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.
But what if I told you that it’s not impossible to reverse the damage done in a flip? It is absolutely possible to restore lost mid-century charm. And there is now a name for the process that is quickly becoming a movement!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Meet the folks behind Un.Flipping
I 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.
I’m sure we all love to spend time scrolling through designer accounts, flipping through Atomic Ranch or taking a tour of a finished, high-budget house.
(Dana and Colin have been featured in Atomic Ranch, by the way.)
But … if you really want inspiration to get STARTED on your house, you’re always better off going to a homeowners own instagram account.
Get inspired by the people who can show you how its done
But non-pro homeowner accounts created by people working their way through a series of projects can be even more useful. Often folks share their lessons learned with realistic amounts of family labor, elbow grease, and time.
And that is exactly what makes Dana and Colin’s work so inspiring. They are real, living proof that restoration doesn’t require a designer and a limitless budget. It does require patience, research, and a willingness to learn.
Find someone who balances your remodel energy this well!
They are also an example of how you might work together with a partner.
They don’t have the exact same strengths or work style. They balance their project energy, with one partner who likes to jump in and start, and the other who likes to do the deep planning and research.
For Dana and Colin, their “unflip” means hunting down once-lost paneling products to install fresh.
And it means taking on projects that most people assume are permanent (PAINTED BRICK).
It has also helped them become seasoned, expert vintage furniture hunters to fill their rooms, replacing their initial quick Wayfair purchases. Their IKEA kitchen (a practical, budget-conscious choice) looks completely custom thanks to their careful, thoughtful design choices.
The lesson here is simple: a flip is not the end of the line for a mid-century home. It can be a starting point for your very own restoration. If you want, it can be your chance to source your first piece of vintage furniture from a Facebook marketplace or to learn how to strip paint from brick or even to plan your own kitchen re-remodel.
In Today’s Episode You’ll Hear:
- How to see past a flip to what might be your dream home.
- Why taking your time unflipping makes sense.
- Where you can add charm back on a budget before tackling bigger projects.
Listen Now On
Resources
- See the Dana and Colin’s entire process and follow their progress on Instagram.
- Read all about this project and the trend of unflipping in the Washington Post.
- 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 is possible to unflip your mid-century house. Don’t take my word for it. Today, I’m chatting with Dana and Colin of Instagram’s un flipping, who have been doing this themselves and sharing their journey in a way that is helping so many. Here’s Dana,
Unflipping 00:13
The amount of comments we get of people being like, Oh my God. I didn’t even know this was an option. Like, I feel like I’m going to have to buy a flipped house eventually, like at this point in the world, and now to know that I can just not have to live with that is amazing.
Della Hansmann 00:27
Today we’re talking about how they did it and how you can do it too. Hey there. Welcome back to mid mob 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 2211.
Della Hansmann 00:43
I’m so excited to share this conversation with you. I love getting to meet my mid-century Instagram friends, if not in real life, then at least through the chattier medium of a zoom call, seeing their faces, hearing their backstory. It does so much to enrich the experience of following along with their delightful Instagram account. But speaking of seeing however you are going to want to see what we are talking about today.
Della Hansmann 01:06
So check out this Instagram account, un period flipping. That’s unflipping with a period in the middle of the words. They’ve been featured in atomic ranch. I’ll link to that article in the show notes, and I was recently tickled to see them pop up in my daily news trawl in a Washington Post article. I’ll link to that too.
Della Hansmann 01:22
They have reels, carousels, how to videos before and after in a very beautifully photographed, beautifully finished, but not unattainably Magazine, perfect way on their Instagram account, that is really the place I want to point you. And this is I’ve talked about this before, but I think that finding and following other homeowner mid-century Instagram accounts is one of the most useful things you can do if you yourself are on a journey towards making thoughtful changes to your mid-century home.
Della Hansmann 01:51
It is always fun to go on a beautiful house tour like it did a couple of weeks ago. It’s gorgeous to get atomic ranch magazine and flip through the pages and sort of see a finished polished product. It’s fun to buy books on architecture and see both historical examples and what people have done with beautiful houses refinished on very large budgets today.
Della Hansmann 02:14
But one of the most useful things you can do is follow along the journey of other people who are mostly using family labor, Dad projects, elbow grease, spending time to work their way through something that is actually achievable for you, and who are willing to share, although, of course, their account is mostly the beautiful pictures of how it’s all going well, a bit of the warts and all lessons that they’ve taken on a bit of their process and to see over the course of how long they’ve been posting that this is not an overnight sensation.
Della Hansmann 02:46
So the biggest takeaway that I hope you’ll find in this hour long love fest for mid-century houses, and specifically my appreciation for everything that Colin and Dana have been doing with their home, is that it is absolutely possible for you to do this in your home, what they are doing in theirs. Dana and Colin have been documenting their five year journey. Still in progress.
Della Hansmann 03:07
They’re not completely done. They’ve got projects that we will talk about in this episode, and rooms they don’t show in their Instagram account. But five years since buying their first home, a pretty thoroughly flipped mid-century house, and at first, filling it up quickly with Wayfair products, furniture and pieces just to put things into empty rooms, but eventually, over time, growing themselves into being seasoned, expert vintage hunters and self-educated experts in mid-century homes.
Della Hansmann 03:34
And specifically in putting back once lost charm. They have hunted down the original type of paneling to reinstall into their house. They’ve struggled to match stain and grain and replacing, or I should say, re replacing, their doors and trim, which were originally mid-century, and then when they bought all white fake five, six panel doors and they rebuilt an entire kitchen from Ikea. It’s just IKEA no extra custom doors and drawers. And it looks divine.
Della Hansmann 04:05
They have made thoughtful, careful choices, and they’ve also learned along the way how sometimes a bit more planning can help you go faster, and sometimes you just have to jump in and start somewhere. One of my takeaways from this was that they have a really nicely balanced energy between them, of someone who likes to jump in and get a project started, and someone who wants to do that deep research and really plan it all out and find out everything they can. Pairing those two things together is kind of a recipe for success.
Della Hansmann 04:33
Most recently, they have been unpainting their painted brick, and this is actually something that I just want to trumpet to the entire Internet. I want everyone to see what they’re doing and get inspired by it. I’m so happy to see examples like Colin and data springing up across the internet, finding resources themselves, tracking down other friends and answering the questions of everybody that reaches out to them online. By the way, this is another reason to take your advice from mid-century homeowner. Instagram accounts, as well as from me. You know, I’m happy to answer questions too, but they spend a lot of time answering comments and questions that they get on their posts in their DMS.
Della Hansmann 05:09
They are inveterate sharers of the knowledge that they have gained. And I think that this is a pretty universal truth of other people who are taking the time and trouble to document their mid-century restoration or unflipping or preservation journeys on Instagram, when you find someone who’s willing to share that much of their house and what they’ve done to it, that person is excited. They are a fellow mid-century nerds. They are excited to share what they have learned with you.
Della Hansmann 05:33
Before we get into this, I should just say Monday was the first office hours call of our newly kicked off mid mod, remod squad. If you’ve been following on the last couple of weeks, when I’ve been talking about ready to remodel, which is my homeowner program, to show you the step by step process to plan an update, perhaps an unflip, for a mid-century home. It’s not too late for you to join us.
Della Hansmann 05:50
You can watch the recording of Monday’s call and still get the benefit of the other calls we’re going to be doing. I only mention this because sometimes it’s really fun to find your way through the woods on your own, and sometimes you want a little hand holding, a little more community, a little bit of a framework. And so that is there for you. You can find out more about that on my website. Pop over to mid mod dash, midwest.com/ready, anytime you want to learn more about the Master Plan method for planning a mid-century remodel for a mid-century home.
Della Hansmann 06:19
Or go straight to the show notes page for this whole episode, which will give you the transcript, but also links to their Instagram, a couple of my favorite photos of their projects and work to date, their atomic ranch article and their Washington Post article that’ll be at mid mod, dash, midwest.com/ 2211 one way or another. If you love your mid-century home, you are so far from alone, and that is a really fun aspect of what we’re going to talk about today. So let’s get into this concept un flipping.
Della Hansmann 06:49
A flipped house is not a final answer. It is not the end of the line for a mid-century house. And today, I want you to see how possible it is to unflip a mid-century home that you can love yourself.
Della Hansmann 07:02
I am so excited to be here with Dana and Colin of unflipping. And I think I can just describe you as of unflipping, because you have kind of, if you didn’t make up this term, and I’m going to ask about that in a moment, you have made this term so popular, it seems so right, that I am starting to hear from clients, from students, from people who reach out to me about mid-century ideas that you are one of their primary sources for inspiration. So I have to say thank you for that. Thank you for all the good work you’re doing on your house, and thank you for being here today. It’s so exciting to talk to you.
Unflipping 07:34
Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, no, I’m really excited. And I mean, that’s also exciting to hear that, you know, so many people are just kind of, you know, sending our house to you and just kind of, you know, using as reference, which, you know, from the beginning, we wouldn’t have thought that would have been a thing, no.
Unflipping 07:49
So we were just posting into the void. So if anyone could take inspiration from it great.
