178: Wait. That's Historic?

Audio Transcript (video transcript below)

0:00

In today's episode, we're talking about the 50-year rule of historic preservation, which sounds great until you do the math.

And later you'll meet Sarah, who's bringing a mid-century modern gem back to its original design and condition.

But first, I'm Stacy Grinsfelder, and you're listening to True Tales From Old Houses.

0:25

Hello everyone.

Welcome to the show if it's your first time, and welcome back to everyone else.

I have an announcement here at the top of the show, but before we get into it, I do want to take a moment to thank our sponsors, Sutherland Welles, Bruns and Co, Linseed Oil Paint, Heritage Supply Co, and Repaint Studios.

0:44

They support the kind of thoughtful stewardship that we talk about every week, and I'm really grateful that I get to connect companies like these to the Old House community.

So please shop with confidence and use my coupon codes.

They're there for you.

Now, the announcement, Brad and I, you may know him as Itty Bitty Bungalow.

1:01

We are excited that we are teaming up again to offer the Woodwindow workshop that we like to call Window Camp.

It's the fourth summer in a row we're having it 2 weekends again, July 10th through 12th and July 17th through 19th.

Now, normally, we've had this, we've called it the wood window workshop at Silver Lake.

1:18

This year we're having a venue change because Epworth Hall, which is located on the Silver Lake Institute property, is having some much-needed structural work.

It's actually up on Caribbean right now, which is pretty impressive for a giant building.

We're still going to be using the windows from Epworth Hall, but we are moving to my little town, my little village.

1:39

I am so excited to welcome you into my home and teach right at Blake Hill House.

So starting on Friday afternoon each weekend, you'll get a full weekend of hands-on window restoration instruction geared towards DI wires.

You'll learn how to restore a window from start to finish.

1:55

That includes some lead safety instruction.

And you'll be able to take what you learn back to work on the windows at your house and share it within your community if the opportunity presents itself, which I hope it will.

Now, during the weekend, we'll talk about best practices and supplies.

And you'll get a chance to use a bunch of products and tools that you may have heard about but never used, including things like steam boxes, infrared tools, and special types of scrapers.

2:20

And we'll talk about linseed oil paint.

We did that new for last year.

We'll do it again this year.

It is a work-forward weekend, but there is fun built in as well.

You'll get a tour of Blake Hill House, which I love to do.

That'll be Friday night, along with an opening social.

I don't really know what else to call it.

We'll have food, we'll have drinks, and then on Saturday, Brad is arranging an after-hours excursion.

2:40

What we're doing is still to be determined.

He's working on that, but it will be followed with what he likes to call drinks and hangs at my favorite local brewery.

They also serve non alcoholic drinks.

My little village is completely walkable, and I can't wait to introduce you to all that it has to offer.

2:56

So here are some things to know if you're considering coming.

It is 20 minutes from the Buffalo, New York, airport.

It's half a day's drive, give or take, from places like Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Erie, Philadelphia, New York City, the Hudson Valley, Toronto, Canada.

3:12

I'm actually kind of really close to the border there.

Fort Wayne, Indiana, those are just to name a few.

Again, those weekends are July 10th through 12th and July 17th through 19th.

Now, the Monday right after, oh, I should clarify, you choose one or the other, not both, because it's the exact same thing both weekends and a Monday following each of those.

3:33

There's an optional free skills practice on the morning.

So if you want to extend your time in the area a little bit more, you can practice in the morning and then do something fun in the afternoon.

We have early bird pricing in effect until April 30th.

The tickets we sell are single tickets, or you can also sign up as a duo for an even deeper discount, which means you grab somebody to bring with you.

3:56

We've had father-daughter duos, we've had mother-daughter, sisters.

That was fun last year, and then we've had friends that sign up together.

So that is an option.

We're also offering one scholarship per weekend that you can apply for if you feel like that's something that you want to apply for.

Now, I do want to say that in the past, one weekend or both have sold out, so keep that in mind.

4:18

If you think you want to come, you might want to consider signing up sooner rather than later.

Just something to take note of.

You can learn more and book your spot at my personal website, whichisblakehillhouse.com.

I hope to see you there.

We always have a lot of fun.

4:34

It's a lot of work, but also a lot of fun.

All right, now, if you have listened to this podcast for any length of time, you know that many of us are drawn to pre-war architecture.

We love our fancy woodwork, old-growth lumber, wavy glass.

Those are the things we find a lot in Victorians, Craftsman homes, Colonials, Italianates, early 20th-century bungalows.

4:55

We like what we like.

It seems like there's already a broad agreement of some kind, at least within our old house community, that these types of houses matter and that they're worth admiring, saving, and preserving.

I would say that the nonprofits that support them make that pretty clear.

5:12

We might like something just because it's pretty, but in the preservation field, it's it's not arbitrary.

There's also a professional benchmark that's based on time, and it's something that's commonly called the 50-year rule.

And the 50-year rule comes from the National Park Service.

It's part of the criteria used for the National Register of Historic Places.

5:30

In general, a building needs to be 50 years old to be considered eligible for the National Register.

There are some exceptions, like Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water.

It was only 30 years old when it was placed on the National Register in 1966.

And the Gateway Arch, I chose that exception for a reason because last week on the Minnesota, or whatever the heck we're calling it right now, I shared 2 observations from the State of Preservation project from Saint Louis.

5:56

But the Gateway Arch, it was built in 1965.

It was put on the National Register in 1970.

It was only a baby at five years old, so there are exceptions, but for the most part, the National Park Service doesn't even consider nominations to the National Register until buildings are at least 50 years old.

6:17

The 50-year rule, to be clear, does not mean that the second a building turns 50, it's automatically protected.

And being placed on the National Register doesn't mean it's protected either.

But that's a story for another day.

But the idea is that after 50 years, at least enough time has passed for us collectively, I guess, society, whatever, enough time has passed for us to evaluate the building with some historical perspective to see whether it represents a significant moment in architecture, culture, or community life.

6:48

In other words, 50 years creates a little distance.

Now is kind of an interesting time because we're crossing a threshold with entire eras of architecture that many of us never thought of as historic.

Things like post war ranches, split levels, brutalist civic structures, shopping malls, maybe even some office buildings.

7:11

I'm not saying that any of these are historically significant; I'm just saying that they have reached the age where we can begin evaluating them that way.

Because math doesn't lie, even when I wanted to.

I was thinking about this the other day.

