If you listen to the Mid Mod Remodel Podcast regularly, you hear lots about the tips and tools I recommend to help you plan and lead your perfect MCM remodel.
And once or twice a year I boil down the most helpful of those tips and tools into a free masterclass that I offer live. Folks show up on a Saturday for an hour-ish class full of advice and a Q&A where I promise to answer every question.
In the past that session was only available to the folks who signed up and attended the live event, but this year I’m trying something NEW!
We are making the audio of my August 19th session available for a limited time.
Now you can listen on the go! (but just for one week.)
So, if you missed the live session and don’t have time to sit and watch a replay… or if you were there, loved it and just want to hear it all again…grab your headphones!
In Today’s Episode You’ll Learn:
- The three biggest mistakes other homeowners are making on their remodels (that ALWAYS result in a remodel that costs more, takes longer and … doesn’t do end up how they want)
- My five step process for planning a remodel YOU CAN LEAD WITH CONFIDENCE: one that will turn the house you have into a home you’ll love
- How to cut the chaos of remodeling in HALF with one simple maneuver (seriously, everyone should do this!)
Listen Now On
Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher
Or watch the video!
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
Hey, mid mod remodeler. If you missed the free masterclass this weekend, planning a mid-century model to fit your life and budget? Well, you’re in luck because it is for a limited time available in podcast format. I’m gonna have to take it down later this week because it has some time sensitive things in it.
But I’d love for you to catch this, whether you listen to it here, or you might want to go watch the video because it has some pretty pictures associated with it. So this is waiting for you for the rest of the week. And then on Thursday, I’ll be back with our regularly scheduled episode. See you there.
Hello, and welcome to planning a mid-century remodel to fit your life and budget. I am so excited to hear. I’d love it if you would follow the prompts. And tell us a little bit about yourself in the chat. Who are you if you feel like it? Where is your house, we’d love to know what our range is today. When was it built? Very early, mid-century, very late mid-century, so much fun to know. And we’ll be getting into a bunch of things that apply to all houses all across the country as we go through this. And if you want to let us know what your most pressing remodeling issue is. We’re right ahead. It’s so exciting to have you all here. I’m going to just wait for a moment to let everybody get through their Saturday feelings and get in line and get online here with us. But we’re about to get started in this is fantastic.
So I’ve got so much to cover, I better jump right into it. I always I want to download my entire remodeling philosophy into your brains during this one hour session. So we’ll just see how far I can get into that without being overwhelming about it. Here we go. So how to plan a mid-century remodel to fit your life and your budget. I promise we’re gonna get to both of those things as we go through this.
Before we go too far into it. I want to say let’s be social. I have a wonderful team. You’ll see Rebecca in the chat. She may put some links up she is our amazing ops person and answers most of the emails that come from my mom Midwest, I answered the Instagram. So if you ever want to ask a question directly to me, please reach out through at mid mom Midwest. And I will be the person that catches you. And also I would love to know that you’re here watching this right now if you’re watching it live, not to distract you pull your phone out and just send a message to mid Midwest right now. And if you’re watching the recording of it, also, I want to know you’re watching the recording. So go ahead and send a message.
I also want you to feel free to tell the world take screenshots of the presentation if you want share them on Instagram tag your friends, this is important and I want everyone to know it. So let’s just be collaborative and information sharing about this and make sure that you can just pass anything you learn today on to anyone who needs to know it. I’m gonna do a little cheerleading right here at the start. I want you to know you’re in the right place. If you live your mid-century home, your right to and I want give you just a little bit of backstory on why because sometimes maybe you want to weigh in on the chat.
I’m going to read where you’ve been calling in from in a moment. Maybe you want to weigh in in the chat and let you know that sometimes people don’t seem to get your love for mid-century if you feel like that, I’m gonna give you some some talking points some why you’re in the right spot. My mission. Basically, everything I do in my life right now, our mission in mind Midwest is to say, every mid-century ranch in America from mediocre remodels, what’s wrong with mediocre? Well, you don’t want to live in a mediocre house. And the problem with mediocre homes is they don’t last they end up as landfill. And this is a horrifying fact. construction and demolition waste makes up 30% of landfills in the US. I can’t fix that all myself.
But I’m trying to save that problems to tone that down by saving more mid-century homes. Mid-century homes are having a moment again. They answered a big crisis during the last big housing shortage in the US. Mid-century homes started sort of two different concepts on two different coasts, beloved cottages on the East Coast, and the cliff may California ranches in California, they raced across the country and formed a sort of a hybrid in the middle. And now you’ll find mid-century homes in every state. They are super common. In fact, there are 15 million homes that were built during the mid-century era that still make up 15% of US housing stock today. It’s a huge part of our home stock.
And it’s worth taking care of this by just for instance, if you’re in the Midwest, if you know Madison, Wisconsin at all these yellow areas are the parts of Madison that are mid-century we doubled in size during 1945 to 1965. Many other places did the same. So mid-century homes are also popular right now Ranches are the most popular homestyle in 34 states and that’s because Ranches are well built. They were made by craftsmen who we don’t have the same level of craft anymore. They were made with old growth forests which have been cut down and turned into two by fours. The Redwood siding on original mid-century homes should last for generations it does not need to be replaced.
Unless something terribly wrong has happened with the maintenance they will easy to modify If they were meant to be minimum viable houses, that homeowners could then finish the basements push out into an attic make a small addition into the backyard. And their structure with that simple gable roof most mid-century homes have most of the houses in my neighborhood started looking exactly like this. And now these are taken from aerial shots of my particular neighborhood, we have pushed out in every direction, el CZ. That’s how people made them their own. But they’re also pretty right sized, they are a perfect starter home that you can also age in place in single level living. So you can literally live your whole life in a ranch house.
It’s the dream house of 1953 and be the dream house 2023. With a little tweaking, we’ll talk today about updates to mechanical systems, materials layouts, a few things that need to be adjusted. But basically the crossover right here is that everyone loves a ranch. So I want you to know this, you’re in the right spot. And yes, you can tweak a mid-century match to fit your life perfectly, and keep the mid-century charm alive while you do it. So quick roadmap for today, our agenda is we’re going to take stock of where you are, I want to know a little more about you, I’m going to read out some of your places, we’re going to talk about how you’re totally not alone in the situation. If you’re finding this a little stressful. Everyone here is in the same boat, everyone in other mid-century matches in the same boat. And there are some fairly common mistakes that we just make out of logic, thinking we’re doing it the right way and actually doing it the wrong way. I want to guide you around those mistakes. So you can plan a remodel that lasts that costs less than that stresses you out less.
And then I’ll talk to you about I’ll talk to you about how to do that. The Masterplan method is what I have derived after six years in this business, specifically mid-century helping hundreds of other mid-century homeowners to do this process. I want to reset your mindset to let you know that you can do this and show you how to get more help if you’re looking for it. Alright, first I want to just say hello to the people who have said hi. Oh my gosh, this is great. We’ve got another architect who’s worked for 20 years on commercial and now wants some help to do the best mid-century job for their own home.
I love it. We’ve got Redlands California. 19 692 86 We’ve got DC suburbs 1964 We’ve got Ohio 1950s. Baton Rouge, Louisiana 1958, Arizona 63, Arkansas 53. Washington State 58 Marvelous North Carolina 1940s. That still can count as mid-century. Absolutely. We’ve got P Waukee. 1978. Yes, late 70s into the 80s sometimes have the DNA the bones of the mid-century house, Minneapolis 66 Los Angeles 61. Indiana, okay, this is amazing. If I’ve missed you, I’m sorry. But this is I’m so glad to have such a wide range. We are all mid-century home lovers, and Don shared a picture. It’s very pretty for everyone who’s here live on the chat. Admire Don’s adorable house.
Okay, so I now want to know a few more things about you. If you are right now moving into your mid-century home if you’re a first time homebuyer or if you’re just right into your mid-century home, you’re in the right spot. The things we’re going to talk about today will be perfect to get you up to speed so that you can make rapid choices that are right for your house right away. You want the strategy to avoid the mistakes other people might make in your situation. This is also the right place. If you’ve been in a house for a couple of years, don’t feel like you’re too late, you’re not you’ve been familiarizing yourself with the house you have the advantage of knowing how the light moves, how you live in the house, what you love and what you don’t. So you’re in a really great spot to learn the Master Plan method. And actually, a lot of people come to these classes a lot of people work with mid mounted West when they are in a new life stage transition when their kids leave home, when they are
working into retirement when they’re just thinking about we’ve been in this house forever. Now we want it to be our home. Sometimes these people have remodeled their homes before. So if that’s you, you’re in the right spot. And now you want to maybe you have a new appreciation for mid-century for what the house is then you might have had if you moved into it in the early 2000s or the late 90s or in the 80s there wasn’t as much in the air about how mid-century house super cool, so you might not have appreciated some of the features you now know about. I don’t also like to know if you feel like your house is more of a time capsule.
Or if it was done over in the 80s or the 90s and now it feels kind of dated or maybe it was just flipped right before you bought it. Each of these situations. needs the masterplan method no matter what shape your house is in we’re going to follow the same methods we’ve got a time capsule here love it hopefully we can preserve all of its good about it while we tune it. You know systems, preserve some maintenance things and fine tune it to fit your life. The steps are gonna be the same. Also, this is the same philosophy I’m going to share with you that works whether you’re going to do the work yourself or hire it all out.
Okay, we’ve got time capsule time capsule. Some rooms added on a dated 10 capsule and dated Yeah, super common mostly Time Capsule now These Yep, perfect. So you guys are all in the right place, we’re going to follow the same steps. And again, you’re hiring out the work, you want to clear plans to explain what’s going to happen to the team that’s going to help you. If you’re doing the work yourself. You might even want to know more what’s going on and do the right things the right way, the first time because it hurts so much to make the effort to do a DIY project yourself and then later regretted, I don’t want that for you. So this class is not for you. If you’d rather let somebody else tell you how to remodel your own home. It’s not for you. If you think design is a waste of time, you’re probably not here, if that’s what you think.
