You’re thinking about a remodel. You have a budget in mind, a Pinterest board full of perfect tile, and a list of things in your house that just aren’t working. But stop right there.
Before you hire a contractor or pick out a single fixture, I need you to answer the single most important question you will ask in this entire process:
Why does your house need a remodel? I mean, does it? Seriously?
Knowing the underlying why, what you are truly trying to achieve in your life, will ultimately control what your remodel costs, how many parts of your house it affects, and everything down to the last tile choice.
It’s the only thing that will keep your remodel on track, keep you going when the planning gets slow or expensive, and help you avoid all the “shoulds” that will make a project unnecessarily stressful and pricey.
Oh AND without sticking to your why, you’re much more likely to take on a remodel that ends up damaging your home’s mid-century character!
So let’s talk about how to get under the surface of your remodeling why …
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Most people start planning a remodel for one of three reasons
My clients usually come to me with frustrations that almost always fall into three surface-level categories:
- “Something is broken” might be a leaking roof, a failed mechanical system, or a broken handle.
- “It doesn’t look right” is an aesthetic that doesn’t fit the home or their taste. The 90s Tuscan style backsplash you can’t stand or the fact that an earlier remodel was done in the wrong era.
- “It doesn’t live right” is a logistical concern, like an awkward layout, a hallway that’s too narrow, or not enough counter space.
While these surface irritations are valid starting points, they are just the top layer.
You need to dig deeper to empower your renovation
Let’s take the kitchen as an example—it’s the spot where we often see the most superficial, trend-driven changes.
The most common reason(s) to remodel a kitchen are:
Because this [80’s/90’s/00’s/flipper] kitchen feels shabby, closed off, and too snug. Oh and the drawers don’t close properly!!
But those problems, while very irritating, aren’t going deep enough to help you get to the right design choices quickly and confidently.
Let’s look under the surface and see one of these rings true:
If the biggest irritant is that it’s too snug…
Maybe there’s not enough counter space for you AND your partner to cook at the same time.
- That means only one person can take point on meal prep or clean up
- Eventually this will lead to a habitual unfair division of labor.
- AND you missing out on the time for those casual but crucial, end of day check in conversations.
Limited counter space is damaging your relationship.
If the space is too closed off …
It’s probably harder to chat with and keep an eye on kids from the kitchen.
- This can lead to too much screen time
- Or homework pushed later into the evening … pushing back bedtime
- Everyone ends up feeling more disconnected than you wanted … every single week night.
A wall in the wrong place is separating your family.
Or maybe the out of date remodel IS just so shabby that …
You never want to have friends over anymore.
- You used to be so outgoing after college.
- But now hosting means inviting people over to your weird ktichen
- There’s not enough sit down space for more than one other adult couple, so that’s a no on hosting game night.
Feeling awkward about your house is costing you community!
One of these may have really “hit” for you. Say HI!
Your why is Unique
But one thing I’m sure of is that every person’s story is unique. We can always dig deeper. And in order to design a remodel that will really work for my clients – to really solve their problems – I need to know their real why. The deeper reasons they’ve decided it’s time for a change and their vision of life in their remodeled home.
Your Why will empower your update!
It’s these powerful, deep reasons—a desire to strengthen bonds, create family togetherness, or build community—that will ensure your new space actually works better for your life and help you stick to your priorities during stressful remodeling moments.
Knowing you why helps you make better choices for yourself and your home and avoid making trendy decisions under pressure from the remodeling industrial complex.
Plus your bigger “why” is also the reason why NOW
If you know that you’re thinking about a renovation to strengthen community, remove conflict from your marriage, or stick close to your kids, then you’ll know why it’s important not to put off planning it until next year or later.
Need help to get the ball rolling? I’m so glad you asked!! Let me show you how to get started … right here!
In Today’s Episode You’ll Hear:
- Why your why is the most important element of your remodel.
- How to get from your surface level reasons to a deeper understanding of your why.
- Where to invest based on your why…and not where the remodeling industrial complex tells you to.
Listen Now On
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
00:00
Why does your house need a remodel? I mean, does it seriously? I’m asking you only you know the answer and knowing it, knowing why not? Just something needs cosmetic updating, something broken needs fixing. Something isn’t working in the space. But what you’re trying to achieve in your remodel, in your life is going to be the most important question you answer at any point in this process, it’s more important than and will control what your remodel costs, how many parts of your house it will affect, and everything down to the last light fixture, hardware and tile choice.
