Do you think of your mid-century home as historic?
Maybe you don’t. After all, MCM stands for mid-century modern.
But I kinda do! These houses are all 50 to 75 years old at this point. That’s getting up there!
Because of that, I am bringing you a conversation with my favorite expert on caring for historic homes, Scott Sidler, the historic window whisperer.
If you know Scott, he has an Instagram handle of @theCraftsman blog. His blog is “the Craftsman blog”. He spends all of his time talking about how to repair windows on craftsmen and Victorian and other historic homes.
So what does that have to do with me, with us, with our love of mid-century?
We may have named our main platform communications for different eras of housing, but Scott and I share the same passionate love for all things vintage.
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In his opinion, mid-century homes and our original windows may or may not be obviously historic.
Some are. And some are instead “experimental”. These are more of a challenge to care for.
(Spoiler alert, one way or another, Scott and I are going to talk about the joys and benefits of maintaining, perhaps repairing, what you’ve got and not replacing it with something new and ultimately disposable.)
But, what mid-century houses and craftsman houses (and everything older than that) have in common is not just the beautiful materials, the wood grain, the craft that looks so pretty.
They share a philosophy behind that appearance – that the materials and assembly were meant to be maintainable and repairable.
The parts of our houses were not disposable units that would need to be tossed in the trash as soon as they failed for the first time. As far as Scott and I are concerned, this is where historic and mid-century are perfectly aligned.
I wasn’t halfway through this conversation before I started to wonder to myself, did we just become best friends?
Then we really dove into how Scott helps homeowners (and commercial building owners, too!) repair and care for their original windows. (And I was sure we were BFFs)!
Scott’s blog (The Craftsman Blog) is a treasure trove of older house information and how to’s built from his experience working on and love for old houses. You may have already found it.
Scott also figured out how to provide education, coupled with services to folks who want to repair their vintage windows. His in-person classes are as unique as his take on historic buildings!
And then he went even FURTHER. His website Heritage Supply Company sells the tools, materials and supplies you need to repair and care for your vintage windows in quantities that make sense for homeowners. I know.
He’s got resources for everything you need! And gives an amazing interview. Keep scrolling for the transcript …
More from Scott
Other Resources
Resources
- Get Ready to Remodel, my course that teaches you to DIY a great plan for your mid mod remodel!
- Want us to create your mid-century master plan? Apply here to get on my calendar for a Discovery Call!
- Need some targeted home advice? Schedule a 30-minute Zoom consult with me. We’ll dig into an issue or do a comprehensive mid century house audit.
And you can always…
- Join us in the Facebook Community for Mid Mod Remodel
- Find me on Instagram:@midmodmidwest
Read the Full Episode Transcript
Della Hansmann 00:00
Do you think of your mid-century home as historic? Maybe you don’t, after all, MCM stands for mid-century modern, but these houses are all 50 to 75 years old at this point, that’s getting up there, and today, because of that, I am bringing you my favorite expert on caring for historic homes, Scott Sidler, the historic window whisperer.
Della Hansmann 00:19
In his opinion, mid-century homes and our original windows may or may not be obviously historic. Some are, and some are instead experimental, and in that case, more of a fun challenge to care for. Spoiler alert, though, one way or another, we are going to talk about the joys and benefits of maintaining, perhaps repairing, what you’ve got and not replacing it with something new and ultimately disposable. This is a great one guys.
Della Hansmann 00:43
Hey there. Welcome back to mid mod remodel. This is the show about updating MCM homes, helping you match a mid-century home to your modern life. I’m your host, della Hansmann, architect and mid-century ranch enthusiast. You’re listening to Episode 2301.
Della Hansmann 00:56
Before we dive in with Scott. I just wanted to say, if you’re feeling any of that new year, new project for the House Energy, I am here for it, and this is the perfect time to kick off a master plan that curates the choices you’re going to make for your house so that we can preserve as much of the good stuff as possible, while maybe removing some of the previous changes and adapting it best to fit the life for you and your family.
Della Hansmann 01:22
Looking ahead at our design schedule right now, we are booking out our next project or two signs should be turning around to our clients with options in March, and then getting the feedback incorporated and ready to take action on in April. So it’s high time to get the ball rolling on your house plans, my friends, if you want to make changes, starting in the spring, we’re taking action right away.
Della Hansmann 01:44
And if you’d just like to get your ducks in a row, start talking to contractors and maybe have something coming along in fall, it’s the perfect time to get started. I would love to talk to you about your house. So let’s schedule a call ASAP in the new year to chat about your house, your plans, what’s on your wish list for the 2026 first project and your bigger perhaps phase two plans in another year or two, you can’t get started on any of it without a good, solid plan one that will allow you to preserve as much as you update now.
Della Hansmann 02:12
Okay, let’s talk about Scott. If you know him, he has an Instagram handle of the Craftsman blog. His blog is the Craftsman blog. He spends all of his time talking about how to repair windows on craftsmen and Victorian and historic homes. So what does that have to do with me, with us, with our love of mid-century? Well, we may have named our main platform communications for different eras of housing, but Scott and I share the same passionate love for all things vintage.
Della Hansmann 02:39
And what mid-century houses and craftsman houses and everything older than that have in common is not just the beautiful materials, the wood grain, the craft that look so pretty, but the philosophy behind that appearance, that the materials and the assembly were meant to be maintainable and repairable, the idea that parts of our houses were not disposable units that would need to be tossed in the trash as soon as they failed for the first time.
Della Hansmann 03:06
So we can really get on the same page about the concept of mid-century houses and everything built before that being made out of materials that were not intended for the landfill and that were meant to be and assembled in a way that could be repaired and maintained for long periods of time. This is where historic and mid-century are perfectly aligned. As far as Scott and I are concerned. I wasn’t halfway through this conversation before I started to wonder to myself, did we just become instant best friends?
Della Hansmann 03:34
This chat with Scott was one of the highlights of my late 2025 and I am so excited to kick off this season of the mid, milder model podcast with this conversation, I would say, long story short, you’re gonna love it, but this is a long conversation, long it’s all worth it. Consider this to be pep talk, instructional manual and entree into Scott’s world of hands on how to content of how to take care of your historic home, that includes our mid-century homes, too, in many cases, if you’re curious about that tease, I gave up top about whether your windows are historic or experimental. Well, we’ll get more into that later on, but for now, let’s just dive right in, and I will let Scott tell you about how he came to historic homes and how he has become a passionate expert on the topic.
Della Hansmann 04:22
It’s so good to be here with you. Scott Seidler of the Craftsman blog, this is really exciting for me, because I’ve been following you online for years, since before I knew I wanted to do anything in home restoration, and now, now we’re having a conversation about how much we love taking care of old homes. Welcome.
Scott Sidler 04:41
Oh my goodness, yeah, it’s so I’m so excited to be here. I love what you’ve been doing in the mid mod, you know, in that world, in that space. And it’s, you know, it’s our restoration worlds are like, slowly growing into it as the 70s is becoming more historic. And it’s just wild. So it’s.
Della Hansmann 05:00
That’s a great place to jump in. Because I think when I first started thinking about mid-century homes, I had a nice conversation with someone who helps people get historic designations, and he was talking about that the 50 year lag of what officially makes a historic home and for you as well, working with older homes, what’s older is coming forward all the time.
Scott Sidler 05:23
Yeah, it’s constantly moving.
Della Hansmann 05:24
What was your okay? So just for everybody, I’ve all, I’ve already said who you are and what you are, but how, I’d love to know more about your actual origin story, because I don’t know it. What was your entry point into old homes, loving them? Did you love them always.
Scott Sidler 05:39
I did well. So my, my first real experience with an older house was my when I was in college, my parents moved from Dallas up to New York, and they moved from like a 1980s suburban house to a night 1700s house, like a beautiful colonial up in the up in the Catskills and just going to visit it. Oh my Yeah. I was like, I didn’t know that there was such a thing. Like, I was born in Florida, lived in Texas and stuff.
Scott Sidler 06:06
So there’s not a lot of, like, really old history, but getting to be in that house where, like, the glass was incredibly wavy on the windows, and you’d go down in the basement, and they had, my dad was showing me how they basically built the foundation around, like, these big boulders that were in the mountain that they were like, well, we’re not moving this, so we’ll just stack some stones around this big boulder, and there’s your foundation right there, and then the hand hewn beams underneath. It’s just wild to kind of that was my first real entry into it.
Scott Sidler 06:31
To be like, this is kind of cool stuff. I never thought I would do that stuff, but my family contractors. In my family, my grandfather was a painter, his dad was a plasterer, and my dad was a contractor for a time, who’s more an entrepreneur of many different things. But I was always handy and enjoyed it, so it kind of laid dormant for a while, and then my wife and I, in 2009 we got married in oh nine, and we bought a house. Our first house is a 1929 bungalow. And I was like, Okay, I’m I was like, I’m gonna fix it up.
Scott Sidler 07:02
It wasn’t in bad shape, but it had a few things that needed, like a bath remodel, and the floor is refinished, and I knew it needed the windows restored. I had no idea what I was getting into with an old house, but I, I was like, I’m gonna do some of this, and I’ll hire some contractors. And I couldn’t find contractors who wanted to restore it. They were all like, oh, tear out the plaster, put in drywall. He’s like, Yeah, no, no, this one. I want this. They’re like, I’ll get rid of the windows. And here’s, here’s some quotes for vinyl. I was like, No, I also don’t want that. And nobody really seemed to appreciate the historic and the character.
Scott Sidler 07:32
And I was like, that’s why I got this, because I love the white oak floors and I love the wood windows and wavy glass and plaster walls that are not perfect, and I want to keep it, but I couldn’t find anybody do it, so like, I’ll do it myself. And just started to learn as I go and make all the mistakes on my house before I started making them later, when I started my company on other people’s houses.
Della Hansmann 07:55
That’s great, man. That is a villain origin story, if I ever heard one, and it’s strikingly similar to my own from several years later, of got a house wanted to do right by it. Couldn’t figure out anyone to tell me the right way to do it. Started to figure it out myself. Yes, you had you DIY before, what was, what was your day job at that time, you just sort of dove in and fell in love with the house.