And it’s not the best class for you if you just wanted to know how to fix a few problems, and you don’t really want to think about any big picture issues, because I’m going to always start from the big picture. That is, that is the masterplan method. It’s also not here for you if if you don’t like mid-century, if you don’t, I don’t know what brought you to this case. But, um, Oh, also, if you came to this class, because you’re hoping for mid Midwest to do your remodeling for you, that is absolutely something or you’re you’re planning, we don’t do the remodeling, I do not be able to hammer for other people only on my own home. But we do have a class that you can watch about that you might want to check that out.
But today I’m gonna be talking more about how to plan a perfect remodel yourself. During this class, we’re going to talk about the three biggest mistakes mid-century homeowners make that many homeowners make that result in remodels that cost more, take longer and don’t look mid-century when you’re done, how to regret proof your remodel, we’re going to talk about my three phase five step if you’ve been paying attention plan, to remodel, to plan to remodel, you can lead one that will turn the house you have into the home you will love and in among that it’s going to be the secret that cuts the chaos of remodeling in half. All right. So I also want to say this is mostly a class to tell you how to do everything for free.
But if you are looking for help, I’m going to tell you at the end about the ready to remodel program, which I use to guide homeowners more deeply through the process. And if you’re curious about that, I’m going to talk to you about some special bonuses for that program that are only available for people who joined today. So pay attention, that’s gonna be later. Alright, fact you, you the homeowner knows best what is right for your home. Now you might not know what’s best.
Structurally, you might not be the expert on electricians prerogative, but you know what a home means to you, you know what it means to feel at home in your house, whether it should be a social space or a retreat. These are really important factors, you know what you like, I want you to trust that because homeowners often feel the least confidence during the home remodel process of everyone they interact with I call it the used car lot problem, you’re gonna buy a used car once or twice or three times in your lifetime.
The used car salesman is there all the time, they’re not a bad guy, but they definitely know how to do this better, smoother, more effectively than you do. I want you to have a level of confidence in what you want what you know is right so that you can make strong choices for your own home. The problem is the remodeling industry, the home remodel industrial complex, focuses on the wrong thing. And it really runs in ruts. It’s trying to make you happy, but it’s trying to make you happy with trendy choices that will instantly become dated with giving you more bigger, better, that’s not actually right for you unnecessarily. And then making up the difference lowering your costs with cheap materials, which again, all of these things benefit the industry, they benefit contractors, they don’t benefit you or your home. And then this problem is compounded. Now, men if you’re watching, you’re welcome to this talk too. But I want to talk specifically in this moment to the women who are here, women often end up leaving home improvement projects, leading remodeling management projects. Due to all sorts of factors.
They often also struggle to feel like the leaders in the remodel, it is still so common to be told when you call up a contractor for a quote, When will your husband be home so I can give him the quote this step, thinking about your house with confidence. This works just as well for everyone of every gender identity. But I want to make you feel more confident as you plan your remodel. And I am very aware of how these things happen. As I found when I started to remodel my own home, even with decades of experience in remodeling, people can have more benefit to a remodel when they have taken the time to design and when they have the benefit of a designer.
But most homeowners in America don’t use a designer when they design or remodel or when they don’t design when they just call a contractor and say Okay, let’s go What would you recommend? And the reason for that is design is very expensive. The average cost of an architect for a residential project is $47,000. It can go way up beyond that and I used to work on projects just like this. I knew that it was frustrating to me that I didn’t get to do work for people who lived in homes like mine who lived lives that looked like mine. And I wanted to change that.
All of that was on my mind in 2016 When I moved back to Madison and bought a mid-century ranch and immediately fell down the rabbit hole of mid-century love. So this is my little house when I bought it in 1952 ranch Much of time capsule, and here it is not actually, today. This is a couple of years ago, but I’ve been slowly tuning the house making my own.
My plan was to go a lot faster. But I’ve been distracted by helping other people with their remodels. But here’s the thing. When I bought my mid-century Ranch, I thought, I’ve got this. I’m a residential architect, I will know what to do. But I still fell into the indecision trap that you’re probably in right now. movie trailer voice, little did she know I was feeling the exact same overwhelmed that I have now helped. Every one of my mid-century home masterplan clients move past of wondering, What should I do first? Should I address maintenance things? Should I do style things? First, how do I coordinate contractors, I don’t have time and energy for this. I actually didn’t get a handle on what I needed to do to manage a project more reasonably without the half a year of architect time solely devoted to the house $47 and dollar price tag until I started helping other people.
So the very first project for someone else that I worked on at a mid-century level was Stephen, Jesse, my little sister’s college friend got married, was buying a first house. And I heard that she was getting some advice from a contractor to get the house completely double it and scale. I just thought that’s a terrible idea. They’re gonna get over their heads, I literally leapt into the middle of their business and said, Please, please give me two weeks to come up with a better plan for you for your lives. I know I can do it.
And they did kindly let me folks don’t try this at home. You can’t actually, I just want to say you can plan a remodel it two weeks, it was insane. But due to their time constraints, we did it. And we were able to pause the project, think about what they really needed, prioritize their goals, how they wanted to live in the house and come up with a really well tuned remodel that fit their life fit their budget, and was what they needed to do. And now they’re raising their family and their dream home. It’s amazing what was able to happen. And it really for me crystallized what was necessary to ask what mattered most. Before we started, they were teetering on the edge of overwhelm, and they were getting pushed around by their contractor.
And so many of my clients feel the same way. If this is you say, hey, no, no guilt associated with this, I’d love to know if you’re in this position, because I know I can help. Here’s the thing. As I started to work with more mid-century homeowners first consulting with other people that call me up that hurt, I could help them freelancing, then pretty soon it became a business, I could see that planning or remodel will always overwhelm you. If you feel like you have to make all the decisions all at the same time if they fall, feel equally weighted.
But the thing is, you don’t, you don’t have to do it that way. And as I started to work with people, I realized that we could focus on what mattered most. Solving the problem for Steph and Jessie didn’t happen because we spent a lot of time on their process. We did not, we spent an incredibly small amount of time. And it didn’t happen because we obsessively planned every detail. To control every aspect of the project, we actually made a fairly sketchy plan for how they could proceed. But we knew that it was a plan that encompass the things that matter most. And it didn’t happen because we pinned every picture on the internet.
Although Pinterest is fun, it’s a great alternative to social media. It came from a proto version of the master plan method, we focused on what they wanted the house to be. They are extroverts. They are hosters. They wanted a social gathering place for their entire family and friend circle. We focused on what the house needed structurally maintenance wise. And to tweak the layout, we set up a style guide so they could determine what the house should look like. And then they chose the best layout from a couple of options I was able to put together quickly because I knew what they were looking for. And they were able to get their remodel done in an incredibly tight timeline six months from start to finish.
Again, I do not guarantee that. But under duress, it can be done. As I work with more and more people, I distilled what I now call the mid-century Master Plan method. And I started offering people a package of design services for a fixed fee. So that could become more affordable to other people. Using this step, the masterplan method, we focus on what matters most. We assess the existing conditions of the house, we distill a style, we test multiple options, and it ends with an action plan. And it works for people who want to hire a contractor to do the work. And it works for people who want to do the work themselves. It works at every budget and scale. And it works if you want to do it all at once or break it up into phases over 10 years.
And now we help people in as many places as you’ve just called in from to do these master plans, we’ve helped over 250 people to plan mid-century updates, upgrades. So here’s the thing, I want you to be able to avoid the three biggest mistakes that most homeowners are making under these circumstances. And here’s how you’re going to do it. Let me just walk you through these. The first one is I’m going to call it driving with no headlights sort of jumping in without a plan of what you’re going to do. And you might do this because you’re short on time. Just like Steph and Jesse they call a contractor because they had a really tight timeline between their condo closing and needing to live in their house. You might do it because you don’t really want to acknowledge how expensive more time consuming the process is going to be so you just get started on something to get the ball rolling.
Or you may have watched too many home improvement shows on HGTV and think it just goes more easily than it does. It’s more fun to think about Pinterest than it is to think about the whole scope of remodel. But if you keep doing this, you will do one of three things that are all unfortunate, you’ll sort of start in high energy and then just kind of fade out on your energy and your budget as you go through the process.
Which means that you spend your money on changing layouts, for example, and then less on the finishes, which results in a process a project, it looks chintzy, you might just choose to keep on spending to not decrease in quality, then you spend more than you ever wanted to. Or you might just do a couple of projects first and then completely run out of steam and never get around to what might have been the most important project you wanted to do. But you didn’t do it first, so it didn’t happen. Here’s how you can avoid this. You need a system to make large and small decisions easily with minimal time and stress. This way, you can avoid those expensive surprises that come up because you can see it all you’ve got your headlights on.
And you can plan a custom tailored remodel that fits your life. You can do the things that matter to you and you can not do the things that don’t matter to you. And you’ll end up with a remodel that helps you lead the life you love. Like Kenzie who is ready to remodel student. And she’s just had so much fun thinking about how to tweak her house for the life she wants to live not realizing that some of her rooms didn’t need to be open plan in her life open pipe works for some people for her it didn’t because she really liked the way that each room in her house was more for its own purpose. So that saved her a huge amount of time, money and effort to realize that she didn’t need to do what she was seeing the right thing to modernize a mid-century house was to open it up, she could just focus on making perfect little jewel boxes out of each row in your house.
All right. If that feels like a mistake you’ve been making, or you’ve been thinking about making jumping into soon, you’re in the right place, you’re already doing the right thing. The other thing I want to talk about is treating your remodel like a spectator sport. Don’t let anyone not your parent, not your contractor, not your best friend, talk you into making remodel choices that you don’t actually like. And if you’re here because you love mid-century, that means making choices that aren’t mid-century. And it’s easy to do this, it’s easy to let someone else tell you what to do when you remodel because you’re busy in your life with parenting or working or just doing other things. You might feel like it’s more reasonable to let an expert tell you what to do in your home, then to just make choices yourself, Who are you to choose how structure should work.
Or, unfortunately, you might be dealing with a bully who’s making it hard for you to make good choices. Sometimes parents can fall into this role. Sometimes contractors can fall into this role. They may not even have any a Will they just think they know what’s right. And they’re just going to tell you what to do until you do it. You might also have just forgotten that no one is going to know how you’ll live in your house better than you will. If you keep doing this, you’ll end up with a house that’s bigger and more expensive than you’d needed, guaranteed. And you’ll spend the whole duration of the project feeling stressed out and out of control and spun out and your home won’t end up what it should be.