I did not grow up in a suburban neighborhood, so I don't have a lot of perspective on this.

7:29

But I imagine that some of you do.

And it must be really hard to imagine that someday the suburban neighborhood that you grew up in may become a historic district because it serves as a pristine example of a neighborhood from that time period.

It might actually happen.

Give it time.

7:45

I mean, that shift is happening.

Another thing I was thinking about is that part of what makes this whole thing interesting, what makes the 50-year rule interesting from the perspective of someone like me or Someone Like You who is outside of the National Park Service?

8:03

I guess I should say, is that there's nostalgia involved.

The ranch house might look like your grandparents' home.

The split-level might look like the house your parents grew up in, and the panelled basement might remind you of some holidays or ordinary Tuesday nights.

8:20

Or I think a ghost story, a Ouija board.

Didn't we talk about that?

Wasn't there a panelled room or something involved in Robert's ghost story?

In one of the 1st two episodes of the season? Anyway,

There's a point where children grow up, and we start looking at the homes that our parents lived in or the houses that we lived in as kids, and those spaces begin to feel meaningful in a different way.

8:44

You know, if our relationships were good, then the houses start to represent stability, routine, maybe even ordinary life.

And ordinary life, given enough time, becomes history.

Around the 50-year mark, personal memory starts to shift into collective memory.

9:01

The houses that once seemed ugly, I'm just going to say it, they once seemed ugly or even slightly embarrassing.

They begin to feel representative of an era.

That's the crossroads we're standing at right now.

The definition of old house keeps moving, and historic preservation is asking us to widen the lens.

9:23

Not to love everything equally and not to romanticize every era, but to recognize when the places that we took for granted start becoming part of the historic landscape.

Mid-century modern homes are a really good example of that.

When they were first built, they were not universally loved by any means, in part because they looked so radically different from what people expected a house to look like.

9:46

But now we're getting more comfortable recognizing that type of architecture as part of the historic landscape, and Sarah's home falls right into that category.

Still modern in many people's minds, but old enough to be part of the preservation story.

10:02

So I invited her onto the show to talk about it, and her story is coming up next.

But first, a quick break.

10:21

True Tales from Old Houses is supported by Sutherland Welles.

Sutherland Welles makes traditional oil finishes for you, today's owners of old homes.

Their finishes rejuvenate and protect old wood, restoring its beauty and helping maintain it for the future.

Sutherland Welles handcrafts their polymerized tung oil finishes in Providence, Rhode Island, using high-quality American-grown tung oil, and they make their products in small batches in-house to ensure consistency and quality.

10:48

Now, I can certainly vouch for that because I've used Murdoch's hard sealer for the wainscoting in my upstairs bathroom, the one I just told you about, Botanical for baseboards, Slicky Wicky, Millies, Teddy’s, and I regularly use Clarabelle's mixed with my oil primer.

Sutherland Welles products are also low-VOC or VOC-exempt, and honestly, that matters when you are living in your house while you're working on it.

11:11

To get 10% off your first order, visit Sutherland Welles.

That's W-E-L-L-E-S, SutherlandWelles.com, and use the coupon code TRUETALES26. 

True Tales from Old Houses is also supported by Brouns & Co. Linseed oil paint.

11:29

While modern paints rely on plastics, synthetic pigments, and chemical drying agents, Brouns & Co. creates linseed oil paint the traditional way, using slow-boiled flax oil and natural mineral pigments.

Linseed oil paint doesn't form a plastic skin like modern paint.

It penetrates wood and metal, protecting from the inside out, just as it did on historic homes, barns, and landmarks across Europe and early America.

11:53

The result is a finish that ages beautifully, never peels or blisters, and lasts decades, not years.

Now look, I have the same questions that many listeners do about linseed oil paint, climate limitations, the learning curve.

So we answered those in episode 164.

12:09

And then I used Brunsenko linseed oil paint on the windows in my sleeping porch and the bedroom at Blake Hill House.

The application was straightforward and the finish cured to a smooth, durable surface. Using it in a real project

That's what finally made it click.

12:26

I understood why linseed oil paint performed so well over time, making it ideal for historic preservation and perfect for modern, thoughtful restoration. Brouns & Co is trusted by preservation professionals and homeowners who value authenticity. Learn more at Linseeoilpaint.com 

12:48

Welcome back.

You already have the context for my conversation with Sarah, so rather than say anything else, we're just going to get straight to it.

Hi, my name is Sarah, and I live in a 1957 mid-century house in Columbia, SC, and it's known as 1957 house down South on Instagram.

13:07

Hi, Sarah.

Hi.

I'm really happy that you're here because we don't do or we haven't done really any mid-century homes here on True Tales from Old Houses.

This is really new territory for us.

I don't know if you remember or I'm sure listeners will remember that Daniel and I somehow could not stop talking about Luster and homes.

13:27

Our conversations, they spanned a few seasons, and then I interviewed Laura on episode 166, and then Daniel and I touched on prefab options and Usonian ideas.

But this is different.

Our conversation is going to be different.

You are the 1st guest who's truly lived in a mid-century, I guess mid-century modern home.

13:48

You live there every day, and I just love how thoughtful and intentional that you've been about caring for it.

So welcome to the show.

Well, thank you.

It feels like such an honor to be the first mid-century homeowner on the podcast.

14:03

I've been a listener for a long time, so I'm very excited that you're venturing into the world of mid-century homes.

Yeah, I don't really know what took us so long, honestly. What's wrong with us?

Well, I do feel like the the mid-century houses are gaining momentum in popularity, but for the longest time, I think most people didn't see them as old houses.

14:23

They just sort of saw them as the houses that their grandmothers lived in or their grandparents lived in.

And they just, I think for a lot of people just seemed a little dated, but not necessarily an old house that could be loved and made into something beautiful.

Yeah, I think we're getting there.

14:39

I think you're absolutely right about that.

And what is the definition of historic now is, you know, anything over 50 years.

So we're getting there, you know, the 80s, and my goodness, I can't think of anything from the 80s right now, architecturally, that's really all that interesting quite yet.

But we'll get there.

Catch me in 20 years, and we'll think, oh gosh, this great house from the 80s that's on True Tales From Old Houses.

15:00

But I don't know, we'll see.

Have you always been a fan of mid-century homes?

So, not always, it's sort of been, I'd say recent, but probably the past maybe 15 years that I became really interested in mid-century design.