Della Hansmann 07:54
It has grown organically, I think, because it is great. And I wanted to ask you about the word you named your Instagram account, unflipping. Did you see that somewhere else, or did it just come did it just come to you as, like, a right thing when you began? Yeah, we kind
Unflipping 08:06
of just like, I would say, made it up, but we’re just like, well, this seems a little bit more appropriate for what we’re trying to do. And we try to go out and look to see, you know, where else it was being used, just to make sure, you know, we’re not just like, you know, copying somebody, or like, you know, kind of taking an avenue that might not be fruitful. And so, like when we did, it didn’t really find much out there. And so we put on flipping on to our Instagram account, and from there, it’s kind of history, almost.
Della Hansmann 08:31
It does feel like one of those things that is now. So to me, it feels so obvious and right, I’m surprised it wasn’t around before. But also that’s how these things kind of emerge, is that we put a name on something. It just describes what it is. And there are so many houses out there that are indeed of unflipping, because we were talking a little bit before the recording, it’s not your house is mid-century, and it’s great. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But the concept of unflipping applies to a lot of different houses. Do you get people reaching out to you mostly about mid-century houses, or about all kinds,
Unflipping 09:01
mostly mid-century just for, you know, like advice and stuff like that, where we source materials, you know, furniture, all that sort of thing. But we definitely have a lot of people with all different kinds of houses just relating to us. You know, I’m not necessarily a mid-century fan, but what you guys are doing is so relatable and inspiring,
Della Hansmann 09:21
and you’ve gotten some pretty good meaning attention, which I think has helped boost the signal and get your good advice and good example out to more people. You’ve been in the Washington Post, atomic Ranch, other places, and I think every time you get published, it gives more people the inspiration that they don’t have to just give up on their house because it’s been flipped. They can start to take action. I’m curious, though, about the story of this house and what drew you to it the first place. What were you looking for, and when did you go looking for it? Yes.
Unflipping 09:49
So no, it was started about like, what, five, five and a half years ago. So we bought, like, right before covid, and then we closed in February 2020, so, I mean, that’s. When everything was starting to ramp up. But, I mean, it was before, you know, covid kind of took over and, you know, ruined the housing.
Della Hansmann 10:06
We didn’t quite know how it was all going to go at that point. Yeah, so we really lucked
Unflipping 10:10
out in that aspect. And yeah, we always wanted a mid-century house. And obviously, if we could get original features, that would have been great. But, you know, looking out there, there wasn’t anything with original features and completely, you know, grandma’s house that we could just move into. And so, I mean, we looked at new construction townhouses, just houses that had other flips. But, I mean, we just kept coming back to the mid-century houses, and specifically this one, there’s a couple on the market. Since it’s a builder, I would say builder grade. It was a model, a model. And so we visited one before, and it wasn’t as good as this one. But, I mean, yeah, it was just we kind of walked in, and it’s almost like we knew, as cliche as that sounds.
Unflipping 10:52
Well, yeah, we saw that house and it definitely had its old house problems. It wasn’t as well maintained. And we said, if we could find this house just a little bit more updated, because we were first time buyers. We admittedly didn’t want any sort of crazy projects, right off the bat, right? And then literally went from that house to this house and walked in, we’re like, oh, this is exactly what we want. This is perfect, and not necessarily. Oh, sorry,
Della Hansmann 11:17
Oh, no. Were they twin houses? Was it the same sort of style and model. But that one, it just had a different history. Yeah, exactly.
Unflipping 11:24
So it was pretty much exactly the same layout and everything the roof line was little different that could change during the time. Is like the roof line, but, I mean, like, they took out the middle brick wall that divided, like the kitchen living space, and, oh, downstairs was completely gutted. It was just one big gray wall, and they had the crawl space dug out, which was nice for space. That’s something we very underestimated at the time of how much space we need in terms of storage. But I mean, otherwise, yeah, there was a lot of original features that were just ripped out. And I think the only one that one really had was the wooden ceilings, which our still has too. I think the beams
Unflipping 11:55
were painted in that house, so they had white beams, and then the wood ceiling, it was fine. But yeah, nicer to have,
Della Hansmann 12:03
yeah. So, okay, so you knew you were looking for mid-century. What? What were the qualities of that that were drawing you in before? Did you had you basically become familiar with mid-century before you looked for the house? Or were you noticing houses and thinking, Oh, this is a mid-century. This is a mid-century. These are
Unflipping 12:20
the things that I like, yeah. So we were very novice at the time. Like, everyone is in their first home, yeah? So like, Miss central mountain. We knew about it. We knew the general style. We don’t know how much goes into it, as we do now, but we there were some aspects of, you know, just like a wooden ceiling, or just like brick around the house, like there’s, like, little stuff like that that you learn as to why it’s in there. But at the time, we didn’t know why it was in there. But it feels right, right, exactly. So it made it feel right. And so when we walked in, you know, like the brick fireplace was still down there. The brick room divider was still here, the brick planner box with the skylight, all that was still here. It was painted white, which is unfortunate we’re still working on. But, I mean, it’s just like, Okay, there’s like, those rules and features that, yeah, feel right. And so, I mean, going along with that, and then everything else in the house, we could see the possibilities that were here, even though we didn’t know at the time how to make it possible.
Della Hansmann 13:13
And you really did find a house that has some great original features in its structural DNA. I mean, yeah, kitchen ripped out, bathrooms ripped out, but having the elevated ceiling, having the wood still there, having the skylight and all of that brick that’s in there, I can see how that would draw you right in from the very first
Unflipping 13:31
forever thankful they didn’t paint these forever thing.
Della Hansmann 13:36
Yeah, that would be a lot of work to get into. I wanted to actually, let’s, let’s transition to some of the things you’ve done on the house. And I wanted to begin by asking when you started, if you can remember back that far, what did you feel like was your first agenda item? What did you want to tackle first? And then what actually did you tackle first?
Unflipping 13:54
Yeah, what the kitchen. I don’t know why it was the first thing. I think it’s just like one of the more easier things that, yeah, it’s big. It’s such an impact there. Like, like, I can change the kitchen. But I think the first big thing that we did was paint the outside, yeah, yeah, it, which is you would have done it differently. It’s a little bit more modern than we like that we did it. But, like, the way the flippers painted the house was, like, this crazy blue with white. And it just like, you could tell it was completely off because it was high
Unflipping 14:24
blue, yeah. It was just Yeah, not a good mid-century blue. And then all the trim was just the stark white contrast. It like the brick painted blue was just Yeah.
Unflipping 14:35
It’s like we had like, this knee jerk reaction of going to the completely other side of that was just, you know, make it modern, yeah. So like, which is fine, which is fine. We like it that, like how it looks and what we’ve done, we just feel like we would have done something different. And so, like, that’s kind of on the plans eventually. But like, that was probably our first big thing was kind of give it that facelift into, like, a little bit more mid-century, but leaning a little bit more into, like, the contemporary, modern space, right? It there.
Della Hansmann 15:01
That’s such a resonant story for me, personally, and for so many people I work with, because I think the lot, a lot of times, the first project you take on is one, when you look back, you’re like, and I if I knew what I know now, yeah, would I do it that way? But in your case, you were very much responding to existing conditions. It wasn’t like you went in and painted brick that hadn’t been painted. You were trying to get the cottage off of the house, and you just kind of over corrected to modern a bit more than you would today. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I’ve heard you talk about this on your Instagram or share about it. Maybe I’ve seen you write about this on your Instagram that this is something you would, you would do differently now, but I think I don’t want, I don’t want, I don’t want to tell people well, I mean, this is part of the reason that I advise stopping to plan before you do anything. But I also think that there is a human instinct to jump in and do something, and then you learn from that experience and make a plan. It’s almost inevitable that whatever you do first is something that you’re like. And when we’re done with everything, we’ll come back and we’ll hit that time. I feel the same way about my house. I left white trim on my house, and it’s extremely cottagey, and I have watched neighbor after neighbor copy the color scheme of my house, and every time I do, I’m like, oh my god, I have to fix that now, because I’m just a bad example to the neighborhood. I’ve said again this fall that maybe it’s on my to do list, but it’s coming on October, so probably not, but, but, yeah, that first project you do, you’re like, finally, I had known then. So after you did that, did you roll straight into the next thing, or did you regroup and make a plan? What was your sort of next approach?
Unflipping 16:31
It was a long time after we spent a lot of time furnishing and decorating.
Della Hansmann 16:36
Yes, okay, well, let’s talk about that, because you guys are what Facebook marketplace is your jam, right?
Unflipping 16:43
Our biggest finds, yeah, yeah. But we’re, we’re everywhere. We’re menaces in every antique store in town, thrift stores,
Unflipping 16:51
online auctions, lot of Prop
Unflipping 16:55
house sales in Atlanta because of the film scene. So we do a lot of that. Oh, fun, yeah. You get a lot of cool stuff that way.
