We dive into Mid-Century Homes. Did you know the secret about the Brady Bunch Home? What are some of the cool things and what should you look for when thinking about buying a Mid-Century Modern Home. All this and MORE in this episode!

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[00:00:04] Eric Goranson: around the house. It wasn't, it was towards the end of that. You know, I don't know the exact age of that house, but that's that, you know, definitely in that sixties look of a house and, you know, with Mr. Brady being an architect, But this is where I sucked Caroline in, because if you go through and map out the inside of the house, it looks

[00:00:28] Eric Goranson: like

[00:00:30] Caroline Blazovsky: of the house or the design of the outside could never be here.

[00:00:45] Intro: existed when it

[00:01:04] Eric Goranson: Thanks for joining us.

[00:01:09] Caroline Blazovsky: what's going on

[00:01:33] Caroline Blazovsky: house.

[00:01:36] Eric Goranson: interested. I sucked you in didn't I, you did.

[00:01:46] Eric Goranson: Okay. So the subject today, I wanted to talk a little bit about the challenges of remodeling, kind of a mid century home to a modern home.

[00:02:17] Eric Goranson: These days that has gone into more of a mid-century to modernist home, you're seeing that get up into, well, like the 1970s, for instance.

[00:02:36] Eric Goranson: you got to keep in mind, not every home built between 19 30, 3 and 1965 had that style, but it was a prevalent style between the fifties and sixties.

[00:03:15] Eric Goranson: post-World war II.

[00:03:19] Eric Goranson: , instead of flying on a prop plane across the country, now you could fly on it in a big silver jet liner, or, you know what I mean? And, and take off and do stuff. And people dressed up in suits and then we get into television, like the Brady bunch, right?

[00:03:38] Caroline Blazovsky: This Eric started talking mid-century modern. And the first thing that popped into my head was the Brady bunch home. That was mid-century mom.

[00:03:57] Eric Goranson: Brady being an architect, [00:04:00] but this is where I sucked Caroline in, because if you go through and map out the inside of the house, it looks absolutely nothing like the outside of the.

[00:04:30] Eric Goranson: Yeah. If you look in there and we've, I, I found a cool YouTube video that does a modeling of the inside. And at the end, did they show what the outside would look at? Look like? And instead of it being a split-level house, it had can leavers. And I mean, they made absolutely no sense. It was the sets of TV, land, TV matches.

[00:04:54] Intro: best

[00:05:11] Eric Goranson: And then the funny part in the back that I always thought it was funny is they never had grass.

[00:05:38] Eric Goranson: So really, , you think about back into these homes and, and this is why I wanted to bring up the challenges of remodeling this era of home. Is there some really cool design and architectural elements to it, but in that, because they were sometimes taking materials and pushing. Too far, they ended up having new systems that were new, [00:06:00] but didn't really stand the test of time.

[00:06:26] Intro: Interesting. I know

[00:06:50] Eric Goranson: Cause you're taking. Radiant heat at the very top. And it's heating the hot part up there. She not getting that. There's not the conduction heat of it. So you're heating the [00:07:00] top of the room where the heat's going to stay up there. So for me, you're hot, you're heating the hot part. So it, it didn't make a lot of sense that way, but that's some of the challenges when you get in.

[00:07:30] Caroline Blazovsky: The only reason it did. Um, at some point was because somebody was a mechanical engineer and he decided to design a commercial system in the house, but most people didn't have central air back then he just put it in cause he was

[00:07:55] Eric Goranson: One, many of these homes were not fastened to their foundations because [00:08:00] it wasn't until. Many areas, the sixties and seventies, California was a little bit before that, but in many places in the country, they didn't start fastening that structure to the foundation until the mid seventies code wasn't pushing for that.

[00:08:39] Eric Goranson: Galvanized pipe ended up having, , at this time of its life right now in 2022 galvanized pipe that was put in in 1965 towards the. It is well past its lifespan,

[00:08:55] Eric Goranson: Yes and no. But the problem that you run into is that. [00:09:00] Why don't you pull up?

[00:09:21] Eric Goranson: That's when you're, that's, when you're looking at a re-pipe for your house. And that's where it gets crazy. When we come back here, I want to talk about really some of the bigger issues that you should be watching out for when you dive into these projects. Just because I love these homes, Caroline, I know you love these homes.

[00:09:53] Eric Goranson: welcome back to the, around the house. Carolyn. And I are sitting here talking about, well, the challenges are remodeling a more [00:10:00] mid-century styled home. And this is this one here is where I want to start talking about something. That's that's big in your wheelhouse, Caroline. I thought we'd start right out about talking about some of the heavy duty materials that were put into this era of home.