It won’t turn into a home, your house will just be an updated house. With a mid-century ranch. If you take too much advice from people who don’t care about mid-century, you will end up removing or damaging the mid-century charm. So to avoid this, you want to plan a remodel that does just the things you want. It’s the right size, it’s the right cost for your life for your choices. When you’re confident about why you want to do what you’re going to do. You can sleep through the night as it’s coming up. You can sleep through the night while it’s happening. And you’ll end up with a house that lets you live the life you want to live in your home.
And you can preserve the mid-century charm. Thinking about your why thinking about what is causing you to do your remodel in the first place. It can help you to make a system that will help you sort of check things off one at a time and really have a lovely time while you do it. So let’s talk about that last one. Here you are today. I said mid-century right on the title. If you step outside in its entry umbrella. You might do this because HGTV told you what was cool right now because your contractor told you what everyone else is doing. Because Home Depot had something on sale because your friend said, Oh, that’s so dated. You should just try this. Instagram might be influencing you to do one thing or another. You get the picture.
But if you update your home in a way that’s too distant from its mid-century roots, it’s going to be trendy first. And then it’s going to be dated to raise your hand. You have seen a house where you walked in you went over to somebody’s house for a dinner party you walked in and you said Oh hi there 9095 kitchen or Oh my God holy farmhouse. This is like five minutes ago flip. You can date an update to the exact moment it was done because It’s too trendy. So if you want a house that’s going to last, that’s going to keep the investment of your remodeling dollars and energy intact over time.
You want to choose things. They can still be modernizations if you want, but they need to be in the same family as the mid-century origins of your house. So please just say no to Shaker Cabinet Doors to subway tile in the bathroom to brush nickel, basically, anything to shiplap paneling, and to painting anything that wasn’t painted before. We’ll talk about how to do this with the style guide, as John is commenting on when we get a little further, okay, if you’re feeling anxious about this, I’d love to get your ticket temperature. If you’re hearing me say this, and you’re like, that’s great deal, but I still don’t know how to do this.
We’re gonna get into step by step, and now is the perfect time to do that. So it’s not your fault, though. It’s not your fault. If you’re struggling, if you’re trying to get traction. It’s not I don’t want to tell you, everyone’s out to get you. But the home remodeling business is not really on our side here. So that’s why us mid-century lovers have to band together, we have each other’s backs. We’re all supportive. It’s a great community on Instagram, on Pinterest, on Facebook, everywhere you find mid-century people are great people. Sorry, we just are. And I want you to know that we can figure this out. And all you need is a system. So here’s the system. Let’s get started.
Are you ready to learn? Yeah. The master plan method has three major parts, five steps to stream discover distill. That’s the first step pre designed. And then we draft we think about options so we can tune the budget and make sure you feel competent. And then we develop it all into a plan that just keeps spiraling around and getting closer and closer to your dream until you’re done with your remodel. Together. These steps will help you plan a smooth regret proof remodel that fits your budget.
But you have to do all of them. Skipping over one of these is going to make the whole process a little hinky. So let’s look at how each step works. predesign dream discovered still, it’s not the same as having a huge Pinterest board. Although I have a huge Pinterest board, I actually have many huge Pinterest boards, you’re welcome to share them. I’m in my Midwest on Pinterest. It’s not the same as just sort of looking at houses and magazines or looking at houses on Instagram and wishing your house looked like them. That is dreaming in a way. But not the kind of dreaming I’m talking about.
You might be focusing on Pinterest because it feels like an easy way to get ideas. But if you fixate too much on other people’s finished projects, you lose the ability to think about you don’t really know why they made the choices they did what their budget was what their starting point was. So you lose the ability to kind of see behind the project. If you do not scroll too much, you’re you’re going to lose your initiative, I don’t want you to get into the comparison trap. So yes, be inspired by the internet. But don’t go too far down the rabbit hole. Anybody want to weigh in? If you have fallen into the trap of getting stuck in Pinterest, it’s great scrolling on Pinterest is really fun. But it’s actually kind of dangerous. When you’re at the early stages of a remodel, it’s more useful once we get to style guides. So we’ll talk about that in a moment. Here’s what we really want you to do. Instead, I want you to get your together, break down the process to envision your dream home into baby steps get there faster. By taking it step by step. What I want you to do is think about what are your goals for the project?
What’s your why? Why do you want to update your home what matters the most, I want you to study up and make yourself a little bit expert in your own home. And that can look a lot of different ways we’ll get into that. But I want you to get that expertise. So you feel confident as you make choices further online. And then the Pinterest part set up a style guide to straight forward Lee streamline your decision making process. So you’re not looking at everything that exists in history and everything that exists on the internet, you’re looking at the things that are within your own style guide. So let’s break that down even a little bit more. If you’ve got a workbook if you want to look at it now grab it or if you want to just take screenshots, go ahead and do that. Dream is what should the feeling of your home be? Is it a gathering place? Is it a retreat? Is it a place where music is constantly playing?
And multiple people are constantly talking and everything is happening at once? Or is it somewhere where everyone can go away into their own little corner and just have some quiet time? This isn’t hard. You know the answer to this. And even if it feels murky, don’t make it feel too complicated. Although this is one thing Judith points out. It’s a very important step for couples who are remodeling. If you’re living alone in your house, you can just ask yourself what you want. But if you live with a couple, if you live with a partner, you have kids, you need to think about the realities of that. And going through the dream step can really be helpful to save conflict later down the line. If you talk about what is important to both of you, first off, I just had a call with a new client the other day, and I asked them when something’s put away because they had written that in their intake form.
What does that mean? Does that mean tucked in a cubby or does That mean behind a closed door? And they actually answered opposite? Well, I can’t design the both. But I would love you to to talk about that. And let me know what direction we’re headed in. This is a question you can ask yourself to as you start to plan. Now to discover, this can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. What does it mean to you to be the expert in your home, and kind of what’s fun for you to discover expertise about your home?
Let me talk about this a little bit more, it might mean that you can add a tape measure and you make a floor plan of your house so that you can sketch out challenges. It might mean that you just look at your whole house, you hire an inspector to come in, you follow them around, and you ask them a lot of questions about why is the furnace like that this noise happens in the middle of the night. What is that? What is the structure of this house? Is this brick block or is it poured CMU. Or it might mean you go to the library and you read a little bit about the early history of your neighborhood. Whatever you need to do to feel more confident in your home will help overall with your sense of I’m going to stand firmly on my choices as I go forward. I talk about all these things further inside of ready to remodel but I want you to ask yourself right now, where’s the missing piece?
When someone asks you a question about your house? What’s the thing that makes you go the most? And can you learn a little bit more about your house Googling, reading family handyman.com Or getting a magazine just to build up that least confidence in yourself a little more? All right, distill. This is this is the secret weapon book. This is how we keep our homes mid-century. And this is also how we keep from breaking our brains as we go through the process of picking every single finish. Everything is single surface, everything single material in a project.
So when you think about your version of mid-century style, are you a preserver or an update? Or do you love 1952? Or do you live 1967? When you know where you fall on the spectrums, you’ll know so much more about what you want to do. And you can set up a style guide for the whole house and then a mini one for each different space you work on. That’s not about products, but it’s about materials. Is the woodgrain dark or light? Are you thinking about you have existing materials you want to work with? What’s your brick? If you have brick in your house? How are you going to work with that? So you make it really glow? Rather than choosing a color that’s going to make it look pasty and kind of scabrous Do you have any original tile or flooring you’re gonna work with? Do you have white oak floors?
How are we going to pick paint colors that make them really glow instead of washing them out. And while there are other materials, you’re going to choose what metals usually no more than two, no more than three for the house no more than two for a room so it doesn’t feel chaotic. Once you have those answers, just the material choices, then you can start to pick products so much more simply, every time you’re going online, every time you’re hunting for vintage materials, every time you’re searching a database, you’re only looking at a little piece of the puzzle. Rather than everything that’s available, this will save your sanity. But what I want you to know is great remodels don’t just happen. They are constructed by people who know what they want and why.
And then make choices that bring that into reality. So if your house was a cooking show, this is the step where you gather all the ingredients together so you can start cooking, and on cooking shows. They do this so they don’t mess up the recipe. It also looks pretty, but you want to plan the perfect home, get all the ingredients together all the pre design steps first, before you start asking yourself questions like what can I do in the kitchen? What are prices? What layout changes when you think about ask the pre designed questions first and then answer them.
This is just a really fun style guide example from one of our ready to remodel students. Based on a print, they decided to simplify their life and materials, their colors by doing everything based on this particular print that they already had and loved and worked with some of the brick that already had was in existence in the mid-century home. Okay, step two design. Now you might be raise your hand if you’ve been playing with any online layout software. Or if you just sort of call the contractor and ask can I open this wall? I mean, that’s a good question to ask.
But that’s that’s not design. Or are you not thinking about layout changes at all? Tell me that’s not true. Because I don’t want you to destroy a mid-century house to make it different just on principle. But I do want you to think about your opportunity to for example, mid-century kitchens love them. They only work for people who want to cook alone. I have clients like that I just the clients I was talking to yesterday. They don’t really want to open up their kitchen. They don’t like open plan. They have one person cooks at a time and then they bring food out and they eat it like a family. That’s how they cook in their house.
But a lot more people are more like the clients. I went to a deck party of last night. They had 15 People all standing in their new open plan kitchen talking at the same time. I could barely hold the conversation but it was really fun. That’s the house they need to have. So knowing these questions for yourself. You’ve got to be thinking about can you tweak your layout? Are you exploring all your options to shift the way your home works in big one These are little ones just a new door opening somewhere or removing a wall or putting in a window. So you’ve got a view out to a particular part of the day. The most effective way to make your house into Whoops, didn’t make that white, a home for your family is to adjust the layout, not just to change how it looks, although we’ll play with that, too. So you can’t do this, let go the fear, you have the ability to think about how a house layout can change. Even if you have no conception of structure, you can get advice on that. But I want you to think about how things can move how you can open things up. Think about the frustrations that drove you to want to remodel in the first place. No elbow room, as you come in nowhere to put shoes away nowhere to spread things out on a counter in the kitchen, we need to do is start your design as if it’s from a blank slate.