Scott Sidler 08:17
Yeah, I was like, I said, I, you know my I’d help my dad do some projects around the house. And I was a kid, my grandfather would was like, you know, for painting rooms. He was teaching me how to not, you like, he didn’t use tape. There was no blue tape anywhere for him to use. He was angry if you tried to, like, you’re gonna paint straight line with a brush. It’s up. This is a skill you should learn. I didn’t understand why you should know that, but now I’m like, thank God.
Scott Sidler 08:41
So I was most comfortable with painting, but really as when I jumped into it, I was working full time at I was here in Orlando, working full time at Disney, and I was a performer. I had a degree in musical theater, and I was working as a stunt captain at Disney, doing the Finding Nemo, the musical show at Animal Kingdom, teaching the people who did the wire work and the performers who would fly around in the air. It was a blast. And I had done that for, really, since I got out of college.
Scott Sidler 09:10
So around, you know, 12 to 15 years I was a performer, before I completely changed gears into this. And part of it was just joy and passion of it, like I really enjoyed it. But then I was also looking at it like the life of a performer for having a family and being married kind of sucks, and it like, I’m gonna go I have rehearsals for six weeks until midnight, because you have to rehearse when the parks are closed and or I’d get a tour or a production out of state or something.
Scott Sidler 09:39
And I was like, I don’t, you know, we wanted to start a family. I was like, that’s not really not really realistic for me to do. So we’re going to, I’m going to start my business on the side, because I enjoy this, and I’ll kind of transition out. So it took me about two years of doing both jobs before I made the leap full time into the company that.
Della Hansmann 09:59
Sounds like an intense era, although, what if they say, if you really want something done right, hire a theater kid. I haven’t heard that, but I like that. I mean, you, you’ve got all of the skills. I was mostly in the pit orchestra myself in high school, but I definitely helped with some set painting and backstage stuff.
Della Hansmann 10:16
I think one year we made a whole like an array, one for every performer of hand twisted chain mail armor for Romeo and Juliet. Yeah. Oh, cool. Figuring out how to solve a problem, getting really into this research of it, and then executing it as meticulously as possible. This makes so much sense. This is perfect crossover that must have been really intense. Of day job, small business.
Scott Sidler 10:45
Yeah, I referred to it my wife and I referred to it as doing the reverse Superman. Because I’d like, go, I’d go get the cruise like I had hired. I had employees, and I was still only part time in the company. So I had two or two to four people, depending on the time in there, where I’d be like, Okay, we’re going out here. I’d have sold the job. I’m going to get them started for the day.
Scott Sidler 11:02
And then I would disappear and go to Disney and put on a costume and dance around and sing and act. And then I’d come back at the end of the day and be like, okay, how’d we do? Let me check on the job. It was, it was just surreal and exhausting and stressful. And I was like, Okay, I got to get to the point where I can, where this business can not only pay my employees, but it has to pay me something so that I can get out of here.
Scott Sidler 11:24
But I took them. Just like most entrepreneurs, I took a major pay cut to work for myself and got just a task master for a boss. Like, yeah, I went from 30 hours a week at Disney making twice what I made when I switched to my business is like, okay, pay cut in half. Work, 80 hours a week. This is not what I signed up for, right? Not fun at all.
Della Hansmann 11:43
Someone is always watching over your shoulder to be like, should you be relaxing right now? Or should you feel guilty about something or plan something or create something? Oh, yeah, I know so. What was the original business? Was it windows? Was it more about old houses? What was the sort of first focus
Scott Sidler 11:57
it was, it was everything. It was, I kind of hung out my shingle as a historic home handyman. And so it was like, I’m not a contractor. Or at that point, I was like, I don’t, I don’t know. I can’t do the big projects, but I can. I know I like the historic buildings. I’ve learned how to do some windows; I’ve refinished some floors. I’m okay at tile work. I was like, I could do some stuff, and I would try and give people help.
Scott Sidler 12:19
And they’re like, we have an old house. You know, what should we What should it look like? How? What’s an appropriate tile for the bathroom, but that we need remodeled? I’d be like, Oh, well, you could use, you know, one inch hex tiles, or you could use these Penny tiles, and they just didn’t know. So I was kind of doing a little bit of, like, historic design and consulting, along with doing the handyman work.
Scott Sidler 12:39
But it took a few years. It took. It was four years into the business before I got my contractor’s license, and we did everything then for only, for a few years, for about until like 2018, or so, where I just focus now on windows and doors in the business, because we that was the special stuff that nobody was there weren’t, like as many people providing that. So there were a ton of good bathroom or kitchen remodelers, and we did our share of those.
Scott Sidler 13:06
And some you could get any painter to come paint the house. It didn’t matter if it’s historic or not, as long as you had your EPA, you know, lead safe paint work rules, the RRP rules done didn’t matter that I was the specialist. It’s like painting his painting. So we just went, Well, we’re just gonna do windows, and that’s what more people were waiting for. And we had other projects that were kind of getting away with that. But it was kind of scary to limit it, to like, go from this wide to just windows and doors. Yeah.
Della Hansmann 13:32
So any kind of boundary you put on, it feels terrifying. I mean, I have the same Oh yeah, at the start of my business as well, but, but I do think it actually it helps people who really need you find you, and it helps you perfect a skill set and do it so many different questions that I want to ask around this, I’m gonna, I’m just gonna popcorn.
Scott Sidler 13:50
I love it. I’ll provide the butter.
Della Hansmann 13:53
You said you knew in the first house you wanted to keep your windows, and you know you described the amazing wavy windows in your folks house in New York. Did you, I mean, you didn’t find anyone who said, Sure, let’s work with you on the windows. It was like, let’s replace.
Scott Sidler 14:08
I found one person who was like, gave me a quote for restoration. I was like, if I didn’t really know that was a thing, I thought it was just, you know, fixing things up, right? I didn’t know that window restoration was actually like a trade or anything. There was one company about 45 minutes from my house that would do it, and when I got a quote from them, I was like, Oh my gosh, that’s crazy expensive. I’ll just do this myself. I’m too handy to spend that kind of money on the windows. I think it was like 1500 a window. And now for most of our windows, for like, a full restoration, I/we usually charge more than that, because I didn’t realize how labor intensive it was, right? I was like, oh!
Della Hansmann 14:41
Did you know, right away when you did yours and you got to the end of the project, you were like, forget it. That was worth a quote. But I did it myself.
Scott Sidler 14:48
Yeah, once I got through it was like, this took me a long time. It took weekends for, you know, every weekend, for months, to get through them. And I was still figuring out and being like, how do I even it looks like it’s. Stuck in there. I don’t know how to get this sash out. Or should I get the sash out? Will I break it right? How do you change the ropes and all that stuff? So it was a lot of trial and error at first, and some YouTube education.
Scott Sidler 15:10
And so trying to find some of the information I could. Came across John leaks stuff early on in his books, and some of his YouTube videos, which are very like Bob Ross of historic windows, this little window needs a friend. Let’s see what we can do. And so I was like, his videos helped me at least kind of like, jump in and be like, understand what I’m doing and what I should or shouldn’t be doing. So yeah, I but I fully understood how much of a lift it was to actually do the window in its entirety. It was like, I don’t begrudge them that price, but I still was cheap enough that it’s like, I’m not gonna pay that. I’ll do it myself.
Della Hansmann 15:46
There’s a risk, I think, when you have a certain level of handiness in your 100% that it’s so hard to pay someone else to do something that you know you could do, like, even if you don’t have the time or the energy to do it. At this point, I don’t have the time or energy to do a lot of things around my house, but I still, I will leave them undone. Them undone, rather than hire someone. Because I’m like, I will. I could do that someday. I’ll do that.
Scott Sidler 16:07
Yes, I’m like, I’m having the exterior of my house painted right now, like, for the last couple weeks. I’m impressed. It was, it was the hardest thing for me to allow someone to do. My wife was like, You’ve been saying, We’ve been here. We had moved to a new house about four years ago. She’s like you’ve been saying that you’re gonna paint it and it needs to paint it and it needs to be painted, but you have yet to do it.
Scott Sidler 16:25
And I’m like, I know I just need the time. And she’s like, You need to pay somebody to do this, not because you can’t, because you just like to take two weeks off, or three weeks off and just paint the house. You’re never going to do that. And I was like, Yeah, you’re right. And you know, four years was the proof that I wasn’t going to I may,
Della Hansmann 16:43
I may be reaching that point on some of my own projects, but yeah, there’s and I also think some things you do yourself the first time, and you realize that was incredibly worth it. It was hard, it was time consuming, but it was really fun, and I did it better than anyone I could have hired to do it. And other stuff you do, and you’re like, well, now I know I could do that, and I will never do that myself again.
Scott Sidler 17:04
We did. I’ve noticed that with having the blog and teaching people how to restore Windows, and then also having company that will restore your windows for people who don’t want to do it themselves, our best clients are the ones who are like, I use your materials, you know, the supplies you sell, and I use your tutorials, and I did a window, and it looks great, and it took me four months.
Scott Sidler 17:21
And so now I’d like to hire you to do the other 30 and because now they get it, because everybody else is like, that’s expensive. It’s like, it’s like, 25 hours a window of skilled labor to do this. It’s not, I’m not outsourcing this to China. Is like, this is done right here on your on your premises. We’re driving to and from your house. It’s like, there’s just not a cheaper way to do it, and I can’t sandblast your windows. There’s no automatic way. It’s all handwork. So yeah, they get it.
Della Hansmann 17:47
So that actually takes us perfectly to you. Now, okay, so you’ve done this. You have a company that’s done this, but you also, I found you because you’re such a wonderful educator, just like giving away free advice and funny snark on the internet, and you have classes, you have in person workshops. You also do. You give remote information about restoring your windows as well.
Scott Sidler 18:07
We do so, yeah, so I so really early on, I started blogging. And so started my business in 2010 I started blogging in 2011 and it was mainly because I get the same question over and over again. And I was like, Well, I don’t want to write this email over and over, so let me just write it once. I’ll put it on the internet. And when somebody says, Well, what do you do about the ropes? It’s like, Here, go to go here, and they’d go there and read it. I was like, great. This is perfect.
