Even those of us who are now professional mid-century designers have skeletons in our closets (and in my case, basements). My fellow designer, Aletha Van der Mass of True Home Restorations, and I have both walked that path. And now we both spend our time helping others avoid making the same mistakes.
So today, in the interest of community (and laughter through tears) we are both sharing our shameful home renovation stories.
I’ve been living in my home for nearly a decade. And I have been regretting a few of the remodeling choices I made immediately after moving in for just as long. I’ve struggled to finish my basement because I regret my original “cottage-y” design choices.
Aletha VanderMass has also navigated the painful process of reassessing her past design choices. She was kind enough to share the story of her bathroom remodel debacle and its undoing.
Listen Now On
She recently re-remodeled her bathroom, adjusting choices she made shortly after moving in while focusing on minimizing waste. The result is lovely and perfectly suited to her home and life. And it serves as a great reminder for anyone who feels the sting of self-inflicted remodeling regret.
The following are photos of Aletha’s Bathroom redemption…
You don’t have to live with a “botched” remodel forever. The most important step is simply deciding to align your space with who you are today, rather than who you were ten years ago.
Episode Resources
- Get Aletha’s Verticyl Sink
- Find just the right Merola Mosaic Tile
- Go Fireclay Tile for less with their Natural Press line.
- Get your own Doo Wop Light.
- Practical Props has the Sputnik fixture you’re looking for.
Mid Mod Midwest 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
- Find the podcast on Instagram: @midmodremodelpodcast
Read the Full Episode Transcript
Della Hansmann 00:00
It’s so easy to point fingers at the previous owner of your home and shake your head and wonder what drove them to make that trendy, out-of-period, cheap choice for a sweet little mid-century house like yours. How could they have been so wrong? It’s a little more painful when the homeowner who tripped and fell into a pile of HGTV advice is you 10 years ago.
Della Hansmann 00:21
Here’s the thing, it happens. It may have happened to you, and it absolutely happened to both me and my fellow mid-century designer, Aletha Van der Mass of True Home Restorations. Today, we are both reliable experts in mid-century remodels and spend our time preventing people from making remodeling mistakes, but once upon a time, we both made some ourselves. What’s important is what happens next. Hey there, welcome back to Mid Mod Remodel. This is a show about updating MCM homes, helping you match a mid-century home to your modern life. I’m your host, Della Hansmann, architect and mid-century ranch enthusiast. You’re listening to episode 2502
Della Hansmann 00:58
I’ve actually made mistakes in a couple of parts of my mid-century house, I made them all immediately after I moved in, and I’ve been regretting them for very nearly 10 years. Since it’ll be 10 years this fall, I shared on Instagram earlier this summer when I was down in the basement taking shelter from one of our numerous tornado alerts this year, so far, knock on wood, nothing worse happens, but I was down in the basement, and I was feeling irritated by being stuck down there and not able to be at my computer doing my day job, so I ended up picking up some tools and finishing the installation of a doorknob that had been sitting uninstalled in the unfinished part of the basement, waiting to allow me to actually close and latch the door separating the hypothetically finished part of my basement from the unfinished back part of the basement, with the storage and the mechanical and the laundry part.
Della Hansmann 01:55
And my basement project has been unfinished since the pandemic, partly because my life and work got really busy around that time, and I just actually haven’t had the leisure to spend a day every week hanging out with my dad and doing tool time projects together, and also, as I confessed in that video, very realistically, because some of the underlying design choices that I made for the basement are pretty freaking HGTV, and I don’t like them anymore. I chose to source pre-primed door trim and base, and so it’s painted white, and the walls are painted gray. Yes, I am a millennial. Hear me roar.
Della Hansmann 02:42
And now that I look at that, I also got a higher than I needed base trim instead of classic ranch base, and you know it just looks really cottagey. So, there are a bunch of incomplete details down there, but I never feel motivated to go and work on finishing the project, partly because I have all the useful living space I need upstairs, and I know I’m very fortunate to have that, but also because it’s not fun to go work on a project that I don’t believe in anymore, and what I know I need to do is make some course corrections to not start over from scratch on that project, God forbid, but to realign it with my vision for what is now mid-century appropriate in the rest of the house and should be down there as well.
Della Hansmann 03:22
Around the same time as I started, but never quite finished that basement project. I did do a first pass update on my bathroom, and as I mentioned last week, I made a bunch of necessary choices. I did not lose anything that was original in mid-century in the house in that process. The bathroom, as I found it, was a very 90s Home Depot remodel, so I got in there with paint. I replaced the flooring with something I liked better. I took out the old manpower flush toilet and replaced with a modern low flow toile toto, but that bathroom doesn’t sing to me. It doesn’t tell me the story of mid-century sweetness that I would like it to, and so it’s going to need me to come back and do it again. Remodeling, re-remodeling parts of your house is not fun.
Della Hansmann 04:08
I encourage everyone, as we were talking about on last week’s episode, to think about what is a more slow remodeling approach. What is the one touch approach you can take that every part of your house you change, you improve, you are making a choice that’s going to last as long as you will live in the house, maybe as long as the house itself will last. Certainly, it could not, something half-assed or so cheap that it will fail soon, or so trend tide that it will soon be out of date.
Della Hansmann 04:37
Anyway, I say all of this, all my personal confessions here by way of introducing how exciting I find this topic I’m going to be sharing with Aletha. When we chatted last season about kitchens, she mentioned that she had recently just re-redone her bathroom, and that she was so pleased with the results. She had finally removed the hurt in herself of knowing that she had about. Room, she couldn’t recommend to anyone else, and she did not have to scrape it all out and start over from scratch to make that happen.
Della Hansmann 05:06
So, I’ll let her tell the story in our conversation in a few minutes, but she’s also going to walk us through sort of her perspective on what are the key questions and the bright process for planning a bathroom update, and I think all we want to catch here is, how do you take a long-term a “I don’t have to do this again because I did it wrong the first time” approach to remodeling the bathroom in your mid-century house.
Della Hansmann 05:33
You can find links to Athleta’s website, and I imagine some nice photos of her bathroom update project at the show notes page for this episode, mid mod dash midwest.com/ 2502 Without further ado, let’s let Aletha tell us more.
Della Hansmann 05:52
Do you want to talk about bathrooms?
Aletha VanderMaas 05:54
Yeah, I just redid mine because I made terrible choices. Follow along with my saga, this was crazy, I mean, not everything I’m doing, but yeah, I messed up the bathroom, like.
Della Hansmann 06:08
because you, you kind of did it first, right?
Aletha VanderMaas 06:11
I did it first, I didn’t, I didn’t really immerse myself in mid-century design at all, I just, we bought this house, and I thought, well, these bats, sadly, I feel good saying the original bathroom was not here. I did not like, take out a beautiful original bathroom. Unfortunately, it would have been lovely if it was there. I don’t know if I would have kept it. It just, I guess, it would have depended what condition it was in, right? Like, right,
Aletha VanderMaas 06:36
ideally it would have been the original bathroom that no one ever murdered over white paint or whatever, but it wasn’t.
Della Hansmann 06:43
That’s its own kind of challenge, really, because when you have a true time capsule bathroom and something has failed,
Aletha VanderMaas 06:49
I know
Della Hansmann 06:50
the plumbing goes wrong. It’s really hard to preserve some of the tile without preserving all of the tile, and it’s hard to preserve the tile without, like, you either leave a time capsule bathroom alone or yeah, destroy it. Generally speaking, there’s not a big middle ground there. So, I mean, I think this is the situation a lot of my clients are in, and you found yourself in where someone’s already come in and made a mess, so you’re like, okay, well, I can’t do worse. But you did probably what I did when I moved to my house, you took all the normal kitchen internet or bathroom internet advice, and you, what subway tile,
Aletha VanderMaas 07:24
so I Pinterested. Well, I mean, so it was 2012 and it was everything was, you know, moving toward this cooler color palette, and everything on the internet was super modern, right? Nothing was century. There, there were. I know Atomic Ranch existed, but and I might have even been a subscriber, perhaps
Della Hansmann 07:46
even they tip into the more modernist rather than the like.
Aletha VanderMaas 07:50
I agree,
Della Hansmann 07:50
mid-century inflected sometimes, and I think when I first encountered Atomic Ranch, I didn’t experience it as a general recommendation for a house built in the 50s. I thought of it as cool homes in California that were a particular type of house, and I think a lot of people make that assumption that what they’re seeing there isn’t something they can have.