So the draft step, turn the kitchen into a third bedroom with a kitchenette, existing dining room, I love it, that might be the perfect solution for your house. And that’s really thinking outside the box. When you’re thinking about draft options, this is my secret weapon, the rule of three. Now when I’m working for clients, I usually come up with five to 10 solutions that could work and then I boil it down and I only show them three because that’s how much we can show them. That’s how much we can draw pretty pictures of etc. But it’s also a magic number.
Because when you have three options, and especially if you’ve got a small, a medium and a large option, you can Goldilocks yourself into the perfect budget for you. And when you have a small, medium and large option for each part of your house that you’re thinking about the kitchen, the bathroom, could you put on an owner suite addition? What about the basement, turn up the outside, you can then later think about what’s most important to you, and put your most effort and dollars into the places that matter most, the large solution there, and the small solution and parts of the house that don’t matter as much.
Again, this is how you really control for your budget by having options. So when we do this, we always do three schemes. And you can do the same, they might not be quite so architecting sketchy as this. But I love the ability to use programs like SketchUp. Or if you have a tablet to draw right over photographs to think about possibilities or old fashioned graph paper plans are perfectly serviceable. There is no shame in that. So think about layout solutions as you go through. And I also want you to think about your rooms, not as rooms, but as spaces. So rather than thinking about I’ve got a kitchen and a dining room and a living room, think about I’ve got social spaces that I want to flow together, or I’ve got a cooking space, and an eating and a hangout space. They should be separate noise answers for yourself as you go through it.
Alright, how am I? Good? Okay, I want you to literally go to the drawing board. Drawing by hand can’t be replaced by other tools, although I do draw a tablet. But drawing is really important as you start to think about it, and sketches no matter how crude will help you imagine possibilities. What if this did have upper cabinets here? Or it didn’t? Does that change the way you feel about your kitchen? Even architects find that starting with paper or tablet is the best way. So before you get into layout software, think about what can you draw even stick figures.
Okay, the last phase is about seeing the entire board the whole project at once Queen’s gambit style. But without the study drugs. What you might be doing right now is thinking about what can I do for X amount of dollars, I want you to think about your budget. But I don’t want you to fixate on numbers as your control mechanism. Remember, we’re going to tune your budget based on big or small places. And I don’t think you’re planning when you’re really just kicking the can down the road, I would love for you to have a big picture plan for your entire remodel before you start on project one. Or at least before you start on project two.
Project One can sometimes via we’re just going to figure out how this feels project. Here’s what I want you to know, a floor plan is not a master plan. When you’ve done your homework, and you’ve done all the steps, you will know not just how it’s going to lay out but how it’s going to be in 3d how it’s going to be finished, what it’s going to feel like and why. So the develop phase is all about a confident and focused remodel process. And this is where you really get to choose again, are you just going to do something cosmetic, you’re just going to fix up your front door by painting it with a can of paint on weekend and getting a new mailbox and your house numbers boom, level one done?
Or are you going to put on a new porch and a deck so you can sit on your front stoop and wave at your neighbors going by and that’s like the perfect dream of living in a home in the neighborhood to you. You might DIY that. Or you might three call a pro and ask them to build that well they remodel your kitchen and take the asbestos out of your basement floor and maybe also put a deck on the back. So each of these levels might be right for you and you actually don’t need to do the same level in all parts of the house. Choosing a level does tie in with your budget and timing. So you might think about doing more contractor lead work if you need to do things quickly and doing more DIY projects if you want to space it out and save dollars and take more time.
Believe though, that you are capable of making a plan for your whole house you are it’s basically A wish list with a lot of reasons behind it. And I hope I’ve made that feel a little easier now. What I want us to do here is think about, what is the guidebook for your remodel, not just a roadmap, that’s a floor plan, but a guide book that’s going to tell you where you’re going to go. And when, what the best places to eat are, what the best places to stay are, the more you know what’s going to happen, the more you control the process, because nothing is more expensive than changing your mind in the middle of a remodel, even if you want to do less.
This is a total diversion. We won’t get into change orders and working with contractors that way. But sometimes when you even want to remove a part of your project from the project that can incur a cost as well as a savings. So the more you know what you’re doing, and what order is important to do it. And the better off you’re going to be. And this is I just have to show off Monica. This is her DIY remodeled kitchen.
And this is the SketchUp plan that she made, she did not know how to use SketchUp. When we started and ready to remodel, she figured it out by herself. She’s a pro. And she’s really been working through her project, she’s now got her kitchen looking exactly the way that she wants it to keeping some of the original cabinets and attack intact, adding more to them in a fun complimentary way, making an eating area that she loves. And now she’s turning her attention to other also important but less first step parts of her house such fantastic news.
So if you take one thing away from today, I want it to be that you can do this, it’s completely doable for you to plan a great remodel for your home, you will get advice from other people, but you don’t need anyone else to tell you what to do in life. You don’t need a design degree. Although having one in your back pocket. Having a friend with a design degree doesn’t hurt. You don’t need an infinite budget. So the big question is, can you apply the Master Plan method to your own remodel, I just walked you through the outline of the steps. But if you’re curious, I also have a lot more support available. I created the ready to remodel program about three years ago, to walk people through this process.
Once I realized I could do it for other people, I realized this method could be taught. And I created this program to walk you through everything you need to know to plan a remodel that you can lead with clarity at any budget. And inside of ready to remodel, we go through every single part of the master plan method together at your own pace. So all of the lessons are pre recorded, you can take them boom, boom, boom, do them in a couple of months, you can do them over a couple of years. I also am always there to support you. We do monthly Office Hours calls when I started ready to remodel we did a package of seven weekly calls. And then in the next cohort we did 12 weekly calls. And I was like oh god remodeling just takes longer than this.
So eventually I rolled it over now every month we do a call. And I answer everyone’s questions. Sometimes they’re about new people asking about their dream phase. Sometimes they’re people asking about what their contractor said or what materials to choose or this gutter isn’t draining right. What’s wrong with the roof we look at pictures, we talk it through, we get answers. It’s so much fun every single time. In the Master Plan method. We’ve got video lessons, workbooks, guides, templates, examples. You don’t have to worry that you’re gonna go in the wrong order because every step is laid out for you.
And we go through dream where we set your goals. So I’ll have a bunch of exercises so you can answer why you want to do this. You can work on them with partner, you can think through it at your own pace, you can check in and make sure you’re going to have less a disagreement that you need. And you can figure out how you’ll prioritize the whole project. In discover, I’ll walk you through everything you need to know to learn your house from floorplan drawing to historical research to calling contractors checking with inspectors figuring out your zoning code issues, so that you can truly feel maybe not that you know every single detail, but you know how to write the right questions.
You know how to respond to contractors, you can call the shots in your own remodel, and distill. This is the country’s fun part. We will build style guides, we will put your design research to work and really set up the project way it’s going to look the way you’re going to keep the mid-century style intact. The style guide system. This is It’s my holy grail of good mid-century remodels. Because not only does it help you make sure the house is going to look right but it really saves your sanity. It helps you to reduce the number of possibilities from everything on the entire internet to the choices that work for you. And once you’ve done one area of the house, it really becomes rinse and repeat. You can take the same style choices you made in the kitchen and apply them to bathrooms, apply them to living rooms, apply them to bedrooms, apply them to a new addition or a basement finishing project with tweaks but not redesigning everything for the whole process. In draft, I will walk you through how to make those multiple options why it’s important to hit the drawing board and give you guides and advice and how to do it by hand or on a computer depending on your preference
and develop. You put it all together and this is the master plan. You’ll make your package your guidebook to the remodel process. It’s going to walk you through the entire process smoothly. So all of these lesson core modules are available in video and audio format and Workbook format, you can listen to it while you walk the dog or do dishes, you can sit down and make a time every day or every week to watch a little bit and go at your own pace. And we’ve got the office hours calls on monthly basis. But also, we’re about to start another remod squad. So it is fun to have weekly calls. And every so often we get a group of people all during the program together. And we do a bunch of concentrated calls old members, old members, longtime members rejoin us and get enthusiastic again, and new members get the benefit of going through the process.
So we’re gonna be doing five calls weekly, in September to talk you through that first burst of energy that does so much. You don’t have to plan the whole remodel in five weeks, but you can get started in five weeks in September. And then everything is available, like this call will be recorded. All of our office hours calls are recorded, you can watch the replay if some people we’ve got a lovely member of our group who’s calling in from Australia, she sometimes shows up live in the morning for our evening call. And sometimes she just submits a question and then I answer it for her while she’s not there. And she watches the recording later. So you can always watch the recording of your call as you go through it. Plus, we’ve got currently a Facebook group. This is beside the point, we’re thinking about taking it off of Facebook. I don’t love Facebook that much myself. But it’s easy way right now for everyone to come together.
It’s a place where people share their wins, share their questions, whenever someone finished the project, we get all the pictures when someone’s choosing materials or color. So sometimes throw some options up there, everybody weighs in, it’s a great way to feel like you are not alone, as you’re going through this process. Because people all over the country are exactly the same spot of their model as you are or are ahead of you providing an example, or coming up behind sort of making you feel like oh, yeah, I remember that. I did that. It’s great.
We also have, oh gosh, I’m gonna fly through this, a host of other mini workshops that plug in and enhance the process, how to find time to plan, how to track each step of the process and keep it running smoothly. How to Choose a contractor, I have a little lesson on this, how to weigh multiple bids. If you’re going to hire contractors, both sub or general, how to think about is the low bid the right bid is the high bid, actually going to be more effective, how to compare apples to apples and how to communicate the contractor a system of contractors to make sure they’re each pricing the same project rather than the project that lives in their head. I have a flowchart. If you have trouble making decisions, is this the right one? Yes or no, you can go through it. It’s like a little app. And I have fun with that.