Scott Sidler 18:32
This is just helping people. And then it started to, it really grew into something. I’ve been done a blog post every Monday since 2011 and it was part of me going like, I can only serve the people where I am. So right now, Austin historical is the restoration company, so we’re in Orlando. We have a branch in Tampa and Savannah, and we’re opening in Birmingham. So we’re trying to grow and reach more people for rest to help them restore their windows. But I was like, the rest of the country, I can’t help you. I can’t do anything for you.
Scott Sidler 19:03
So I was like, Well, what if I just taught you? Like these, I want to save more of these windows. I want people to understand the joy I the joy and the pain of owning an old house and, like, not throw the house away. And so I thought, well, I’ll just start blogging about things to help people do this stuff. So we started doing courses, like, online courses on window restoration. We got one coming out on how to build windows.
Scott Sidler 19:26
And then we started selling, like, the supplies, because I noticed I had the trouble as a restorer, being like, well, I can’t get my the glazing putty I want at Home Depot, and I can’t find the rope I want the sash court I want at Home Depot, or the chain or the locks, like, all the, all the stuff for these old houses was not on the shelf at the hardware store, yeah. So I was like, well, and you had to have a business account or do something stupid, or you’ll buy $20.20 gallons of glazing putty, and then you can do it. I was like these, there’s a lot of homeowners like, I just need to re glaze one window. I could use a quart. So we started, like, getting these supplies that were not at the Home Depot or Lowe’s or something, and carrying them in our store and selling them because people I, you know, I put out the blog post, use this glazing putty. By the way, you can’t buy it. Why are you sharing? Why are you even sharing this with me?
Scott Sidler 20:16
So, yeah, exactly. I was like, Well, I don’t want to tell you, use the crappy one. Don’t use DAP. That’s a bad one. Let use you should use the Sarco products or things. And then we started developing our own products and tools, because we’re like, Well, I like what Sarco does, but I’m in Florida, and they’re up in Chicago, and we have a lot of heat and humidity, so we get a lot of mildew. So we worked on developing one with them that is more mildew resistant. So that’s our Austin glazers putty. So it’s all those kinds of things that be like, I like solving problems for people, and if it’s if I if it’s a problem I have with an old house and I need a solution to it, once I solve that problem, then probably somebody else would have that problem as well. So I’ll just post it out on the internet and share it with people, and maybe use some of my musical theater skills to make it entertaining and fun, right, right?
Della Hansmann 21:02
That makes, that makes so much sense. This is actually contextualized so much of your for me, and I really appreciate it. But no, I think it’s so it’s so powerful. And when you’re when you’re in a business like this, and I resonate with this so much you want to do right by every client you have and every house that’s in front of you, but you also, there are so many houses out there that you can’t personally save.
Della Hansmann 21:24
You don’t have the time to get everywhere. You can’t be everywhere, and so you just kind of want to get the word out to save as many old houses as possible. Now I want to shift and ask what your definition of old house is, personally, no judgment if it doesn’t include mid-century. But I am curious.
Scott Sidler 21:36
No, it does. So I so I wrote a blog post. It’s been a long time called the historical cusp, and I’ve always referred to that like mid, mid-century. Modern to me, is a bit of that. So our Austin historical work on any house built before 1960 and sparing houses into the 60s, and we’ve done a couple in the 70s. But for windows and, well, just in houses in general, they were very much built the same up until World War Two. It was like a window was has not, had not changed in a couple 100 years, you know?
Scott Sidler 22:08
Oh, we developed double hung windows, okay. But before then, it was like, you know, wood putty and glass for a window, and the house was usually built out of bricks or wood. There was not a lot of experimentation with new materials and new techniques on this stuff. The mortar was lime, the plaster was lime. And then we started building with new materials, like drywall and plywood, and now we have vinyl siding and aluminum. So I kind of, for my service business, Austin historical. We draw the line at 59.
Scott Sidler 22:37
But there’s so much cool stuff in the mid-century where you go, is it historic? Well, technically, anything before 75 is historic, which is wild to me, because that means, in two years, I’m historic, but, but there’s a lot of cool stuff in the mid-century that did, like, they were just experimenting with and did it for like, three to five years that they don’t do anymore, and they were never doing it. No, they were never doing it for, you know, anything before World War Two was pretty much the same. And then you get that mid-century, where it’s 45 to, probably to 70 or so, where, in my mind, they started going, like, we’re going to try this new technique. We’ve got a new material here. We’re, we’re going to try this.
Scott Sidler 23:17
And some of them are amazing. Some of them are super kitsch and some of them were awful and failed completely. But, you know, like, like, literally toxic. Oh, absolutely. And we just had, it was a very experimental time and building. So I love some of that, like the Lustron houses that I think are just so cool that you’re, like, time out. Like, I was reading about, Gosh, what was it? Buckminster Fuller and his idea for, like, these dome and, and what’s the thing that the ball and Epcot, I forget the word for it.
Scott Sidler 23:50
The geodesic. Yeah, the geodesic, yeah. Like, all that kind of design that that always coming out in the mid-century, when everybody’s like, we could try all this cool stuff. So I love those. They’re super experimental, and that’s why we kind of say, well, we’ll take those on sparingly. If it is something that we either are daring to try and figure out how to fix it, or can it be repaired. Because that’s when they started getting into, well, when this wears out, you should throw it away. And for me, that was tough. For me, I wanted a building that could be repaired and maintained over the years, not just replace the pieces as they wore out.
Della Hansmann 24:23
And I think that’s yeah, I really that’s part of the reason that I’m so drawn to the mid-century era as this interesting bubble, because it does fall into everything that came before, materials that are real, that can be replaced and repaired, mostly starting to shift.
Della Hansmann 24:23
But it also has all the experimentation, the sort of the modern floor plans and the more livable to a household without servants and all these things. So it has this modern, forward looking cast, but still made with old materials, decreasingly through the mid-century era and with craftsmen who were building to last, rather than thinking that we’re going to just install something and then it would. Be thrown away where replacement was broken.
Della Hansmann 25:01
So we’ve got, you know, I’ve seen, okay, so sidebar, one of the posts that you put on Instagram regularly that I can never stop myself from reposting is crosscuts of wood from turn of the lesson, oh yeah, from right now. And the green density and the difference between a pine two by something and what even is the dimension of a two by has changed so much, and I still feel like in the mid-century era, we’re a lot closer to 1900 than we are to 2000 or 2025 where we are right now. So I just like, it’s yeah, and it shifts you right.
Della Hansmann 25:32
And there were some really weird little experiments, thinking about window experiments. In particular, there’s a house. There was an architect in the Chicago area, two guys, Keck and Keck, who had this idea that they could do fixed glass windows and then these little operable louver panels next to them, vertically, beside them or below them.
Della Hansmann 25:32
And that idea turns up in contractor built houses, just like one offs around the Midwest occasionally. So you just see, like a bunch of louvers, they’re often painted shut the screens often don’t work anymore. People have often put in a double hung final window on top of it. They don’t know what it was, yeah, as far as I can tell, it was an idea that lasted maybe 10 years at most, and it appears, I don’t know, there’s probably, like, 1000 of them somewhere.
Della Hansmann 26:14
They’re so cool, and no one’s ever going to do them again. And I don’t even know if they can be. You’d have to find a handyman who really cared to repair them like, no contract, yeah, do them again.
Scott Sidler 26:24
But that’s what’s fun about the mid-century, time period in architecture, because there was so much experimentation and so much like, like, you know, with the space age and everything, so much future view of the world is going to be completely different, and we’re looking all that everything can change. It was like we really weren’t shackled by what the past was anymore. Everybody kind of threw that off and went, we should try everything.
Scott Sidler 26:41
And it was a mess of stuff. And then we start, kind of settled into to be like, Okay, that was crazy. Some of these ideas were absolutely insane. We should never have done that. Let’s settle we found some stuff that works, and we’ve, I feel like, in terms of architecture today, at least residential architecture today, it’s gotten very, boring, and there’s always exceptions to it, but it was like we had this massive time of experimentation, which is the mid-century, and that’s where you find just a few years of really cool stuff.
Della Hansmann 27:11
Really cool stuff. Yeah, everything else since then. Again, not to say that there aren’t still architects who are doing good work, and not that they’re absolutely well put together developments, but it’s mostly it’s very boring, and it’s, yes, replaceable, throwaway things, which is all depressing.
Scott Sidler 27:28
And I live in, since I’m in Florida here, everything in the suburbs is just a bunch of stucco boxes with green windows. You’re like, okay, and there’s not even that many windows, so it’s just a massive stucco wall. And we were just like, well, you know, the termites won’t get it because it’s, it’s, it’s concrete block, it’s cm used, and it’s stuck over top of it, and we spray, and we can crank these out very quickly.
Scott Sidler 27:51
And you’re like, it’s, it’s just disheartening. I was like, I live very close to the villages, which is a huge retirement community, and it is just, it is the definition of sprawl. It is like today’s version of Levittown, where it’s like, we are just going to build five of the same model, and we’re going to do it 1000s and 1000s of times over, because we can do it really quick.
Della Hansmann 28:12
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, they had a housing crisis to solve. But it does feel like, is that? Is that? Is that the way we wanted?
Scott Sidler 28:21
Yeah, if you’re hungry, there are some things you could do to resolve that, right, you know. But maybe eating a candy bar isn’t the best way to solve your hunger. Maybe something healthier. So, you know, some, some of it has been architecturally Nestle Crunch bars, and it could be something better. It’s great design out there today, but it’s just not as mainstream, right?
Della Hansmann 28:42
And it’s not, you know, a one off isn’t going to change the world as much as Frank Lloyd Wright thought he was going to one off design America’s future. It doesn’t really work like that. Needs to be practical. It needs to be buildable. I have focused my attention on, how can I preserve existing housing stock rather than solve the housing crisis of the future? But, yeah, but, you know, there’s a lot, there’s a lot to be preserved. There’s a lot of older homes, there’s a lot of mid-century homes, and so trying to get to as many people as possible before they let some window company tear out their original windows and trash them. Yeah, it’s a work of a lifetime, maybe.