Unflipping 17:01
Yeah. And then, I mean, yeah, just Facebook marketplace. I mean, not just around the Atlanta area. We, we try to tell people a lot too, like, Facebook marketplace, like, oh, well, I don’t have a big enough just, like, sample size of population there, so, like, we can understand that’s not difficult, but Atlanta, yeah, it’s huge. Because people get it from Prop houses, estate sales. It’s just, like, such a big population. We’ve had great success. But we’ve also had good success on Facebook marketplace back home in the NEPA Scranton area, because I was such like,
Unflipping 17:30
people don’t know what good vintage they have. Yeah, they’re just like, oh, this is my mom’s outdated couch. I don’t want it anymore.
Unflipping 17:37
Yeah, there’s, like, perfect like, middle class families there, coal towns, growing city to where it’s just like they went to Sears, like, in the 50s and 60s. So they have all this stuff from like Sears or other catalogs that, like, now it’s like we’re all trying to go and hunt in, like source, and right? And they still have a bunch there. So like, we have a lot of good luck when we go back home and try to find that sort of stuff.
Della Hansmann 18:02
Yeah. Oh, that is, I mean, it’s really fun. I tend more towards objects rather than whole pieces of furniture. But, yeah, I’m a sucker for little brass tchotchkes and sometimes big brass tchotchkes to put on the walls. And Facebook marketplace is the place where you see them, not priced at 1000s of dollars because a dealer knows what they’ve got on first dibs. But just like, somebody didn’t like this thing that somebody in their family once had, and I don’t, I mean, I don’t know, I always feel like it’s just transferring it for someone who doesn’t appreciate it to someone who does. It’s not incorrect. It’s just they don’t value it, and we do. So I think that’s kind of the fun of I’m hunting it down in a point to point way, rather than going to a store where someone has, like, tracked down its provenance and knows exactly what it’s really worth. Yeah. So you Okay, so you did a big exterior cleanup, and then you were like, All right, we’re in the house. Let’s start filling it with furniture. Did? I mean, you probably came from a smaller place, so you needed to, actually, yeah, fill it up furniture. It was,
Unflipping 19:06
we had like one vintage light but, I mean, yeah,
Unflipping 19:08
we had no vintage
Unflipping 19:11
but, I mean, yeah. So it was all just like, before moving in, we went into like a West Elm outlet that was around, like the Philly area. Because, I mean, I have school in Philly, so it was easy to get to. And so like, when we’re planning on graduating, moving in, we’re like, oh, let’s go to this outlet. We’re getting stuff like crazy, good deals. That was like, you know, nice looking. And then, like, moving into the house, yeah, you bring that in, you’re like, Oh, my God, we have four bedrooms, no furniture anywhere else. And so it was a big pain point, because it’s just you want to find pieces, but you also need to furnish quickly. Because, you know, family, friends were coming in, we don’t have a second bed. You buy a quick bed from Wayfair, and it’s just like, yeah, that looks fine enough. $200 put it in there, and then that kind of just starts snowballing into, like, we need the couch. Downstairs. Okay, here’s like, another Wayfarer, or just like Facebook find, which is a really cheap couch. And so, like that kept happening because we needed furniture to accommodate everybody, and so it was just a lot of bringing furniture that didn’t match the house either, even though it was mid-century inspired, like, mid-century, yeah. So it was just like, it was tough, because we were trying to find vintage at the time. But even the price point for vintage, I mean, was tough, even if you did find it somewhere else, it was just like, you know, out of college, you’re trying to save up money, you bought a house, like, dealing with all that sort of stuff. It was just kind of like years and years until we got to the point to where we’re at. So it was a lot of just like buying, selling, replacing and so, I mean, yeah, we’re still pretty much about done, but, like, there’s still a lot of pieces that we could probably get to, you know, make it all fully complete
Unflipping 20:50
well. And I think as we brought more vintage in too, that’s when all of our new stuff started to clash even more. We were like, Oh no. Now this couch really looks out of place in here. Like, we got to get a vintage couch. So it definitely had a snowball
Della Hansmann 21:04
effect. Yeah, exactly, it snowballs. What was, do you remember, sort of like the first vintage find you happened on to and what that felt like,
Unflipping 21:14
I think the first actual I mean, not that we purchased, but my dad owns a factory building in Pennsylvania that was a light bulb factory in the 60s, and basically, they just, like, left it. They just abandoned it in the 90s, gave it to the guy’s nephew, and the nephew just kept everything in it, and then gave it to my dad when he bought the building. So we had this treasure trove of just random stuff from this light bulb factory. So we that, I think that’s kind of what started the excitement for finding the vintage we found this little telephone stand that we didn’t even know what it was. We were just like; this is really cool. We’re gonna put it in our apartment, and then it just kind of, yeah,
Unflipping 21:59
they had, like, some chairs and stuff like that. Oh yeah, we did a couple chairs seem like designer, but, you know, it was like, 50s chairs that were put and so it’s just like, yeah. That definitely was yeah, one of the shiny moments. I feel like, okay, yeah. Like, vintage stuff is really cool. How do we go about getting more of it? Because, like, yeah, the excitement of hunting for it was just like, I don’t know, it really gets you going.
Della Hansmann 22:21
Any cells have a thrill factor, yeah? Well, that’s so much fun. And I think that you’re right. Once you start placing vintage pieces next to modern reproductions, you’re like, oh, I can see the difference here. And I know what I like better. And then it becomes this whole self-fulfilling prophecy. But you really have filled your house up with gorgeous objects, and I think it speaks too much this also, by the way, for anyone who’s listening, who’s like, I don’t have time to even take on a home improvement project right now, finding vintage furniture is a great way to begin to offset a flip, because even if everything in your house has been painted sort of ghost white, when you bring in original furniture, you’re getting the wood grain, You’re getting the patina of age. You’re just getting a bit more of the feeling of the original era of the house. So, okay, so you’re in the house, you’ve been there for a while, you’ve started to fill it up with vintage furniture. Then what was the, what was your first real unflipping task? Oh, yeah. Okay, so you
Unflipping 23:18
don’t, yeah, it was the kitchen. I like the first base thing, yeah, all the furniture is in and kind of like, what you said, all the wood tones are like, warming everything up. And that’s actually a good point. Our house was, people ask for our paint color all the time, and it’s like a grayish white, which, you know, you moved in, and it’s very cold, but all of the wood tones that we added makes it so much warmer now. And so I was like, what’s the paint color? What’s the paint color? And we’re like, we don’t know. Yeah, we haven’t touched it. Don’t know if you want it. We’ll give you, like, the color simple that we have, but like, it looks a lot warm because all the wood tones, right? So, I mean, keep that in mind. Color Theory is crazy and it’s annoying, but, I mean, we all have to deal with it, but always keep that in mind. But, yeah, no, the kitchen was the first big thing. And, I mean, we tried, we got, you know, a consultation for a custom kitchen, putting back in, like, some type of walnut kitchen in here. And then that was like, oh my god, $40,000 plus. And you’re thinking, okay, maybe we can’t do this, yeah? So we’re like, okay, IKEA kitchen with custom fronts. Okay? We go out to some other companies, like, semi handmade, or I forget what other companies? There’s a few, and then it’s just like, Okay, this still adds up to being like, 30,000 Yeah, it’s not cheap, no. So we’re like, what is going on here? So we actually got put on the back burner for a little while, and then all sudden, like doing this talking that we do online all the time, trying to find, like alternatives. IKEA released the test Torp line, which is, they’re just flat wood looking fronts. And we’re like, oh, let’s go get a sample. And we got it, and it was identical to, like, the semi handmade fronts.
Della Hansmann 25:00
I can’t do what they were doing and got in front
Unflipping 25:02
of it. Yeah, probably, yeah. I mean, yeah, because we could not beat the price difference. Like, I mean,
Unflipping 25:07
by the time we, like, actually planned out the kitchen with a twist Torp on it and everything like that. I mean, it was, like, a $13,000 kitchen. And then you add in, like, the apply, we went a little bit hardcore for the appliances, because we’re, like, we’re saving so much money, yeah? Like, let’s add that stuff in there.
Della Hansmann 25:25
Well, it’s worth investing in something that’s not going to break in five years.
Unflipping 25:29
Well, that, yeah, but I mean, we wanted to, like, vintage appliances too, but I mean, I was hard to, you know, source and find. So, I mean, we got some other stuff because we also wanted a panel ready to hide the dishwasher in the fridge to make it a little bit more seamless, and like, have all the attention towards the cabinets. But yeah, that was the first big project. I don’t want to say they got lucky again, but, I mean, yeah, the price point was nuts for the IKEA in achieving what we want to achieve. So did
Della Hansmann 25:57
you do the whole thing? You got the flat pack boxes, assembled them, installed them whole nine yards, or did you have help with that process?