Aletha VanderMaas 08:12
So that’s exactly what happened at my house. I actually had a friend who was kind of helping with me with design, but I didn’t love all of her ideas, which was fine, but anyway, it turned into a mess. Don’t hire friends, it’s very tricky. Anyway, that’s a whole story on itself, but it doesn’t matter. But anyway, I, yeah, I did, and then, of course, we were doing this whole renovation, so obviously price was super important. So I was like, I mean, I don’t really care what the floors are, which is insane. Now that I didn’t care what the floors were like, we heated the floors and we put in 12 by 24 oversized tile. I know it’s terrible, Bella, it’s terrible. Did you
Della Hansmann 08:56
DIY it? Because that’s such an easy install choice.
Aletha VanderMaas 08:59
No, we hired him to pay a bunch of money to have his style installed, and then on one of the, in one of the bathrooms, when you were going to the bathroom, one foot was warm and one foot was cold.
Della Hansmann 09:17
That’s not the thing you experience every time, and you’re just like,
Aletha VanderMaas 09:22
so for 12 years. I know this is the first world problem. For 12 years, my right foot was cold in the guest room while I went in the cold, cold months when the heat set. Anyway,
Della Hansmann 09:31
right?
Aletha VanderMaas 09:32
Oh, I did these very affordable tile choices, and I know it’s a luxury to be able to come in and do your bathroom, and now I’ve done my bathrooms twice. I know that that is like very luxurious to be able to do that, but I will tell you what, it’s cheaper than moving houses. It is
Della Hansmann 09:50
well, and what you have done is been a test case for a lot of other people who can take advice, who follow you on Instagram and watch this remodel journey, and who are listening to this podcast. Cast now and going forward in the future. Who can just make a one-off?
Aletha VanderMaas 10:03
Yeah, set of good
Della Hansmann 10:04
choices for their terrible
Aletha VanderMaas 10:05
choices, right? And it’s so simple. If you were to.. if I, of course, I say that looking back, how simple it was. I could have picked any four, four by four tiles exist a plenty, even if I just would have won white ones, I would have been happy with them anyway, so yes, I put in Subway tile with gray grout, because why not? It
Della Hansmann 10:26
was like practically the law in that moment. I mean, it was
Aletha VanderMaas 10:31
super affordable. I think those tiles were 22 cents apiece at the Home Depot, like whatever. It was fine, gray grout made
Della Hansmann 10:40
them fancy,
Aletha VanderMaas 10:41
I don’t know, and then we added wallpaper at some point, you know, to judge it up a little bit, even though it just looks terrible in my.. it was fine, but anyway, yes, so that’s what I did. Don’t do that,
Della Hansmann 10:58
hopefully. Well, here’s the thing. I wish people were in no danger of doing that today, but we still, we still are. That’s still what you find on Pinterest, and that’s still what you see at the Home Depot. And I honestly don’t even know that it’s a terrible choice if you live in a 30s cottage that’s been terribly remodeled five times and you’re trying to bring back some cottage charm to it, but it’s not in your mid-century bathroom.
Aletha VanderMaas 11:26
No, no, yeah, affordable four by fours, and they’re just as easy to install as a three by six subway tile, and it’s.. it’s just.. I just didn’t know. So I hope that you and I and Aylin and Karen of Destination Eye Claire, everyone who focuses on mid-century design just continues to put out the information that people need to find somehow just to make the right choices, if they want to make the right choices. Some people would be like you just said, some people would be super happy with, you know, a tile, whatever tile, just be happy to have a bathroom. In fact, so I know that this is like just for design people, design nerds who are.. yes, I am obsessed. I looked at that tile every day, numerous times, and I was like, this was the stupidest, expensive mistake, too, right? Like, the tile was cheap, but the install was so
Della Hansmann 12:20
expensive, and then taking it out again, and I think that this really, though, is the thing, rather than looking back and saying, like, how wrong I was. What you did was, and I haven’t done it in tile, but I did it to my house in that moment, is I made a trendy choice, because I looked around, I saw a bunch of people doing remodels, I thought it was cute, and it seemed fresh and new, and I was like, oh, that’s kind of cute. I haven’t seen that much before. Now I’m seeing more of it. Ooh, I like it the more that I see it. Being aware of making trendy choices is challenging, because at first they just seem fresh.
Aletha VanderMaas 12:54
Yeah,
Della Hansmann 12:54
but every time you follow a trend, 10 years later you hate your own house every day as you use it, and so that’s the trap that I want to keep people out of, because it, you can live with it and be frustrated, or you can remodel, and both of those are iffy choices for different reasons, but at the end of the, like, I think also there is a risk, I feel like everybody makes a mistake on their first house project, like, whatever you do first, yeah, gotta come back around and do that one again. The rest of it, I’d be good, good to go. You love your kitchen, your kitchen is still magazine worthy, but your, your first bathroom project, you’re just like,
Aletha VanderMaas 13:29
I never shared pictures of the bathrooms, rarely, and I was like, now I post a picture of a bathroom and people like, and I’m like, oh, I’m so.. I did not do this for the accolades, I did this for my own brain, but I’m glad that everybody also is like agreed. I don’t know if you remember, but my, you can kind of see my floors back here, they were gray. I did gray wood floors, and of course I remember a couple years after moving in, someone was like, why are your floors gray, and I’m like really good with the mortar in my fireplace, and it did, and then I was like, “Oh no, it was the wrong choice, and I, I didn’t know, I just didn’t, I just didn’t know. I mean, in 2012 I didn’t know, and so
Della Hansmann 14:16
wasn’t really easily, but I should have
Aletha VanderMaas 14:19
known. I mean, I’ve seen old houses. I knew that they had wood floors, and you know, some sort of brown, not gray. Anyway, so these are all sanded down now. These are the same floors, they’re just totally naked. Oh yeah, and they’re maple. I’m like, oh, look, and they’re maple, and they are beautiful. They are a little wider than if I were to do them today, I think they’re four inch instead of two and a quarter, or whatever, but they’re beautiful, and they were already here, so
Della Hansmann 14:49
yeah,
Aletha VanderMaas 14:49
you know, like ripping out maple would have been insane, so silly, so you know,
Della Hansmann 14:54
and there are also always middle grounds when you’re trying to modify what you’ve got, whether it’s somebody else made a choice. Don’t love or whether you yourself made a choice in your early home ownership that you don’t love anymore. It’s not necessary to throw the baby out with the bathwater. You can just, yeah, tweak,
Aletha VanderMaas 15:07
yeah, just tweak. Yep, that’s what we did, not
Della Hansmann 15:10
not the subway tile
Aletha VanderMaas 15:12
tile. No,
Della Hansmann 15:14
so if somebody’s starting from scratch on a bathroom, changing the layout, did you make any layout changes when you’re remodeling again, or did you just replace?
Aletha VanderMaas 15:23
No, we thought about it. I felt like in hindsight, in our little primary bathroom, we could have moved, but the toilet, but then we would have had to move a door, and I thought toilet was there. Then you, you know, it kind of.. and then I was like, this is too much, that’s gonna.. I don’t even want to do it. So we didn’t do it.
Della Hansmann 15:41
It’s disruptive. I mean, I always workshop layout changes on bathrooms for my clients, but especially when they’re snug, or when they’re like too nested back to back.
Aletha VanderMaas 15:49
Yep,
Della Hansmann 15:50
you’re making a choice to destroy everything to fix one problem, which some people want to make, but I want them to sort of like, let’s think about it, let’s think about how big of an improvement, that is. Yes, yeah,
Aletha VanderMaas 16:02
yep. This was this case, yeah, not in this case. And the other side of this bathroom is our closet. So then the closet got funky, and then if we ever were like here and really old and have like a walker or a wheelchair, I was like, you wouldn’t even be able to get to the bathroom because you’d have to make like 290 degree turns, which, yes, as a walking human, I can do that, but as a human with assistance, I couldn’t do it. So, anyway, we did not make that change, and I’m.. it’s fine, it’s totally fine. Um, and it works, everything works just fine. It’s no, yes, two small bathrooms, but they, they work just fine. So, same, so the same sort of thing. If you want me to go through the process with that kitchen, it’s the same, or I mean, with the bathroom, it’s the same as the kitchen, so it’s basically a kitchen on a much smaller scale, size wise, but you’re literally picking every the same thing you’re doing, you’re doing three layout, and then I’m having my cabinet maker come and do, you know, whatever we’re gonna like get these prices going, and then we’re doing three design, you know, directions, and then we’re narrowing down all those choices, so you know, your wood grain, your metal color, obvious. I would say not obviously, but usually a white toilet sinks in tubs, like I’m not doing it. I’ve never done anything in a color, like I, you know, I know Kohler has those really cool. Have you been
Della Hansmann 17:20
tempted?