The 1st house that I ever lived in on my own as an adult was a new construction sort of mass development house.

15:23

And so it was just kind of cookie-cutter and looked like everyone else's home.

And as I was trying to get my own style in terms of decorating that house, I came across a Drexel Declaration dining room table on Instagram.

And I thought, wow, that's so clean and yet still organic and beautiful.

15:44

And so I latched on to that.

And that was my first ever mid-century purchase, that piece of furniture.

And that was just the start of something much, much bigger.

And I ended up really getting into mostly furniture, then sort of accessories.

15:59

And then when I was deciding to move, I decided I wanted to look at mid-century architecture and really just jump in.

And so that's what led to 1957 House down South.

Interesting, So how did you find the house?

16:15

So that was a really long journey.

Like I said in the intro, I live in Columbia, SC.

The South is not known really for mid-century architecture, particularly mid-century modern architecture.

16:30

The architecture that's really appreciated in the South tends to be more traditional design.

So just finding a real estate agent who understood what I was looking for was the first sort of hurdle, getting them to understand what was the design and the style that I wanted.

16:47

And I found a wonderful agent, and then just became the slow process of actually finding a mid-century modern house and not just a mid-century house.

Right, two different things for sure.

Exactly.

Yes.

And the mid-century has mid-century traditional, mid-century colonial.

17:04

There was a lot of different design movements happening at that time, and I was particularly interested in mid-century modern.

And so it was just slow.

There weren't a lot of houses on the market.

It took about probably 8 years of looking.

There were a couple that I considered.

17:22

The problem that I ran into was because it's not a popular style, there were a lot of renovated homes.

So there were not a lot of houses that had what I considered to be architecturally significant details on the interior still intact, let alone on the exterior.

17:38

Most everything had been painted.

There were a couple that I considered, and then 1957 House Down South came on the market.

And a funny thing about the houses is when I came on the market, I had actually been inside the house before.

Really.

Yes.

It was on a historic Columbia, which is our local historical organization.

17:58

They did a mid-century modern tour in the spring every year for a few years, and this was a house on that tour before I was really deep diving into mid-century design, and I remember going into the house and thinking it wasn't that special.

18:16

And that was sure my only memory of it.

I kind of popped in and popped out and thought, oh, it's not doesn't seem very mid-century to me.

I don't know why they have this house on the tour.

And then it ended up going on for sale And I realized in that moment it was the way that it was staged or the family who lived in it did not have a mid-century aesthetic.

18:35

So they sort of designed the interior of the house and furnished it with more traditional furnishings.

And you really kind of couldn't see past that to see what were really intact mid-century design details.

So the house came on the market, It was significantly out of my price range.

18:55

And so I thought, oh, this is sad.

This is kind of the closest I'm going to get to this intact mid-century house.

And the house ended up just kind of lingering on the market for another about 8 months.

And so I just kept an eye on it, kept watching it, and eventually put in an offer and it was immediately rejected.

19:16

And I thought, OK, this is really it.

I have to give up on this house, and it's up for a few more months.

And then I was like, let's just give it one more go and see.

And so about 30 days later, we had a deal.

And that was in August of 2020.

19:31

And then we closed in November of 2020 and started the journey to kind of make it our own.

So let me see if I understand.

So you, you had seen it on a tour, and it was staged differently than or it was furnished differently than you would have.

So you didn't really notice the details.

19:46

But then, when you toured it as a potential homeowner, then you saw it differently.

That's when you started seeing, wow, all these details are here.

Everything I want is here in this house.

Yes.

So when I went to tour it with the agent, the couple had already started moving almost everything out of it.

20:03

So it was pretty much just a shell.

It was.

There was hardly any furniture in it at all.

And that was the first time.

Then I thought, Oh my gosh, the den is, you know, lofted.

And I hadn't noticed that before.

And there's this amazing screen and the entry.

And you think that would have just like hit you smack in the face when you walk in.

20:21

But for whatever reason, it was just all this oversized furniture that really took away from all these details.

And there were very large rugs everywhere, so you couldn't see the parquet.

So yeah, it wasn't until I saw the house nearly empty, though, I thought, OK, there's a lot left here.

20:38

Of course, there was a lot that had been changed.

I don't have any original bathrooms, and that's sort of 1 project that I'm working to bring back.

So that's sort of the biggest one was all the I wanted an original bathroom, and that was sort of the thing that I had to concede with the house was just, I wasn't going to get that, but I can bring it back.

20:57

Before we pivot to that, let's talk about the architect, because I know it was built by an architect, or designed by an architect, I should say, rather.

When I purchased the house, I did not know that it was architect-designed until we were doing the negotiations for the contract.

So that's when I learned that it was designed by a local architect named Mader Erlstein, and there were some things that conveyed with the house to every owner.

21:21

So I'm the 5th owner of the property, and as part of the conveyance in the contract, what also conveyed was AIA Merit certificate.

So it won an American Institute of Architects Local Merit Award in 1957.

So I have that award and also the newspaper article from 1957 in December, when all of the merit award winners were announced.

21:44

So I have that as well and the blueprints for the house.

So I have both the architect's set of blueprints and then also the set of blueprints that were provided to the workers in the field every day.

So I have two sets of blueprints, which is really amazing.

Yeah, that's so neat.

22:00

And I love, I love learning, I love research.

So when I had those things in my hand, I just thought, I have to know more about him and the house and his design style.

So I just started researching.

I went to newspapers.com and went to local library researches just to see what I can find searching his name and searching the address of the property.

22:24

He designed several mid-century modern buildings in Colombia as well as several residences, and they were all mid-century modern.

He also lived in Charleston for a while and designed houses down there on the coast.

And I actually had the opportunity to send Mr. Pearlstein a letter.

22:42

He was still alive when I purchased the house.

He was in his 90s.

And I sent him a letter and told him who I was, and was grateful.

I did receive a short letter back to him, sort of explaining what he remembered about the house.

And he unfortunately then passed about six months later.

22:58

So he is no longer with us.

But he has definitely left a mark on Columbia in terms of modernism.

Have you been able to reach out to any other homeowners or any of those building owners, and you've been able to communicate with each other and find out if there are other, you know, original features still intact from some of these other homes?

23:16

Yes.

So I have been in touch with two of the daughters of the original owners.

Their names were Edwin and Shirley Copeland.

Edwin was a business owner; he owned a variety of businesses in Columbia, and Shirley was a homemaker, and they had four children, 3 girls and a boy.

