diy projects Archives - MidMod Midwest

Nightmare Mid-Century Remodel Scenarios

32 min readIn honor of spooky season, let’s talk nightmare mid-century remodel scenarios.

Can you picture it? Sure you can. We’ve all seen some really scary remodeling choices —on Zillow, on Instagram, or sadly, maybe even in our own homes.

You can file this under schadenfreude if none of it applies to your house. Or it can serve as a what not to do guide to help you avoid mistakes. If you’re already living one of the nightmare mid-century remodel scenarios I’m about to describe, then let’s focus on the fact that you’re far from alone.

AND there’s hope!

I really believe that a good, solid master plan can bring any mid-century house back from the brink of horror.

A flipped house is not a final answer with Un.flipping

55 min readI was thrilled to chat with Dana Jenkins and Colin Davis of the Instagram account @un.flipping,(who may have coined the phrase!) and have blown up online by sharing their five-year journey to add the soul back into their thoroughly flipped mid-century home.

We all know the story. You find an MCM ranch in your perfect neighborhood, only to click further into the listing to discover a flipper has been there first. They’ve ripped out the character and replaced it with trendy, generic finishes.

It’s a tragedy…(well, to us it is).

And many mid-century lovers believe it’s also the final answer for the home. Remodeling something that has been “updated” is wasteful, isn’t it? And it’s almost impossible to undo the damage to original finishes or find replacements for pieces that ended up in the dumpster.

DIY Landscaping Advice for Your Mid-Century Yard with Ginkgo Leaf Studio

25 min readDo need need some advice to get started on your DIY landscaping project? This week Jim Drzewiecki is back with his best tips for DIY landscape designers.

I get asked about landscaping a lot and I always turn to our favorite mid-century landscaping expert, Jim Drzewiecki. Jim is an APLD, award-winning principal designer and the founder and owner of Ginkgo Leaf Studio where he and Hannah Paulson design beautiful landscapes for all kind of homes.

Now, not everyone can afford to hire a landscape designer for their project. Others just love gardening and planning for their own yard. And Ginkgo Leaf Studio usually has a waiting list.

So, this week Jim is back with his best tips for DIY landscape designers.

If you tune into the episode you’ll hear him start off with a great idea that I wanted to write down and then start putting into my own designs, immediately!

Finding the right mid-century home for you with Susan Halla

44 min readSusan Halla, founder of Make It Mid-Century and mid-century enthusiast, joins me this week to dish about her own recent house hunt.

If anyone knows what they’re looking for in a mid-century home, it’s Susan Halla. She has spent the last decade making retro-focused DIY doable for mid-century lovers of all stripes.

When she had to move, she knew she needed another perfect mid-century house to make her home. And she’s just completed a multi-city search that was laser focused on finding a relatively untouched, not too high end mid-century home.

Expand your MCM house with an Outdoor Room

37 min readOutdoor rooms are spaces around your house where you could be extending your enjoyable living areas, sometimes with just a few simple tweaks.

With spring around the corner, it might be time to spend a little more time in- and on – your yard. Let’s make it COUNT! You can easily feed two (or more) birds with one scone when you create an outdoor room – a space designed to expand your living area without necessarily adding any more solid wall or roof!

Make an outside space you want to spend time in that ALSO fixes design or lifestyle challenges you’ve been having in other spaces. Done right, an upgrade to your yard can be an upgrade to your house, too!

Easy Summer Projects to Tackle This Weekend

16 min readEasy summer projects can help you kick-off this year’s (mid-century) home improvement season! Here are a few of my favorites.

What feels like the true beginning of summer to you? Memorial Day weekend? Seeing the first lightning bugs? The last day of school? For me, my birthday in early June is the real start of summer!

It kind of feels like we just dived into the middle of summer in the last week or two and I have a feeling you might be in exactly the right headspace to take on some easy summer projects to make your mid-century home a little more your own.

So, grab your lemonade and a lawn chair and listen in for a few fun (and, okay some less fun but more necessary) summer project you can tackle right now to kick off your mid-century home improvement season!