Aletha VanderMaas 17:21
Oh, yeah, that peach blow color is so pretty. I’ve never had a client ask for it, and I’ve never presented it as an option. So I
Della Hansmann 17:32
remember when they had their, they had like a poll, they had nine colors or something, and they narrowed it down to three. I was voting for none of my favorites, got picked, so I think if one of the colors I had loved most had gone into their selection, I would be like twisting people’s arms to try to get it in, but the peach isn’t my favorite. You don’t
Aletha VanderMaas 17:52
love that peach, I think lavender was the option I voted for. I feel like Earth, yeah, I don’t think. And then there they did spring green, right? I don’t know, they’re very, very cute, but again, like, oh, and I didn’t mention this when we were talking about kitchens, but in my opinion, the easiest thing to change in your kitchen is your backsplash, even though it may be like a really big.. I know this isn’t going to fit into the back when we talked about, but just to say to you, like, I tell clients, we can, you can change this backslash in 10 years, and it wouldn’t be the end of the world. It wouldn’t destroy
Della Hansmann 18:25
your layout, yeah.
Aletha VanderMaas 18:26
Oh, or it doesn’t ruin your countertops, it doesn’t ruin anything. That’s an easy change. So, saying that, going into bathrooms, in my opinion, tile in the bathroom is way more important, because it is so, though, floor tile is such a mess, that’s not just a quick backsplash change, that’s no bathroom for a couple of weeks, right?
Della Hansmann 18:46
You’re pulling the toilet, you’re possibly installing the vanity, it’s a big deal. Yeah,
Aletha VanderMaas 18:52
yeah, I mean, our bathrooms, my guy is wonderful, but he was very slow. It took 12 weeks to get those bathrooms retiled. Did you do them
Della Hansmann 19:02
both simultaneously? Yeah,
Aletha VanderMaas 19:04
and the laundry room and the kitchen. So, in our kitchen, backsplash is tiny. Um, and our laundry room isn’t that big either. Every room is pretty small, but it was just a ton of tile. And then we did all the walls to the ceiling, so it’s a lot of tile. Yeah, and the ceiling over the tubs, so yeah, it’s a lot, but it did turn out wonderfully. I do think I made an excellent choice. I can’t imagine there’s, there’s so much better,
Della Hansmann 19:31
yeah. Well, no, but objectively they’re just great, yeah. Although there’s, there’s something fun to actually experiencing an improvement, not just a nice thing, but like I remember what it was,
Aletha VanderMaas 19:41
oh, when I look at old photos and it’s hard to remember, like how I’m like, oh, and I had those vessel sinks, so
Della Hansmann 19:51
Pinterest pretty, so much cleaning grime out of a little corner,
Aletha VanderMaas 19:55
so dirty, because I had to like wash on both sides, and then. Behind them would get gross, especially in my spouse’s side, with his like shaving. There were always.. I was like, this is so gross, and the kids.. oh, it was so gross. Oh,
Della Hansmann 20:11
go-to recommendation.
Aletha VanderMaas 20:13
Well, I was gonna tell you, I got those sinks because they were only $100 a piece. So, when I have two double sinks, so I remember picking them based on price too, I’m like, these are 100 bucks a piece. We actually did a laminate countertop underneath them to keep it, you know, it was like a more affordable choice. My go-to sink is the Kohler vertical drop-in, or doesn’t drop in under mounted sink, it’s there, very, they have it in like a few sizes, the 19 inches, the big one I have, the 17 inches in mind, because I thought the 19 would be too big, and I was wrong, I could have done the 19 inches, but that’s okay, it’s totally fine. Anyway, the color vertical and white is my favorite bathroom sink, and now that I have it, it is a little difficult to clean because it’s the, it’s the edges are so straight, so like you have to like really, especially those corners, but I still love the look of it enough that I don’t want like a slopey one. Yeah, I use that one in every bathroom I’ve done, so
Della Hansmann 21:17
it’s worth thinking about too. The $100 sink for the vessel sink, but then how many hours of your life did you spend rhyming? This is where I’m like, some choices are expensive because they’re expensive, and some choices are expensive in your life.
Aletha VanderMaas 21:34
Yeah, I didn’t end up tracking those vertical sinks down for myself on Facebook Marketplace, and I got one or two on eBay, and you know it’s just a standard sink that everybody sells, so I feel like I got a good deal on most of them. I don’t think I had to order any retail pricing, but also, like, I had plenty of time to order things, so I just tried to like accumulate this stuff as slowly as I could.
Della Hansmann 22:00
This is an untold benefit of a long planning window in a project of any nature. For you, just sort of.. I don’t know. Did you have a full flesh bout plan, or were you like, “I’m redo this, so at some point I’m going to need my favorite sink. I’m just going to start hunting for it. But one way or another, you have the leeway to look for things secondhand, to find things at a deal. If you’ve got a little storage, you can just hang on to stuff, and then take action when you got it all. Yeah,
Aletha VanderMaas 22:23
plenty of storage. We put vintage. I just had like very modern finger pulls on all the cupboards, and they were fine. I liked they were just super simple, but over time, being wet, they kind of got a little grimy, and they bubbled a little bit, and so I knew we’d replace those, and so I did find some vintage ones that we tracked down over many years, not knowing they’d end up in that room, but just that we had kind of, you know, $1 here, $1 there at the restore, or whatever, and then I’m like, “Oh, dang, these will be perfect for the bathroom. The ones we went put on are a little pointy, they’re like a little boomer, it had that boomerang. I don’t put their pointy on the end, so I’ve definitely like, oh, they grab the towels, like you can’t stand next to the ring. I’ll grab my towel. First world problems, yeah.
Della Hansmann 23:12
But it’s, it’s fun to have tracked them down and sort of source them into the right spot. Oh, that’s great.
Aletha VanderMaas 23:19
Yeah,
Della Hansmann 23:20
so what do you do? You recommend anything other than four by four tiles? Is that your favorite, or what do you put into a bathroom wall normally? So,
Aletha VanderMaas 23:27
my favorite is a four by four out of all the bathrooms I’ve seen over the years. It’s just the most classic, right? However, when you do find those old time capsule, vintage time capsule bathrooms, there are some that are really cool, but recreating them, in my opinion, would be really difficult, because they are either a mosaic, which obviously, what is the brand, Universal? No, I can’t think of the, oh, Morola, Merola still makes those University and academy lines of mosaics, so those are two really good bathroom floors, and I have used those numerous times, and then paired with a four by four, those look pretty authentic, and, but, like, and I love a good rectangle, like stacked, you know, all nice and linearly, it’s not what I wanted at my house. I wanted people to think my bathrooms were old, so time
Della Hansmann 24:26
capsule. Yeah,
Aletha VanderMaas 24:27
I really wanted the time capsule look, even though my original bathroom had bubble tile, all different size circles in, really. Yeah, I have
Della Hansmann 24:38
piled..
Aletha VanderMaas 24:38
I feel like I have to show you a picture. Hold on. Okay,
Della Hansmann 24:42
we’ll, we’ll put it in the show notes page for sure.
Aletha VanderMaas 24:44
All right. Oh, yeah. Here it is. I’m like, it’s no, it’s not. Let’s see if I can show it to you, and I can. Yeah, I can send you a digital copy of it, but it was pink maroon. And yep, like pinks and maroons, which I guess the whole house kind of was, which, when I look at our fireplace, that totally makes sense. Okay, let’s see if I can show you. Let’s see, do you see that wall, like right? What, that’s tile, so that laundry room, and oh my gosh, the bathroom with the pink counter. Oh, I’m getting okay. And then the
Della Hansmann 25:29
drop-off sink, dropping
Aletha VanderMaas 25:31
sink, like bright magenta countertop. And then all of this,
Della Hansmann 25:37
what’s built into that little shelf there? Is that a soap dispenser?