Unflipping 26:03
So, yeah, yeah, we had someone help us actually install them, because we had the whole house problems of wavy walls, bent wood behind, like the drywall, and so it was stuff to where it’s
Della Hansmann 26:14
just like, it’s not a beginner project. No, no,
Unflipping 26:17
because we’re thinking like, yeah, you put on the rail, completely flat wall, hang all the cabinets up when you’re fine. But, I mean, yeah, we had to have someone help install, but, I mean, we did put everything together ourselves. Yeah, countless nights of just putting everything together, the drawers, getting all the actual cabinets made into cabinets, ready for them to just, kind of like, hang up. So, like we did have people just, you know, help us figure out while we have wavy walls and how to correct them,
Della Hansmann 26:44
and that’s great. I think I’m a huge believer in people think of remodeling meaning that you have to call a general contractor, and you have to tear everything out, and you have to do everything new, but there is a lot of ground between that and just making improvements in your house. And sometimes that means buying and replacing things, and sometimes it means DIY projects, and sometimes it means you’re making means you’re managing subs, or you’re having somebody come in and assist you with some of it, and you’re providing elbow grease and manual labor at night. So I think that there’s basically the end result is the important bit, and you can control price a lot when you’re involved in some of the project, and you’re not sort of just, I mean, it’s not that hiring a general contract isn’t worth it, but there’s a cost to there’s a cost associated to making it somebody else’s problem entirely. Yeah. So yeah, your kitchen is, it turned out so gorgeously. And you know, obviously you had good bones, you’ve got the sloppy ceiling, you’ve got the skylight, but you’ve made some really lovely choices for it. It’s one of the first things that caught my eye. I think of your that’s probably how your whole account came across. My feed was your kitchen, which turned out so beautifully. And then from there, what did you go on and try next?
Unflipping 27:53
What’s Next was it the paneling in the basement, which is kind of what took our account off, is the
Unflipping 28:01
paneling broke the internet, yeah.
Unflipping 28:04
I mean, I feel like the paneling that’s down there is very, you know, 60s, 70s, what you think of as paneling, what’s down there, it’s what was originally down there and they took out. Obviously, there’s a bunch of different kinds, tongue and groove, flat panels that might be a little higher end, but we want to go the route of, yeah, that basement feel, and that was originally in the house. We’re like, well, if we can at least honor that, that’d be great. And sourcing paneling like that is extremely hard, yeah, basically it doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist, except for, like, this one place mantle craft that we got it from, but we got that put in and like, yeah, it was the recipe for, like, people absolutely hating it. And also a lot of people being like, Oh my God, yes, this is amazing. And then also, yes, this is amazing. On flipping and like, finally connecting the dots with everything to where they’re like, oh my god, yeah. And then that’s kind of where our account just started really growing with that
Della Hansmann 28:56
too well. And you’re gonna find exactly that divergence of some people who are like, Why would you do that? And all the people who are selling you their mom’s vintage stuff, because they just don’t even really see it on the cheap, are not going to love what you’ve done in your basement. For people who have spent some time thinking about mid-century and understanding what makes it great, that paneling. I mean, I actually describe it as there’s real wood walls and fake wood walls, and it’s not fake. I mean, it’s wood, it is, yeah, absolutely wood, but it’s what people think of as fake wood walls, and it can still be so gorgeous. It gives you that warm and closing, wrapped up in coziness feeling that was the vibe in the 60s. Is that den feel? Yeah? So you had to do some dancing to track down that specific product.
Unflipping 29:38
Yeah? I mean, it was just trying to search Google every single day.
Unflipping 29:42
Well, yeah, we were going, my dad’s factory actually has a bunch of it that we were going to use. We couldn’t get the sizing to work. And that one, yeah, that was, I think, Masonite paneling. So my dad was, like, it honestly will probably just disintegrate when we take it off the walls. Like, yeah, it’s probably not going to work. So then, yeah, we were kind of looking. At like, Okay, do we do flat panel? Do we do just go for a more, like modern, sophisticated look down there, and then, I don’t know, one last like, Hail Mary. Google search of wall paneling, and it came right up. And we’re like, where has this been this entire time?
Della Hansmann 30:15
That’s fantastic. So Google has been your major I was going to ask, maybe this leads us into your sources of inspiration. Where were you looking for examples of people doing something like this? Was there anyone? What books were you reading? Magazines, websites, sort of what? What were your inspiration points?
Unflipping 30:34
I mean, yeah, we’re, of course, subscribe to atomic Ranch, big books, but a lot of it is just looking at like Time Capsule house listings. You know, there’s a bunch of Instagram pages that share just like, you know, houses that are untouched on the market. We love looking at those, getting ideas of what has actually been in these houses. And then again, since our house was a model Build, it helped a lot with our fact finding missions for this house specifically, because there are a lot that are either untouched, oh, okay, yeah, things like that. So we can see, you know, what other houses exactly like this had what people have done to them that we liked and didn’t like. So yeah, it’s honestly just, yeah, a lot of stocking real estate listings,
Della Hansmann 31:16
primary sources. Yeah, I think it’s interesting. When I started looking into it, I was looking at original ad literature, maybe even more than houses. But yeah, that, what were they doing then feels more useful than any so anyone who’s sort of packaging for modern consumption, what should you do in a mid-century house? And there’s still not enough advice out there, I think, for people who love mid-century,
Unflipping 31:38
no, I completely agree, and it’s always hard, and it’s always hard. And that’s why, like, I feel like a lot of people with Miss entry Instagram accounts is just like, especially ours, is kind of, you know, taking off is because people are always asking, like, that same stuff, and we try to, like, really do our best to respond to every single comment and like every single direct message. We try to, like, do that because, like, we were in the same position of, like, where do I start? How do I do it? Like, where are you guys finding all this stuff? And sometimes I feel like it’s tough, because it’s just like, you know, being chronically online and being through all this, it kind of just absorbs into your brain, yeah, it’s where you’re just like, I already know all of it. So, like, I don’t know where it’s coming from, except for just our minds. But it’s just like, yeah, it’s just old ads, like, Better Homes and garden they have, like, every single old catalog that you’re able to go to throughout the eras. And, like, right? And that’s what they did back then, too. So it’s just, like, just look through those and like, anything old, ad wise archive, the archive website you can go on look at old just like, you know, craft associates, pamphlets, you know, yeah, any other type of stuff like that is like, what you can do. And, I mean, our biggest thing is, we’re always, like, really huge into you Sony and design, which I feel like is also cliches. But like, we feel like the pinnacle of mid-century is in there of just like, the natural materials, wood, brick, stone, yeah, lots of light. How do you bring like, all that together, which you know, comes with not just materials, but colors as well. It’s once you’re into it again. You kind of like, know it, and know how to regurgitate it very well at some point. And so, yeah, yeah,
Della Hansmann 33:08
you’ve given yourself an education in mid-century history and design. That’s I want to just circle back on what you were saying that you respond to comments. Thank you for that, by the way. And this is for everyone that’s listening. I give this advice all the time that while atomic ranch magazine is fantastic, and I just ran into Ricky Torres as a house tour last two weekends ago, she’s amazing, everything they produce is great, but I think it can be a little unreachable when we see this sort of magazine production. And you probably felt the same way when your house was published. We’re talking just about the best things, the best camera angles, the best lighting, and sometimes those houses come with built in features that are not replicable for everyone. So it can be very disheartening. Plus, it’s a printed article, it’s done, and you can’t really reach out to the person in question. But with social media, when you’re watching someone who is actually doing the work on their own house, you’re a perfect example. You’re an enthusiast. You’ve learned so much, you’re excited about it. You want more people to make great choices. Make great choices. So when someone’s going to DM you and say, how, how did you do that? You’ll tell them, and you’ll also make videos. I’m going to segue into the brick in a minute, because I get so many questions from people about painted brick, and it’s not something I’ve personally tackled, but I can recommend some products and some sources, and generally, what I do is point people towards other social media accounts of people who have depainted their brick. Now inside of my homeowner program ready to remodel, I’ve got a bunch of students who have already tackled their brick, and they can give advice to the other students, but the sort of like how to video the process reels you put up just recently about depainting The brick under your planter or around your planter box in your kitchen, I think are the source material now for anyone else who’s going to do that, and so it’s so kind of you to share that. And it’s just such a it’s such an emblematic nature of the warmth of the mid-century community that people are really cross pollinating their good ideas. So thank you for that.
Unflipping 35:00
Yeah, I feel like we’re not, we’re not in this to be influencers or push products or any of that sort of thing. People are always asking us for links, and we’re like, it’s vintage. But yeah, I mean, we were again, just posting into the void, and people liked it. So now, yeah, if we can help people, I mean, that’s literally the least we can do, because we’re just here to kind of share what we’re doing and have a good time. And yeah, I mean, if we can help, great.
Della Hansmann 35:33
Oh, that’s fantastic. All right, so I was gonna ask you, so you put up new paneling in the basement. Have you depainted Any wood actually, yet. Yeah?
Unflipping 35:43
So there was, as you walk downstairs, there’s like, a whole room divider that goes down there that was common in all these houses. So you’re walking down the steps, and it’s just, like, completely open with just one slat wall
Della Hansmann 35:54
that’s right from
Unflipping 35:56
your feed. Yeah, yeah, I didn’t document it very well, yeah.