00:30
The other important reason to answer the question of why is because it ties in with the question of why. Now, if your reason for remodeling is good enough, there’s no reason to put off getting the process started as soon as possible. Hey there. Welcome back to mid mod remodel. This is the show about updating MCM homes, helping you match a mid-century home to your modern life. I’m your host. Della Hansmann, architect and mid-century ranch enthusiast.
00:53
You’re listening to Episode 2010 Today’s episode is going to be a relatively short one more of a pep talk and a mindset tune up than a full everything I want you to know on one topic, because I’ve already talked a lot this week, sharing all of my good advice for your mid-century home. If you missed Monday’s special episode, I shared an hour of my very best everything I believe in advice in the form of the live master class from Saturday.
01:20
I might characterize this as me serving up a big steaming mug of the antidote to fast faction remodels and HGTV blandness. If that isn’t enough, there’s another hour and 20 minutes of mid-century advice fresh this week hiding on my website at midmod-midwest.com/ready, the Q and A from after that live class. It is great stuff, and I actually highly recommend you go take a look. But I wanted to point your attention to the fact that if you’ve been on the fence, if you’ve been thinking about why and why now is the right time to remodel, then I’m going to put one more weight on the side of the scales of yes.
01:56
Now is a great moment to start taking action and to take it inside of my ready to remodel program, because we are kicking off a fresh, exciting mid mod remod squad, starting on Monday, when a new group of homeowners all start the program at the same time, or refresh their energy for it at the same time they are a mid mod remod squad, a group of like-minded mid-century homeowners all committed to taking action together, and we use that collective energy of people going through the same steps of their master plan, method, asking why, questions, encouraging each other, picking up problems, solutions, ideas and advice, and using that power to just supercharge their remodel energy.
02:36
It’s a wonderful feeling. And if you’re curious about what that’s like, or what you can get from ready to remodel, then I don’t have anything else to say to you about it. Other than that, you should check out the free masterclass, which you can watch on your own time, or just listen to in Monday’s episode. Go check it out at midmod-midwest.com/ready find the show notes and the transcript of today’s episode at midmod-midwest.com/ 2210.
03:05
So why does your house even need a remodel? No, seriously, I’m asking you, and I want you to know the answer, because your why is what’s going to keep the remodel on track? It’s going to keep you going when the going gets tough or slow, because planning is slow or expensive, because remodeling is expensive, but having a deep, good, rooted understanding of your why is going to help you focus and prioritize in order to keep costs under control and even keep things moving faster to the extent that that’s possible, it will help you avoid all the shoulds of a remodel which will result in a remodel that’s bigger and slower than you wanted it to be, because the more you start adding on things other people expect you to do, or things you should you feel like you should do without actually really wanting and needing them, the more bulky and unwieldy and pricey a remodel is going to be.
03:56
So I, in my capacity as a designer, I am so motivated by my clients. Whys I feel like I can’t provide them any kind of useful, valuable design advice until I know why they came to me in the first place. Is their concern esthetic or logistical or maintenance oriented, or some, ideally, some combination of all three, and what are the various subcategories of those reasons, what really is driving them towards the you know, taking on the voluntary pain of the disruption of a remodel at this time, if you don’t have a good enough reason, you shouldn’t take on a remodel. It’s much easier to not remodel than to get the process starting.
04:37
And I will ask you now, how long have you been thinking about the changes you want to make to your home? Now it might be that you’ve been thinking about them since you moved into the house, and that might have been just last week. I often do get contacts from people who are just moving into a house and immediately know it needs some changes, and they’re getting started on them right away. I have so much admiration for using the momentum of a move of a house search process to throw you like a flywheel forward into remodeling.
05:02
But if you haven’t done that, then you might just be stuck in the inertia of you’ve been living with things that aren’t working right, and you’ve known they need to be changed, but you just don’t have a good enough reason to get started. When things like that are holding you back, when life, when expense, when busyness, when the season, when focusing on your kids or your job or your recreations are all holding you back from beginning.
05:23
There are so many challenges, so many stopping points before you get to taking on the effort of a remodel, you need something big to push you through all of those stopping points and into actually getting started. So when I ask you why your house needs a remodel, I’m going to speculate on the answer, because I talk to a lot of different mid-century homeowners about a lot of different stories, backgrounds and mid-century homes, and the answers that I hear about their frustrations, their concerns, their worries, what’s prompting them to reach out to me now fall into a few general categories.
05:56
I’m going to say they are, it doesn’t look right, it doesn’t live right, or something is broken. Now, one of these three things, broadly, is probably the reason you’re tuned into this episode in the first place, or, I don’t know, maybe you just like mid-century history and listening to me ramble about Hansmann.