[00:10:24] Caroline Blazovsky: And this again is if you are just tuning in a house, if you have a house that was built, let's say from the 1930s to the 1970s, you fall into this mid-century modern correct

[00:10:43] Eric Goranson: Colonial to just a regular, , war box, , Victorian all those other styles, but even any of this mid century era of home, let's not even talk the style. These materials were used in this era of home because it's a style that was hot. It [00:11:00] was the cool, neat thing to be doing. So even if you weren't following the latest, greatest style, you still had many of these same materials in this age of.

[00:11:18] Eric Goranson: on slightly under, , these homes breathe really well. Cause they still didn't understand, , they were using tar papers. Vapor and moisture barrier back then. So they still, , they, they, they, weren't doing all the caulking of windows and a lot of that stuff still wasn't happening at this point in the game

[00:11:46] Caroline Blazovsky: So when they wrap this house, they did the insulation. I guess overextended it to the point that it was almost like they wrap the house back then, do you know what I'm saying? So , instead of having it be separated in any [00:12:00] capacity, they just kind of did a house wrap, which was sort of enough that what they were looking at, energy efficiency back there, the windows were smaller.

[00:12:22] Eric Goranson: energy mid-century style homes, it century style homes.

[00:12:50] Eric Goranson: It was absolutely crazy how you did. There would be in many mid-century homes back in that style, in that modernist style, you would [00:13:00] see the whole complete use of glass and it was absolutely. Amazing how they would do it. And that's one of the things I love about it. But the problem was is that you had single pane glass and, uh, and that's where you run into some of these things.

[00:13:39] Eric Goranson: That was really hot back then.

[00:14:02] Caroline Blazovsky: Uh , a traditional Stockholm, right?

[00:14:20] Eric Goranson: So then you would go upstairs to the kitchen, the living room, , where it was a, you were entering in at that middle level. And those were much more traditional houses where you had just, , decent window sizes. There were usually sliders, , you'd have a big picture window over the staircase.

[00:14:43] Caroline Blazovsky: I think in the north when, , I'm talking about the Northeast, from what we've seen here, I think they went to that more energy efficient model because they had to, right, because they had to conserve with heat and made sure that people, , the, the houses that we're looking at.

[00:15:13] Eric Goranson: Oh, they're huge up here in the, the thing is that's interesting too, is that, the west coast has always had, uh, a little more of a modern twist in the style out here anyway, especially in the Northwest and in California, , look at Palm Springs is how Palm Springs is just absolutely beautiful, but it's filled with mid-century homes.

[00:15:48] Eric Goranson: Concrete as floor that you'd see many times in commercial buildings, like, you'd see it in a, in a bank or a hotel or a casino. And it's that, , when you see that polished concrete floor and it has the silver [00:16:00] or gold little metal bars in it, and they've polished them and they look so gorgeous. You started seeing that in these homes, which was absolutely.

[00:16:22] Eric Goranson: It's absolutely stunning of how it was kind of the entertaining house.

[00:16:48] Eric Goranson: , my mom was a, was a teacher in second grade and she remembers part of their curriculum was taking asbestos and mixing water with it and they would [00:17:00] fire it up in the kilns in second and third grade where the kids were making. Projects out of it. And they would take it home and build , they would build, , a cigarette tray or something for their parents.

[00:17:36] Eric Goranson: Um, it made for a super durable. Lasted for decades from problem was as well. Then you got to clean that up and,

[00:17:54] Eric Goranson: there.

[00:18:26] Intro: Hey guys, you're listening

[00:18:32] Intro: it out while you're building it up.

[00:18:54] Eric Goranson: Northeast versus the Northwest versus Florida versus so Cal [00:19:00] and Palm Springs. And there's definitely some different looks of those homes in those areas.

[00:19:15] Caroline Blazovsky: So out in the west, , the weather permitted and also you had beautiful views, , you had reasons, I'm sure why people wanted to use all that glass and big overhangs. And, and just that structure where in the Northeast, , we had to conserve during that time period, people became real energy conscious, right?

[00:19:48] Caroline Blazovsky: And some

[00:20:18] Eric Goranson: And so that's kind of what interesting. And then when you get into. You know the style. This is where I think if you're going to go buy one of these homes and you're going to remodel it and you're going to hire a contractor with it, I think you should find somebody that is specialized in working in mid century modern homes.