Scott Sidler 29:15
And lose, yeah, and lose, like, those unique things like the pink bathrooms and stuff in the mid-century, we go, no, please don’t tear it out. It wasn’t a girl’s bathroom. It was definitely different. Like, look at your history, it’s different. And so just, I think, in general, like, that’s why I’ve enjoyed blogging and YouTube and social media is like, just to teach people be like, this is probably not what you think initially. This is, this is different. And if you can understand the house, then you can decide if it’s for you or not, but you I never want anybody to tear something out, or, you know, irrevocably change it when you just because you didn’t know. And I’ve almost made that mistake on my houses, or before I knew, I was like, Oh, I almost tore that out. I thought it didn’t belong, but it really does, so.
Della Hansmann 29:45
It’s almost inevitable that if you can’t, if you don’t already have the information before you find an older home, you’re gonna make a couple mistakes on it before you. Start to learn before you really fall all the way in love. And I made a few mistakes on my house that I’m still have worked on repairing, or I’m still waiting to remediate.
Scott Sidler 30:09
Yeah, it’s tough to remediate your own work, isn’t it?
Della Hansmann 30:15
It hurts so much. I’m making a YouTube video series right now. This will be out by the time this podcast airs about how it how to come back from mistakes you made yourself, and also about the special pain of like, oh
Scott Sidler 30:29
Yes, it was. I think Richard Nicholas’s great architecture has only two enemies, water and stupid men. It’s like, these are the two things. Like, what’s going to make a building come down? It’s Mother Nature is going to reclaim it with water getting in, rotting it, causing issues, or somebody is going to tear it down. And that’s how we’ve lost most of the great structures in this world.
Della Hansmann 30:52
So we can repair to solve the water problem, and we can teach.
Scott Sidler 30:56
Yes, those are the two. Those are the two greatest tools.
Della Hansmann 30:59
Yes, well, that that’s so I mean, I you talk about this all the time, but can I ask you to just jump on a soapbox and give a little pitch for why historic houses, maybe, particularly historic windows, are so important.
Scott Sidler 31:12
I always have a few soapboxes around here, so I’m always happy to jump on one. So where do we want to go to houses, or houses or Windows? Specifically, start with Windows. Windows. Okay, let’s start with Windows. We’re saying so my pitch on Windows is there are a few reasons why historic Windows matter the most.
Scott Sidler 31:33
One is authenticity. The original window, whatever it is, whatever was built into that house, is the most authentic window to that house. It was picked because the architect, the builder, whoever was putting there, said this fits my house. So any other window, unless it’s a replica of that, would not be as accurate or appropriate for that house. And I never get much pushback on that. Most people like, yeah, of course, my historic windows are most appropriate, but they’re so leaky I’ve got to get them fixed. I’m losing money hand over fist and like, so that’s the second thing is that old windows are energy hogs or inefficient.
Scott Sidler 32:10
For me in Florida, I come across when I go to most people’s houses, they’re like, my windows are drafty. I need them fixed. Like, okay, let me look at your window. It’s usually hermetically sealed with paint and caulk from six decades, so it’s not leaky. It’s not drafty. In any window you get, if you get the brand new highest in window, it will be more drafty than this, because there’s air hasn’t moved through that window or around that window in decades. So you have in your mind that marketing’s told you that it’s drafty because it’s an old window, and that’s just a lie. Some of them are drafty, but I always say abuse doesn’t rule out proper use.
Scott Sidler 32:44
So the fact that somebody put a bunch of caulk and paint on it now it doesn’t close all the way, or the rope broke, it’s not a fault of the design of the window. The window is just beat up. And if I’m 100 years old, I’m probably going to look pretty rough too. Or if you buy a brand new like Renewal by Anderson window, and you put 12 coats of paint on it and leave it outside for 60 or 70 or 80 years. It’s going to look rough too. So these windows, I don’t know any replacement window today that will last 100 plus years, they will fail in a shorter time period, usually 10 to 15, yeah, much less than that, right? Yeah. And lifetime always has quotes around it, right?
Scott Sidler 33:22
So for the it’s guaranteed for the lifetime of the window. What’s the read the if you’re a dork like me, you read the window warranties. It’s, it’s not, they’re not great. They’re like, we make no warrant as to how much gas is between the panes. It’s warranted for as long as you own the home. And they know that most people own a home for just over 12 years. So, you know, they’re like, will the person in 40 years come back and call us? They probably won’t have any clue where you got the window from.
Della Hansmann 33:48
Will, the company exist.
Scott Sidler 33:50
Yeah. Will they? Yeah, exactly. And so the energy benefits of replacing a window make there is no financial incentive to replace a window. And I know some people kind of like, freak out on like, of course it is. My utilities bill. My utility bills went down when I replaced my windows. I totally agree with you. They will go down. ENERGY STAR says that they’ll go down. If you go a single pane to a double pane, they’ll go down around 22 bucks a window per year. Cool. That says, I don’t know how many windows you have in your house. I have a lot, and that’s a significant savings, but the average cost of a replacement window is around $720 so it takes you 30 plus, I think it’s 32 years or so, is what we talked about in my book back here, with Stacey Grinsfelder saying, after 32 years, you’ll have made back the money you spent on that replacement window.
Scott Sidler 34:38
Well, you’ve probably already put replaced it twice in that time. So there’s no financial incentive to replace your window and make utilities go down, but you’re going to write a $30,000 check or a $40,000 check in order to save $500 a year. Yeah, that’s a long time to get there. So like the money aspect is gone, and then the longevity for. For me, these old windows can be made to be energy efficient. We’ve shown and there’s lots of studies in our book, we talk about lots of techniques that you can use to make them meet the current energy codes or even exceed them. So using storm windows or weather stripping, all kinds of different things that you can do and so there and you can do it, usually cheaper than a replacement window, and nothing else is going to last that long.
Scott Sidler 35:22
So if you’ve got a premium product already your existing historic window, then you should keep that premium product rather than throwing it out and buying a subpar product. So I liken it to, you know, if you’ve got a vintage Ferrari for the car people, and you’re like, well, but it, you know, we haven’t, it hasn’t been driven in 30 years, and it’s been sitting outside. It looks terrible. It’s like, yes, but don’t trade it in for a Ford Focus.
Scott Sidler 35:45
There’s nothing wrong with a Ford Focus, but those are not the same caliber car, yeah, but they’re like, oh, but it looks so ugly and doesn’t even run. I was like, yes, but it can be made to run, usually for less than what the Ford Focus, and it’s lasted already for a very long time in the focus, I don’t see a lot. I don’t know when the Ford Focus came out, but there’s not a lot of like civics from the 70s still driving around on the roads today. It was a cool car, right?
Della Hansmann 36:10
Maybe they could. Does anyone even want them to also make Yeah, yeah.
Scott Sidler 36:14
There’s a few people who are dedicated to it, but nothing will last as long as these and provide as good a service for as long as they do, and once they’re gone, you can’t go back. That’s the That’s the challenge. Like you can never go back to it.
Della Hansmann 36:26
That’s the deep tragedy. I mean, I’m talking to you now. I keep it out of shot. I have replacement windows in my house. Not my not my choice. The guy before me did it. Bless them two. It’s a two owners before me and the guy before me made a couple of replacement repairs to get the house ready to sell. Least favorite thing.
Della Hansmann 36:43
Yeah. And this doesn’t improve the value to me. Yeah.
Scott Sidler 36:51
The people who want an old house want the old stuff. Like, if you cover up my wood floors, is like, I want to know if it’s got good old wood floors. I want to see the old windows and the old doors. Is like, that’s the character that I want. What the glass doorknobs, or, you know, the single panel like I see behind you, the single panel birch doors that you go these are part of the character of this house. And if I didn’t want that character, I’d go buy a new house.
Della Hansmann 37:13
I bought this house for the doors, basically, oh, they’re very modest. It has not a lot of cool mid-century design features. But these doors are gorgeous, and I appreciate them literally every day and every light they just, yeah, they’re plywood, and they are stunning. They’re so beautiful, they’re just wood grain galore. So yeah, I think anybody who fears, anybody who’s worried that they need, that they should, they should have, I should replace something. No, you shouldn’t. You don’t need to. The next person doesn’t need it. There’s no value.
Scott Sidler 37:41
It doesn’t. Unless there’s a like, you know, if you have again, if you have windows where the glass is broken or they’re like, stuck in the open position, you need to get that resolved. Nobody’s going to come in and buy your house with all the like, broken glass and things. But that the solution shouldn’t be, why I need to replace the windows.
Scott Sidler 37:58
It should be like, if you have a car that you’re looking to sell is like, Go clean it up, wash it, wax it, get the interior detail, but you’re not going to be like, now I need to tear all the seats out and put a new steering wheel. I was like, You’re not all that stuff. It doesn’t pay for itself. And I think it’s remodeling magazine that does. They do a cost versus value thing every year they have for, I think, a couple decades, and it’s brilliant, because everything they put on their windows, new kitchen, new bathroom, like, what should you do if you if you spend money on this, you know, improvement to your house, will you make that money back? None of them return the same amount. They’re the highest you get is like 85% or, you know, something like that, where you go put 10,000 into new windows, you’ll sell your house for 8500 more. So it’s like you still came out behind I think the only thing, and it’s been a couple years, was the front door. Yeah, the front door.
Della Hansmann 38:51
Also garage doors can get 100%. To my and to my mind, I always want to ask the question like, are you replacing something original, or are you putting in something better because, well, this is a mid-century house problem, but a lot of mid-century houses had someone take out the original wood panel garage doors and put in something lighter that probably had an automatic opener that looks like good, and taken out the original mid-century front door and put in something with like an oval of leaded glass, which looks weird.