06:12
But let’s assume that you’ve noticed that something isn’t right, something about your house doesn’t look right, or a lot of things don’t something about your house doesn’t live right, it doesn’t flow, it doesn’t flow, it doesn’t contain you, it doesn’t have the right number of spaces, or the right arrangement of spaces, or something is broken. Now that might be the roof is leaking. It might be you’ve just discovered that there’s asbestos in the popcorn ceiling. It might be that there is a mechanical system that needs addressing.
06:39
Maybe a number of things are broken, particularly for people who get lucky enough to have a time capsule. Hansmann, of the things that has preserved it intact for all of these years is that people haven’t been doing the necessary maintenance on it. So there are pros and cons to the Venn diagram of each of these situations. And I would say that most people don’t have only one of these answers.
07:00
It’s not only an esthetic consideration, it’s not only because it doesn’t look right. It’s not only a logistical consideration, it’s not only because it doesn’t live right. And it’s not only a maintenance question, it’s not only because something is broken, but all three of these things together can drive you right to the brink of needing to make a big change in your house, knowing what are your fundamental reasons underneath the superficial ones, though, is going to take you further.
07:26
I don’t mean to be reductive when I call these three elements superficial, but they can feel that way. When people come just telling me this top level issue, it doesn’t look right, it doesn’t live right. Something needs replacing. Then we’re not getting really to your underlying, your psychological why. Someone might come and tell me that they need a new kitchen because the existing kitchen is done in a 90s style that looks ridiculous, and they can’t stand it another day, and also, they’re embarrassed to host.
07:55
Or they might say that they need a new kitchen because the there isn’t enough counter space and there’s not enough space For two adult members of the household to cook together, and it’s really frustrating. It’s causing some disagreements, and they might come to me and say they need to redo their kitchen because it’s cut off from the house, and it feels this isolated room, and it’s hard to Hansmann with kids who should be doing their homework at the same time as food is getting prepped in the evening.
08:19
And I would want you, if either of any of those were your reason, I would want you to drill down a little deeper that first example you need to replace your kitchen because it’s tired, it’s dated. That falls into the category if something doesn’t look right, and that’s fine. I mean, if you love mid-century style as much as I do, you’ll find it irritating to your psyche, to be in a space that just looks wrong day after day after day.
08:43
And there are some little things you can do right away to mitigate that. You can take the cabinet doors off if they’re the wrong shape and style. You can paint things that are temporary. You know, if there’s a backsplash that’s in a weird 90s Tuscan style, you can do something with that. But knowing what you’re trying to get at. Why do you need it to look a certain way? Is it for yourself? Is it so that you will spend more time at home, spend less time on takeout? Maybe salve your budget over time? I mean, the cost of a remodel is also a non-zero budget line item, but maybe you just want to be directing your dollars more into creating a sanctuary space for yourself.
09:17
Or maybe you’re thinking about your kitchen as being a place that you would like to invite people into but right now its shabbiness, or maybe also its layout might be it doesn’t live right are preventing you from hosting neighbors for regular dinner parties like you did in your last house, and you don’t feel like you know the people on your new block as well. You’re missing out on a sense of deepening community, which is so valuable in these trying times.
09:40
That’s a really big underlying why. Knowing that you’re trying to create a space that you want to build community in will help you want to get started on this project. It will also help you evaluate what is really important to you and what isn’t you might think about wanting to have the kind of high end finishes that are going to keep up with the Joneses.
09:59
Or you might think about you don’t really need it to be fancy. You just need it to be spacious. You might actually wish it to be more casual rather than dressy, because you’re looking for a place where everybody can feel comfortable pitching in, wandering into the kitchen, getting what they need, a place where your neighbors will be friendly and happy to bring their kids, rather than feeling like it’s a really high end dressy environment.
10:19
Knowing the goal, what you want to do in this space, who you want to host in the space, how you want to create psychic, psychological space in this space, is going to make so many more of your decisions down the line, anchored rooted, easier, and it’s going to help you continue to move forward towards making that goal happen much more powerfully.
10:42
Now, again, I had another example. What did I say does to not enough counter space so you and your partner can’t cook at the same time in the kitchen? Now, that is, it doesn’t live, right? And it feels like a very logical thing. This is super common in mid-century kitchens, by the way, because they’re set up for to be for a single cook. So in most households now where two people share cooking duties, they’re struggling to make that happen in the layout of an original mid-century kitchen.