23:33

And I have been in touch with two of the surviving daughters, and they have been very helpful.

They're also a little older, but they're really excited to hear from someone who was excited about the house that they grew up in.

So it's been fun to learn from them some of the details that they recall about the house.

23:53

And we've been able to implement some of those changes based on what they recall, which has been a lot of fun.

And I've been in touch with all of the past owners before me, and about, I guess it was last summer, I got in touch with the first owner who purchased it from the estate of the Copelands when the Copelands passed.

24:13

And they had pictures from when they purchased the house, and it was in the early 2000s.

So it was sort of really not great digital photos, but it was really exciting to see.

Even though the quality wasn't great, I was able to see things that I didn't realize were original features.

24:30

And one of those was 2 sets of bullet lights in the dining room that I thought were just can lights.

And they sent this picture and I thought, Oh my gosh, that's so strange that there's two sort of pull-down bullet lights right where those can lights exist.

And I had lived in the house for almost five years by then.

24:48

So I walk over, and I grab a dining room chair, and I sit in under the light, and I look up, and I think, I think it's just pushed up in there.

I think the light is just pushed up inside.

And sure enough, I'm standing on the chair, and I pull it down.

I thought, how are there?

There's just many little hidden features in this house that I've lived in, and they were both still there.

25:07

Someone had just kind of pushed them up and made them can lights.

So that fun little finds like that that I never would have thought of had I not seen the picture of the dining room from that early 2000s picture.

Oh, that's neat, little treasures in there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Have you uncovered other things like that or things that you saw in pictures that you were able to find in the house after?

25:27

Yes.

So another one was which I was very excited about.

So I knew that two of the bedrooms had built-in units, and I knew that from the Daughters.

So it was both of their rooms.

And they told me that there was like a built-in dresser and desk, and they were asking me if these things were still there.

25:43

And I'm like, Oh no, unfortunately, they're not there.

So then, when I got the pictures from the first owner who purchased from the trust in the estate, they had pictures of both bedrooms, and they had pictures of both built-ins.

And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is exactly what we need.

And in the girls' rooms, there were two pegboards on either side of the desk where they could, you know, hang a little artwork or baskets or whatever.

26:05

And I thought, that looks so familiar.

Why do those pegboards look so familiar?

Like they're not there.

And then probably the next week, I'm in the shed in the backyard, and I'm getting the lawnmower out to mow the grass.

And I look up, and there's the pegboard sitting in the outside shed that they had clearly just taken down and moved it over to the outside shed.

26:25

And I thought, Oh my God, there's one of them.

Like, this is crazy.

And then a couple months go by, and I'm getting ready for Christmas, and I'm going down to a different exterior unit.

This place has storage galore.

It sounds like it.

And I go under the house and it's like a sort of like a little workspace under the house.

26:43

And that's where I store some of my exterior Christmas stuff.

And so I'm getting that out, and I look to my left, and there's the other pegboard hanging on the wall.

Oh, wow.

And so immediately we're taking those down, and we have since refinished them, repainted them, and they're back where they always belonged in the girls' bedrooms.

26:59

So that's been fun.

Little exciting things like that.

That's really neat.

You talked about how you moved into the house, and you needed to go back and restore the bathrooms because this really is a restoration project.

I mean, we kind of sometimes people use the restoration and rehab and whatever, but you, you are trying to restore the bathrooms back to original, which I find really inspiring.

27:23

So I guess my questions would be twofold.

First, how do you find out what they look like?

Maybe you have pictures or information from the past.

Maybe you've already partially answered that.

But the second is, how do you find what you are looking for to bring those bathrooms back to original?

27:40

Thankfully, I do have photos, and those are the photos that I mentioned before.

So I have photos of the three original bathrooms.

So I at least know the color of tile and general layout, which has been very helpful.

And of course, I know that from the blueprints too, I can see what the layouts of the original bathrooms looked like.

28:00

So the process of just sort of putting all that back together is then figuring out, OK, so I have a picture of the sink.

What is this sink that I'm looking at?

Thankfully for things like Google Lens and Vintage Faucet Shop in Chicago keeps a wonderful website of vintage, colorful things that go in the bathroom.

28:22

And so it's just a lot of just research, just looking online and trying to piece it together and say, does this look like the picture?

Did the handles look like the picture?

And so thankfully too with the blueprints, I do have a schedule list of quite a few things, so I can at least kind of tell brands.

28:38

So I know that all of the bathrooms had crane products.

So I learned that the sinks in all the bathrooms were Crane Criterion sinks, which then sort of pieced together that probably everything else in there was Crane Criterion as well.

That starts the process, and then it's actually finding the pieces to put back in.

28:59

And that can be more challenging.

Sometimes it's simple.

Sometimes you can go on Facebook Marketplace, and someone's, you know, ripping out an old bathroom, and there's a blue commode ready for you.

Just come pick it up.

I wasn't quite that lucky with the sinks.

Crane, I think, is a little more challenging to find.

29:17

And so I did use the shop in Chicago.

They thankfully had two pink Criterion sinks for the first bathroom that we're restoring.

So I did purchase those there and have them shipped in.

It's a lot of just looking, figuring out where you can find it, and if it's feasible to get it to where you need it to be.

29:36

Because a lot of things are just in, they're too far away or they don't ship.

So you have to decide, am I willing to go get it, or can I find a way to get it here?

Are you open to replicas or are you looking purely for original I'm?

Looking purely for original, I am, yes so quite a purist when it comes to putting it all back.

29:55

The goal is really to get it back to as much as I can as it existed in 1957 as possible.

I love it.

How about things like tile?

How do you handle tile?

I'm so glad you asked about tile because I did forget to mention that.

So the tile is sort of similar.

30:13

I was able just by continually looking for Google Images and looking for vintage tile samples, I was able to determine what the main bathroom we're working on right now is what I call the pink and blue bathroom.

So that's where the crane sinks were.

30:29

And then also there was a teal blue tile that sort of had like a striped pattern on it.

And of course, that's not manufactured anymore.

So I began reaching out to persons who deal with custom tile to see if anybody could recreate it.

30:46

And thankfully, I was able to find someone who's willing to hand-paint all of the tiles to exist as they existed in that bathroom.

And so that's the route we're going to kind of get that as close as possible to what that tile looked like.

31:02

But they're great in terms of that's just the countertop tile, the rest of the tiles, just regular 4x4 tiles.