And then a guide on how to make your model work. Remember at the top I was talking about all the remodeling parts that end up in the landfill. There are a bunch of ways that don’t really cost you anything extra that you can make choices while you’re remodel to add insulation to reorient think about shading to think about thermal comfort to make your house greener and more cost effective. As you go through the process. You might as well. We also have a This has actually been upgraded.
We have an entire design guide system where we have advice masterplan templates, past projects to take examples from for every space in your house plus, out saving strategies. That’s a big one, how to budget and how to cut costs both. And then that’s if you have anybody here been to one of our topic design clinics, mid-century kitchens, mid-century owner suites, we just did that one two weeks ago, exterior updates, the style guide clinic, all of these are actually for ready to remodel students. So I give them to those people and then other people sometimes show up.
We have them available for a small fee, but you get access to all of the ones that exist. The replays are great little ways to spend a weekend focusing on some area of your house. Or you can also be the person who’s adjusted for topics that I’ll do in the future. Okay. I am hoping you are excited about ready to remodel because it is the best way that I know the most I can give you to save you from the remodeling industrial complex to help you focus your remodel to keep the costs low to really make it amazing.
So to encourage you to sign up now rather than putting the decision off today, if you sign up today and join us, you will get access to this is one of my favorite things inside of ready to remodel the layout challenge Buster workshop, I take 90 minutes on a Saturday, and people bring their actual floor plans and whatever escape sketches grid paper is fine. And we workshop layouts in real time I get my tablet out and I just sketch the kitchen go like this, it could go like this. We really can reframe what’s possible for your home.
I can’t design your remodel for you inside of ready to remodel. But this is the time when I actually get to suggest, here’s how this could look. Here’s why you might try this one over this one and draft the possibilities for you. It’s so much fun. Plus, for people that sign up today. There’s a bonus one to one call 30 minute call to get you oriented. I’ll learn your house and what’s necessary so I can turn my advice to you on future Office Hours calls. And I’ll be able to point you to the right parts of the program as you go through it.
So Rebecca just dropped a link if you’re curious about joining ready to remodel check out that link right there. And that will take you to future a recording of this live class, but that’s not available yet, because we’re still giving it. And then right now more information about the ready to remodel program, which costs $2,000. Or if you want to invest in your home, but you want to break it up over time, you can make four payments of $500. Or we just introduced actually a monthly a 12 month payment plan. So, for $167, you can join us right away, get started. I also want you to be completely happy with this program.
So there’s a refund policy anytime within the next few weeks. If it’s not for you, if you realize you just don’t have the time right now, if you realize it’s not what you imagined it would be, you can have your money back. But with ready to remodel, you will get deep access to the Master Plan method, you will learn exactly what you want your home to be, it will make all of your decision making processes easier. It will minimize partner disagreements, swear to God, as a residential architect, I have been a relationship counselor.
Yeah, so glad you’re sending a monthly payment plan. I want this to be accessible. My mission is to save every wrench in America, I want designed to be accessible to you, I want this to be available. So I want you to walk away with a focus master plan that will let you lead your remodel with clarity and confidence. So if you do that, you’ll see this little payment screen while you sign up. And as soon as you sign up, we’ll send you a welcome email, you get instant access to all of the course material. So you can watch all the lessons later this weekend if you want or you know, just the first one. Don’t feel like you’ve got to get all in. And you’ll get access to the Facebook community as soon as we can approve your membership because it’s a private group. And then you’ll get to see what other people inside of ready to remodel have been doing. I encourage you to introduce yourself, join the group become new friends with all these people. I’m happy to guarantee and endorse. They’re all lovely people who are updating mid-century homes in such beautiful ways.
And when you enroll today, you get access to the layout Challenge workshop and a bonus call with me. So I have just been talking for 52 minutes straight. I’m so impressed myself. I just like raced through that. I was afraid I would run over but I want to have a lot of time to answer your questions. So if you’ve asked any questions yet Rebecca has been catching them. Did I say that start? I’m not sure. And I’ll tell you just a couple of quick things about ready to remodel a couple of frequently asked questions about that. And then I would love to answer questions about your particular home, your layout, your materials, anything that’s on your mind. So I’m going to turn the slide deck off now.
Hi, there. So nice to see your lovely faces. Thank you to everyone who camera on it really helps me to feel like I’m talking to people here. So a couple of things that come up all the time when people are wondering about ready to remodel. They’ll ask Is it too soon to start? Maybe you just came to this class because you’re only beginning to think about the process.
But my answer to that is it’s never too soon to start thinking about design. It is literally never too soon to start thinking about design because if you’re planning to remodel next year, you want to be able to start now, the school year is beginning life just gets crazy in the fall and the holidays come if you want any work done in this economy next year, you better be calling contractors no later than January. So now is the right time to start your plans. And if you’re planning to start DIY and work at any point, it’s definitely the right time to get a big picture plan for what you’re going to do so that you can have some confidence about that first project, not being something you’ll have to undo later.
If you’re already a middle of your remodel, it’s also a great time to join ready to remodel because we’ve had a bunch of homeowners join so they can get help with all those last minute oh gosh, the contractor said this questions and the detail work of picking every last finish. It can be really hard to keep your momentum going at the end of a remodel and having the community around you to encourage you and cheer for your wins and support you it’s very motivational.
We’ve had a bunch of people join actually in the mid or even towards the end of their remodel. To get that boost and to get the chance to ask me monthly questions. I will not design the remodel for you. That’s our master plan one to one service. But I will help you with layout questions. I will help you with technical questions I will be on call every month to answer whatever is on your mind. You don’t need design experience to join the program. No experience is necessary. The Masterplan method will walk you through everything you need to know. But if you have remodeled before, you may also find this really helpful. It’s nice to get more detailed questions answered. It’s nice to go a little deeper.
And you know if you’ve remodeled before, how complex it can be, and have a system that streamlines it that just reminds you to go in order is really helpful. So it starts right now it’s ongoing it the program is always running, you can always have access to the material. If you’re asking yourself, should I enroll on the future? Well, sure, sure you can. But I think you’d be better off if you started right now. I would love to get you inside the program so we can encourage you so you can have some accountability to keep moving forward. worried if you fall off the wagon, you can just always come back to the group. And we can go at the pace your ad, rather than feeling like when you realize now’s the time, you just have to kick off that remodel, you don’t have to rush. So let’s see if we got some questions showing up in the comments. I think so.
Great. Christy asks thoughts on creating a mid-century bathroom that’s a bit more luxurious and modern. And then a time capsule mid-century ranch bathroom. Perfect question. Yes. Okay. So I, again, I’m defaulting the comment. I just had a discussion. I just have clients yesterday, they had not the world’s tiniest bathroom, but like a classic tiniest version of a mid-century bathroom. And probably a lot of us have been there mid-century bathrooms were not luxurious. They were very builder basic. If you have Yeah, and we’ve got great shipping and I got original talent, you don’t want to mess it up, but the spaces are really tight.
Okay, so two separate related questions, there are some things you can do. If you are lucky enough to still have your original bathroom, you might choose to sort of keep one wall or one L intact, keep the original tile there and then pick up something that complements it on another wall, where you have pushed out borrowed some space from an adjacent room maybe taken over. I don’t want to call it an unnecessary hall closet, but a whole closet, the storage could be elsewhere and you could have that footprint in the bathroom. You don’t necessarily have to get the whole space, especially if you can find a contractor who’s amenable to a little bit of compromising.
You can think about what’s most important to you. It’s also possible well I never would recommend let’s go to bathroom have original materials and then buy new old style materials and put them in just for no reason. If you do need to change the layout, there are some lovely companies that still have been providing mid-century style tile b&w tile has been making those four by four color block tiles since the 1940s, same family company, and you can still get those original colors you can build back a mid-century style finished actually, Kohler just reintroduced a mid-century colorway line of toilets and sinks and things. So you can also hunt on Facebook marketplace.
Again, when you have a plan, you’re ready to go. I’ve got just a lovely client who’s been building back color block bathrooms by finding free toilets and sinks and things on Facebook marketplace and then building her bathrooms back around the mess. She had to sort of put back previously gutted house. So bathroom layouts are so tricky. We talk about I’ve done a whole workshop on bathrooms. But it also can think you can think about the question of what do you want your bathroom to be a lot of mid-century bathrooms come with that sort of shallow tub that’s good for bathing children, but not adults. It’s beautiful. I love it. If you have an original comment, you want to keep it permission slip granted.
But if you don’t love that tub if you prefer to just shower or if you really love to bathe, you might think about salvaging that tub, innovates horizon house or thinking about often people will keep their mid-century bathroom on the main floor. And then build in another bathroom in the basement. Most mid-century houses originally came with just a plumbed toilet in the basement, the laundry toilet, and you might think about building a bathroom around there, you might create the luxurious space you’re looking for there, go down and have a soaking tub experience a couple nights a week, and then come back up and live in a snugger bathroom that just does what’s opposed to upstairs.
And again, Greg, if you have original tile, you don’t want to mess it up. You can think about I if your commitment is to the original tile, I would think about is there one corner one wall that you can sacrifice that you can push out in where you save the rest of it. And or is there a way to reduce some of the functionality maybe to separate sometimes people choose to make a separate powder room so that they can sort of take down all of the things that are happening in one space and separate it out that works more for people who have more members in the household using the toilets at once. But there’s a bunch of possibilities that you can sort of tune your experience to
All right, we’ve got Anna asking. I’m adding an adu to the carport underneath my duplex. I’m uncertain as to what siding I should put on it. I want to break up the services of the two story flat wall. Great question a lovely to use. One thing that century houses could use more of his density be Yes, siding is hugely important. So if you have everyone if you have your original Redwood cedar siding, please leave alone. As long as it’s an even remotely good shape. It will last generations more please don’t tear it off and replace it however, a lot of houses have already had their siding removed and replaced with vinyl.
A lot of houses have already had their house covered and aluminum siding or vinyl siding which has damaged which may have damaged not a guarantee the wood siding underneath. So as you think about that, you’ll be in the same situation as Anna is where you need to choose a new siding material. I recommend the new wood replacement products the Hardy board the LP SmartSide some of them are cement boards, some of them are plastic, they all have wood in them a little bit and they’re meant to look like wood. You can get them in the wider strips that look like original mid-century siding, eight inches or 10 inches or 12 inches rather than that narrow forage which you often see for vinyl and that was designed to match Victorian houses which are taller and needed narrower look rather than mid-century houses which are more horizontal and needed a wider strip now, you also asked me about breaking up the surface of a two story flat wall. Yeah, that cliff wall effect is a killer.