Unflipping 36:01
That was before we but that was, like the first big one. We, like, stripped all of it, and there was a big burn spot from, like a candle or something that was on to there, so we had to deal with that. But otherwise, yeah, it was easy as just stripping all the paint off, sanding it, getting ready to put on some new stain. And then, I mean, we also did, I think just this doorway, this doorway into the kitchen, was used to hold, like an old swinging door, but they kept the frame, took away the swinging door, and so that was all white. And so, like, we stripped that too, and just like, stained that. And so I mean some here and there, but I mean wood and brick.
Unflipping 36:33
I honestly prefer doing the brick to the woods. Really controversial, but yeah, something about sanding wood and then having to refinish it and all this stuff, the brick is like, yeah, it’s hard in the moment, but then it’s done and it looks good. But yeah, I mean, sanding that thing on the staircase upside down was a nightmare. Was a nightmare. There’s probably still paint under it that we don’t even see because it was so hard.
Della Hansmann 36:59
You get to decide what’s good enough on your house, and you’re like, yeah, it’s mostly not painted in that I think, Well, I think it’s interesting too. Everyone I’ve ever talked to who’s done work in their house has learned along the way that there are some projects, they’re like, Yeah, I do that for myself. I do that for a friend. I’ll do that next week. And there are other projects, they’re like, I did that once. We’re not doing that again. So maybe deep painting the wood is kind of one of those for you. Yeah. I mean, or you’d have to have a good
Unflipping 37:24
reason, I think we would just continue trying, because we only tried one chemical stripper and it didn’t work. Amazing. So I think now that we’ve got our arsenal of, like, ones we’ve tried and liked better, I think it would be worth a shot again.
Unflipping 37:38
Yeah, it’s also kind of, we’ll do it as we go. Like, our next big project that we’re still doing or planning for is the bathroom. And so there’s a window in there has all like, you know, the clamshell pine that was another they painted white. And so, I mean, that has to get changed because we’re doing flat panels in there. And so, like, we have leftover sapella trim that we’re gonna put in there. So it’s either sand it and then try to match the stain to the flat panels, or do we replace it with, like, the Sapele again? But, I mean, there’s still wood in there that, like, we’re not gonna be able to, like, actually change that, you know, actually
Unflipping 38:14
frames out, yeah. So we’re gonna have to, we’re gonna have to,
Unflipping 38:18
but we figured we do it, like, as we go through each project and like, Okay, now it’s time for this window. Now it’s time for this one.
Unflipping 38:23
Yeah, the windows have been, I mean, the windows, we still have white trim on the windows because the windows are white, so it would be a whole thing of, you know, painting the windows or replacing them, but right that they’re brand new. So yeah, we just kind of left the white trim on the windows for now, and we’ll, we’ll
Unflipping 38:41
do it as we’ll get done eventually.
Della Hansmann 38:44
It’s, it all goes on the list well, and it’s so this is an interesting point, because you did, I also noticed that you had faux six panel doors in the house that you then replaced again to get the wood grain, to get the wood trim. It’s a, it’s a, I think, a necessary choice, Frank to my eye, a fake six panel door in a mid-century house is like, you never stop seeing it. I never stop seeing it. It drives me nuts. How long did it take you to tackle those? By the way,
Unflipping 39:12
that was probably our hardest
Della Hansmann 39:14
project. Did you hang them yourselves? No,
39:17
well, some of them did, yeah.
Unflipping 39:19
So we had when we did our kitchen flooring, the guy’s like, you know, I could do all those doors. And so we’re like, okay, he didn’t do a great job. He was a
Unflipping 39:28
recommendation from a neighbor. Surely he will, you know, he’s good, if our neighbor likes him, but
Unflipping 39:35
either way, the risk, yeah, we took the risk. It didn’t work out. So he did some of them. And then we’re just like, hold on. And then we got her dad down here, because, I mean, he helps out with a bunch. And so, like, we didn’t really exactly know how to do it ourselves, like we had the general concept, yeah, rip everything out, try to get it framed in there. But we knew he would do it right. And so like, he came down, he’ll put up the rest of them, which was, I probably, like, four or six, something like that, some number. Sure, but like, yeah, he helped us put them in. And so, like, we’ve learned how to do it from doing that. But I mean, yeah, that was not a good project.
Unflipping 40:09
Well, yeah, the trim, we assumed this guy doing the doors would give us recommendations for matching trim, and he just got, like, construction pine, and it looked so bad. Now, the stained Luan, that’s like, this beautiful red and so Colin, I mean, he spent weeks like, just doing so much research on wood and contacting millwork companies, and probably lost 10 years off.
Unflipping 40:35
I don’t think I’ve ever felt so stressed. And I don’t know what it was about it, I was just like, This can’t be happening. It was just, like, some prolonged panic attack that I was happening, but eventually got to the end of it, and so, like, yeah, we sound found so Pele that like matches we want perfectly.
Unflipping 40:50
I know you know everything about me.
Unflipping 40:54
It’s crazy. But I mean, like, that’s one of those things of, like, trial and error. You go through this stuff with projects, and like, you’ll eventually learn it and but, like, this knowledge that we have of that now is, I mean, priceless. I mean, it plays into a bunch of things. And so,
Unflipping 41:08
yeah, now we don’t have to think about it doing our bathroom. We’re just like, yeah,
Unflipping 41:11
that’s what we need. Is what we need to
Della Hansmann 41:12
do. That’s the benefit of sort of having a holistic approach to the house, is that once you figure out your material palette, then you’re kind of rinse and repeating as you go through it, particularly, you know, I think sometimes people have an idea of design that each room should have a specific, different vibe, the theme of this place. And that’s, you know, sure, if you want, but actually, if you want the whole house to feel connected, you’re going to use the same trim over and over and over again, and you’ve done that research so you can make each project less stressful. Well, the doors turned out looking gorgeous, and the trim looks gorgeous. Well done. I was gonna I had a I had a direction I was going with this. And now I don’t remember deep painting replacing, well, basically, I think, sort of the silver lining effect. I personally started from a time capsule place. So I bought a house that had had very little done to it because I couldn’t stand a flipper kitchen. And I bought the house for these doors, which are pine plywood. You know, they’re not fancy, but they’ve got their original wood grain, and it made me happy from day one. But I talked to a lot of people whose houses have been flipped. And I do try to focus on the positive, the silver lining of it, which is that you can, as you’re replacing things, as you’re unflipping, you have the leeway to make some adjustments. Maybe you’re actually improving on what might have been there originally, or you’re adjusting it more to your own taste. Are there spots in the house where you have tweaked layout or chosen something that you now know because you’ve got the original photos, the pre flipped photos that wasn’t there that now is that you feel like is a benefit of having flipped and unflipped.
Unflipping 42:48
I mean, yeah, this kitchen layout, it was originally kind of like a U shape, which it had a nice little peninsula, very cute. And we could have worked with that, but we do like this long galley style. I mean, it gives us so much more storage space. Yeah. So we can’t complain that they changed that. I mean, if
Unflipping 43:04
it was kept originally, probably would have kept it, but, yeah, but since it was already like, oh, all torn out, we’re like, might as well to our advantage, because, yeah, it gives us a bunch of space. And, I mean, like, the bathroom is gonna be another thing where layout change comes, because they had, like, the Hollywood style originally, to where there’s, oh, really, bath. In the middle, you go into the guest room, you can walk into the bath, you go into the master bedroom, you can walk into the bath, and then you could meet each other in the bathroom, basically. And like, it looks
Unflipping 43:31
really cool, it gets so funny. And like, I love it, but
Unflipping 43:35
like, they’ve put up drive, they close it off. They close everything off, and all that stuff. And so, you know, we’re left with this really small just, like, what is it like, 30 square foot bathroom that’s like, unusable for two people. And so, like, the upcoming project for that is to expand, like, double it to, like, 66 square feet, to where we’re gonna take our closet, the hallway closet, and then the guest bathroom closet, open all that up and put all the storage into one big closet in the bathroom, but also opens up the whole bathroom, gives so much more space, makes it an actual, like main bathroom to where two people can use it, yeah, sunken shower. We’ll do whatever it takes to, you know, make it like mid-century modern, but also like, yeah, it’s not gonna look like it originally did. Yeah, it’ll be a lot more Houstonian, if anything. Yeah. Well, and
Della Hansmann 44:21
that’s I mean, that actually speaks to something that’s really powerful too, which is that a in the mid-century, they had, they had different lifestyles, that different priorities. We do live a little differently, and kitchens and bathrooms are key areas where our expectations have changed. The house was probably occupied by a family with a bunch of kids originally, or it was certainly designed to be. You guys are, at the moment on your own in it, so that just requires different things. You’re looking for guest space and space for the two of you. But you get the chance to make these adjustments as you go forward. And it really does allow you to personalize the space. And more than that, you get to personalize the style, because you have chosen Usonian as sort of your you. A North Star in the project, and you’re moving towards wherever you can bring in those organic materials. You’re probably putting in even more 60s. House has a lot of wood to begin with, but you’re maybe towards more wood than that, because you really want that sort of lost in the woods feeling the right Ian vibe, yeah. And I think for everyone they get to choose. Are you looking for something really atomic? Are you looking for something Brady Bunch? Are you looking for the sort of Frank Lloyd Wright of it all? And then you get to take your house in the direction with every project that, yeah, it becomes more and more your style, as well as Yeah. That’s kind of Yeah.