And so there are companies that still do the 1950s and 60s vintage tile colors.

BMW Tile in California is one that I know that does it.

31:17

It's a replica, but it's also exactly as they produced it in the 1950s.

Nothing about their process has changed.

What color is it, just in the in the colors you're talking about too, and the blue or the teal or whatever?

Yes.

So they have an array of colors.

BMW has every color that you can imagine in terms of wanting for a mid-century bathroom.

31:37

Yellow, purple, burgundy, pink, Teal.

I was picturing those four-by-fours when you were talking about your bathroom.

I was thinking, I bet they're square tiles.

That's what I'm picturing.

Square tiles, yeah. four-by-fours.

If you want to do a mid-century bathroom, you can't go wrong with four-by-fours.

31:52

How about the kitchen?

Was it intact?

So it was. Thankfully, the kitchen was intact.

However, it was sort of a slight little renovation done by the original owners in the 1970s, and it's very 70s.

It's very brown.

Was Orange was there? Was Orange involved? There was not.

32:10

Orange involved that I've been able to see, which is is shocking.

I wouldn't have been surprised if they had some orange or some avocado in there, but it was, it was just a lot of brown.

So all of the original cabinets are intact.

They replaced the floors in the countertops with both would have been some sort of like linoleum or laminate product in the 1950s.

32:29

And we're actually working on the kitchen, and we were not able to find a contractor who was willing to take on the cabinets because the cabinets had been actually restained a really dark brown.

And contractors were just like, it's too time-consuming, we don't want to strip it.

32:46

It's not going to be worth your time.

We can bring in these really beautiful other cabinets for you and they'll look exactly the same.

And of course, they said that's just not going to work for me.

Yeah, good for you.

Stick to your project there the way you want it to be.

Yeah, yeah.

So it was really important to me that we kept the original cabinets, and I was able to find a woodworker in Columbia who has stripped all of my hallway doors for me because they were all painted.

33:13

Of course, everything got painted somewhere along the way.

So he stripped all those doors, and I said, hey, would you be willing to take on stripping some cabinet doors, maybe 42 of them?

And he said, sure, let's give it a shot.

I can't come do the bases, so you would have to do those yourself, but let's do it.

33:32

And I said, OK, so looking at my kitchen right now, and I have sort of partially stripped cabinet bases and no cabinet fronts, and we're just going to make it work and then sort of piece together the rest.

Are you stripping the finish and then bringing the stain lighter?

33:49

Is that what you're doing?

Yes, that's what we're doing.

Yeah.

So the cabinet bases were actually painted, and then the cabinet doors were stained, but both are dark brown.

So we're stripping the brown paint off of the bases themselves, and then we'll do a light sanding, and then the wood is the rest of the oak in the house, like in this room.

34:11

So we'll just have that stained back to sort of match everything else.

Wow, So you're getting the house in order, and it's going to look as it was built in 1957.

And the other thing that I find so interesting, and you'd mentioned this in the dining room table, that you initially found that kind of started you on the path to this mid-century love.

34:30

But you were furnishing the house from the mid-century as well, making the entire house match that era, which I find sort of fascinating because not everybody leans in that hard.

No, they really don't, but I actually don't understand why not.

34:48

Yes, we'll go for it.

Yeah, why not?

It's a lot of fun.

The thing about mid-century design was that it was designed for the masses and to have this very casual but also forward-looking feel.

35:04

So the furniture is really fun, the textiles are really interesting, and the quality of the furniture is just exponentially better than anything you're going to find today.

I think some people shy away from mid-century furniture because furniture, they'll say, well, it's laminate and it's not solid wood.

35:24

Well, that laminate is still better quality than most furniture you're going to find even in stores today.

So I'd tell you, don't let that keep you from purchasing mid-century furniture.

So yes, I'm all into mid-century design, I guess.

35:41

There's only one piece of furniture left in the house that's not period.

And that's a bed frame that's on its way out because we're having a new one constructed by a Carpenter.

So yeah.

And I also think it's worth mentioning now I'm living part time in an apartment as well, and we ended up furnishing the apartment in used mid-century furniture.

36:02

So I tend to agree with you that it does hold up so much better.

And we partly did that because right around the corner is the store and we can just go buy it and then just walk it over.

We don't have to load it up because we don't really have a truck or anything like that.

So we just go buy it and walk it over here.

36:18

And it's kind of a silly process.

We just walk the furniture home.

But it does, it seems to last.

They take it into the shop, they spruce it up a little bit, they reupholster what they need to reupholster and then sell it from there and it's great.

Even everything that's laminated is pretty much in perfect condition.

36:35

It's fantastic stuff for sure.

Yeah, it is great.

And I, I can appreciate The Walking furniture back.

I have a very small car and I call it the clown car because somehow I have managed to fit very long dressers in there and other things that should not have fit under any scenario, but yet I managed to make it work.

36:51

But I always joke that eventually I'm going to bite off more than I can chew and I'm going to have to just leave something in the middle of the highway somewhere.

It's just going to get abandoned.

I was once in this man's house.

It was the family house, but the man was really into antiques, and he was into French provincial antiques, and they were all over the house and he just was into the thrill of the hunt.

37:12

And you could tell because he had collected these over probably a 40-year period.

So do you get that way?

Like, are you constantly looking for a certain piece, or are you just the kind of person who kind of has your eyes open, and if you find it, find it?

Or do you have a list of items that you are hoping to find that will fulfill your goal of having the perfect lamp for this spot and the perfect SETI for this room, and whatnot?

37:38

I'm a little bit of both.

I definitely started off with a wish list, and thankfully, I've been able to check off everything except for an Eens lounger.

So I don't know when I will be able to just get the Eames lounger, but that's sort of the last thing on my real wish list.

37:53

But I'm constantly learning too.

I'm I'm, I follow other mid-century houses on Instagram, and I see what they're furnishing their homes with.

And so sometimes that will sort of spark an interest and something new.

So for the longest time, I was a really big fan of Knoll furniture, and I wanted everything Knoll Tulip design, which is sort of a singular leg down the middle and then sort of a rounded bottom.

38:19

And so I started hunting for Knoll everywhere I could and was able to find a table and chairs for the breakfast room and some armchairs for some other places.

Then I moved on to, I'm really into, I'm going to say this wrong, aesthetic vintage on Instagram.

38:35

If you're watching this, I'm sorry, Modeline or ModeLEEN lamps.