Aletha VanderMaas 25:40
I think, into the shelf,
Della Hansmann 25:43
like there’s a little hiding things, I
Aletha VanderMaas 25:44
think those slide open, and they were like a little compartment. I know you’re getting it there. We go, no, but that’s
Della Hansmann 25:51
fabulous,
Aletha VanderMaas 25:53
wild. So, unfortunately, that was long gone when I moved when we bought the house. I’ll show you what I bought.
Della Hansmann 26:00
I love that detail, though. The built-up.. I often actually design a little shelf. Oh no,
Aletha VanderMaas 26:06
that was.. yeah, I mean, I’m just showing you the one image. They’re totally antes.
Della Hansmann 26:12
That’s
Aletha VanderMaas 26:14
so.. in night glass block. In 1992 he took out. he like merged the laundry room and the bathroom, and he made this last block, like you and I, as seated in my end, could like brush our teeth facing one, and he was so proud of it, like when we came to the walkthrough, he was like, I made this, I have, and he shows me all these pictures, and I’m like, this is the first thing we’re gonna take out. I did not tell him that, but it was like, oh, he had rope lights in it. He was so proud of it, and I, he loved this house. He lived here for 20 years, but he took out the original kitchen, which was metal and had the overcoming freezer, like the fridge that opens.
Della Hansmann 27:03
Oh,
Aletha VanderMaas 27:04
I just had.. I can’t.. the photos hard to see, otherwise I’d show you, but he took.. I mean, I assume it broke, like I can.. I can understand that, and I can also understand, in like the 80s and 90s and early 2000s you don’t want to live in a time capsule from the 50s. like it
Della Hansmann 27:21
wasn’t, it wasn’t sweet, man, it was just old, but oh my god, what I wouldn’t get for a cabinet refrigerator,
Aletha VanderMaas 27:28
I know it was so cool. Anyway, so I did get to meet the second family that lived here, and he, the kid who grew up here in like the 70s and 80s, and he’s like, oh, my parents just lived there, they didn’t change anything. He goes, “I don’t even think we ever painted anything, like everything was exactly.. I know they changed the carpet because I have some cute photos of them, like, doing, like, taking out carpet staples, but he’s like, ‘We might have changed the carpet.’ I’m like, “This looks like it was 80s, and this is you, right? He’s like, “Oh my gosh, I think it’s my brother there. that’s
Della Hansmann 28:03
wild, though, because I can’t imagine that just, just living in a house exactly as you found
Aletha VanderMaas 28:10
it. It
Della Hansmann 28:10
doesn’t make sense to me, but
Aletha VanderMaas 28:12
I know, and yeah, they were the second. I bet they bought it in the 70s, because the first owner lived here until sometime in the 70s, and then this family moved in. He’s like, we didn’t do anything, we didn’t change any, we didn’t paint the outside. He’s like, I don’t think my parents did anything, and I was like, I mean, at that point they didn’t damage
Della Hansmann 28:29
anything.
Aletha VanderMaas 28:30
No, at that point the house is what, 15 years old, you know? It wasn’t like an old house, so I don’t know if they thought it was cool. I didn’t ask, like, did people think you lived in the weird house or the cool house, or you know, like, all my kids’ friends think this is cool once they see inside, like,
Della Hansmann 28:50
yeah,
Aletha VanderMaas 28:50
you have no walls, like, there’s no walls at all,
Della Hansmann 28:55
not everybody has a brick fireplace wall, like, you have, you know,
Aletha VanderMaas 28:58
it’s yes, for sure, it’s Margaret behind us, and then the, yeah, and then the fireplace is like
Della Hansmann 29:03
hearth,
Aletha VanderMaas 29:05
yeah. So, yeah, it’s definitely like a house that you walk in as a kid, and you’re like, this is this is not like my house at all. So, yeah, but anyway, bathrooms, yes. So, our bathroom did not have four by four tiles, which was totally fine, so again, like, if I would have walked in and it was an amazing shape, would my 2012 brain be like, “this is totally worth keeping, or it’d be like, “this is terrible. I don’t know, I’m not sure how I would have felt back then.
Della Hansmann 29:34
It’s hard to see, but you did. You took out the glass block share sink island sink.
Aletha VanderMaas 29:40
Yes, yes, we didn’t set out immediately. Oh, and when we, you know, what, when we took that room apart, there was this wall that was just plywood, and we were like, what the heck is this, and it was an old exterior door that wall. Walked into the laundry room, but at some point someone took that out, and I kind of, I glazed over it. But in that laundry room, there was a door that used to come – you could go in or out – and I could imagine someone, you know, in the Midwest. Here we have lots of people who worked dirty jobs, right? So the guy who built this house was like a tool and die guy come back and drop things off there, and yes, and then going and taking a shower, like after work, and also to get out to the line to hang your clothes after washing, that would be really easy, because it’s, it kind of, it’s right behind our garage, so you would have a line out there really easily, like I can understand why all that was there, but we did glass block that actually, so that open doorway is now a really pretty glass block, and we were able to track down a very, the same glass block that’s original in our garage, a smaller version of it for that room, so it all looks intentional, but it is weird, because it goes like from the floor to the ceiling, and you’re like, what is this weird window, you’re like, oh, well, it used to be a door, but someone covered it up with really cheap plywood and painted it. It’s real ugly.
Della Hansmann 31:09
It works, though. Yeah. So, what? What did you keep from one bathroom to the next? Did you keep the vanities intact?
Aletha VanderMaas 31:19
Yes. Okay. So, when we did the house in 2012 we did everything, obviously, and so then we were redoing it. Yes, we kept the vanities and all the faucets, the shower heads, the toilet, all of the hooks and teepee holders, and like towel hooks, I mean the lights, we didn’t even remove the mirror. I had mirrors glued to the walls, just like a wall-to-wall mirror that were no frame, just like a way they would do mid-century. I don’t have the little clips, even though that would have been more period appropriate. I just had them stuck to the wall, and I had my tile guy just tile right around them, which he wasn’t really hip to initially, he thought it would look kind of unintentional, because the tile was going to kind of end wherever the tile ended, and I’m like, I don’t really want what happens, you’re going to take this off the wall, it’s probably going to break, and then I’m going to buy a new one and have it, I just, I like them where they are, so we just, and even though they weren’t very expensive, you know, 1214 years ago I didn’t really want to rebuy them, so we reused everything. We, Greg, my spouse, he reinstalled our shower glass, that all is the same.
Della Hansmann 32:31
Oh, nice.
Aletha VanderMaas 32:32
Yeah, I mean, we reused every single thing, so the only thing, the only thing we replaced was all the tile and then the sinks in the countertops, so we did sports in there now. Yeah, which felt wasteful. The old countertops are just kind of sitting, and I’m like, oh, this feels wasteful, but yeah, but
Della Hansmann 32:53
someone will be able to source them at some point. I think it looks great in the photos. The four by four you chose is gray. Is it is it gray in real life, or bluer in
Aletha VanderMaas 33:03
really lavender in real life,
Della Hansmann 33:05
lovely?
Aletha VanderMaas 33:06
But when it first came, it looked really gray, and I was like, did I pick gray again? But it’s just
Della Hansmann 33:15
cool.
Aletha VanderMaas 33:16
It’s a very cool lavender, that is true. Yes, and so I’m
Della Hansmann 33:20
looking down at the pictures right now as I talk to you about it, and it really just makes the warmth of the existing built-ins pop. It’s so nice.
Aletha VanderMaas 33:29
Yes, yep. So I used fire clay, they have that – they have a prep, it’s called natural press, so it’s a little more affordable than their ceramic, and they had a pink that I really wanted my bathroom to be pink, but the pink they had was a little too earthy and didn’t contrast enough with my cabinets, and I thought, oh, I like this color a lot, but I don’t like it with my cabinet, and I’m not putting in a different cabinet because they match all the other cabinets, and so then I landed on that, they call it amethyst, the purple color, yeah, it’s definitely purple in real life, but people are like, is it gray? And I’m like, no, it’s not gray, but I can see that it looks gray.
Della Hansmann 34:07
It’s just hard. It’s hard to tell from the photos, but what it does, regardless of what it is, is it looks great with your cabinets. And, as you said, you know, we talked about this in the kitchen, like, are you choosing wood or are you matching wood? And in this case, you’re matching wood, and so that everything else has to look good with that, it’s the wrong color if it doesn’t make your wood look good.
Aletha VanderMaas 34:25
Yeah, for sure. Yes, and I just
Della Hansmann 34:27
does.