Unflipping 45:35
That’s kind of the beauty of the unflowed too. Like you said, like you feel less guilty taking it in your own direction, rather than, you know, it’s like, okay, I’m not tearing out this original feature and like or restoring it exactly how it was. It’s like, okay, I have no choice but to make a new kitchen out of this. So I might as well, you know, also make sure I like it a lot while honoring the architecture of the
Della Hansmann 45:58
house. And you’ve made a lot of shit like the kitchen is a perfect example. It’s not that there weren’t kitchens with that layout, with the with the sort of a few upper cabinets, some full floor to ceiling pantry, and a lot of you know, open space counter galley in an architect design house from that era. But it’s not what you were finding in even a 60s build a great house. You were finding something similar, actually, to what the flippers had done with a lot of base cabinets and upper base cabinets and upper cabinets that don’t make for a whole bunch of work surface really. Yeah? So you get the chance to personalize and upgrade as you make changes, which is really wonderful.
Unflipping 46:34
Yeah? No, it’s nice. And then one thing that we always get is just like, you’re ruining the resale value. And it’s just like, well, we’re not living for the next owners. And I think that’s a really important thing for a lot of people. Is just like, Yeah, put your spin on it. Like, don’t feel bad if you’re trying not, like, to be one to one, or, like, you’re trying to think of recent value. Like, who cares? Like, I mean,
Unflipping 46:54
yeah, unless you’re literally living in there for a couple months and you need to sell it, yeah, sure. But if you know you’re going to be here. We’re not 100% sure we’re going to be in this house forever, but we still don’t care about the resale, because it’s our house now. It’s going to be our house for a long time as we plan, and we’re going to enjoy it while we’re here.
Della Hansmann 47:13
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’m actually, I’m curious about that, because in my opinion, you are also likely to find someone who wants this house because it is so true to itself, because it is so coherent, because it is so cared for, and it has an appeal not to everyone, but to the right person. That’s going to make it not just a fine house, but the house to look into. So I don’t necessarily agree, but I’m curious who you hear from that’s saying you’re going to ruin the resale value, because it sounds like that’s a message you’ve heard
Unflipping 47:46
more than once. I mean, yeah, it’s mostly just people who, of course, hate the paneling, or think because we changed from white cabinets to wood cabinets, that the kitchen is instantly pitch black and you can’t see anything in it all the time. So yeah, I mean, it’s just people
Unflipping 47:59
that don’t like the style of it. Of course, it’s just the internet being the internet. Oh, man, it is what it is. Like, we laugh at all this stuff anyway, but it’s just like, Yeah, you get it, like, that specific quote quite a bit. It’s just like, yeah, that’s what it’s all
Unflipping 48:13
about. Well. And I feel like there is that real estate advice where, like, you shouldn’t just assume there is going to be one right buyer for your house. But I feel like when you have a house like this that’s so specialized, it should match that, like, yeah, if I had a regular house and I made it some sort of like, crazy unique thing, yeah, that might not find anyone, but there’s going to be people that, because they appreciate the house, also appreciate the design
Della Hansmann 48:37
of it, yeah, I don’t think there’s one person that wants your house. I think that there is an entire swath of the population who will appreciate what you have done here, specifically. But, and that’s, and I think that’s, you know, within not everybody likes mid-century, but people who like mid-century like it all the way. So there is, I would say, maybe not every single person who follows your account, but certainly a lot more people who don’t follow your account would be delighted to be the next owner of your house. So I don’t think you’ve really painted yourself or unpainted yourself into a corner here. Oh, pun not intended, but, but it is interesting to see that that’s funny. I don’t I’m operating in a little bit more of a bubble. I also am pretty I’m pretty happy with my block feature if I get a rude comment, honestly, but it is true that I think when you sort of, the bigger your reach is, the more you’re going to get people who are like, I don’t like that. And I’m going to tell you about it, because it’s the internet, which is all you had to say was nothing, yeah.
Unflipping 49:39
I mean, yeah, we, we’ve have this great little community of people who are very, very supportive of us. But yeah, once you reach beyond that is led, when the little trolls, oh,
Della Hansmann 49:51
well, I’m on behalf of all of the internet. I’m sorry, but I’m really glad that you are shaking it off.
Unflipping 49:57
So yeah, it’s funny, and. I mean, the engagement helps us find the people that do appreciate it. So yeah, I think that’s true.
Della Hansmann 50:05
And if we’re thinking about your and your goal isn’t necessarily social media, but if we’re thinking about that, yeah, finding the point that it’s going to say this is for me or this is not for me, is actually the answer, and that, you know, that’s true of anything that requires taste or personality choice. I feel like when I’m showing design options to clients, I want them to say no to something I projected, because they can’t choose to do it three different ways. They got to pick one. So there’s the yes and there’s the no and there’s something in the middle. We’ll find our we’ll find our common ground, all right. Well, this okay, I wanted to actually maybe, let’s, let’s talk about the design of it all. I’m curious how far forward you plan a project. Do you had? Was there a point at which you sort of stopped and looked at the entire house and gamed it out? Or do you go space by space, whatever’s next? I think
Unflipping 50:53
it was kind of after the kitchen that we were like, Okay, we should probably do this strategically, because, I mean, we did the floors after we put the cabinets in. It was a budget thing, but in hindsight, it’s like, okay, we should have just waited a little longer and saved for it. But again, you live and you learn. You figured out, yeah. So then at that point, we’re like, okay, let’s now that we’ve done the one thing that we want to do, let’s tackle the things that a need to be done, and let’s make sure we do it in a more logical order, yeah, and the bathrooms are, I mean, the bathrooms are probably should have been done first, because they are all falling apart. So now we’re like, Okay, we’re gonna do the one we use the most first, and then the one the guests use most second, and then the basement we can figure out after. So we’re trying to make it more logical now.
Unflipping 51:41
But I mean, it all has, like, we have it all kind of planned out at the moment on how it all is actually going to be. Like, the guest bathroom will be converted back into a pink bathroom, like you would find four by four, pink tiles. We’re putting all that back in there. Pink fixtures the main bathroom, yeah, we’ll be again, a little bit more Usonian. It’s gonna bring in, like, the browns, a little bit of yellows. Sunken tub, I mean, so there’s gonna be a lot of elements in there that are not just like Usonian, but kind of come back into, like a 60s way. And then downstairs bathroom. We disagree on a lot with something, so we’re trying to figure that part out. But like, we know that’s separate, but doing like the main bathroom affects the guest bathroom because we have to take out a closet
Della Hansmann 52:24
and, oh, right, yeah, yeah. There’s a lot of
Unflipping 52:25
stuff we can’t do until we do this main bathroom. Even, just like we want to put up grass cloth wallpaper, we can’t do that. We wanted to do it in this hallway, but we can’t until we close off this closet. So there’s a lot of stuff that we really can’t do
Della Hansmann 52:39
until we do and once you start thinking about this, then that, then this, things will fall into a projected order, and it does kitchens, I feel like can be a microcosm project. There you, you did your first project elsewhere, which is great because you did the like, I’m going to make some mistakes, and I’m going to learn from them, but I think a kitchen is a great microcosm project, because it touches everything. It’s got woodwork, it’s got flooring, it’s got fixtures, it’s got appliances. Once you’ve done that, you can apply that knowledge and a lot of the same choices, given that you like them, which you do to the other parts of the house, and they kind of fall like dominoes, but still, they’ll fall in an order or not.
Unflipping 53:15
Yeah, no. And I’m sure there’s gonna be stuff that comes up that, you know, we’re gonna learn from. Because, I mean, I don’t think there’s been a single project that we haven’t just, like, failed, or something hasn’t come out the way that we thought it would, and then we’re just like, Okay, we have to change course. And so, I mean, you
Unflipping 53:29
never know what you’re going to uncover when you start taking stuff
Della Hansmann 53:32
out, right? Being prepared to pivot is essential in any reality. Yeah, 100% Yeah. What’s looking back, what’s your favorite project that you’ve done today, large or small?
Unflipping 53:45
I think we have different answers to this question. Yeah, I think my favorite is the paneling, because it just truly transformed the vibe of that basement, like you walk in there now you’re like, Okay, I feel like I’m in a house from 1966 this is so cozy. I just want to, you know, hang out down here all the time. Yeah, and it was so much more simple than anything we’ve done,
Unflipping 54:08
yeah? And I it is just difficult because, like, everything that we’ve done has been such a big just like, wow moment, because it’s such a big difference from what it was before, yeah. And so I think that kind of, just like, I don’t know, makes it difficult, yeah, because you went from white to like, wood tones, and it’s like such a big difference to where you’re just like, how do you actually choose? But I think the doors in trim, it’s something so where it’s you’re in a house, you don’t realize how much it like, just messes with your mental state, and how much it just like, transforms your environment. Like you walk in and you just like, know of just like, yeah, all the wood trim is all throughout the house. Like, there was so much of that that, like, you really didn’t, like, know so far, because it was just like, white, I
Unflipping 54:49
mean, yeah, even just this little bit of baseboards in the kitchen is like, Oh my god. That looks so much better next to everything, just being this little strip of wood than being this scallopy. White mess.