Well, I don't know how to say it, so you're fine with me.

So it's a it's.

A style of lighting and it's, I don't have a piece yet, but I find it really interesting and beautiful.

38:51

And so I'm constantly always sort of just adding to the wish list.

But I also love estate sales.

I love vintage shopping just for fun.

So a lot of it, too was just sort of seeing what's out there and then adding it to the collection if I feel like I have a great place for it.

39:08

So I know there's a place for you on Instagram, but do you ever hear just in your day-to-day life, like why don't you just update it?

Do it?

Does anybody ever just tell you or ask you why you don't do something different with your house?

All the time.

Pretty much every contractor who walks into my house assumes that they're being called in to RIP out all that's left of the wood paneling and paint everything white.

39:32

That's always the assumption coming in.

So their mind is blown every time I tell them, Oh no, you're not here for this room.

You're here to go to this other room and actually make it look more like this room.

So yes, I get that so much, and people online for sure don't understand it and say.

39:50

Oh, they don't.

OK.

Yeah, I mean, of course, people who follow me, I think, do follow the account, I think get it.

But there's always, if you have sort of a reel that goes viral or a post that goes viral, I always have the people saying like dated, that looks old. You should paint it white.

40:09

It's just sort of like the refrain that I hear pretty constantly.

I sort of feel like they're trolls, though, right?

The paint it white people.

Yeah, they've got to be trolls by this time.

I think so, yeah.

What do you think is misunderstood?

Maybe about mid-century modern homes?

40:24

Or do you feel like there's anything that's misunderstood?

I do.

Like I said before, I think a lot of people who see mid-century houses or even just mid-century modest houses, a lot of ranch houses were built in the mid-century, but they have a lot of the design details that architecture really significant houses have, like the wood paneling or the colorful tile.

40:47

And I think a lot of people just look at it and see dated, and they just think that's not conducive to modern living, and it's just old or it's dirty.

And it makes me sad to think that someone can look at something that I find to be so beautiful and not be able to see the beauty in it.

41:05

And I think a lot of it is just we've sort of everything has to be the newest and the best sort of thing in society.

And I think that we've lost a little bit of like small spaces can be cozy and darker spaces can be cozy and set a very homey vibe, which is what I think that mid-century houses do so well.

41:25

And the flip side of that is the other thing that they do so well is that a lot of them have a lot of windows and a lot of access to inside outside connection, which I think that we should appreciate more.

Getting outside of your house and enjoying it for what it is.

41:42

And mid-century houses have a way to do that really beautifully.

Good points.

Well, if people want to follow along with your projects or see the house, where can they find you?

So on Instagram, the Instagram handle is @1957housedownsouth, and I'm not great at updating because our projects are very slow.

42:04

We have trouble finding contractors, so we end up doing a lot of things ourselves.

If you're interested in seeing what a real restoration process looks like when you have sort of weekend warriors doing the tasks who otherwise have full-time jobs, then please come on over and see sort of what that looks like.

42:22

Yeah, you can find our projects there that are ongoing.

Again, some of them take quite a bit to do, but I put them up in stories so you can see the good, the bad, and the ugly of stripping paint, and most of it is ugly.

It's not fun, but it's so worth it in the end.

42:38

So that's on there.

And then of course, like I said, I love to do estate sales and vintage shopping, so I love to take people along and stories on that too, to just be like, these are the cool things that are out there.

Go in your own local thrift stores and see what you can find, and you can have an interesting piece that no one else in your neighborhood will have.

42:56

Well, there's lots of gorgeous pictures of what you've already done, as well as inside interior shots of the house and everything.

So yeah, thank you for explaining more about mid-century modern homes, the restoration process that you're going through, and clearing up some maybe misconceptions that people have about mid-century homes.

43:16

Thanks for being here.

Thank you so much for having me.

True Tales from Old Houses is supported by Heritage Supply Co.

If you've listened to the show before, you know the Craftsman Store. Well,

43:33

Heritage Supply Co is the same company with a new name, and it is still the best source for window restoration supplies.

If you're stripping old paint from windows, Heritage Supply Co carries the Speedheater Cobra and their own IR paint stripper.

Both are infrared tools that remove even lead paint without creating toxic dust.

43:51

For reglazing, they've got Austin's Glazier's Putty that actually cures in days instead of weeks.

Their spring bronze weatherstripping will last hundreds of years, and trust me, your grandkids will thank you.

And if you're looking for those parts that seem to have vanished from the hardware store, you know, sash cord, sash locks, glazing points, parting bead, Heritage Supply Co has it.

44:14

They also carry Plaster Magic for ceiling and wall repairs and Abatron epoxies for rotted wood.

And if you're looking to learn some new skills, check out their window restoration courses and hands-on boot camps.

Visit heritagesupply.com and use the code TRUETALES10.

44:29

That's true tales 1-0 for 10% off your entire order.

And if you spend $250 or more, the shipping is free.

Again, heritagesupply.com code TRUETALES10.

True Tales From Old Houses is also supported by Repaint Studios.

44:45

Quick question, what do you do with your paint tray when you're in the middle of a project?

If your answer involves a garbage bag, plastic bag, or a carefully balanced tray on the floor.

Same.

I have done all of that, but there is a better way, and it's called the repaint tray.

45:01

The repaint tray is a paint tray with a reusable silicone liner and an airtight lid.

So you can stop mid-project and come back days or even weeks later, and your paint is still usable.

The tray itself is heavy-duty metal, so it doesn't slide around while you're working.

45:18

And when you're done, you just let the paint dry in the silicone liner, and you peel it out.

No muss, no fuss, no waste.

Repaint Studios is a woman-owned business, and recently they were featured on Shark Tank and funded by Barbara Corcoran and Chip and Joanna Gaines, which tracks because this is truly one of those.

45:36

Why didn't this exist before tools?

Grab one for yourself at repaintstudios.com and get 10% off with our code TRUETALES10

That's TRUETALES10.

45:56

We're back.

You know what stayed with me after my conversation with Sarah wasn't just her impeccable taste or even the era of the house.

You know it's her patience.

She wasn't buying replicas, which I'm pretty sure I would have done.

She is tracking down original fixtures and fittings from that period.

46:13

And that kind of dedication is so rare.

We really don't hear that story very often here on the show.

You know, there's that saying everything old is new again.

And while Sarah's out there hunting down the real thing, I've seen companies go back and dust off their archives.