11:09
But this when we come down to the deeper psychological root, what’s the problem there? Is it? Because it feels like there’s an unequal division of labor in your house when only one person is doing it? Is one person doing it more than another. Does it feel like again, this might be a place where you compare your current experience to a past one. In the past, in other kitchen spaces, have you and your partner had a chance to really get on the same page, to have calm, casual, but deep conversations while you’re doing things like cleaning up all the dishes after dinner? Is this an opportunity you’re missing, to deepen a relationship, to strengthen bonds, to feel like you’re pulling in harness with someone and you’re sharing your lifestyle with them, soup to nuts.
11:49
That is a why that will get you calling up contractors and pricing out plans, but it has very little to do with Are you planning the latest trend, or even what is the perfect mid-century style, although we’re going to think about planning timeless remodels, knowing that you’re making space for conversation is going to help you with some esthetic concerns. You want to think about the right kind of low lighting to sort of tease out those what was really going on today, kind of conversations you’re trying to have over the dishes.
12:20
And you’re also going to be thinking about not just a kitchen triangle, not just do I want an island or not an island, but thinking about how you’re going to cook together or separately, how you’re going to sous chef for each other, how you’re going to parallel play, where one person is doing baking for the week and one person is prepping dinner tonight, knowing those things and knowing that you want to get back to a place where everybody in the household participates in kitchen time to the extent that they are able and want to, rather than only the people that fit in the kitchen are in the kitchen that is such a deep and underlying why around a kitchen that it will motivate an entire remodel.
12:57
Then thinking about what was the third example I gave just five minutes ago, if you had a hard time, if your kitchen is too cut off and you’re having a hard time keeping tabs on what’s Hansmann outside of the kitchen? This is, you know, a layout question. This is the house doesn’t live, right question. It might just be, oh, let’s have a broader doorway in the kitchen so we’ve got a better flow to living room.
13:20
But it also might be that’s the surface level, that’s the technical solution that we’re working towards. But honestly, you might be worried that if you’re not able to supervise homework time while food prep is happening, you’re letting there be more screen time in your life than you wanted there to be. You’re letting your kids get more engaged in their phones and tablets than you ever philosophically wanted them to, because then you know they’re not getting into anything worse while you’re minding things on the hot stove, prepping dinner. That, again, is the kind of reason that you do kick off a remodel for, not because the kitchen is tired, not because you wanted something fresh, but because you want to create a space to have a relationship with your family now, while they’re at the age they’re at before they’re up and teenagers and empty nesters and out of the house.
14:07
So these questions are always served by drilling down deeper. But I didn’t even, I didn’t even really mention the psychology of something is broken. People will often want to do a remodel because they found lead paint in the siding, and it needs to be replaced. The roof is leaking or just getting older and needs replacing. And want to logistically pair a couple of other things with that.
14:29
People who are smart and savvy know when it’s time to replace a roof, you want to think about what color should it be? How is that going to affect other decisions you’re gonna make around the house? Do you need a window replacement at some point in the next 20 years? Where will that come in? Maybe you don’t, by the way, check out the episode on window replacements. Let me look that up for you. Hang on, that’s episode 1708, I don’t want to say you might need replacement windows without caveating That, that you might very well not need replacement windows, but my point stands when you’re thinking about maintenance work, a lot of savvy.
14:59
People will come to me saying, we’re going to be making some changes. We want to have a bigger picture plan to drive those, which is always when I come back to our underlying Whys now, you have to start with a surface level. It doesn’t look right. It doesn’t live right. Something is broken. These are the things we’re trying to check off of our checklist, and ideally with design, we’re always going to be answering more than one of those for any different solution, we’re going to get a twofer or maybe a three for fix what’s broken, make it work better than it ever did, and make sure it looks right and will last at the same time.
15:31
That’s the win, win, win that that we can achieve with design thinking. And by the way, savvy listeners like you may already have noticed that those three things, how it lives, if it’s broken, and how it looks, correlate very neatly to the dream phase, the Discover phase and the distill phase, the predesigned phases of the master plan method that’s again, it’s not an accident. These are the things that are most important to people.
16:00
One or the other of these three things are most important to people in a remodel, but a good, well planned remodel touches on all three and provides solutions that address all three elements. Ultimately, though the dream phase, the underlying why, getting to something that’s more important than the dishwasher is broken and the oven is also broken, and we can’t fit an existing modern oven into the opening for an old oven.
16:25
So now, really, we can’t limp along any longer, and we need to think about making some major changes in the kitchen. What are we going to do to bundle that all together? Should always be informed not just by the logistical level, but by a deeper goal of making your life work better in the house, anchoring all your choices in their ultimate Why is going to help them.