[00:20:59] Caroline Blazovsky: [00:21:00] It's so amazing.

[00:21:20] Caroline Blazovsky: You'd almost need someone who really specializes in that type of glass open area.

[00:21:42] Eric Goranson: And, , nowadays though, there's so many things you can do to that house, like putting in UV coatings on the glass so that you don't have the Walnut furniture. Changing color and going blonde on you and baking out in the sun and hurting those fabrics and things like that. So there's [00:22:00] a lot of different options where you can put in windows systems that look beautiful, but it'll be so much more efficient and it starts to pay itself off.

[00:22:27] Eric Goranson: And so you go to replace a window and now you're reframing a wall. It's a really common occurrence in some of these more mid-century style homes here in our area.

[00:22:47] Caroline Blazovsky: And the issue was all of the windows had substantial rot. Everything had to be removed because there were no overhangs, no protection at all. And then I guess whoever had installed the [00:23:00] siding over, under, , over whatever had originally been under there. It could have been as fast as it could have been would who knows what the signing was originally, but they did it wrong and everything had brought it out.

[00:23:17] Eric Goranson: Absolutely. , some of the things that I, and I'll be honest when I run into a mid century home and if it has asbestos siding on the outside, I'm going to try to talk you into keeping that

[00:23:30] Caroline Blazovsky: tough call.

[00:23:43] Intro: never

[00:23:46] Eric Goranson: It doesn't, it's a mineral. I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a system made out of a mineral.

[00:24:13] Eric Goranson: As long as it's not shipping and it's in good shape. So to me, it's like, man, put a good coat of paint on it and if it looks good, embrace it and use it for what it is. Cause it's. It's going to outlive you on the side of that house.

[00:24:35] Caroline Blazovsky: If you start disturbing it and becomes airborne or you're working on your pipes or you're taking up your nine by nine, always remember if you've got these funky looking tiles in your house that are sort of a peculiar side. And they're from that era of time, chances are they're asbestos and you have to have them removed appropriately and make sure that they're not getting airborne when you're taking all that stuff out and disturbing

[00:24:55] Eric Goranson: Yeah, here's what I see. And this is the testing that I've done with [00:25:00] asbestos and remodeling over the years, nine by nine tiles. Somehow that era I've got about a 70% chance when I've tested those, that those end up being asbestos containing with.

[00:25:19] Caroline Blazovsky: They don't, they're not like a linoleum.

[00:25:40] Eric Goranson: They made decades before and decades after. So during that timeframe, those nine by nine and 12 by twelves, many times were just up. There's the nine inch version. There's the 12 inch version. And there are made on the same line, the same material, same everything, but because the nine by nines were very much in that certain area.

[00:26:22] Eric Goranson: And then of course you got that as best as black mastic that may be holding it down to the ground. Yeah.

[00:26:39] Caroline Blazovsky: With the impression that I'm not going to disturb it, which is not a bad cop. But when you start digging around in these older houses and they usually have six, some of these houses can have six, seven floors. Like if you I've seen houses built in 19 10, 19 20, and you just keep pulling up floor after floor after floor, chances are, you're getting one of these underneath there.

[00:27:19] Eric Goranson: And to change the dishwasher because it was captured in there. Cause they didn't take the floor underneath the dishwasher is you had to halfway just assemble the dishwasher to get it in there and take the wood edge off the countertop just to get the dishwasher and that replaced it. It was very captured.

[00:27:53] Eric Goranson: It looks so good because there's so many products out on the, on the market right now for these homes. And we'll [00:28:00] do that just as soon as around the house returns.

[00:28:33] Eric Goranson: everybody. I'm already command from even novels

[00:28:43] Eric Goranson: Welcome back to the round, the house show. Carolyn and I have been talking about , mid century homes and of homes of that. And it doesn't have to be a mid century modern home, but a lot of these same materials were used in homes of this era.

[00:29:11] Eric Goranson: So we're

[00:29:33] Caroline Blazovsky: They seem to versus what we use now for using dry wall or sheet rock, they would breathe. And so you'd think you'd take them down and they'd be moldy, but they actually. Stood the test of time. And so they were allowing vapor to kind of pass through. And so I asked Eric his opinion. Do you think we should go back to paneling?

[00:30:17] Eric Goranson: The problem with paneling that we see in these older homes is when you have a fire sheet rock has that natural ability to slow fire down, get you out of a house, but when you're in a wood box, You're going up, you're going up. It's it's not a good thing. Do I love the mid-century homes with paneling on the walls and the ceiling and in words, a lighter tone, not the super dark, but the lighter tones where it's got cool figure in the plywood has got a little bit of orangy color to it.