Polar is a really good example of that.

46:31

They've been around since 1873, and they were one of the first American manufacturers to introduce coordinated color fixtures in the early 20th century.

You know, sinks, tubs, toilets, all in matching hues instead of just white.

A lot of us have seen those beautiful pink bathrooms or yellow bathrooms, or even blue.

46:49

At the time, that was a huge shift.

Bathrooms became impressive.

They weren't just functional.

And then in 2024, Kohler celebrated its 150th anniversary.

And for their anniversary, they pulled six archival colors from their historic catalog and asked the public to vote on which one should be reissued.

47:11

Some of you may remember this, and some of you may have even voted.

I know I voted.

It was a big thing on Instagram.

You know, designers, old house people, a lot of us really loved this campaign.

The colors up for consideration were Peachblow, Spring Green, Lavender, Gray, West Point Gray, Blueberry, and Fresh Green, which if I remember correctly, looked more like avocado--

47:34

what a lot of us may remember is avocado.

I voted for Peachblow and Fresh green, the avocado color.

The winners were Peachblow and Spring green, which was more of a leafy green color.

Kohler then re-released both those colors for a limited time, and I think they were available through part of 2025.

47:53

I'm not sure.

I didn't buy them.

I don't know how many people bought them, but I do know the colors sold out.

They called it the anniversary celebration, but let's be honest, it was a marketing campaign and a very successful one at that.

Regardless, I jumped on that train, and last summer I had a chance to visit the Kohler campus in Kohler, Wisconsin, because I was in the area for a family reunion.

48:14

The campus itself is part corporate headquarters.

It's part design hub.

I think you can still go there and pick out things for your modern-day kitchen and bathroom.

And there is a historical showcase.

It includes a small museum that walks people through the company's evolution, shows those early enameled cast-iron tubs, and then you get to see all the really fun, colorful mid-century fixtures.

48:37

And they have a bunch of these past innovations, including this really wild thing called the electric sink.

I'm not sure what they were doing with that.

The campus also features giant showrooms, like full-on bathrooms and kitchens, kind of like a big IKEA.

48:53

If you've ever been to IKEA with working product demonstrations that included lots of high-tech talking toilets, that seems to be the big thing.

You know, bidets that would talk to you.

And then you could also see how the company's manufacturing history tied into American domestic life.

49:11

You know, basically, how we bathed, how we washed dishes, how we used indoor plumbing.

And thank goodness for that.

I love my indoor plumbing.

I love my flush toilets.

It's all very, very interesting because we are so spoiled now, and I'm not mad about that.

Within the museum, they have rows of original bathroom fixtures from decades past.

49:30

So the sinks, the tubs, the toilets, and all of those colors that we associate with very specific eras.

You can see the original Peach blow and spring green, and then they have the rest of the greens and Blues and pinks that, unfortunately, people are still ripping out of their homes without a second thought, somewhat crushing.

49:50

I will put a handful of photos.

I took a bunch of photos, and I'll put a handful of those from the Kohler Museum in this week's newsletter on Sub Stack so you can see the vintage fixtures, the colors, and yeah, the electric sink.

Still not sure what they were thinking about there.

So if you would like a little visual context for everything that I have just described, including a few extra photos from Sarah's house, you will find it there on Thursday.

50:16

And that's it.

Thank you for listening to True Tales from Old Houses, and thank you to our sponsors Sutherland Welles, Brouns & Co. Linseed Oil Paint, Heritage Supply Co., and Repaint Studios.

To continue the conversation, follow True Tales From Old Houses and me at Blake Hill House on Instagram and subscribe to Notes from an Old House on Substack.

50:39

Check the show notes where you're listening right now for a direct link.

I genuinely love hearing from you.

So send messages and voice memos.

Send photos of the bathroom fixtures you saved from the curb. Instagram, Substack e-mail, and the voicemail button on the website.

I check them all.

And before you start scrolling Zillow for split levels, I need a favor.

50:58

If you enjoyed today's episode, leave a rating and review wherever you're listening.

It's free, takes about 30 seconds, and helps more old-house people find the show.

Also, hit follow or subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.

I'm going to need you after I apply the 50-year rule to my childhood because that math… it hurts.

51:17

Take care of your old houses and each other until next time.

Video Transcript

Stacy Grinsfelder (00:00)
In today's episode, we're talking about the 50-year rule of historic preservation, which sounds great until you do the math. And later, you'll meet Sarah, who's bringing a mid-century modern gem back to its original 1955 design and condition. But first, I'm Stacy Grinsfelder, and you're listening to True Tales From Old Houses.

Hello everyone, welcome to the show if it's your first time, and welcome back to everyone else. I have an announcement here at the top of the show, but before we get into it, I do wanna take a moment to thank our sponsors, Sutherland Welles, Brouns & Co. Linseed Oil Paint, Heritage Supply Co., and Repaint Studios.

They support the kind of thoughtful stewardship that we talk about every week. And I'm really grateful that I get to connect companies like these to the old house community. So please shop with confidence and use my coupon codes. They're there for you if you need them. Now, the announcement,

Brad and I, you may know him as @ittybittybungalow, we are excited that we are teaming up again to offer the wood window workshop that we like to call Window Camp. It's the fourth summer in a row. We're having it two weekends again, July 10th through 12th and July 17th through 19th.

This year we're having a venue change because Epworth Hall, which is located on the Silver Lake Institute property, is having some much-needed structural work. It's actually up on cribbing right now, which is pretty impressive for a giant building. We're still going to be using the windows from Epworth Hall, but we are moving to my little town, my little village.

And I'll be teaching the workshop right at Blake Hill House. So starting on Friday afternoon each weekend, you'll get a full weekend of hands-on window restoration instruction geared towards DIYers. You'll learn how to restore a window from start to finish. That includes some lead safety instruction.

And you'll be able to take what you learn back to work on the windows at your house and share it within your community if opportunity presents itself, which I hope it will. Now, during the weekend, we'll talk about best practices and supplies, and you'll get a chance to use a bunch of products and tools that you may have heard about but never used, including things like steam boxes and infrared tools and special types of scrapers. And we'll talk about linseed oil paint. We did that new for last year. We'll do it again this year.

It is a work-forward weekend, but there is fun built in as well. You'll get a tour of Blake Hill House, which I love to do. That'll be Friday night, along with an opening social. I don't really know what else to call it. We'll have food, we'll have drinks.