A lot of houses with walkout basements have the same thing. So I would say you can make a change with color. depending on what’s happening up above, you could have two different siding materials. You could think about a cladding, a stone or a brick below. Or you could just put a horizontal datum line between them. Maybe there’s a shade structure that comes out from the side that walks you in towards the adu doorway, or just creates a sitting area outside the house and that can break up that two story cliff wall effect that isn’t great for a mid-century house. It’s just not the vibe. Hopefully that’s helpful. Okay.
Rebecca asks, we bought a new kit. We bought new kitchen appliances a couple of years ago and chose all stainless steel if you mess up, mess up. No, everything would be tuned everything could be tweaked. Stainless is the default color from an original mid-century kitchen metal. They we okay now when you see mid-century updates, you’ll often see the brass the gold. I love it personally, I’m millennial enough to think that’s really cute. But in an original mid-century house, all of the handles and the faucets and everything would be stainless, so no, you have not messed up. They wouldn’t necessarily have had a stainless appliances in the mid-century. It was beginning of planned obsolescence in colorways. So they were basically making color trends to sell people more kitchen stuff. Thanks a lot, capitalism, but it was cute.
So you know we can now flip back to those colors. It won’t look like a time capsule house with stainless appliances. But you can still bring in color elements you can bring in wood elements, you’re not out of luck. I know people have also had some luck if you want to be extreme with stick on wallpaper that you can then paint if you wanted to play that game. But if you have stainless appliances that are in good shape that you like just fine. No, you haven’t messed up you’re doing screen. All right. Let’s see what else we got. Laurie says sticking point choosing new materials that have mid-century look. I see a lot of what not to choose Shaker Doors, brush nickel, etc. But what to choose also updating that will keep the mid-century look for provide a decent resale value more modern, outdated, great. Okay. So this is going to depend on what you’ve got going on in your house already. If there’s anything original to the house, not everybody some people are living in flips that don’t have anything original house. But if you have original wood, if you have original door handles.
In my house, I’ve got my original doors that I love. I sing love songs to them all the time, and they have their original brass handles. Note mid-century brass is not the same as modern brass mid-century Brass has a patina and it sort of goes dark. You would never put a new brass metal right next to a mid-century brass metal, because new brass looks Victorian and it will never have that patina. But what am I talking about? Sorry, I’ve got a lot of ideas going. You want to think about what complements that so if I was to need to put in a new handle next to the store, or replace the hinges or something, I would choose a dark matte brown or black with a little bit of like a rubbed bronze or an age dress would be usually the marketing for that. That would not be a perfect match for it, but would complement it nicely. So that boils down to the essence of if you have anything original in your house, you want to match or complement it. And then you want to build a style guide that’s consistent. You asked about resale. I’m not a big believer in planning a remodel for resale your remodel is for you. You might know that you only have a limited amount of time in your house. So you don’t want to over personalize.
But I would say one of three things is going to happen when someone else buys a house. They’re either going to buy the house because of what you did to it, they’re going to see what you did, and they’re going to love it. And they’re going to choose your house because when you did, or a lot of people just live in houses as they are not everyone is here at this workshop right now, a lot of people don’t care about the aesthetics, they’re gonna buy a house for the location for the number of bedrooms, for you know, because it’s on the market in that particular moment, and they’ll just be fine with it. So then it doesn’t matter.
And then other people are going to buy a house and they’re going to do whatever they want to it. Sometimes it’s gonna break our hearts afterwards. But those people also don’t care what you did. So I would say there’s also this it’s always the right choice to make a house more itself. Not necessarily dated. But true to its mid-century origins. Maybe your house was a really builder basic 1952 ranch. That’s me that’s this house. I’m not going to only make builder basic 1952 choices for this house. I have been consistently looking for things I can bring in that both make it feel fun to me in a millennial way like painting it dark gray. Anyone else can painted another color in the future paint is a repeat replaceable thing. So go nuts with already painted surfaces, do them any color you want.
But I’m also gonna look for design details from other higher end houses from the early 1950s Or later in the mid-century era. And bring those in screen walls built in details, other fun things so you can make choices for your house. and improve on it that even modernize it in the sense of modern architecture, but don’t take it out of its own period. The real risk in any remodel is to do something that’s so trendy that it becomes dated, you want to look for timeless choices, and I really believe that’s the best way to think about resale. Okay, um, let’s see, let’s see, we’ve got Christie says, yeah, we’ve got brushed nickel kitchen hardware and when it would be a good replacement.
So yeah, I would say stainless, totally fine, totally mid-century actually very vintage appropriate, or I really do like the sort of rubbed brass rubs bronze, those are fun if you’re kind of on the modern end of the mid-century spectrum. Matte Black is a fun choice. And again, kitchen hardware can be a really, I don’t recommend thinking of it as disposable but that’s the sort of thing that can be changed over time without damaging the house and you can tune that to your own preference. Okay. Small tactical question. Painting a bathtub by a professional, usually okay are usually a disaster. I have a bathroom with pink tile, yellow image fixtures and rosy on floor thinking of slimming down to two colors by mixing the mixed yellow fixtures and trying to save but not removing the tub. It would be the only remaining yellow fixture. Yeah, I haven’t done this personally. Although I thought about it. Um, my bathroom is blue, but only the tub is blue. So it’s not I know the tub is white. What’s the matter with me my tireless blue, my tub is white, but it’s only around the tub. Because somebody that’s the one thing that wasn’t a time capsule in my house that the 90s got the bathroom. Home Depot got the bathroom, it said, but I know that there are professionals out there who have been able to very well re enamel tubs.
The question I don’t know the answer to is going from white to a color is pretty easy. I don’t know about going from one color to another. So you might have to stick in the same family. Let’s see You said pink, yellow pink. It’s possible. I think it’s definitely possible. I would definitely want to see some references. Some examples that the professional have done that before they will certainly have photos. But I don’t think it’s a bad idea. And it might be a nice way to give a new life to the tub rather than certainly to replace them throw it out or even to source it to someone else and bring in a new one would be more work and more damaging. Yeah. Great. Great question.
Okay, grace and Brennan ask any recommendations for Windows I want to keep the architecture design but durability that will help the left house last longer currently what is rotting Wonderful? Okay. You said the magic word rotting Well, you told me what you needed to know rotting. I would actually say for anyone who has their original windows, if they’re in good shape, keep them even if you could probably get a more energy efficient window now. There are a lot of things you can do to seal to preserve to improve on an existing window and nothing’s ever going to look more organically appropriate for the house than an existing window also it’s much cheaper. It is cheaper actually to raise your energy bill slightly to air seal the windows to get insulated curtains than it is to replace every window in your house especially to replace it well. But rotting okay well that we can’t we can’t deal with that. So windows are so specific. I know mine on windows are the cheapest I know all the windows in your house are expensive. I can’t I can’t recommend it.
This is a place I feel like you need to invest. I do like modern Windows with a metal cladding on the outside. The fiberglass modern Windows are actually fine different companies Pella Anderson Marvin have different sort of mid and high range solutions. You’re going to look for the most simplistic Windows you can find. Marvin Ultimate is a perfect match for mid-century houses like you can do an articulated nine pane operable window over and Marvin ultimate and it will look original, but the well insulated and air sealed and perfect. They’re not cheap, but they are worth it. The other thing you can think about is the design of the windows not just the detailing, but the shape of the window. So many builder grade mid-century houses have double Hung’s that’s fine. It’s good for air movement. But what’s really sort of a little more zazzles for a mid-century home is to have a fixed window above with an awning window below that flips out.
So you can think about taking the exact window openings that you have and replacing maybe a different shape a different operability of windows inside of them. The most minimalistic looking windows are going to be casements. But you don’t want too many large casements because they start to be a little fussy to operate and it’s a lot of area for screen which is a risk for kit damage or bird damage, things like that. So I have if you want to join ready to remodel I’ve got so much to say about it. But what I want you to know is thinking about the sort of picking the overall style of the Windows is the most important thing.
And you can also think about having maybe you’re only replacing the windows that are most pressing right now and you’re kind of phasing it in it’s most efficient to have an all done at once. But it might be worth it to save and spend to get the right windows in the most important places sooner and then come back and get all that later. Something to think about. All right.
Greg says my kitchen has original cupboards that I love the tile counters are pretty well used. I don’t like solid surface replacement options. They look modern or trendy is it practical to restore existing chip tile, or bedding to replace the whole shebang. So interesting. If you are used to a tile surface, you could restore or replace the tile with tile. A lot of people don’t love cleaning the grout. But if this is your kitchen routine, you can go right ahead and do that. I think it might be reasonably cost effective. Think about replacing tile with tile, it’s sometimes hard to Repair and Replace, you might have to pull it all out and put in new tile in its place. I hear you on a solid surface feeling modern, although I feel like a matte, simple white solid surface is a finish that a mid-century person would have loved. It’s not what they had. But they would have liked the practicality of the cleanability of it. It’s not luxuries. It’s not Marvel this century wasn’t about Lux finishes, it was about livability and cleanability. So if there’s that.
The other thing I would suggest if you want it to stay vintage is Formica. very practical, very durable, very clean of all and there’s a lovely company make it mid-century that is selling a sparkle lamb product, which is so fun and really looks like a time capsule when it’s installed. Well, so make it mid-century there actually, they were started as an architect and became a mid-century supplier. They’re lovely, lovely people. I would look into that. Or like I say, if you like the tile, I think you could go one to one with tile tiles. Also, it’s a DIY viable thing. Anybody who has time on their hands can put tile down so you can think about that for sure. And hurray for mid-century kitchen cupboards, they are so well built, they’re so solid. I’ve been thinking about how it might have some water standing on the bottom and I need to refinish them. So I’m like, I hate to do that myself are hired out but yeah, they’re wonderful.