Aletha VanderMaas 34:28
Yeah, and I do like the color of our wood, it’s like a tiki orange, so it’s definitely like mid-century. It looks definitely different than like a white oak kitchen, would be beautiful, just not what I have, right? So, yeah, yes, definitely. Warm, it looks good with all the other stuff in our house, so yeah,
Della Hansmann 34:46
fabulous. So, how long did you say you were gonna do your bathroom over before it took you to actually do your bathroom over?
Aletha VanderMaas 34:53
Probably 11 years.
Della Hansmann 34:56
That sounds about right. That sounds about right. Yeah,
Aletha VanderMaas 35:00
we moved in, and I was like, oh no, oh no, and then I’m like, but I can’t take out this brand new tile, that’s so wasteful, and then, like, I said, we added some wallpaper, and, of course, we added art, but you know what, I never, to be honest, I sound so snotty, but I never liked the bathroom, so I never even bought like towels for them. We just had like our old white towels from our old house. I only, I literally only bought one runner for each room once in the 12 years we lived here, just a white runner. It was so plain and boring, and I just was like, I know I’ll eventually do these, I just don’t know when, and then yeah,
Della Hansmann 35:43
I think it’s an interesting thing to just realize in yourself, because I was, as I mentioned, we were chatting before we got on the call, there were, when at the time of recording, there were tornadoes in my neighborhood last week, I spent a bunch of time in my basement, my basement is finished, what it is not finished, because I was working on finishing it as a project with my dad in 2020 and I remember the day when my sister, who was still in medical residency at that point, she’s a doctor now, was hanging out with my mom on town getting coffee as they had a little break between her classes and she had just gotten a lecture from her immunological diseases professor about how dangerous COVID was about to be, and how we should all go isolate, and my mom came home and was like, “Doug, we gotta go, and they left, and we put our tools down on the floor, and I didn’t touch them again for like three years, and basically nothing has ever happened in that basement since I don’t really need the space, and also in the time since I have realized the mistakes I was making down there, it has gray cork floors and gray walls and white trim. I can’t stand to finish the project because it’s so wrong. So it’s still so I was like hanging out, avoiding the tornado in my unfinished, like it’s.. I’ve dreamed and done something since then, but there’s like still tools in the corner, and like a pile of boards in the like living den area. Oh, shoot, right. So I have to go back and, like, I can’t choose wood trim now, but I can at least paint the walls of trim to match. I’m gonna have to do it all over again, because I can’t live like that. I know, yeah, it was my last project. I didn’t do
Speaker 1 37:24
anything in the
Aletha VanderMaas 37:24
bathrooms. I didn’t even buy pretty towels. I just used what we had, and then.. and they were fine. They were all just white towels, but you know how you’re like, “Oh, now I’m gonna accessorize. I’m like, “There’s nothing to accessorize. It looks terrible in here.
Della Hansmann 37:36
It’s hard to love it when you know you made a choice wrong, especially the longer you let it sit, so I’m so happy for you. You’ve, you’ve brought your bathrooms into alignment with the rest of the house, and now it’s also charming. Anything you did on your bathroom that feels like absolutely universally would recommend it for anyone, or conversely, anything that was right choice for you that you wouldn’t generally recommend for other people doing a mid-century bathroom update,
Aletha VanderMaas 38:01
I mean, I again with that countertop just being one continuous thing. I love those sinks that are just, you know, under mounted into the.. we use quartz again. I think that is just a nice, beautiful surface that really looks awesome. One thing that we do have is I floated the vanities, and they were floating before, but they were too low, because again, I had that sink on the top, and it had to be at the right height, and so it never looked floating,
Della Hansmann 38:29
so you got to elevate them.
Aletha VanderMaas 38:30
Yeah, so he, so my guy elevated them, and now they look like they were going to look in my brain, you know, when we moved in, but they never did. So, yeah, it was a little annoying to like reconfigure everything to like get it up to the right height, and Greg had to like redo a little plumbing to make everything fit, but they look so much better. And then that tile goes right under there. It’s not like anything fits under there. I have a scale under, I mean, you know, it’s not that much space, but when you’re in there and you can see it, it just looks so pretty and modern, like it feels like, oh, I mean, yeah, I have to vacuum and I have to like mop under there, so maybe you don’t need that, but
Della Hansmann 39:10
I really like it, though. I, wherever possible, I spec a floating vanity at a bathroom for a couple reasons, one, because I think it makes a small space look bigger, and two, even though you’ve got to clean underneath it, you never have the wood of your of a kick plate touching tile, where they could get gummy or like actually take on water damage. So, you’ve just elevated the main wood thing that’s in a bathroom above the wet surface of floor splash.
Aletha VanderMaas 39:35
That makes it look pretty.
Della Hansmann 39:36
It just looks pretty.
Aletha VanderMaas 39:38
I was like, that was a lot of finagling, was that even worth it? I’m like, whatever, that’s what it is. So, totally
Della Hansmann 39:44
justified. Yeah,
Aletha VanderMaas 39:45
for sure. It looks
Della Hansmann 39:47
great.
Aletha VanderMaas 39:48
Yeah, yeah, I’m super happy with it. So, or both of them, they look great.
Della Hansmann 39:53
What was your.. do you remember? Because it looks like they’re not.. you didn’t replace the lights. What’s the light fixture that you have over your mirror there?
Aletha VanderMaas 39:59
Oh. Man, rejuvenation used to make really awesome lineup of mid-century stuff, and they’ve slowly used to discontinue each piece by piece by piece. I have new lights. Let’s see if you can see these lights over. Oh, those
Della Hansmann 40:16
are so cute.
Aletha VanderMaas 40:17
Yeah, so I know that that is a writ, or you know, they stole that. It’s an old design, they call it the Do Wop Light. I’m trying to think of who the designer is. Oh, I know it
Della Hansmann 40:29
too. It’s, or it’s the PL, it’s
Aletha VanderMaas 40:38
the PA, yeah, it’s that guy. I think it’s Poulsen. Is that.. I don’t know. Anyway, you’ll have to look it up, but it’s the do op light. I didn’t know this until a really knowledgeable client was like, “Oh, we’re going to do these do-op lights, and I looked it up. I’m like, “Oh, I must have the knockoff version of these from Rejuvenation.
Della Hansmann 40:53
Yes, it is Poulsen. You’re absolutely right,
Speaker 2 40:56
the Danish.
Della Hansmann 40:56
Yeah,
Aletha VanderMaas 40:57
yes, yes. And so maybe Rejuvenation got in trouble. I don’t, I don’t know, I don’t know. I mean, you can’t, like, I mean, if you’re knocking it off and selling it as something, I don’t, I don’t know all those things, I don’t know all the legalities of that. But that was a really cute light they read anyway. So, the bathroom light, they used to make the little version, which I have four of four little versions. They also made a really long version that I’ve had a client use, and that’s actually my favorite. But again, those were $500 each, so I instead bought four little ones instead of four big ones. Yeah,
Della Hansmann 41:36
fair, but they look super cute on yours, and they really do look – they look time capsule. Yeah,
Aletha VanderMaas 41:42
they really do. Yeah, that was an act. We got a few. I have.. I feel like I could, could show you all of my lights. Let’s see, which one’s over here. So, this one was also a rejuvenation. I didn’t really clean over there for you, really. I would have
Della Hansmann 41:56
guessed that was a find. That is
Aletha VanderMaas 41:58
also a knockoff of an old light, I forget I could find it, but I don’t know what it is off the top of my head. So that was when they offered in brass and chrome, and in hindsight, brass would have looked better in this house, in my opinion, because it’s so warm. But I went with chrome, and we’re, we are in with chrome, so we’re not changing all the lights. Chrome
Della Hansmann 42:19
works, I think. My take on that is, today we think of brass as fancy and chrome as workmanlike and sort of basic, but back when I think they thought of brass as a little bit more of like, well, you have to polish it and it’s going to get a patina, and chrome is the atomic, it’s the metal of the future, it’s so modern and clean, so I’m
Aletha VanderMaas 42:41
good with it. Yeah, I was like, we could change, because my Sputnik behind me, which I love, which is from Practical Crops, which makes the best one in my opinion. I was like, I could order that in the brass, and I’m like, are we gonna change all the lights? No, we’re not changing lights. Don’t get ahead of myself. So, I don’t know, if I found one secondhand, maybe I would, but it’s not hard
Della Hansmann 43:03
to substitute them if you do have a find, but you don’t need to go around repurchasing. I definitely
Aletha VanderMaas 43:09
know, and it’s like, and this one is fine. And then, what do I do with this one? Then I just have this in a box somewhere. Yeah, no. So, anyway, rejuvenation made those lights in the bathroom, and they’re perfect. So,
Della Hansmann 43:18
they’re so charming.