Della Hansmann 39:18
Yeah, I am 100% behind putting back a more MCM style appropriate front door. I think you will, I think, and particularly for like, getting someone to say yes to something. I don’t even know about the dollar value, resale value, but you’re right so many things, if you’re thinking about it, for a return on investment, no.
Scott Sidler 39:37
It’s all about the appropriateness. There’s stuff there, right? There are distractions on a house where you go that just, I’ll deal with that after I buy the house, you know. But so that’s the stuff where you want to resolve it, you know, if you have a stove that doesn’t work, it was like, some people might be like, Nope, I can’t buy the house. They’re just not thinking that, like, you know, you could buy a new stove, right?
Scott Sidler 39:55
Yeah, so, but, but those distracting things of an inappropriate door or something, but. Door is a big deal. I always tell people like, that’s the only part of your house that people are going to stare at with nothing else to do, right? Because you don’t pull out your phone when you go knock on somebody’s door, because you’re like, they can open it at any second. You just wait and stare at the chipping paint, or the failing this, or the broken glass. You look at that. Nobody looks that close at your windows, unless the glass to see if it’s dirty. Nobody looks that close at your floors or anything, unless it’s distractingly bad. You don’t put your nose up to these elements and go, let me examine the tile wainscoting in your bathroom and see unless it’s distractingly dirty. The front door gets like that. You know, white glove examination.
Della Hansmann 40:37
And in this low attention era, maybe the only thing that’s such a good point for do right by your front door. Yeah, would you say? Okay, so I am not an expert in window replacement, but I do point people at you all the time. And also just say, please, you know, don’t replace mid-century features you have. I also always point people towards if you’ve got problems with your windows, go talk to a glazier, not a window company, because window companies sell you windows. So they’re going to tell you your windows need to go. But is there a line where windows have gone too far, or do you think every historical window deserves a shot at being salvaged? What’s your sort of philosophy?
Scott Sidler 41:14
I kind of, I usually defer to the Secretary of Interior standards for historic preservation, which is, if it’s more, if you’ve got some element in the home that is more than a third, more than 33% destroyed or missing, you know, if your window is just termites holding hands under paint, then go. Okay. Well, this should be, this should be replaced. Now, the Secretary of Interior says you should replace it in kind. It should look like what it was.
Scott Sidler 41:40
So rebuild the bottom sash, because two out of the four rails, you know that a rail and a style are rotten, so you need to replace that. Or, you know, I’ve seen done some mid-century steel windows where they just cut it with a hacksaw to fit a window air conditioner in there. I was like, those are things like, it should be repaired. Does it have to be replaced, usually not. I have not come across a ton of windows that have to that have to be replaced. It might be easier to rebuild a sash or a piece of the jam unless it’s gone.
Scott Sidler 42:10
I usually am not advocating for replacement, because repair is usually one is going to be more appropriate, and it depends on how serious it is. Where we’ll kind of draw the line is, is it more expensive to rebuild that bottom sash that’s rotten, or is it more expensive to restore it? And depending, is, you know, is it a Frank Lloyd Wright house? Is like, we should save every piece that we should, but is it just, you know, like Joe Smith next door? Is it just his house is like, does he care? Like, what’s on his budget? It’s like, if we make it match and make it look like it should, then we can do that route.
Della Hansmann 42:45
But there’s that which you’d say, okay, these windows are too far gone. You should go to Anderson or Pella, like.
Scott Sidler 42:52
No, usually not. And it varies. It varies based on skill level, right? So if there’s, if you’re gonna, like, I have to do it myself. You’re like, it’s a steel window on this, this, you know, mid-century house, and I don’t know how to weld. I don’t know how to find these pieces of steel. You’re probably gonna lean towards replacement, because you just, you don’t have somebody locally who can do it, or you don’t have the skills yourself. So as you gain in grow your skills as a trades person, suddenly the line for replacement just keeps raising where you go. It’s got to be missing. And when it’s missing, yes, I should replace it then.
Della Hansmann 43:27
Okay, if there is, like, an upper sash only on the window, you’re like, Well, I don’t know about that. Or if somebody knocked it out completely and threw it in the trash.
Scott Sidler 43:36
We did something. So in Florida, well, I’ll give you an example. So in Florida, the building code says, if there’s if you need to replace a window, then you need to have that window engineered. I need to have a Florida product approval code. But if you’re repairing it, then you can just do a repair. That’s just a regular permit. You’re fine. Well, what is, what is repaired? So we had a window where all of it, except for one, except for the right side of the jam, was like, completely falling apart. And we’re like, well, this piece still works.
Scott Sidler 44:06
So we built the head cake, the head jam, the side the sill, the sub sill, the sashes, and we just called it. We’re like, technically, it’s as long as we connected it to that one original piece, it’s still a repair. It’s a very intense Repair, repair, but, you know, but it was for a client who it was just dealing with this one window. And they’re like, they’re like, I don’t want to pay for engineering to have a custom window built. We built a lot of these other pieces, but the engineering alone and the permit would have been, like, really extensive and expensive for just one window job. So we’re like, we can make this work according to the letter of the law. So it just depends. It will, if you have the will or not, that’s about that’s what the term is, if something could be restored.
Della Hansmann 44:44
That’s, I love that answer. That’s exactly the answer I was hoping you would give me. Thank you. And yeah, and I feel like there are, well, okay, so this is a question do, and maybe it’s a question about finding somebody. Who doesn’t work in exactly your line. But what do you think about when you’re putting in, when you’re building new structure, a small addition, for example, it needs windows. Where would you go? Would you try to build windows the old fashioned way, to match the original house? Would you be willing to source a new window? And if you were, what feels tolerable to you? What’s your thought on?
Scott Sidler 45:20
So, yeah, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve come across that a lot. We It depends, like we’re doing a hotel job in Ocala right now where we’re restoring all the original windows. But then they have an addition, and they were having us, they were going to have us build the windows for it to match. And then they were like, No, we’re, we’re gonna go with new, replacement aluminum, because it’s an addition and it’s different, and it’s different, and we want it to stand out. It was like, All right, fair enough.
Scott Sidler 45:44
I know that there’s that argument in preservation circles of, should additions match the style and everything, or should it look like it’s separate and different historically and so. But we, as far as wood, windows and doors, we build all those in house to match the exact details. Because our goal is, when we were saying at the company is make it match. You’re like, well, what should the window look like? Well, it should look exactly like the other windows. It should have the same dimension, same thickness, same wood quality.
Scott Sidler 46:07
If we can, we want it to we want somebody to come by and not be like, Oh, that’s a new one. Like, no, no. You shouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the original window and a restored window. We hope windows, they are still around. They built a lot of the steel windows, and in in this country, industrial ones, starting in the, you know, early 1900s going up to, I don’t actually know when the company started, but they were all in residential in the 50s and 60s. And so we’ve done some projects with them where they still have their original machines that will make the original, historic steel windows. They’re not cheap, but they’ll, they’ll make them to match. So there are manufacturers out there who will do it, and they’ll give it, they’ll deliver us the frames. We’ll put the original, you know, put some wavy glass in it, and putty glaze them, and you can’t tell the difference, and it’s good stuff.
Scott Sidler 46:58
So there’s options out there, and there’s a lot of, a lot of small window companies around the country that’ll build windows for you, like, we build and ship sash flat pack to people who are like, I restore them, but I can’t, I don’t have this set up in a wood shop to build them. So we’ll just ship them full Windows, unit, Sash, trim, things like that to match. So again, I want to, I saw a problem, and I was like, I want to try and solve it for people. Solve it for people.
Scott Sidler 47:22
But the window preservation alliance.org, is a great place to go if you need, if you need to find a local person who will work on historic windows, because they have a directory of where some, I think 300 or so members, all around the country, and some in Canada too, that restore Windows, and some of them, a lot of them are building Windows as well, building storm windows or things. And they restore wood and steel. And a few of us will do the mid-century, like aluminum windows. So there’s, there’s options for people out there who can, who can help.
Della Hansmann 47:53
Oh, that’s great. And that was going to be my next question is, if, if someone can’t get to you, do you have recommendations? And I’ve often not been able to answer that question myself. So window preservation alliance.org, Yep, yeah. I’ll put a link in the Show Notes.
Scott Sidler 48:07
Yeah, that’d be great. And there’s a directory on there that people can go to, and you can see it all through the country. Another good source is just simply asking your if you have a historic preservation officer locally, to ask like they usually can’t recommend any person because they’re because they’re a city employee, but they can say these are some companies or some individuals in town that do window restoration or have made windows, or that are that we know that, you know, they pull permits in the historic district a lot, and they’re, they’re good, they know what they’re doing.
Scott Sidler 48:37
They’re not going to, you know, be fly by nighters and come replace your windows on a Sunday and so nobody sees. Got a fight with my neighbor once about that one, I got in a little trouble. Like, you know, you can’t replace your windows, right? He’s like, Yeah, that’s what I’m doing on the weekend. I was like, Oh, see, this is awkward, because I’m on the historic preservation board.
Della Hansmann 48:54
So, in fact, when I said, you can’t, I mean.
Scott Sidler 48:57
I mean, I mean, like, I’m kind of, I, I would not have integrity if I didn’t share with the city what you’re doing, like, so it’s like, I tell you what, go ahead, replace them. I’ll hold on to your old windows. And I held on to him in my shop, and then he I let the city know, and the city told him, You have to put them back in. I was like, here’s your windows. They’re right here for you. You’re welcome, sorry, like it was we didn’t share Thanksgiving dinner that next year.
Della Hansmann 49:26
I can imagine that would be awkward. Well, that’s so interesting, because that this is now we’re dodging into the topic of actual historic preservation, which is not really my area, but it’s something that I find really interesting, because you mentioned putting back things make it match windows.
Della Hansmann 49:42
But if you’re putting in a new area, in addition, there’s a there is certainly a school of thought and preservation that anything new in a building that isn’t original should be made to stand out. And there are places where there are regulations that are actually governing what you can and can’t do, which mostly mid-century houses don’t, are not included in those envelopes at this point, although.