[00:31:07] Caroline Blazovsky: then when we. Deconstructed the house and took all that paneling off.

[00:31:24] Eric Goranson: Depending, you know, it's yeah. It's, it's depending on the house, many times, if your code didn't require it, then they'd put it right over the studs.

[00:31:50] Eric Goranson: Where maybe it was drywall just due to budget. And they came in and put that over the top of it, or they

[00:31:58] Eric Goranson: the basement and like that. Yeah. I [00:32:00] mean, I remember his kid putting a penalty with my dad in the basement, you know, when it was drywall first. So, you know, and, and so it's one of those things.

[00:32:24] Eric Goranson: But as we do that addition, I'm not going to build, I'm going to have a contractor buddy do it for me. A lot of it just due to time, I'm adding more mid century. Styles that are going to be kind of before that 1977 house, there's going to be some, some sixties ask and even fifties asks things that are gonna go put into this to make this a little bit of a different retro house, but it it's my house.

[00:32:58] Caroline Blazovsky: Right [00:33:00] paneled man-cave I think we should bring paneling back around the house, bring paneling back.

[00:33:08] Eric Goranson: I've had so many people give me grief over man cave was you're a woman cave, it's like, oh, here we go again. I call it the Dan. That's why I call it. I'm going to go old school and go it's the dead man cave. , it was Dan. It was

[00:33:30] Caroline Blazovsky: Paneling. Yeah,

[00:33:49] Eric Goranson: People would come in, come down. That was the furniture that many moms told their kids not to fit, honestly, in that room to I sit on that couch. If I catch you sitting on the couch, I'm going to bust your [00:34:00] hand. That's how that. , and no, I mean, I knew if I went playing up there, sitting in the car, if, if I walked into as a kid, if my mom walked into the front living room by our front door and she saw me sitting on the couch, she's like, are you waiting for somebody to come to the door?

[00:34:39] Eric Goranson: There's a ton of them. I mean, I want to find that mid-century mailbox. I found a couple of them that I'm going to do for my house, that I just thought that's cool. I'm going to do that once I'm done. There's so many mailbox. You don't know what a mid-century mailbox is. Oh my gosh, , let me, um, let me pull it up here and I'm going to talk to you about it because these are little details that I [00:35:00] absolutely.

[00:35:24] Eric Goranson: , they look really cool. You could have some fun with it. And so they've got that kind of bend in the door. So the they're, they're just, , different angles. I'm showing a rejuvenation one right here. That's really cool. It's $355 for a stinking mailbox, but it does look cool, but your retro, but it's the style I'm looking for.

[00:36:00] Caroline Blazovsky: flat, even the flag that comes up, I call it the flag, but it's that, , it's got an angled triangle flag.

[00:36:08] Eric Goranson: I worked for a winery years ago, uh, on weekends and I was working for wine and it worked out pretty good. So there was kids that would come by. We have this big, , the bigger industrial mailboxes, like a business mailbox with the full down door arch top, , the big, the big one.

[00:36:49] Eric Goranson: And I think it was actually 15 inches around. Cause we fit the mailbox inside of it and bolted it down and then did an I-beam down to the ground into concrete. And we did some, some bolts. So in [00:37:00] case somebody hit it there, wasn't going to be like, they hit a wall. If somebody ran into it, loss control, we put some shear bolts on it.

[00:37:28] Eric Goranson: So the kids went by swung the bat out of the mailbox. And we have a few, we probably broke somebody's arm because when it hit that it bent the bat at a 45 degree angle and shot it back and broke out the back window of the car and dropped it there when they hit.

[00:37:51] Eric Goranson: last time we'll do that to a

[00:37:53] Intro: Yeah,

[00:37:55] Eric Goranson: mailbox. It was pretty funny, but , come back to wrap up a nice little bow around this [00:38:00] before we head out. It's a big style, but , there's so many things to take into account. If you're going to hire a contractor, find one that specializes in it. Cause they're out there and every one of those marks.

[00:38:12] Caroline Blazovsky: I mean, how do you go about finding someone that's a mid-century contrast? , someone who's focuses on that. How do you research that to find somebody

[00:38:31] Eric Goranson: Find out who the remodeler was. Karolina hear that music in the background. You know what time it is? It's time to wrap it up on the go I'm Eric G and I'm Caroline B and you've been listening