Aletha VanderMaas 43:20
Yes, I love them.
Della Hansmann 43:21
Did you see this? Didn’t finish gossip. Rejuvenation has reintroduced a line of unanodized brass. They’ve got a heritage brass product now that will take a patina. It’s not in everything, for example, they don’t have it in the cute little, like, starburst backers. They have it in some of their things, and I want everyone to go buy it, so that they’ll keep making it until they’ll make more of
Aletha VanderMaas 43:46
it. Yes, I do have the.. I did put these on. Oh, I left the drawers open. They’re hard to see. They’re the little stars. Oh,
Della Hansmann 43:54
yeah, they’re so cute.
Aletha VanderMaas 43:56
Yeah, and those are from Rejuvenation. Those went on sale a few years ago for like 99 cents in the chrome, and I was like, “Oh, I need 50, that’s a good time to buy them. Absolutely.
Della Hansmann 44:05
Oh, they’re so precious. Yeah, and that gives you the time capsule.
Aletha VanderMaas 44:10
It does, yeah. And you know, half my clients are like, “Oh, yeah, I definitely want that time capsule look, and half of them are like, “Oh my gosh, those are way too retro for me. I’m like, “Yeah, that’s totally fair. So I’m. that’s fine,
Della Hansmann 44:22
exactly. So I feel like knowing that in yourself is one of the starting points of like where, where are we headed? Because there are a bunch of roads that all branch off from mid-century, even accurate mid-century, and knowing how sort of twee versus minimalist you’re going is maybe the biggest divergence of all that informs so many other choices afterwards. It does,
Aletha VanderMaas 44:46
and actually, that’s a good thing to note. When I give people three design choices for the kitchen and the bathroom, they do kind of lean, like one is more minimalist, organic, the other one is maybe like very atomic, where I. Do the starburst, and I might do like a wacky wild if they say they like color, like red and turquoise, or something that would be like, whoa, this is unexpected. And then there’s usually one that’s like minimal, but still colorful, so I wouldn’t maybe give them a neutral, but I, you know, anyway. So I do try to like lead them to three different ideas to see where they land and then kind of zero in on exactly what they like, so then I feel like I’ve done all of those for people. I mean, I’ve definitely had people that really want a lot of color, which is how I like to live, but then I’ve definitely done like black and white, like I’ve done a black, white, and gray living room, and I’m like, this is so boring, and then I get it all together, like great. I don’t know why I was worried about this. I mean, I tell the client I was worried, but I was like, oh, this seems so boring. And then you know, you get all the pillows and you get the odds and ends out, and you’re like, oh, actually, this looks amazing. I’m awesome. So it’s cool. They love it. We’re all good. It works, I think. My theory about color is, if you love it, you should go for it, but if it scares you, you don’t have to do things you don’t want to. And also, I think if you know in yourself, like some people have a favorite color and they have it forever, and other people sort of like go through seasons,
Della Hansmann 46:16
yeah. And if that’s you, put it in your paint and your soft furnishings, and don’t tile it to your bathroom walls, for example.
Aletha VanderMaas 46:24
Yes, for sure, for sure. I have always loved red, even I don’t wear a ton of it, but just I’ve always loved red. And when I moved here, I didn’t think I could have any red in this house, because it’s so warm, and it just didn’t make sense. And now I’m like, I love red in here. I mean, I don’t want like a red sofa, that would be too much with the orange wall, but like one red pillow isn’t going to kill the place, and so I literally sold like all these red things because I had so many at my old house that was also a little tiny 50s bungalow, but anyway, yeah, it’s just funny how I’m like I’ve always loved red and I just shied away from it because it wasn’t great, you know, did it go with gray, and like it was supposed to be everything was just so neutral, and so that was so, the, you know, that was my mistake, not just embracing what I liked. Yeah, so yellow, right? Yellow is your color,
Della Hansmann 47:17
I do basically, if it’s, if it’s a color in my house, it’s yellow.
Aletha VanderMaas 47:23
Yeah, you know, you could tile your bathroom in yellow and be very happy.
Della Hansmann 47:29
I probably could, I really probably could, but I’d still be more likely to do everything in white and yellow tones. I have, I have blue original tile in my bathroom, so for me, blue and yellow isn’t it’s fine in the world, but for me it’s too much color.
Aletha VanderMaas 47:48
Yeah,
Della Hansmann 47:49
where I get into my Tism, and I’m like, no, only one color at a time. So the bathroom has any blue things,
Aletha VanderMaas 47:54
okay? All right,
Della Hansmann 47:56
but yeah, everything else in the entire house is yellow, basically. Yeah, yellow or neutral,
Aletha VanderMaas 48:01
yes, yellow or neutral. I think yellow is a neutral, right? That’s how you start looking at your favorite color. It goes with everything
Della Hansmann 48:09
that works for me.
Aletha VanderMaas 48:11
Yeah, Aylin color is orange, and she’s always loved orange, and so she has a lot of orange, and I’m like, I like orange, but I also, yeah, it’s just funny, so it’s fun to have a favorite color and know what it is, and just go for it
Della Hansmann 48:25
starts to seem like the right thing. It also helps me avoid that I don’t have to buy a lot of things if they don’t come in yellow, I don’t need it, so that saves me. Marvelous. Any final self-bathroom remodel lessons to pass along.
Aletha VanderMaas 48:42
No, I mean, I think, I mean, in my opinion, so we reheated the floors. Well, oh, we even use the heater, like the heater thermostats, because I remember buying those, and they were $300 a piece. And then, when the guy redid the bathroom, she’s like, ‘You’re going to update these, right? And I was like, no, no, I’m not, because I have heat, and I know that they were $300 so we reuse those. I mean, in my opinion, in a mid-century house, if you’re.. I think that’s such a great upgrade. I know it sounds like so goofy to heat your floor, but I feel like you’re retiling anyway. In the Midwest, it is cold, like everybody walks in the bathroom, and they’re like, “Oh, your floors feel great, you know. It’s a tiny luxury in most of these houses that we are talking about, and I work on our small houses. It’s not like some huge fancy house, but like,
Della Hansmann 49:39
effective thing to do, though. I think, because a lot of people feel like you get up in the morning and it’s cold, and you’re going to go take a shower, and you want it to be warm. You can go bump the thermostat in the entire house to try to keep up the bathroom, or you can turn on the floors in the bathroom.
Aletha VanderMaas 49:55
Yeah, yep, the
Della Hansmann 49:56
bathroom, and so, yeah, I’m. I’m, I mean, given a choice, I would in floor heat everywhere. Back when I designed homes from scratch, I put floor heat in everywhere, and my parents’ home, which is the last house I designed, new has radiant floors, and it’s great. Yeah, save some ridiculous amounts on heating, and it’s marvelous. I actually even like, in a mid-century house, I like old radiator baseboard heat, so I
Speaker 3 50:24
do
Della Hansmann 50:25
forced air, but
Aletha VanderMaas 50:27
my sister has that in her Chicago house, and it feels just so nice and toasty in there.
Della Hansmann 50:32
Exactly, yeah, it’s really.. it’s a pleasant heat source. I mean, you think about forced air, sure, you can have a filter in the furnace, but you’re blowing air around the house, you’re recirculating dust from the basement into the main floor every day, and especially when you’re heating, when you’re cooling, a little bit of air movement is cooling, even if you’re not cooling the air, but when you’re heating, you’re blowing air past someone to warm them up, so even if it’s hot air, it feels cooler,
Aletha VanderMaas 50:58
yeah, yeah, yeah, she has that big word heat, and then they also, she has radiant heat in her original terrazzo in her front entryway, that’s all radiant heat on the floor. Lovely, it is lovely. Sure, such a cool house. Yeah, it really is. I’m like, it’s cool, but it also was so thought out. It’s so thoughtful, like every single thing, you’re like, what, that’s crazy. So, yeah, but
Della Hansmann 51:24
it’s the best of a vintage house, is when you get to admire all the clever things they did, and try to preserve or build off of them, and even go further. Great. So, radiant floors in the bathroom, I think. Yeah, if you’re going to go to the trouble of retiling, you might as well.