Scott Sidler 50:00
There’s not a lot, and they really shouldn’t be. I’m it concerns me because we’ve had a few streets here in Orlando where I’m like, I feel like this, just this one block, had these amazing mid-century houses, and they’re all getting torn down to build some McMansions because they’re just outside the historic district. And usually for us, it’s most of them go to, like, the mid 40s and like, you’re missing out. There was not that same anymore. There’s not that same push to make mid-century historic districts, and there really should be, because they just won’t be around anymore if we don’t do something.
Della Hansmann 50:30
And in some ways, I mean, there’s a lot of mid-century construction, but it’s still a finite amount. And I think there is a lot of everything that came before mid-century. There’s still more of that than there is within this, oh yeah, it’s not properly protected, and it really makes, makes me very sad. And even, you know, even the very modest, but not the like, really dramatic, cool blocks, but just seeing house after house have its original cedar siding torn off and replaced with vinyl, I’m just like, can anyone stop this? Would any, can I stop please?
Scott Sidler 50:59
Yes, the vinyl pirates are everywhere.
Della Hansmann 51:04
And I feel like that really falls into the same category. This isn’t your area of day focus, but it’s the same thing as Windows. Like companies, whose job is to sell you a new product, will knock on your door and tell you your old product or your old, not product, your old, what your house is made of is bad, and we should take it off and put on something new. But they’re selling you a product. They don’t care about your house and the integrity of it and how long it’s gonna last. They’re just gonna give you something fresh, new, and all they’re promising you is that what they have is newer than what you had before.
Scott Sidler 51:34
Yeah, and it’s tough, because we live very much in like, a replacement generation where, like, newer is better, right? The new iPhone is better than last year’s model. They’ve made some improvements. So technology gets better every single day, yeah, but that’s not to say that not everything, but because we’ve been convinced it’s everywhere. The computers are newer are better. The refrigerator, that’s newer is better, right? It’s going to run more efficiently, have more storage, right? Or is it? Yeah? But I was like, we have that mindset that if it’s newer, it is better. I was like, better is better, and sometimes newer is better, but not let’s not default to that. You know, too much of anything is no good, so don’t go too far with that.
Della Hansmann 52:11
That’s a really excellent point, and I think that it’s a really important distinction to make about buildings, because buildings are not meant to be replaceable. No one is actually suggesting that you take a house and knock it down every year and replace it with the new one or three years or five years, or whenever you get a new an iPhone, I tend to hang on to mine for a while, but you do.
Della Hansmann 52:31
I mean, you’re right, a new iPhone is better than an old one, and the old one is going to wear out, and we don’t have any ability to, like fix no one. But a house is supposed to last a long time, I would argue. You know, you would argue an ounce could last hundreds of years. A mid-century house, I certainly hope, is going to last long past my own lifespan and they were meant to so if we keep pulling the pieces off of them and replacing them with new which is not meant to last, we are diminishing the overall lifespan of everything in the house, putting that at risk by putting in cruddy windows.
Scott Sidler 53:10
There’s, there’s an old, I mean, it’s an old, I think it’s an old story from the Gospels, where it’s like, you wouldn’t take an old wineskin and sew a new, a new patch onto it, because the new one will shrink and tear the wine skin. It’s the same thing, like jeans, like, if you, if you have a you need a patch on your jeans, because there’s a hole. Like, don’t sell brand new material, because as soon as you wash it, it shrinks and it makes the hole worse.
Scott Sidler 53:40
We do that with our houses. Where you go I’m putting this new material on here is, like, you need to be really cautious. It’s not saying that you can’t put new things in. Like, right when your air conditioning system or heating system wears out, if it can’t be repaired anymore, by all means, don’t just be like, well, it’s just a fireplace. From now on, we’re just going to make it work, you know, replace it. But be considerate about like, I need to think about, how am I am I doing this cautiously?
Scott Sidler 53:56
And is it going to be like sewing a new patch onto an old wineskin that’s going to cause more damage to the house. Yeah, I just watched the 1920s school that’s in my neighborhood just a few blocks down. They were like, it needs to be repointed. I was like, yes, they repointed it with the wrong type of mortar, and so they used Portland cement. It had line mortar, but they use Portland cement. And now I’m watching, I’m like, It’s it? It looks a little different. Now it’s a different color mortar too, but it’s only good. It’s just a matter of time before that really hard mortar damages those fairly soft bricks. And now, will they survive?
Scott Sidler 54:32
I don’t know. It’s gonna, you know, probably in the next 10 years, I’ll start to see spalling bricks. But I was like, they just didn’t know. They’re like, well, we’re catching it. We’re making it better. The mortar had worn. I was like, Yes, it did, but you got to be considered about what kind of materials you’re using and where, because you can do more damage than you can good.
Della Hansmann 54:49
And that, I think, is maybe the message that all older, older buildings need to be focused on, is that people who specialize in new stuff are hopefully well versed in. How do you subscribe to go forward from here? But if you’re working on an older building, you kind of need someone who has an expertise in in lime mortar, in the way that mid-century houses are constructed. Or you’re going to get someone who comes in and applies new technologies to an old material in a way that actually, yeah, ruins the brick. You can’t replace that brick, you can maybe replace and repair the mortar, but you can’t.
Scott Sidler 55:24
And that’s why we don’t work on new houses. Like early on in the company, I pick up a job on a newer house, and my wife told me later she’s like, every time you do work on a new house, you lose money or screw something up, you should stop working on them. You know what? You’re right? Because I don’t know how to honestly, I could probably figure it out, but I don’t know how to install a new window, because that’s not what we do. I don’t I know there’s nailing flanges, and I know that there’s, there’s some method that they use, like, I don’t know the right method for it.
Scott Sidler 55:52
They’re different windows. They’re different same thing of like, flooring. I don’t know how to install vinyl flooring. It’s like, it doesn’t seem complicated, but I could probably figure it out, but our team knows how to do historic windows, and that’s why we stopped at 60, because every 60. Because every time we get into some of the weird ones, I have to look at it and be like, let me see. This is one of those cool mid-century ones. Let me see if there is a way we could do this. Like, Oh, this one lines up with our skill set. Okay, we’ll do it. We understand the materials and methods. We’ll do it.
Scott Sidler 56:20
But if it’s outside of our skill set, then it’s a question for me to be like, do I want to learn something new, maybe, or maybe it’s no it’s just too new. You know, a 1978 window, there’s, it doesn’t have any of the same there’s no putty. The glass has some weird gasket that was only made for four years in that time period, and they don’t make it anymore. You know, once Carter was out of office, they stopped making it. You’re like, I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t know how to fix that. So stick with what we know and otherwise, it kind of causes problems.
Della Hansmann 56:46
It does. And there are. There is a magic too. I think, as you in your experience, it’s that built windows were made with real materials meant to be repaired. And in the mid-century era, for me, it’s very much the simplicity of and consistency of structural methods. Whereas when we get into I don’t take any houses. My boundary goes up to the late 70s sometimes, although that gets to be an iffy area.
Della Hansmann 57:07
But once houses were being designed with even the most rudimentary computer engineered trusses in the ceilings, I don’t know what’s going on with the structure. I don’t know where it’s coming down to hit the ground. I can no longer give someone professionally accurate information about what walls we can and cannot remove without doing demolition in advance to figure it out. Yeah, a house built in the 60s. I can look at the roof, I can look at the foundations, I can look at the walls, and I know now there are there secrets in the walls. Yes, there are. But I know where the lines of structure are because it was always built the same and it was built with materials that we understand. It with crap, understand? So, yeah.
Scott Sidler 57:43
That sounds like that should be the title of your of your book is secrets in the walls. That’s a good that’s a good book for a mid-century architect.
Della Hansmann 57:51
This is the warning I have to give everyone. I was like, here’s the plan, here’s the design. When your contractor gets in there, there’s gonna be a potentially unpleasant surprise when we open up a wall. Yes.
Scott Sidler 58:02
What was it? Eisenhower or something like no plan survives first contact with the enemy.
Della Hansmann 58:08
And that’s true of every remodel. Yeah, new builds, you can control everything, or you can imagine that you can control everything, but when you’re remodeling, there are always some surprises. Yes, I’m sure you encounter all the time.
Scott Sidler 58:20
The more homeowners can, the better we can be at educating them on that, the better. I feel like it’s a tough thing, because they’re like, but you’re the pros. You should know is like, yeah, I feel like I should, but my time has proven that I know a lot of the pitfalls, the things that potentially could go wrong. I just don’t know which ones you’re going to get.
Della Hansmann 58:38
Yeah, exactly. And some guy named Stan was maybe having a bad day in 1955 and, you know, and did something weird with the two by fours in this kitchen wall. We will find out in there. Yeah, oh, wow. Okay, so let’s see. I want to make sure we’ve covered. I also don’t want to keep you here chatting forever, although we’re just gonna have to do this again.
Della Hansmann 58:59
But I actually wanted to ask you a question about something I saw on your social media, maybe in your Instagram story, here and gone. You were at a window conference recently and you had a screen that just sort of like squished and then popped into place again. Oh yeah. Did you like that? And was that cool? Because I have a lot of people with vintage Windows who are like, I don’t have screens, so I need new windows. And maybe this is the answer.
Scott Sidler 59:23
That statement scares, scares the pants off of me. I don’t have screens, so I need new windows. It’s like, right? You need new screens. Get new screens. No, I it’s called a flex screen. I thought it was really interesting, because I was looking at it for we build wood screens. And we also do steel windows that have the screens that go on the inside, which are incredibly difficult. I can’t find the steel stuff that frame those steel windows are very difficult to find the screens again. And I was looking at it being like, Man, this is an easy thing that they manufacture it for you, and you can repair on site too, where they’re like, you just stretch the screening over.
Scott Sidler 59:59
It’s just standard screening. And you, basically, you would take an iron and go around and it kind of like the it’s steel coated in this, like polymer or something that, as it keeps up, the screening melts to it, and then it, like attaches. And so I thought, Oh, this would be easy for our wood screens that or anything there’s like, you can just fit it into you need something to hold it in place. And so if I did, yeah, if I did a wood screen, rather than the way we do it, which is the historic way of stretch the screening across the wood, staple it about, you know, 60 times, and then put a screen molding on and staple that, and then cut off the excess, it’s like, this might be kind of cool.