Cindy says if your budget doesn’t allow for a contractor like remodel, should we start with our municipality to get questions about do’s and don’ts answered before getting bids from individual contractors, some don’t ever get back to like mid-century and budget. You ya and Imani says I feel this I need a new custom sized door and I can’t find anyone to redo it. Okay, so okay, it’s got two answers to that. Yeah. Um, you’re gonna look in a different place. If you don’t want a full contractor led remodel, I think your best bet is to be finding a person who is totally out there, I’m sure is out there in the community is going to be hard to find, because they are like a handyman contractor. And they don’t advertise, and they don’t have a website. And they may just have a cell phone. And the way you find them is word of mouth, you find someone who they just did a great project for and then they’re sort of between projects where they’re working on one, but they’re lining up the next one.
It takes work to find these people. Get on Angie’s List, get on mid-century Facebook groups, ask around ask every week, ask your neighbors and friends. If there is a local contractor sort of interchange, maybe go to Home Depot and ask around. But these people exist, but they’re, they’re a little harder to find than the big budget firms. The places that are always advertising have higher end overheads. And they want to do bigger, more expensive projects. So yeah, they will kind of think mid-century and budget or four letter words. But you can find the person that you need to do the project with you who will take it in spaces and even let you work with them. There. They’re just a lot harder to find. Unfortunately, they exist though. It’s an absolute sub market of contractors and I want you to find that person so fingers crossed for you.
IMANI custom size door, your local Lumberyard can help you make a custom size door. They can order it for you. They can tell you all the specifications, and they may even have someone who can help you install it. Oh, also go to your local lumberyard and ask them who they know who are sort of guy in a truck, gallon a truck style contractors that actually has great place to look for your handyman contractor. But yeah, instead of going to Home Depot, Home Depot Lowe’s, they will not sell you a custom sized door, but your local Lumberyard will have a list of multiple door suppliers who will cut a door down to scale who will mount the handle in a different spot for you. All of those things can be custom ordered, and they’re not generally that expensive because it’s entry doors are more simple than the more ornate fancy six panel doors that older or newer homes are sometimes looking for.
Okay, Rebecca asks, our basement is unfinished with really low ceilings I’ve been told we would have to drill down if we wanted to finish it don’t know if that’s accurate. Can we add a half story and greatest little situation or is that a bad idea? Okay, you can drill down I used to do this when I worked in higher end remodels in Chicagoland. A lot of Chicago basements are just not they were meant to be storage areas but now with prices being what they are people are moving into making finished basement basements, and it was pretty common to cut out the entire basement floor to the foundations. Dig it out. Six to 10 to 12 inches and then putting a new foundation and basically lower the floor to raise the ceiling. It’s a doable thing. Depending on where you are, if it’s not very common in your area, it will be more and more expensive, the less people are doing it around your space, but it can be the solution.
I wonder what you mean by really low, because sometimes the other solution we would use in those Chicago low ceiling updates would be sometimes you want to have to finish the basement exactly the way you would finish the rest of the house with drywall on the ceilings and maybe wood paneling or drywall on the walls, those things but if you have a really low ceiling, you can create extra head height, but you can create extra feeling of headspace. By exposing the joists above you mid-century dress can actually kind of beautiful if they’re in really rough shape, you paint them black, to sort of hide the detritus, if they’re in decent shape, you can paint them white to get more brightness and then you like you can’t actually put your head into the space between joists but you feel the headroom of the space between joists it does make a difference.
So if you’re talking about not head bopping height, but just it feels a little low. That’s one way to make it better. The other thing is yeah, I’m foolishly find a split level. So you could think about a side addition that pops out. But that’s yeah, you’ve asked a lot of complexity parts to that question. But I think it’s worth it to get some prices on what will be the lower the ceiling, it’s probably easier, probably even cheaper to lower the floor of your basement. And it is to put in at least a large addition to stay within your original footprint. And certainly if there’s a way to make the basement work as is, even as a slightly lower ceiling space, if it’s a space where you’re mostly going to hang out and watch TV, for example, if you mostly are walking to a cool sofa, really low set furniture mid-century furniture can also help make a low ceiling space feel higher.
Let’s see Serrana says 1946 original Roman brick with lower half would form concrete aging mauve colored paint on concrete chipping and feeling badly what to do with prefer original gray tone of material. Okay, so the concrete is painted. Yes, the concrete painted good. If brick is painted, it’s really hard to do anything about that it’s very hard to get paint back off a brick without damaging the exterior finish of the brick. But concrete is a little bit more resilient. So you could think about starting with a scrubbing power wash, then you can think about a sandblast. Just to bring it back to concrete. Concrete doesn’t really have an outer layer. So you can go in a couple of micrometers and just sort of get into from the original finish that should be okay. And then you might choose, you might choose to repaint. Here’s the thing, if it’s been painted for a really long time, whatever the moisture performance of your house is right now is based on that paint so you might paint again, or you can leave the concrete exposed and let it breathe a little bit more organically.
One of the other reasons I highly recommend against painting brick or concrete is you’ve changed the moisture performance of the house by sealing the outside layer. And that can cause a new buildup of moisture inside the house which can lead to hidden mold and ventilation problems over time. So you’re probably not going to create a problem by removing paint those on it wasn’t originally painted. So I would say go ahead and try. Again, depending on your DIY versus I want to hire someone to fix the problem. Nature, I would say you could try high pressure hose and scrub brush yourself and see if we can get the peels off. Or you can think about more intense options.
One thing this is for the whole room. If you’ve got any type of paint on your house, certainly if it’s peeling, I want you to do a lead check. I want you I say lead check test for lead paint lead check is the only products that you’re going to find on the shelves at Home Depot. That’s actually or most hardware stores that’s actually EPA approved. It’s led checkmark, but it’s a very simple test, it’ll just turn yellow. If you have led in the paint, it’s a good thing to know about led paint is no joke. It really is dangerous, especially to little kids is very developmentally harmful. And it’s one of the biggest risks along with asbestos in our beloved mid-century homes. So if you have lead paint in your house, on the outside of your house, especially if it’s peeling or chipping, you want to address that responsibly as soon as possible, especially if you’ve got kids in the area.
So just think about that. It’s not a guarantee, but unfortunately we use LED painting this country way longer than we should have it was banned in Europe in the 1920s That’s reality. Okay, what else? Topic shifting.
We’re trying to lighten up a dark 1970s kitchen will be replacing non functional cabinets would like to have some mid-century woodgrain lowers and white uppers IKEA for affordability but don’t want to be trendy. Is a white kitchen classic. Fantastic. Okay. I often recommend IKEA kitchens. If you don’t have your original cabinets. Not everyone is so blessed if you have to change the layout. Again, IKEA isn’t something actually IKEA was around in Europe in the mid-century. It’s a European style fitted kitchen. And it’s a perfectly modernist appropriate choice. It can do Be a little basic. So you’ve got a couple of options. There are several companies now that are offering woodgrain, door and door, door and panel replacements for IKEA kitchen semi handmade, just one there. Walmart grain match is really nice. It’s not going to look original, but it is going to look mid-century appropriate. If that feels like it’s too much, you can still do a fully white cabinet kitchen.
A couple of caveats actually. IKEAs own mid range cabinet door, I think it’s called Vega. It’s not the low end, it’s not the high end, which is very shiny and modern. It’s a matte, slightly rounded edge finish. I actually really liked it Matt is a very mid-century finish. I think you could choose that with an original, maybe a vintage door handle or a vintage replacement style. And then bring wood into the kitchen somewhere else. wood panel, wood wall wood shelves, bring in your wood grain that would have been in the cabinet doors originally to some other parts of the kitchen. Again, it’s not going to look like a time capsule, but it is going to feel like the young cousin of your mid-century home’s original kitchen. And for everyone who’s thinking about IKEA, there’s a lot you can do.
You can think about colorways you could do an avocado green kitchen, you could think about, again, a combination of some built ins that are custom and some that are more simple. But I really do like the option of bringing in some woodgrain. There’s a couple of other companies that have been selling handmade out there that are doing this. They’re the ones I’ve had the most experience with. So I can say they provide a great product, but there’s a couple of others out there that are doing wood replacements that you can understand yourself or have pre stained and a white kitchen actually kind of is classic. I always tell people do not paint your wood if it’s not been painted before, but some of the original mid-century kitchens were painted originally or right away and they were painted in color. Sometimes they were painted sort of Mondrian style multiple colors. Or often they would have like the frames would be painted and the doors themselves would be stained. So there’s a bunch of things you can do to play with that.
Oh, Imani says a door with glass still a lumberyard check with a lumberyard? Yeah, they’ll have suppliers who do multiple paints or single Paintsville light. Yeah, your local Youngberg for everybody going to Home Depot, they don’t have anyone there that know what’s going on your local Lumberyard has a desk staffed by helpful young person and a crusty old person almost at all times. And they will give you good advice and they will connect you with people that you want to know and they will point you out to like showroom examples. They’re great. They have catalogs you can flip through they know things. The longest find a lumberyard that’s been around the longest, there’ll be something probably it’s been there since the mid-century. And then maybe you’ll find the person who’s been working there since the 70s. They will know where the bodies are buried. It’s great.
So yes, still about weird. Let’s see. Serrana says considering a plain metal security screen for airflow and security outside and original front door thoughts. Yeah. Um, if you need security and you want airflow, then yes, my best recommendation for screen doors for storm doors for security doors is if you can paint them and you probably can paint them the same color as your door unless your door is wood stain In which case, white black, bronze, whatever you want. But if you have a Color Pop front door and you want to put a storm door it I need to destroy on my door. I live in the Midwest and my door is original and yeah, it’s a little leaky. So storm door is a must. But I painted the storm door the same orange as my front door and it just does such a good job of making that color pop really come out.
So there are also depending on where you are in the country. For example, in Georgia most mid-century houses have amazing metal grid sometimes their screen sometimes they’re just security doors because they don’t know they didn’t have bugs in the mid-century. They didn’t care about bugs in that century. I’m not sure. But I when I was down visiting friends in Atlanta, I toured a couple of mid-century neighborhoods and I was just blown away by the cool patterns like sunburst and wrought iron and beautiful detail work that were on the security doors. So I find this today I do not know I don’t have the answer. But you could also you could hunt out vintage. If that doesn’t go across purposes to a security door. I highly recommend you have some fun with this. There are some great stuff out there.