Aletha VanderMaas 51:37
I feel like that’s a really nice upgrade for such a small space that you do use a lot. I mean, most of the bathrooms I work on are tiny. I wear, I have very few very large bathrooms that I’ve worked on, so mid
Della Hansmann 51:50
century bathrooms, yeah,
Aletha VanderMaas 51:53
tiny. I had one amazing client that had an enormous, it was original bathroom and closet, and then it had this, like, it had a separate tub that was the original plan said it was supposed to be the whole tile tub, but it was a drop-in tub, so what happened to, like, what do they call those? Oh, a Roman tub that’s all tiled right below
Della Hansmann 52:16
the floor,
Aletha VanderMaas 52:17
like hers was up, like you stepped up some stairs, so it looked like, right, so like he was, it was really wild, but then they had like saloon doors, right, like the swinging doors on the toilet area, and then the shower was its own little capsule, and then it was like a really huge, and then there’s it was just really wacky, but anyway, someone had already demoed half of it before she bought the house. Oh, you know, so like we came in and I knew, like, this was the first project. This this bathroom has no floors, so anyway, that’s the largest bathroom, like closet I’ve ever, I think I’ve ever worked on for a client, and yes, we did heat the floors, and we, and we separated it better. Where there was like, there still was a tub and a shower, but they weren’t through saloon doors. Yeah, anyway, she had this really big closet area, and it functions way. It, the layout was way better than the original, in my opinion. I’m sure it was the talk of the neighborhood, though, when it was built. Doesn’t it make you want
Della Hansmann 53:21
to meet those original people? Who,
Aletha VanderMaas 53:23
yes, expect that, like, who did this? This is so, you know, it has like this little dressing area, and then this, and the tub was just so enormous. It was half of the upstairs, like it was. It is such a big part of this house. Yeah, it is fun to see stuff like that, and it wasn’t that, like, from the outside, it’s more of a two story, it looks like a two story traditional, but then when you walk in, it’s a split level, it’s like a side split, okay, and then, oh no, it’s like a side tri level, it even goes up more, it’s really large, like you walk in and you gotta go up or down anyway. It just had a huge primary ensuite bathroom closet situation. So anyway, we, yes, so that’s probably the biggest one I’ve ever done. And that one is really pretty. It’s a dark pink. I’ll send you a picture of that one. That one is really pretty. It’s really
Speaker 4 54:22
fun.
Aletha VanderMaas 54:22
I actually considered the color tile from my own bathroom, but the only thing is, oh, here’s my one thing I want: trim tile. I do not want, I want base coat base tile. I want, you know, all of the real trim, so that’s actually why I landed on fire play more so than any of the other tile places I looked at that were more affordable, so you’ll
Della Hansmann 54:51
get that top cove edge rather than what is it, Schlutter shoulder
Aletha VanderMaas 54:55
Schluter. Yeah, I don’t love that, it’s not terrible, but it’s not my. First choice, I have it in my kitchen, and it’s fine. It’s not like that big of a deal, but in a bathroom, I want the base to cove, you know, into the floor tile, and then I want all the bullnose, like, to end, so like above our shower, that tile just goes above the shower, right? And so then above that, there’s a piece, there’s like traditional two by sixes with a nice little bait or cove, so it all kind of off nicely. Yeah, in our shower, you know, our curb to get in the shower, those are all nice and curved. And then they could go around all the windows. I just really, that was important to me too. I didn’t want all that Schluter in there, and I know first world problems, Della, I know this, but no, but
Della Hansmann 55:44
I think it’s actually a huge deal, because that’s the sort of thing that rings right or rings wrong, and I have I have a lovely master plan client who, the one room in her house she’d done already was the bathroom, and she tried so hard to time capsule, and she did an amazing job. At a glance, it looks just right, but when she came to me, she was like, and there’s something weird about it. I tried so hard to be vintage, but it still feels modern, and I was looking at it, and it is all white tile, but you know, she’s stack bondage, her fixtures and finishes were right, but it’s got a slitter edge, and that really instantly says modern update, not retro throwback, and so I think actually it’s one, it’s so subtle, and as you say, it limits your sourcing options,
Aletha VanderMaas 56:31
it does, yeah,
Della Hansmann 56:32
but it does matter.
Aletha VanderMaas 56:34
That pink tile was from Zia, and they have beautiful colors, and they’re really nicely affordable, but they don’t have any trim, so that just out, no edges. Yep. And then I know that is it B and W tile, B and W tile, they do beautiful vintage stuff, but their pricing was way more than what I wanted to spend,
Della Hansmann 56:55
more than Fire Clay.
Aletha VanderMaas 56:57
Yeah, isn’t that wild? That’s what everyone said to me, and I was like, I got the price. Well, I mean, also, you have to remember that I get a trade discount, and I promised photos, so I get a discount, for you know, so there’s, you know, the back end of that as a person who’s doing that, but yeah, it still was less expensive to do fire clay, so, but yeah, I mean, and I definitely price shopped, because B and W did have all the trim pieces, all the, you know, everything I could have wanted, and who else? I mean, Dell Tile has some decent four by fours, and they also do offer trim. Their color selection isn’t as broad, so if you love, and I have done some of theirs, that they have a really pretty spa color, which is like a really soft blue. I’ve used that a couple of times. That is an excellent color, and they do have the trim, but theirs is a little more difficult to order, like you don’t have, like, a sales rep that can walk you through that. So I haven’t used their trim pieces with it. But anyway, so that’s important to me when doing the tile in a mid-century bathroom. Are all the trim? I would say most people don’t, that is not like a make it or break
Della Hansmann 58:04
it, so it is something, though. If, if your goal is to hit a visual note, that’s that is a make or to break detail. And then, if you’re just looking at, like, I just want a good color, I just wanted to be four by four, not subway tile, like,
Speaker 5 58:18
yeah,
Della Hansmann 58:18
any, any color from any source will do it.
Aletha VanderMaas 58:20
Yes, that there was a really pretty color from Zia that I was like almost set, and then I was like, oh, you don’t have any trim, and I, I just can’t do it, so I didn’t, and it’s nice and affordable too. It would have been a traction, fraction of the grounds. Let me think of what else in a bathroom. I think the tile is important to me. I, the other thing. Let’s talk about this. What about people who are only doing their bathroom to sell their house? Like, what are we doing? I, this is
Della Hansmann 58:49
a rant I’ve given so many times. I won’t, I won’t do it. Like, I, the what do I need to do to sell the house? My answer is A, nothing. B, clean it and put some stuff in storage and then nothing like literally nothing, just leave it alone, frankly, leave it dirty to me. It’s better to just take your parents’ furniture out of an old house and put it on the market than to like come in and tear off a whole bunch of original features and dumpster them, and then be like, Who wants a flip? I don’t know,
Aletha VanderMaas 59:24
right? Right, I can’t.
Della Hansmann 59:26
I can’t stand it when people want to remodel something to sell it.