Unflipping 55:01
Well, yeah, and just like the doors, the six panel white doors, I mean, obviously, like, they don’t belong in a mid-century modern house, but it’s just like, just like the white doors, which, I mean, could be in some mid-century houses, but just like ours specifically, is like, that’s what I had originally, and I’m like, that’s what we wanted to put into it. And so you’re laying in bed at night and like, you’re sitting there on the your pillars, like, looking up and you see, like, these six panel white doors. Like, that’s all you have to stare at. You’re like, I freaking hate this. And so like, be able to finally change that. And it’s just like, I feel like, so much more comfortable.
Unflipping 55:32
Yeah, made our hallway just like, look like a cozy hallway into the bedrooms. Now, I don’t the difference in the hallway is crazy. Just completely warmed up the space.
Della Hansmann 55:42
That’s fabulous. That’s not what I expect you to say. And yet, it makes so much sense. And I
Unflipping 55:48
really, yeah, I think it’s so true, underrated
Unflipping 55:51
icon, yeah. I mean, we still love the kitchen, everything but a space you
Della Hansmann 55:55
start in every day. You start from there, you end there. And it really, I mean, bedrooms generally don’t, don’t need or have as much. They don’t get as flipped, and so they don’t need as much on flipping. But the way you go to bed every night, if that resonates with you, or if that irritates you, that is deep seated. And I think it speaks to the power of design generally, like we spend so much time in our homes, especially since the pandemic, even you know, life has changed, but it hasn’t changed that much, and the way that you feel about the place where you spend most of your downtime is hugely important. If you could go back and tell yourselves at the beginning some like shortcut piece of advice, or what do you know what you would say,
Unflipping 56:42
take your time? Ah, I mean, because at least with decorating, I mean, like Colin said earlier, we just were kind of rushing to fill the spaces, and it didn’t work, and we ended up having to change everything anyway. So I mean, I Yeah, you do need things and you want it to feel like home right off the bat, but if you just step back and let the things find you, it’ll all come together.
Unflipping 57:07
Yeah. I mean, yeah, I feel like, I tell myself, I’m an idiot. No matter what happens, it’s just I don’t it’s like, such a crazy experience, but it is like, yeah, you take your time. Because it’s just like, yeah, we look back now and like, we wouldn’t have thought the same way, but it’s just like, it all, it all comes together. And especially like furniture wise, it takes time. I mean, you’re not gonna find it all right away. Five and a half years later, we finally got, like, all the furniture that we need, and I don’t know, all the stuff that we wish we knew. We finally figured out, and we’re still finding out. And it’s just it all comes so, yeah, and it
Unflipping 57:39
all takes time,
Della Hansmann 57:40
well, and five and a half years is a long time, and also really isn’t you know like and now you’re here, and now you live in a house that you’re mostly happy with most of the time on Instagram, you’re probably showing us your favorite spaces, and obviously, the bathroom. I actually have seen you make some notes about your plans for the bathroom, scrolling through your feed recently. But are there other parts of the house that are still TBD that you just never show the internet Absolutely?
Unflipping 58:09
Yeah, I think it’s like the bedrooms in general, all of that. It’s my office is like my worst base. It’s got hand me downs of furniture that keep getting swapped out. So it’s not something like I want it to be. I mean, I work from home, from there every day, so it’s just, like a little bit chaotic, but it’s got some nice pieces in there. But, I mean, eventually we want to have all the bedrooms just kind of be coherent with the rest of the space. Like, ready to go our, yeah, our main bedroom is going to have flat panels that come out from the bathroom, so that should all be kind of integrated and playing into one another. And then, like, the guest bedroom is also another. Just like, handing down room Yeah, tourists like, yeah, we have like this, like, teak bed in there. And then just like some other furniture pieces, there’s like a million lamps in there, because
Della Hansmann 58:55
that’s our lamp graveyard. It’s so easy to find a cool lamp and then not know where to put it. There’s, yeah, three in this room that don’t show up. Yeah.
Unflipping 59:04
And so, like, the bedrooms are definitely one of those things, yeah,
Unflipping 59:08
for sure. And I mean, just the bathrooms in their current state, other than Yeah, us talking about the plants, but yeah. I mean, I’m not gonna glow about this gray bathroom with the vanity.
Della Hansmann 59:21
Well, that, I think, is also really helpful. Not that you should come, you know, every other image in your feed should be the gray bathroom, but I think it’s helpful to hear on a podcast when you’re when people who are excited about scrolling through your account and just find it so soothing and beautiful and are looking at their house feeling like, Oh, my house isn’t like their house. Yeah, well, my house isn’t like some parts of your you know, there are parts of your house that you love and are done, and there are parts of your house you’re still working on. And I think that also you see more of that in Instagram, in stories, in conversations like this. And it really helps to get over the sort of disappointment, overwhelm factor of seeing something cool and get back to the inspiration of like. Five and a half years from now, I could be there exactly sooner. I could be partway there. You know, that’s exciting, yeah,
Unflipping 1:00:06
yeah, no, definitely. I mean, we’ve been there again kind of same thing. I’m just like, oh my god, we’ll never even get to this point where we’re at and we’re like, we still have so much to do. And like, yeah. Like, you go on to our social media feeds, and it is kind of like almost the same stuff that we post over and over again, just in different ways. It’s like, they’re helpful, but like, we’re trying to work towards project. And the realistic thing is, like, we’re not, like, these Uber wealthy people that, like, we, yeah, we have full time jobs. We need to, like, save money to get into these projects. We need to plan them out. And so, like, it takes time, and,
Unflipping 1:00:39
yeah, the internet tricks you into that. Don’t often?
Della Hansmann 1:00:44
Yeah, absolutely. I was actually going to ask, because you mentioned that you work from home. Colin, but Dana, you don’t.
Unflipping 1:00:52
I actually am working from home today. I work from home once a week. Yeah, I’m a pharmacist, so I can’t really be remote
Della Hansmann 1:00:59
all the time. Oh, yeah, no, that that requires some in person time, but I do at least get to, yeah, once a week, which is great. So I was, I was curious about how you balance the sort of energy of work in the house versus working on the house, and if that, I mean, obviously it ebbs and flows. And there are times when you’re, as you say, planning and saving for a project, and times when you’re doing a project, but I think for a lot of people that energetically is a tough balance. So I’m just curious if you had insight into that, or how you manage it, how you balance it. I think it’s just
Unflipping 1:01:28
like our number one hobby at this point. We
Unflipping 1:01:31
just enjoy doing it so it doesn’t feel, I mean, it’s, of course, draining,
Unflipping 1:01:36
like we’re trying to source everything, get prices for everything, and, like, do all that stuff. It gets exhausting. But, I mean, like, yeah, like, we finish up our day, like, we take care of our dogs cooked in or whatever, in our free time, it’s literally just, like, all right, do we have everything that we need to have? Or, like, call her dad and be like, Are you sure you can actually do this feature that you said, that we can do in our bathroom? And so, like, it just has encapsulated our life, which we don’t mind, because, like, we do really enjoy it. Yeah, we
Unflipping 1:02:00
do just end up talking about it all
Della Hansmann 1:02:05
entire personalities now well, and I think that actually it’s funny, because that’s very much how mid-century houses in by the time we get to the era of your house, the 60s, that house was kind of built a bit more as a finished object, but the early mid-century houses were your minimum viable house that you were meant to save up for, add on to as the family grew, it would grow with you. And it was kind of; it was kind of supposed to be a lot of people’s hobbies. That’s what they were. You know, getting Popular Mechanics magazine and reading about how to finish a basement and then doing it. So you’re just kind of living that mid-century home improvement life almost,
Unflipping 1:02:39
go to work, come home. Do more work.
Della Hansmann 1:02:42
It’s a thing.
Unflipping 1:02:44
This is all Yeah. This is a lot more fun than Yeah, jobs that pay us.
Della Hansmann 1:02:50
It’s something I struggle to balance, because this is my day job, and so I sometimes lose the energy to do projects in my own house, because I’m like, I just literally thought about this for three other people all day long. And now, yeah, I don’t want to pick up tools, but it’s nice too, that you share this, that you’re doing it together, because you can kind of leapfrog each other energetically through moments like that. Yeah, there’s one of you, the instigator.
Unflipping 1:03:18
I mean, like, we’re both, like, just so into it. She usually comes up these delusions
Unflipping 1:03:23
that I have, yeah, crazy, just like I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and have this, like, bizarre, delusional thought, and 50% of the time they end up being viable.
Unflipping 1:03:38
She had, like, this idea for the layout, and it was just, like, it was a eureka moment.
Unflipping 1:03:42
Yeah, the original plan was to just keep this teeny, tiny footprint. We were like, There’s nothing else we can do. And then I woke up in the middle of the night, let’s shift around some closets, and when we could have a bathroom.