Okay, more questions. What do you think about the high orange shellac on pine boards? I do love the look but I wonder if the shellac shine should be removed? Well, as a matter of preference. amber Shellac literally crushed up bugs. Interesting gross depending on how you feel about it. Um, I do I i know it’s original. My favorite burnish and the thing that hammer shellac it’s really Shellac is you can actually take the sheen off yourself. Not the sandpaper with the finest possible sandpapers. And actually they would get that sort of really velvety finish that you find on some original doors with crushed up newspaper. It is elbow grease. It is labor intensive. But you can modify the finish of amber Shellac even today, although it will have been sort of slowly hardening over the last couple of more than a couple of decades. Now Mmm, you can also think about refinishing it.
If you liked the look of the pine, but you don’t love the orange, you can remove some of that I think it does well in places you can also think about. If you’ve got a lot of orange and black pine, you want to keep some of it, but maybe not all of it. Again, this is going to hit differently for different people on the time capsule to update scale. But if you can keep some of it, maybe you remove one wall out of a room that was fully panels, or maybe you keep the built ins but not the panel walls or maybe you salvage the panel walls. One thing is if you do need to remove and replace this is work. Sometimes you can flip them backwards and get the unfinished side and then you don’t have the sheath to deal with. Some people don’t really like the fuzziness of the Pickwick pine that has the like little grooves in it.
The backside of it is just a simple beveled straight board. So, things to consider when you’re salvaging when you’re upgrading. If you are changing your layout, you might have to remove mid-century materials entirely, but you can keep them, and they maybe repurpose them as you go forward.
Great, Christopher, I had the crazy idea to put grasscloth wallpaper on our hallway. Not crazy, but we have cats. Okay, so I’m only wanting to do the upper world grass cloth any suggestions for the lower half? I’ve considered to some trim having lower half drywall. Worry the wallpaper on top might look heavy. I’ve also considered just plywood, but I’m worried I don’t have the skills to make that look nice and finish. Okay, yeah, so there’s a couple of things you could do. Again, I’m going to drive you to your lumber yard where they may have straight Luan, which is like really, really thin plywood that you can finish neatly and it comes in big boards, you don’t have to you don’t have to manually too much and everything about fine grains too much find connections between too many panels.
You might also think about how you could do a redid finish board on lower half, and then a grass cloth wallpaper above and have the same sort of vertical striation pattern pick up in both that can be really fun. Your local Lumberyard may or may not have redid luring them, but they may be able to source it for you. There’s also a company out of California that works specifically on Eichler’s. I am not going to think of the name right now. But you know, I’ll look up a look at the name. I’ll put in the email that I send you guys with the replay video to this.
Or if I don’t get in that one, it might be scheduled I’ll send it again. They supply exterior siding to anglers, they ship all over the country. I don’t know what the shipping costs are. But that might be a fun thing to think about for making this really special. And I do I love grasscloth for mid-century houses. It’s really fun. You’re right, it might be a little dangerous for the cats. So you could also just think about giving it a trim bass. You think about painting a bolder color below and using the lighter colored reclass to give that that visual heaviness to the bottom. Or you could just test it you could put read grass up on the top grasscloth Up on the top and think about it for a while and if it does feel weirdly imbalanced you can come back and do some below it later. This is the benefit of if you’re DIY in the project, you can kind of take it in steps. But I love that idea. I don’t think that’s crazy.
Okay, my last question. If you’ve got more questions, feel free to ask them I’m still here I will stay till the end I swear to God, but we’ve got is there a way to repair or refinish the surface of Formica countertop the sheen has gone from mine on there some scratches stains easily but it’s cream with pretty cool that’s all like mine and I love it if I could repair it I would prefer that to replace and countertops I don’t know the answer to this. I feel like you ought to be able to clear epoxy it perhaps like a Clear Matte epoxy. I would want you to test it. So if there’s any other Formica in your house, if there’s like a basement something okay, we’ve got Eichler siding.com This is the company I’m thinking about. Yeah, that’s easy. All right, great. Thank you Anna I appreciate it. Everybody microsite and got come I don’t have to send an email that makes my life easier. But we’re talking about from I would think I would want you to test it. So I don’t want to just go into this cold but you could think about it, there’s I would look like for like a marine grade, clear matte sealer. You could go shiny. For sort of the best durability in paints as well as in stains.
The shinier it is, the more high gloss it is the more it’s going to be easy to wipe down and clean what you want for a kitchen counter. But I would look for something more satin finished so it doesn’t sort of like reflect into your eyes. You do you’re talking about how the shame is gone and that is bad, but I think you don’t want it to be like super high gloss. So yeah, I would. What am I thinking of? I’m blanking on the exact product and thinking but yeah, if you look for sort of a marine waters ceiling product, and think about if you can get it into a medium sheen finish, you could try that. I think it might help. Probably wouldn’t hurt too much. On but I would love to see you tested on something before you put it all over your kitchen counters. On the other hand, right now they’re not working. So you could definitely do that either as a stopgap measure, or just if it works, you win. And if it doesn’t work, you are where you are. And you might need to replace again, modern Formica could be your answer, you can still get gold flex, but it’s not as cheap as just repairing what you’ve got, of course. Let’s see.
Christie says thoughts on an affordable MCM ish ceiling to replacement of the drop ceiling in the den. I’m dreaming of a plywood finished ceiling that looks unfinished, matte and light. Yeah, I think that’d be really lovely. I favor favorite ceiling from its entry houses is so problematic, because it’s the like KraftMaid hand done seashell curves, which I don’t even know where you find someone who can do that you can teach yourself to do it. But I think a light unfinished plywood, I would make sure if you’ve got any other wood in the room, maybe you don’t want unfinished, unfinished might be risky, but really a light finish. And then think about how is that would get to play nicely with whatever you have, it doesn’t have to be an exact match the rule of three metals in your house to in a room also works for woods, you don’t have to have the exact same stain and species of wood in every single space. But you don’t want to have too many different things going on.
And you don’t want one with a really cool tone and one with a really warm tone because one of them is going to look better than the other, neither of them are going to look as good together. So with all materials, bring samples into your house and check them in situ in daylight in light and shade next to your existing materials before you pull the trigger. I think I can be quite nice. Other things. I mean, you could just simple drywall. That’s not very exciting. But it’s nice. We’re going to drop ceiling
boards more intense, but you know to do a tongue and groove would be that’s very mid-century appropriate and could be a lot of fun, but play would probably be easier. I like it. I like it. Have I run us out of questions. Okay, no, I haven’t good. How should we deal with lead paint on concrete? If it is LED? We definitely have to deal with a black mastic and old wiring behind plaster walls right now too. Yeah, that’s the other three main hazards lead paint, asbestos? And if the if rewiring, so can you tell me? Am I pronouncing your name right? And B? Would you DIY this or would you hire someone to do it? I’m just going to drink water promote my way because if you’re going to hire someone, you’ll need to hire a lead specialist if you’re going to do it yourself.
In most states, there is no requirement that you hire a specialist, you’re allowed to do it yourself. You don’t need specialty training to deal with lead. But you don’t want to mess around with lead. So this is where you get into your intense googling. You can follow the exact same procedures that someone would if they were a professional letter mediator, and those are included include things like wearing a high quality respirator while you work, wearing a full Tyvek suit so that you can get all the lead particles and dusts on the outside of that and then take it off before you go outside your house. Putting down plastic out from the house to catch all of the paint chips and dust that might fall down and working wet. So getting the whole surface wet before you do any sanding or scraping so that the pieces that come off will be more likely to fall down onto the plastic than to go out around the space. So I am not a professional letter mediator. But these are some of the steps you’d want to take. You can basically look the OSHA training guidelines are online for health professionals are trained and you can follow the exact same steps yourself to minimize the risk. Honestly, it’s probably worth it to take on dealing with this lead paint if it’s led all at once and get rid of it in one big maneuver rather than just having it sort of slowly chipping off into your garden areas around your house under your open windows all day every day until you do deal with it. So it’s definitely worth taking seriously. But it’s not doable. And it is you’re within well within your rights as a homeowner to remediate that yourself and to take care of it.
And then Anna asked in my master bath, the tub and shower are separate. And the shower stall is tight. There’s only one thing I was thinking I’d combine the shower and bathtub and put in two sinks is combining the shower bathroom steak or no it’s not unless it feels like one for you. Bath fixtures are so personal. If you are not a bather, you don’t need a bathtub, if you don’t shower, maybe you only need a bathtub. And this is a question only you and your family can answer. But I definitely think if it’s an original mid-century master bathroom which hurray we’re also lucky if that exists. But they’re often very small and snug and so yeah, they often benefit from a little bit of opening up the modern conception of an owner’s bathroom is luxury and the mid-century conception of an owner’s bathroom was a little bit of privacy. In a very small space, so that doesn’t always it doesn’t always translate perfectly to what we have today. And I definitely think if you aren’t using the shower and tub together, putting just a shower in and then giving yourself an extra vanity spot is not a bad idea at all i highly endorse.
Ask yourself the dream questions. What do you want your bathroom to be? What is a great bathroom to you? And then proceed confidently accordingly. This has been so much fun. I love getting to answer your questions. You guys have been such a great group. Thank you for sharing your Saturday morning with me or afternoon depending on where you are. If you have more questions, shoot me a DM on Instagram. I’m there. I am so excited. I think we already had somebody in this group has joined us Yes, somebody in this group has joined us and ready to remodel. Hurray, I’m so excited for you. I would love if you think about it today. Today is the day to join us and get the benefit of the extra call and the layout Challenge workshop.
It would be so much fun to keep chatting about your problems, your challenges your questions with your mid-century update in our office hours calls over time. If not, then don’t be a stranger, come to a clinic, come grab a couple of our free resources. I want you to make great choices for a mid-century home no matter how you do them.
But I’m so grateful that you care. I’m so grateful that you have chosen to Mid-century home and that you love it. And I want you to know that you’re going to do a great job with it. So have a Happy Saturday.
And I hope to see you in the future. Thank you. All right. Take care everybody.