16:49
That’s going to help you make better choices, and it’s going to help you avoid the cycle of fast fashion and just repeating one choice after another in service of the greater remodeling industrial complex. Thinking about this threw me back to my very first job, which, other than a bit of babysitting around the neighborhood, was working as a shop girl for the small interior design firm in my area. And mostly what I did was organize the stock room a bunch of sample fabrics, upholstery items, pieces of furniture, very highly tasseled pillows with cording around the edges and a tassel on every corner it could be purchased and walked out from the shop with.
17:26
And this was the era of sort of peak grown up Laura Ashley style in the late 90s, just as it was about to shift into everything in your house should be Tusken villa, even if your house is in the north suburbs of Chicago. But that maximalist grown up Laura Ashley style I think of as being sort of wallpaper, everything, tassels on, everything, custom fabric, valences for every window, which would coordinate but not match the curtains.
17:51
The reason I bring this up was that part of my job was organizing the stock room, and part of it was filing away invoices and purchase orders and records of client meetings. One day, I was going through a big backlog, and I realized that the client I was filing for didn’t just Hansmann hanging folder in the file cabinet, but they had several. They had about a linear foot of, you know, of paperwork stacked up, if I’d pulled it out and plopped it on top of the desk. So I just started coming back through, looking at the dates, and I realized that they were working on redoing one room in the house. I don’t remember which one it was, a bedroom, the living room, a dining room.
18:26
And they had been basically doing the house over one room at a time for the last several years, going back to about five years ago, they had already done the room we were doing. They had hired this firm to redo every room in their house that they had already done now, I mean, I’m not going to style shame. Some people really get a lot of value out of refreshing the esthetic, the colors, the choices around them, but taking every object in a room and tossing it, I hope donating it and getting new ones every five years, feels a little excessive, and that feels actually very related to the drive of surface level changes.
19:09
So of course, we begin our remodeling. Why with surface level things? A handle is broken. Many handles are broken. We can’t stand it. Something is leaking, something is faulty, something is failing. These are common reasons to plan a remodel for a mid-century house. Or it doesn’t look right. It’s been remodeled in the wrong era. We don’t like the time capsule nature of the era it was built in too mid-century, traditional, too mid-century, modern. Or it doesn’t live right. This layout is awkward. This hallway is too narrow. This doorway is in the wrong spot, and it impedes our flow. We don’t have an island. We don’t have enough space.
19:45
These are all good surface level reasons, but what I want to encourage you to do as you go about your daily life today is when you’re experiencing a frustration at another house, don’t just think about it on the surface level. Tie it to a deeper underlying why? And I think that you’ll find that one, it might actually soothe the irritant that’s making you think you need to make a change. It might make you feel like, oh, there is perhaps a non-remodeling solution to this problem. That’s certainly the case.
20:14
And if you’re interested in that, I’ll point you towards several of my posts on level one or quick fix solutions that you might try. Let me actually I’ll list those in the show notes for you, but it might also highlight how much it’s not just a surface level irritation, it is actually preventing you from experiencing family togetherness, from living in the moment with your kids before they’re about to grow up into teenagers and bust themselves right out into their own lives, of creating harmony with your partner, of connecting with your community.
20:44
If any of those things feels like the underlying why for why you need to make a change in your house, then I’d like to get the ball rolling on making those changes for you as soon as possible. And the best way that I can support you to do that is to point you towards first, the helpful MapQuest directions to planning a remodel that I give away for free whenever I do one of these live workshops, go check out Monday’s podcast episode, Saturday’s live class planning a mid-century remodel to fit your life and budget.
21:11
But if you want to take your journey a little farther, a little faster, I would love to support you in it by offering you a place inside the ready to remodel program where I will share the step by step instructions, guides, workbooks, lessons and templates for each part of the process of planning a mid-century remodel.
21:28
And also, when you start before next Monday, you get the advantage of the energy of a shared Mid Mod remodel squad, as well as bonus Office Hours calls. I’ll be holding one next Monday, two weeks after that, two weeks after that, two weeks after that, right through to December, we’re going to be having, I hesitate to call them biweekly calls, because that always raises the question, are they every other week or twice a week? They’re every other week. Enough time to do some thinking, to live your actual life and to come back with more questions fresh from now through December.
21:59
I’ll be giving you pep talks on every stage of the master plan process and hosting a live layout Buster Challenge workshop where I will work on whatever is bothering you about the layout of your house in real time on my share screen tablet. This one’s a really fun one. Don’t miss that.
22:14
So if you’ve got any questions about ready to remodel and whether it works for you, reach out. Send me an Instagram DM, shoot me an email. I would love to chat with you about the program, but mostly one way or another, I want you to get to the underlying why of why your house needs a remodel at all right now and then, based on that, what it should be you.