Unflipping 1:03:53
And, like, it worked out. And then, like, we found, I think it was, it wasn’t last weekend or no, two weekends ago, we found out how to even make more space out of I just, like, moving a door, like, five inches, yeah, and so it’s just like, now
Unflipping 1:04:04
we’re gonna do a pocket door. We’ll have even more space. Like, there’s just so many things that we’re like, as we talk about it, we just kind of the light bulbs go off at the same time. We’re like, Wait, what if we just move to the door?
Unflipping 1:04:15
Yeah, that would be perfect. Yeah. I try to be as realistic with as possible, with everything, which is sometimes knocking down, like, her delusions. And, like, I hate doing it, but it’s just like, you need the balance. I always think about it in such a realistic manner of, like, we can’t get that we don’t have the space for that. Like, it’s just like one of those things that, like, I need, like plans, A through Z planned out before, like, actually be able to try to incorporate what we think of as an idea. And so, I mean, it gets tough. I mean, I mean, I go through like, the same things are just like being hyper and just spitting out whatever I need to spit out.
Della Hansmann 1:04:46
So, but you’re manifesting different sides of real, two really necessary parts of design process that you have to open up possibilities. The fact that you can, I mean, to change the layout to make it work better, is it’s not. Necessary. You don’t have to change the layout when you remodel something, but if you don’t consider that, you have missed an opportunity, and yet you do also then get practical and say, like, well, what’s possible, what’s plausible, what’s less expensive. And so sort of opening things up and then focusing that back down again is that’s inherent to a good design process. It sounds like you really you keep each other going, and you have kept going for this time. You mentioned that this is maybe not your forever home. Would you take on another house that’s a project at all, as much of a project as this one in the future? Do you feel like you would actually want that? Or are you looking for something maybe in the future that would be closer to right?
Unflipping 1:05:40
I mean, the original plan was buy. This is our starter house, you know, 1520, years find, like the perfect architectural Time Capsule gem. But yeah, now that we’ve started doing this, I mean, we wouldn’t not consider it, yeah. I mean, we’re having a lot of fun now you can Yeah, I would not recommend buying a flipped house, but if you have to, it is a lot of fun to unflip it. So I mean,
Unflipping 1:06:08
no, we know now it’s easier to consider it, whereas in the beginning, if you asked us when we first left us, we’re like, no, no way. Like, why would we ever do this? Yeah, yeah. I still think there’s a lot of like wants and needs, especially, like wants more than anything else, or like, what we want in our next house, in terms of, like, it being like the Forever place. But, I mean, I feel like that’s still 1015, years away, so who knows what will change in that time? Yeah, you’ve got time, yeah, and
Della Hansmann 1:06:37
you’ve got plenty of time to appreciate what you’re doing here. And really, yeah, really, live in it. That’s fantastic. Okay, well, I think this is I shouldn’t let us actually, it’s the end of our time, so I should, I should pause this here. But anything you want to make sure that somebody else who’s kind of in your five years ago footprint knew, or what should? What would they what would you want to tell someone else who’s starting, where you were starting?
Unflipping 1:07:05
I feel like we hear a lot of people just saying, like, I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what to do. And I mean, like we talked about this whole time, if you don’t just do it and make the mistakes, you’re not going to learn. You’re not going to know what you like, what you don’t like, and you’ll just be stuck in decision paralysis forever. And, I mean, yeah, that’s natural. It’s gonna happen. But if you, if you don’t take the
Unflipping 1:07:28
risk, yeah, just send it. I mean, put a hole in the wall, do some, like, like, look at, like, some YouTube videos, and how to repair, I don’t know, but it’s just like, yeah, you just have to do it. And it’s just like, it is tough, because it’s one of those procrastination things that I think everyone suffers. Like, yeah, I can do this, or I want to do that. I’ll get started tomorrow, and then you never do it. It’s just like, one of those things, like, she does it so much to me. Like, like, she’ll start a project. I want to do the rest of the brick, through the rest of the brick. We have so much other stuff to do. And, like, other stuff that takes probably, like, the bathroom and, like, next thing I know, she’ll be putting stripper on the brick. And I’m like, I guess we’re doing stripper this weekend. Once you start it, you start it, and then, like, the groove of it, yeah, and so, like, you just have to do that.
Della Hansmann 1:08:12
Yeah, you did choose a pretty good bite sized project to begin with, the brick that was, like, a relatively small square footage, like a strip up the fireplace wall, but the whole thing, oh, that’s, I think that’s great advice. Just jump in and begin somewhere, because you’ve got to make a mistake. Miss Frizzle it up, make mistakes. Get Messy. Yeah, learn something. Have fun.
Unflipping 1:08:35
Learn something. Yeah. I mean, have fun. Yeah. Don’t stress too much about it, because, I mean, like, if you’re gonna be doing anything, that’s not electrical or plumbing, I mean, it’s all cosmetic. I mean, it can be fixed. Electrical and plumbing, obviously could still be fixed, but it’s a lot harder, probably someone that needs to be licensed to do that. So, I mean, yeah, just do it. I mean, it’s cosmetic. It won’t always look that way. You can figure it out eventually.
Della Hansmann 1:08:58
Well, you’ve shared a bunch of really good entry points too, that you can begin with furniture. You can begin with one project. You can begin with one unflip, fix, unpaint something on, unremove something, re, replace something. And then, you know, five and a half years later, a lot of the house looks like this, and there are still some secret rooms that need work, which honestly not. I don’t mean this to emphasize it and to pick on you at all, but I think it’s really helpful for people to remember that, like, what we see on the internet isn’t everything. That’s reality. It’s some of reality. It’s curated, and that, yeah, helps us all, like, walk through our own disaster rooms and feel a little better.
Unflipping 1:09:37
Absolutely, we try to put out videos like that too, tourists just like, looked like this. And like, we try to emphasize that a lot, and obviously it’s not always gonna capture and like, everyone’s attention and understand that. But like, there’s people be like, Oh my God, thank you for putting this is just like, because I’m in the same exact spot, and it’s just like, Yeah, we all are at some point. And even right now, like, yeah, we still are, like, it’s not done. We’re always. Gonna, there’s always gonna be projects.
Della Hansmann 1:10:01
Otherwise, I think the finished projects are or a finished house is a little demoralizing. Sometimes, when you’re like at the beginning of your journey, it can really overwhelm
Unflipping 1:10:10
Yeah.
Della Hansmann 1:10:13
Thank you so much for sharing your experience or insight and for continuously sharing all the gorgeous things you’ve done to your house. I think you’re; you’re really an inspiration to so many people. And I just feel like it’s such good news for the mid-century space to have this visible example of people on flipping
Unflipping 1:10:29
Yeah, no. Thank you so much. It’s so nice to hear that. I mean, we try not to grow an ego from it, and so it’s just like we try to really just keep it a platform that is a community that people can come together in, and we try to at least help and support, because it’s all we can do, really. I mean, we’re not like experts, even though people see us as experts. But, I mean, well, at this
Della Hansmann 1:10:53
point, you’ve put yourself through mid-century on flipping University, I think. But you didn’t start from a place of un-endable expertise you have just gained it over time. And that’s also something people can aspire to and do themselves
Unflipping 1:11:06
exactly. Yeah, anyone can do this. And so, I mean, it’s not just us just go and do it.
Della Hansmann 1:11:12
Oh, amazing. Oh, that’s such a good place to leave it. Thank you for that.
Della Hansmann 1:11:15
It’s been a delight to watch Dana and Colin from afar on Instagram making amazing choices for their home, building back a paneled basement worthy of a 66 split level house, taking a standard IKEA kitchen and really making it gleam by building in thoughtful details, the Right tile, the right orientation choices, really just highlighting everything that’s possible out of that, and continuing to just pour so much love and attention and affection into their home, finding vintage pieces for it, sourcing and staining and perfecting the replacement, replacement doors and trim, all of the pieces they’ve done that have made them love their home so much. Have made us admire it so much from afar.
Della Hansmann 1:12:01
If you haven’t seen their Instagram account yet, this is the time to go do that. I have linked to it in the show notes page. Find that at mid mod, dash, midwest.com/ 2211 that’ll take you directly to it, the Washington Post article, the atomic ranch article, but also the transcript of this episode, and I hope you’ll find some inspiration here, especially if you are like they were sitting in a house that has had a lot of its original mid-century character stripped and flipped.
Della Hansmann 1:12:30
Even if some of those choices are choices you made yourself in an earlier incarnation of Home Improvement, there is so much potential to put back mid-century charm, and that is, I think, the great gift that unflipping And that Dana and Colin are sharing with us through all of their tireless dedication to not just doing this work, but documenting it and being so friendly and open to everyone that reached out to them to share their journey with us today in this episode.
Della Hansmann 1:12:58
I think it’s really part of the joy of people who love mid-century that so many of us are willing to give of ourselves, of our own experience and knowledge. And so thank you to you for listening and for everyone that you’ve shared your passion and enthusiasm and past experience with. I will catch you next week. Mid model modeler, thanks for being here.