Aletha VanderMaas 59:30
Hell yeah. And I don’t think I’ve had anyone come to me and say, we’re selling, we want to hire you. It’s more of, well, I don’t think we’re going to stay that long, and so what should we do? And I’m like, I mean, I probably wouldn’t do anything if you know you’re going to sell. I don’t think there’s a huge.. and I’m not a realtor, so maybe a realtor would have different advice, but I do find it’s hard. So, for example, someone just came to me and they’re like, we’re going to replace this floor with what’s it.. LVT, the luxury. Vinyl tile, and I was like, I don’t think I’m
Della Hansmann 1:00:04
making right now. I
Aletha VanderMaas 1:00:04
know, I know, and I don’t know if this woman will listen to the podcast, so I don’t want to speak badly about it. And it, she was lovely, but I was like, I wouldn’t do that, because it’s gonna end up in a landfill eventually, maybe not tomorrow, but like, what, I don’t know. Yeah, it was.. it was, you know, they made up their mind, and I thought, well, I have a flooring guy, I’ll give you my flooring guy, like, you know, if you’ve already chosen it, and this is what you’re doing, I don’t need to be involved. So, and then they really want to do a kitchen, but she’s like, we might move. I’m like, I don’t know if I would do anything then. Yeah,
Della Hansmann 1:00:40
I mean people in America move, we change jobs, we shift across the country. I know it, but I also think the, to me, the fun of helping someone plan a remodel is to make, is to tailor the house to the life they want to live now, five years from now, ideally forever, barring unforeseen consequences, and yeah, I had a lovely realtor. Speaking of realtors who do or don’t understand Mid Century, which we talked about last time, I had a lovely realtor from the Minneapolis area get in touch with me, and she actually had a young family trying to sell their parents’ house, and she was asking me for advice on how to remodel it, and she was like, could I hire you to do a master plan for the house, and I was like, I don’t think you should do anything to the house, I think you should sell it like a time capsule, and then she’s like, well, could you do a spec master plan, so the next people could see what it could be, and I was like, well, in theory, but actually, no, because my process is so driven by the owner, the people,
Aletha VanderMaas 1:01:41
yeah, the people who live
Della Hansmann 1:01:42
there, and so I, I mean, I could come up with ad design, I could imagine people and put it into it, but I just feel like the purpose of spending money, time, materials, effort, labor on a remodel is to make it to make you happier, to make you smile every morning in the bathroom to solve a problem to make the house last longer to care for it, so yeah, I just.. I don’t have any, I don’t have any advice for people who want to remodel for resale. Also, when you look at, like, even in people talk about the return on investment of remodeling costs,
Aletha VanderMaas 1:02:18
yeah,
Della Hansmann 1:02:19
and I feel like this is where we don’t understand the term, because it’s always less than 100%
Aletha VanderMaas 1:02:23
Yeah,
Della Hansmann 1:02:24
what you’re saying is you want to spend $100 to get back $80 in the sale, and I’m like, so you just spent $20 and gave it to somebody, why? Why would you do that? That doesn’t make sense, the
Aletha VanderMaas 1:02:38
cost, the whole cost of the house goes up 100 and you only get eight, or I don’t know, I’m sure there’s some math problem there that I can’t think through. Like,
Della Hansmann 1:02:46
when you look at it, the only projects that ever make 100 or more than make back what they cost to buy and do are front door and garage door replacements. So I’m like, sure, if you want to, I guess, but like also the next person pick it, but that also reflects the kind of home buyer I am, where I’m looking for a project, I’m looking for other people’s mistakes I can fix. I want the house that’s marked down because it doesn’t look appealing to someone, and I see possibility in it. That’s what I also offer my clients. But yeah, well, yeah, and for your client, who is gonna go with LVT?
Aletha VanderMaas 1:03:26
No, she’s not my client, but
Della Hansmann 1:03:30
yeah, I mean, I know, I know why salespeople are selling it. It’s very cheap, the costs are being externalized into the world, and it is relatively hard to damage, although it’s very long, but yeah,
Aletha VanderMaas 1:03:43
I’ve definitely better
Della Hansmann 1:03:45
options,
Aletha VanderMaas 1:03:45
I know, and I hate to be like a Debbie Downer about those selections, but I guess it’s hard to know, and I’m like, I understand why, and I get the cost is affordable, it just doesn’t feel like a long-term investment, it feels like someone at some point is going to have to redo this, and then what? It’s just sitting in the landfill, plastic. Yeah, it might be, and you know what, this particular house is amazing. It’s one of those where you like drive by and you’re like, I want.. I actually, this woman knew my sister somehow, so it was like 11 years ago. She was like, “Hey, we’re buying this house. 11 years ago, and I finally got to see it a few weeks ago, after 11 years. I wasn’t like, I mean, I was excited to see it, but it was just funny. She’s like, “Yeah, time has kind of gotten away from us, and I’m like, “It was 11 years ago, you sent me that message, which is fine. We didn’t like, stay in touch, you know, and it’s no big deal. I just think it was so funny that all of a sudden I got this message, like, “Hey, and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I know who this is and what house it is. And it was very, it was very cool. It’s cool to finally see it. They have family in other areas, so I understand, even I. Understand them eventually moving, but they bought at an amazing time. They have an amazing house, and if I were, if they were to hire me, I’d, I’d just be like, I don’t think this is the right choice, and I hate to say that, because the choice is yours, of course,
Della Hansmann 1:05:15
right? Ultimately, that is
Aletha VanderMaas 1:05:17
totally yours, and just like you said, like we are thinking of people who are going to stay in the house for a long time, so the investment there is different than we might move, or this just works for our family better, or this works for our budget, and so, and I, and I do understand all those things. It’s not that I don’t, but I think I think of the thing, like I’m like you said, anything could happen, and you could move, and whatever, but like in reality, when we talk about, I’m like, we’re staying until we’re buried, like we’re dead, we’re gone, we’re, we’re not moving. I don’t know. First,
Della Hansmann 1:05:52
first house project mistakes aside, I don’t ever want to touch any part of my house twice. Now, that of like, it’s paint siding has to be repainted every time you’re like, but, but, like, I don’t want to remodel something in my house and then come back and remodel it again. This is maybe here. Let me just be a little catty and ranty right here at the end, for anyone that’s stuck with us this long. My very first job in high school was sorting the stock room and filing receipts for a local interior design firm, it was really fun. I had no idea I wanted to be an architect. I just got the job because my neighbor, who I used to babysit, her sister-in-law, was one of the partners in the firm, and I would go in after hours and just like tidy away fabric samples and file receipts, and you know, it’s like old-fashioned filing cabinets. There were drawers that were devoted to one household’s client base, and it was like, here’s their kitchen project, two inches of receipts, and here’s their living room project, and here, and I would go back through time, and once I noticed, I started to see it more and more, there were all these houses where they had gone through and done every room in the house, and then come back around and they were redoing every room in the house.
Aletha VanderMaas 1:07:04
Oh no, this
Della Hansmann 1:07:08
is like Greater Chicago suburbs, Northside 90s, and I was just like, what is happening? What do you mean? You did your entire living room over like nine years ago, and now you’re throwing out old, all the furnitures and new custom valances, and it was like you can just imagine what it looked like. Anyway, I didn’t approve of it then. I don’t approve of it now. I was a snarky little high school student, not liking that, and I still think it’s so wasteful to just wasteful.
Aletha VanderMaas 1:07:37
Yes, yes, my mom would update her like carpet in, I don’t know, 10 to 15, maybe 20 years, seems like a long time, so maybe 15 years. There
Della Hansmann 1:07:50
are things that wear out. I mean, I’ve got a little two-seater sofa in my living room that was my mom’s that she got from a Danish import store in her youth. It’s probably had 10 different fabric upholstery covers, we upholster it because it’s failing, we reupholster it because we’re bored with the color and we want to do it again, but you know, yeah, like, yeah, taste can change, your style can change, but like the concept of, like, I’m bored with my kitchen, I think I’ll remodeling it again, like, no, I
Aletha VanderMaas 1:08:22
I, I did have my big old sofa back here. We upholstered in this renovation, and I love it. I loved it before it was a great
Della Hansmann 1:08:30
color. Yeah,
Aletha VanderMaas 1:08:32
now it’s purple, and I.. it’s just so different, and but it’s still super comfy. It wasn’t super expensive, which is wild. It’s from this company called Thrive Furniture that doesn’t exist anymore. They were like pre-joy bird, I guess. I don’t really story, but yeah. And so it’s still really comfy, and nothing’s like wonky, and I’m like, I don’t know, but again, like, I know how to get it reupholstered. I have a woman who does it. She’s really affordable. I can get fabric in West Michigan for like $0 because there’s fabric bolts coming out of everywhere, so it’s just easy for me to do. But yeah, so I’m with you. Like, reupholster, reuse. Do not just like put it on the curb and hope it doesn’t end up in the dump.
Della Hansmann 1:09:21
Yeah, so anyway, I think I’m three cheers for your bathroom project. It looks so good, and more than being what you like right now, it is remarried to the era of the house, so it’s never going to be the wrong choice for that space ever again. And it’s just, it’s so cute, it’s so cute. We’ll put pictures on the show notes page, and yeah, everyone can appreciate how adorable it is and make notes.
Aletha VanderMaas 1:09:50
Sure,
Della Hansmann 1:09:53
this has been so much fun. We’ll do it again soon, huh?
Della Hansmann 1:09:56
Okay. Anything we talked about that needs a link from this episode, you’ll find at the show notes page at mid mod dash midvest.com/ 2502 and we’ll be back next week with more practical advice on what you can do to make long term improvements to your mid-century bathrooms. If you need to catch you next week, be model modeler, you.