Scott Sidler 1:00:38
Now it’s only for the fiberglass screens. It doesn’t work for aluminum or brass screens. But if it’s, if it’s if it’s fiberglass, then it’s a it’s a pretty cool thing. And it was, it was incredibly inexpensive. So I was like, if I could find a way to, like, Gussy this up and make it look like it belongs on a historic window, then, to me, that saves people money and saves us time, and we could, you know, maybe have something that would be a good fit.
Scott Sidler 1:01:04
So, yeah, the other thing I saw there was that the new, like vacuum insulated glass that was really interested, because that’s, I feel like, a far better option than the insulated glass units the typical IG use that fog and fail. And there’s some new ones that don’t have, like this little vacuum port on it, and it just looks like normal glass, but it’s two panes of glass with a vacuum in between them. So it’s really slim line. And it’s really, it’s a they can fit into these historic windows and make them it’s, it’s like our 20 or something. So it’s incredibly insulating.
Della Hansmann 1:01:35
This is an excellent point for someone who has, you know, and again, I’m now, right now I’m speaking to mid-century homeowners listening to this podcast. If you’ve got your original windows and your complaint about them is that they have a poor R value, we can replace the glass and the existing windows. We don’t need to take out the entire window unit, throw in the trash and end up, yeah, new time stamped, yeah, immediately. You know, getting old off a lot when.
Scott Sidler 1:01:59
And honestly, for the for the for most people, and that stuff can get expensive, but for most people in the in my book, The case for historic windows, we talked a lot about, like, energy efficiency. Codes are all about what how efficient is the glass? Well, glass is, like, the least efficient building material in the world. No, it wasn’t designed to be energy efficient, was designed to allow you to see outside, and, you know, to let light in. And so it has a purpose, which is sight lines enjoyable, so you don’t live in a cave and light. But there’s options like, you know, simple things like cellular shades that have a really high R value that you like when it’s hot, I can just close these.
Scott Sidler 1:02:40
And when it’s when it’s nice out, I can open them. It’s like, you don’t have to have super energy efficient glass. You could put an awning over your window on the outside, if it’s on the really hot side of the house, and you could put those shades inside, and you’ll get the you’ll get comparable energy performance to a brand new window, far cheaper than if you replace the window. And you get to keep that historically accurate and appropriate window in place and not complain about it. But everybody’s trying to do a, well, I’m going to put these windows head to head with no window with no window dressings on it. You’re like, Why? Why would you do that? Why don’t you, why don’t you try a tint even on the glass, and then you don’t have to replace the window and see what that does?
Della Hansmann 1:03:17
Yeah, I feel like there’s my recommendations are often, let’s, let’s put some we can put blinds and curtains on the inside, if you’re really worried about energy efficiency, but we’re worried about heat load, we can, we can put a shade trellis outside your house. We can plant trees. There are a lot of ways to protect original window glass rather than take it out and trash it. But yeah, I am always looking for a little especially for people who are trying to make DIY choices, if there’s some, yeah, repair technology or replacement, something that they can get that will help it work better. And then, of course, there’s like, maybe they should come to your workshop learn how to repair windows and have the, you know, make it your whole personality for six months while you do this, and then you can brag about it for the rest of your lifetime in the house. That’s fine.
Scott Sidler 1:04:05
It is. It does give you bragging rights. And I find that people who go through our workshops are like, we do a two day window boot camp, and then we also do a one day painting workshop to teach people how to how to deal with lead paint and how to paint safely. And then we’re also rolling out plaster workshops in 2026 as well. And so we do a lot of them here in Orlando, because it’s, it’s nice to be in Orlando in February and March, which is a great time. Our August workshops seem to not be well as well attended.
Scott Sidler 1:04:31
I don’t know why. Maybe it’s a little hot, but, you know, I was like, you can go visit Disney and learn to work on an old house. But when people take the workshop and then they send pictures back, and they’re like, look, I did it. Like, I accomplished this window. I was scared of it, but they got to mess with an actual window in our workshop. And they’re like, I didn’t feel so bad because it wasn’t my window, and it wasn’t a client’s window, and it’s, we’ve had people go on to start their own businesses, and but you really learn it, we try to compact it, and it’s an intense couple of days that you’re doing the whole. Window in two days. So we work hard, but.
Della Hansmann 1:05:03
Can I actually pause you and ask what? Okay, do a whole window? Short version, what are all the steps if you’re gonna What do you teach in your workshop?
Scott Sidler 1:05:10
Yeah, so in our in our Windows Boot Camp people come in, we kind of explain a lot of what we’re talking about, like why you shouldn’t replace them. We do a little bit of the theory behind it, what’s, what’s great about them, and then we get them in front of windows in an old house here in Orlando, and they pull the sash out, they scrape and restore the jams. They redo the ropes or chains. They learn then they learn how to board up the window while it’s out with some plywood. They paint the jam and everything. Get it ready.
Scott Sidler 1:05:37
And then on the second day, we come back and start working on the sash. So we strip the glass out, strip of paint. We repair it with epoxies or dutchmans. We teach all that, and then we start putting it back together. We clean the glass, we put it back in. We cut glass if we need to everybody that they’re first timers. So everybody’s breaking some glass here and there. And so then, you know, re glaze it. And by the end of the workshop, you’ve got with the only thing we don’t do in that window workshop is paint the window, because the day after it is a painting workshop, so people can extend and do some of the painting. It’s just drying times. We just don’t usually have the time.
Scott Sidler 1:06:09
But, but then they come in and it’s, it’s all about, you’ve, you’ve fully restored a window, you’ve, you know, sometimes we’ll add weather stripping, if people want it to, to understand how to do things like spring bronze or other weather stripping. So they’ve worked their way through a whole window, and they can the goal is, at the end of it, they feel confident of like, what tools should I be using, what techniques, what kind of supplies, what’s it like to work with this epoxy or this glazing putty?
Scott Sidler 1:06:34
And then they can make decisions. If they go, Ooh, I like that tool or supply, I’m going to buy that. Or, no, I want a different kind, but without it, then you’d be like, you, I’ll buy a ton of tools. I don’t know which one’s the right tool. I’ll buy a bunch of supplies. I don’t know which one’s the right supply. Yeah. And it’s just kind of familiarizing yourself with what a window is.
Della Hansmann 1:06:52
That’s so cool. And as you say, doing it on a window that’s not your window.
Scott Sidler 1:06:55
Yes, yeah, you don’t feel so bad. And then we always kind of come back and, you know, if we tell whoever the homeowner is like, we will my crew, who are professionals, will resolve any of the issues that the volunteers, that the that the participants, did you do it on real house. That is so cool. So it’s we’ve done it in our workshop a few times on some salvage windows, but this coming year, in February, we’ve, we’re doing it on an actual house here, and we’ve done a few different workshops on houses. So you have to be careful, because, like, you run out of time very quickly, you got to get those windows back in.
Della Hansmann 1:07:30
That is really fun. And there’s nothing like it really looks nothing like being hands on with it. And sometimes you just have to make those mistakes on your own house. But it’s so great that you’re providing an opportunity to have someone get the expert advice, to be taught and do it at the same time. Because, you know, YouTube exists. There’s so much we live in, information rich age. We’re lucky. Oh my gosh, but watching someone do something on YouTube is not the same as putting your hands on to it and doing it yourself.
Scott Sidler 1:07:56
Yeah. So getting we have the online course that people go through to do it as videos of me doing it and walking through it, but I, you know, getting to do it in person and go, I understand how much pressure I have to put on that paint scraper or how to glaze the line just right? You know, when you see somebody who does it all the time, you’re like, Oh, that looks easy. I’ll glaze them. I’ll put the putty like that.
Scott Sidler 1:07:56
And you’re like, why is mine not doing Why does it not look the same? You’re like, it’s practice. It’s, you know, the first time you rode a bike, you’re like, you have to get the feel for it. I can explain to you that the pedals go like this, and you balance and you turn, you have to lean a little bit when you turn, but until you actually do it, then you’re you really don’t understand it. So, yeah, I feel like that is lacking for the historic trades. We really want to help that.
Scott Sidler 1:08:42
That’s why we’ve kind of rebranded his heritage supply company and started doing things under the Craftsman you for a craftsman University kind of thing to like we want, we want to help people get their hands on doing like, plaster masonry, windows, all the stuff, floors, everything that you need to do in an old house. Because those trades are just dying off. I don’t, I don’t know a whole lot of plasterers who are under 75 it’s just, it’s a dying trade, and once it’s gone, once those people are not there to pass on that knowledge, it’s really, we’re kind of up a creek.
Della Hansmann 1:09:05
We Yeah, I mean, you guys figure it out again for first principles, if anyone even cares you. But yeah, no, I mean, and I wish I have people ask all the time, and I’ve got clients all over the country who are like, who can you recommend that does this? And my answer is always, I don’t, I don’t know. You might get lucky word of mouth. Ask your friends like, knock on the doors of people with cool mid-century houses and ask them. That’s a great way to do it.
Della Hansmann 1:09:32
You got to be an extrovert about it. But, yeah, but yeah. But sometimes you get lucky. My little sister and brother in law had their kitchen redone by a local a good local company, but very much sort of a big, boxy local remodeling company. But they happen to have on staff a guy who had retired and unretired, who did beautiful plaster work, and he did the most gorgeous, sort of, like, I don’t know how to, I don’t know the technical term, sort of like clamshell, yeah, repeating pattern across their ceiling.
Della Hansmann 1:09:57
We just sit there and look at it. You know, it’s beautiful. It is stunning. It is a feature of the house, and it’s just the ceiling. It’s just a white ceiling, but it’s craft. And so, yeah, we want to preserve those skills and make sure people know to do them. So I’m so glad that you’re out there capturing this information and then using it in your life and your business and teaching it to people. That’s an amazing that’s a gift to everybody.
