’s one other remaining place that does make mid-century color tiles. But this place we were repping decided they weren’t going to do it anymore. And so we were out of luck.
Susan Halla – she/her
So I have been working with a major manufacturer to recreate the most popular colors that people are looking for. I’m looking to start with the pink and the seafoam. And so the solid color tiles for people that not only are trying to recreate an entire bathroom, but also people I have found that those colors match really closely to the original vintage colors. So
Della Hansmann
So if you need to repair or do a fresh wall because you had to deal with plumbing you can put back without actually going back to pink bathrooms.
Susan Halla – she/her
That’s right.
Della Hansmann
So obviously there’s more to be said here we actually have another combo prepped and that will cover what you can learn from living in a mid-century house and why you really want to if you can. And also a list of what not to do if you want your mid-century homes choices to last.
Della Hansmann
Spoiler alert, we’ll start right at the top with do not paint your brick. This is a chant that Susan and I can do together. Meanwhile, though, pop back to the show notes page mid mod dash midwest.com/1803 to get your name on Susan’s email list. Seriously right away, so you can get her August 1 newsletter and check out some of her fun front door and garage door kits too.
Della Hansmann
Even if you already like your front door, like I do, they’ll have you dreaming of other options, alternatives future projects.
Della Hansmann
Okay. That’s all for today friends. I’ll catch you next month, you know, in August.