Scott Sidler 1:10:20
It’s been so much fun, and it’s empowering. Like, having like, as we’ve grown as a company, we have about 62 people on staff are, like, training these people how to like, so that when they come in, there’s like, nobody comes into us with a degree in window restoration. There’s like, we’ve had, like, maybe two or three people over 15 years who are like, Yeah, I did window restoration before I came to work for you, everybody else is like, we’re training them how to do this craft that they didn’t know.
Scott Sidler 1:10:44
And so when they, when they move on to another job or something, the future is like that they, my hope is that like this is a bunch of people who are out in the world now that have that skill set, now that maybe it was lacking. Yes, you know how to putty glaze, or you know how to you know how to paint without blue tape. God help us. You know, all these skills that just are not really that common anymore.
Della Hansmann 1:11:06
So, yeah, that’s amazing. Okay, well, I think, Okay, first I’m gonna put you on my calendar to do this again real soon. And Franken, can you give us a rundown? Because you’ve mentioned a bunch of different ways that you help people. Of all the different ways you help people. I think a lot of people who were familiar with you at all because of me know you from the Craftsman blog, but there’s also,
Scott Sidler 1:11:27
Yeah, so, so a couple different ways. So if you’re, if you’re really, I mean, anywhere in the country that we can service would be great, but we’re mostly in the southeast right now. So Austin historical, you can go to Austin historical.com We’re also on Instagram at Austin historical, that’s my, you know, brick and mortar company that does window restoration. We’re Orlando, yep, yep. It’s a do it. It’s the do it for you option. So commercial or residential, anything that has to do with an opening in a building. So, doors, windows, screens, shutters, everybody knows I’m obsessed with shutters, so all that kind of stuff. But all that, all that kind of stuff, it we’re in Orlando, Tampa, Savannah and Birmingham. So we’ll service anybody you know, from Key West up to Nashville. Is kind of our working range. Our teams travel, and so that’s one way that we can serve you.
Scott Sidler 1:12:19
The other way is just all the DIY stuff on the Craftsman blog. So you go to the Craftsman blog.com, or on Instagram, the Craftsman blog, you know, to kind of lots of blog posts, lots of tutorials. We’re on YouTube, Facebook, all that stuff at the Craftsman blog, with tutorials on how to do all this stuff on old house, how to build, you know, repair a deck, how to glaze window. It’s not just windows at the Craftsman blog. It’s all old house kind of theory and DIY, right? And then we just rebranded in it right here at the beginning of November for our it used to be the Craftsman store. We just changed it to heritage supply company. And so heritage supply CO is, is what we’re trying to do there, is trying to expand what we started with at the Craftsman store, and I don’t want to get sued by Sears for selling Craftsman tools, so we don’t do that. So it’s like, I’m gonna have to change the name.
Della Hansmann 1:13:09
I saw your email about the brand, but now you’re gonna happen to get those emails.
Scott Sidler 1:13:12
We’re gonna have to change that. I mean, people return their sockets to us, and we’re like, I don’t, I don’t, we don’t sell socket wrenches. But the goal is to have a store for professionals and DIYers that has the supplies, the tools and everything that you just won’t find at the typical hardware store, right? So the all the all the restoration, we want to serve the restoration trades. And so if anybody’s, like, if there’s stuff, feel free to reach out for like, nobody makes this anymore.
Scott Sidler 1:13:36
Like, we even restore old glazing point drivers or old tools. Like, we want to have those, the kind of tools and supplies that people need, so that we’re eliminating excuses to not restore apps and so and then the last piece there is our trainings, that which is craftsman U and that’s all you can get to all that through heritage supply CO or the Craftsman blog, where we’re doing in person workshops.
Scott Sidler 1:13:59
We have our online courses. We just got stuff AIA certified so people can get their continuing education units by taking some of our online courses or our workshops really. Yeah, so there are hands on workshops coming up. Yeah? Everybody does right? They always come up. And so we want to provide not just the supplies for people, but actually education. We don’t want to leave we’re trying to leave no stone unturned. So where people need education, on window restoration, plaster, masonry, all the trades, flooring, all that kind of stuff, we want to provide those training.
Scott Sidler 1:14:32
So we’re just starting to ramp up more of that. It’s been mostly window based training, but we’ve got, you know, plaster coming out soon. We’re going to go into floors and masonry and things to really expand the offering so that we can more, more better. We can better equip the trades, historic trades, to do what they need to do.
Della Hansmann 1:14:49
Oh, that’s fantastic. And you forgot to mention your book.
Scott Sidler 1:14:53
Yes. So Stacey Grinsfelder and I. I put this one up just recently. The Case for historic windows. And with this is, you know, a handy and concise guide to basically, if you’re thinking, if you if you need to make the argument that you should keep your original windows. We spent about two years digging through a ton of studies and things about what, what is actually going on, the cost, both in like carbon and raw materials and money, everything, comparing historic windows with new replacement windows.
Scott Sidler 1:15:31
And we put it all together in a book that if you read this, the goal was, people would always say, well, window, old windows can be made more efficient. Well, how much more? I don’t know, a lot, or you should keep your windows. Why? Because, because I said so. We wanted to give people like specific numbers where you can go, oh, you can make a 30% increase in efficiency by doing this. Or in a southern climate, you should do this. Or here’s how much they pay for themselves, or don’t pay for themselves. So it’s all numbers and facts in there. And we tried to make it kind of fun and easy for a lay person to read, and not just a putty head like myself.
Della Hansmann 1:16:07
It’s great I have skimmed it, and I want to go back and like mine it for arguments that I can make myself. Yeah, who? Who was your ideal audience for that was this, like one spouse persuading the other, or people making a pitch to, like, take a historic public building and make sure they’re restoring it properly.
Scott Sidler 1:16:27
Also we had a couple people, one where we were aiming for our primary audience was window restorers, because they had no they had no ammunition to go. I can’t make an argument of why you should restore other than I think it looks better. And so that they needed some kind of answer to that that’s data backed. And so that as well as architects, we’ve really wanted to get this in the hands of architects who are doing commercial or residential projects or especially renovations or adaptive reuse, to be like No, no, wait, wait, you don’t have to spec new windows. Let me show you what you could spec, some potential options for how you could design this building for the renovation, to keep the original windows, not just for the historic tax credit, but actually you could make them hit the energy codes, and so those kinds of things.
Scott Sidler 1:17:12
And then third was homeowners to kind of settle some of the arguments that are going around between husband and wife to go. I think this is like, Well, hey, there’s an answer, and we’ll be the bad guy, right? Not we don’t have to worry about, like, you know, one spouse being like, well, I believe this is like, well, they can be mad at me and Stacey that we put together the numbers, and we’re like, it’s not actually our numbers. None of the studies are things we did. It’s all third party studies at universities, and, you know, with a control that we looked at and actually, like, dug through the pages and pages of information to see what they were actually saying.
Della Hansmann 1:17:44
That’s fabulous. Well, you know, and in my own experience, I’m a residential architect, I deal with partner disagreements. That is the thing I’m I have experienced. But often it’s more even like people feel like at the Thanksgiving table, like their parents, who think mid-century is just old and lame and not cool, or their neighbors who just had a brand new everything put in, are like, Well, why wouldn’t you? And that it’s not people aren’t even being that pushy with it, but just if you have more of a leg to stand on, a little bit more experience in your house, some data you can cite, it just makes you feel so much more confident to basically say, I’m doing it this way because I want to because I like it, and also that it’s more energy efficient and safer and more economical as well.
Scott Sidler 1:18:28
So yeah, it’s just support for your argument. Most of us are, most of us, who live in an old house, like, we live in the old house because we liked it, not because science or data backed up that we made the right choices. Like, I just like the house. I know that the door, like in my study here, I know that these doors, there’s a couple of French doors that are not weather strip I know that they’re kind of leaky. I should weather strip them. I’ll get around to it, but I’m not. I’m not replacing them. They’re beautiful. I love them.
Scott Sidler 1:18:50
Yeah, and I bought the house not because it doesn’t leak, but because it’s wonderful and has a wraparound porch, and I’m happy and so but I can have some data to go well, I weather strip my windows, and they’re more efficient, and they meet the code for the for air leakage now because of what I did, if somebody if I really want to make the point, so, yeah, it’s just support.
Della Hansmann 1:19:07
It’s all right there in the book. Well, that’s, yeah, I’m gonna link to all of those things in the show notes page for this episode, because you have amazing resources and awesome thank you. Also, should know about them. Mid-century, people should know about them because our houses are historical.
Scott Sidler 1:19:21
So are they are unique. Yeah, so unique. That’s the fun part about it.
Della Hansmann 1:19:28
It really, really is Well, Scott, thank you for coming on today and sharing so much of your enthusiasm and expertise with mid mod remodel, and we’re going to do this again and talk about shutters next time.
Scott Sidler 1:19:39
Oh, I love it. All right. Thanks, Della. I appreciate it great.
Della Hansmann 1:19:45
All of this leads us kind of perfectly to next week’s topic. I’m going to be talking about the National Historic designated neighborhood of Madison, Wisconsin, the university Hill Farms development. What makes it historic? It’s more than just the 50 Year. Rule, although that helps and some of the incredibly successful planning techniques that were put into it such that it’s not just an accumulation of cool mid-century houses.
Della Hansmann 1:20:09
I basically always approve of a mid-century house, but it is a part of Madison that was planned in a kind of uniquely successful way. I don’t always love the way mid-century areas are laid out which can be a little bit hard to retrofit in terms of street plans and access and mixed use development. University Hill Farms is remarkably successful. It has business districts, government buildings, mixed and multifamily homes, as well as a whole bunch of single family homes with beautiful styles.
Della Hansmann 1:20:38
And I’m going to talk about its inception, its development, and how it has lasted, all in next week’s episode. So stay tuned for that. And meanwhile, if you’re looking to connect with Scott online, I’m going to drop all of those handy spots to find him, Instagram, blog, YouTube, his online school and his vintage supply shop on the show notes page. Check that out and get the transcript of this chat with all of his extremely popular extremely pithy and cogent words for your easy reference at mid mod, dash, midwest.com/ 2301. All right, catch you next week, mid mod remodelers.