And then Saturday, Brad is arranging an after-hours excursion. What we are doing is to be determined. He's working on that. It will be followed with what he likes to call drinks and hangs at my favorite local brewery. They also serve non-alcoholic drinks as well.

My little village is completely walkable, and I can't wait to introduce you to all that it has to offer. So here are some things to know if you're considering coming. It is 20 minutes from the Buffalo, New York, Airport. It's half a day's drive, give or take, from places like Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Erie, Philadelphia, New York City, the Hudson Valley, Toronto, Canada. I'm actually kind of really close to the border there.

Fort Wayne, Indiana, those are just to name a few. Again, those weekends are July 10th through 12th and July 17th through 19th. Now, the Monday right after, ⁓ I should clarify, you choose one or the other, not both, because it's the exact same thing both weekends. And the Monday following each of those, there's an optional free skills practice in the morning. So if you wanna extend your time in the area a little bit more, you can practice in the morning and then do something fun in the afternoon.

We have early bird pricing in effect until April 30th. The tickets we sell are single tickets, or you can also sign up as a duo for an even deeper discount, which means you grab somebody to bring with you. We've had father-daughter duos, we've had mother-daughter, sisters, that was fun last year, and then we've had friends that sign up together. So that is an option. We're also offering one scholarship per weekend that you can apply for if you feel like that's something that you want to apply for.

I do want to say that in the past, one weekend or both have sold out. So keep that in mind. If you think you want to come, you might want to consider signing up sooner rather than later. That's something to take note of. You can learn more and book your spot at my personal website, which is Blakehillhouse.com. I hope to see you there. We always have a lot of fun. It's a lot of work, but also a lot of fun.

All right, now, if you have listened to this podcast for any length of time, you know that many of us are drawn to pre-war architecture. We love our fancy woodwork, old-growth lumber, and wavy glass.

We like what we like. There's already a broad agreement of some kind, at least within our old house community, that these types of houses matter and that they're worth admiring, saving, and preserving.

We might like something just because it's pretty, but in the preservation field, it's not arbitrary. There's also a professional benchmark that's based on time. And it's something that's commonly called the 50-year rule. And the 50-year rule comes from the National Park Service. for the National Register of Historic Places,

In general, a building needs to be at least 50 years old to be considered eligible for the National Register. There are some exceptions, like Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water. It was only 30 years old when it was placed on the National Register in 1966. And the Gateway Arch, I chose that exception for a reason. Because last week on the Minisode, or whatever the heck we're calling it right now, I shared two observations from the State of Restoration Project

from St. Louis, but the Gateway Arch. It was built in 1965, and it was put on the National Register in 1970. It was only a baby at five years old. So there are exceptions to that rule. But for the most part, the National Park Service doesn't even consider nominations to the National Register until buildings are at least 50 years old.

The 50-year rule, to be clear, does not mean that the second a building turns 50, it's automatically protected, and being placed on the national register doesn't mean it's protected either. But that is a story, that's a story for another day. But the idea is that after 50 years, at least enough time has passed for us collectively, I guess, society, whatever, enough time has passed for us to evaluate the building with some

historical perspective to see whether it represents a significant moment in architecture, culture, or community life. In other words, 50 years creates a little distance.

Now is an interesting time. We're crossing that threshold with entire eras of architecture that many of us have never thought of as historic.

Things like post-war ranches, split levels, brutalist civic structures, shopping malls, maybe even some office buildings. I'm not saying that any of these are historically significant. I'm just saying that they have reached the age where we can begin evaluating them that way, because math doesn't lie, even when I want it to.

I was thinking about this the other day. I did not grow up in a suburban neighborhood, so I don't have a lot of perspective on this. But I imagine that some of you do. And it must be really hard to imagine that someday the suburban neighborhood that you grew up in may become a historic district because it serves as a pristine example of a neighborhood from that time period. It might actually happen. Give it time. I mean, that shift is happening.

Another thing I was thinking about is that part of what

makes the 50-year rule interesting from

the perspective of someone like me or someone like you outside of the National Park Service, I guess I should say, is that...

there's nostalgia involved. The ranch house might look like your grandparents' house. The split-level might look like the house your parents grew up in. And the paneled basement might remind you of some holidays or ordinary Tuesday nights or, I think, a ghost story, a Ouija board. Didn't we talk about that?

Wasn't there a paneled room or something involved in Robert's ghost story during the first two episodes of this season? Anyway, there's a point where children grow up, and we start looking at the homes that our parents lived in or the houses that we lived in as kids. And those spaces begin to feel meaningful in a different way. If our relationships were good,

then the houses start to represent stability, routine, maybe even ordinary life. And ordinary life, given enough time, becomes history. At the 50-year mark, personal memory starts to shift into collective memory. The houses that once seemed ugly, I'm just going to say it, they once seemed ugly, or even slightly embarrassing.

representative of an era. That's the crossroads we're standing at right now. keeps moving, and historic preservation is asking us to widen the lens. Not to love everything equally and not to romanticize every era.

but to recognize when the places that we took for granted start becoming part of the historic landscape. Mid-century modern homes are a really good example of that. When they were first built, they were not universally loved by any means, in part because they looked so radically different from what people expected a house to look like.

And Sarah's home falls right into that category. Still modern in many people's minds, but old enough to be part of the preservation story. So I invited her onto the show to talk about it.

And her story is coming up next. But first, a quick break.

(Sponsor Message)

Welcome back.

You already have the context for my conversation with Sarah, so rather than say anything else, we're just gonna get straight to it.

Sarah (09:53)
Hi, my name is Sarah, and I live in a 1957 mid-century house in Columbia, South Carolina, and it's known as 1957 House Down South on Instagram.

Stacy Grinsfelder (10:04)
Hi, Sarah.

Sarah Nielsen (10:05)
Hi.

Stacy Grinsfelder (10:06)
I'm really happy that you're here because we don't do, or we haven't done really any mid-century homes here on True Tales From Old Houses. This is really new territory for us. I don't know if you remember er I'm sure listeners will remember that Daniel and I somehow could not stop talking about Lustron Homes, our conversations, they spanned a few seasons, and then I interviewed Laura on episode 166, and then Daniel and I touched

on prefab options and Usonian ideas, but this is different. Our conversation is going to be different. You are the first guest who's truly lived in a mid-century, I guess mid-century modern home, and I just love how thoughtful and intentional that you've been about caring for it, so welcome to the show.

Sarah (10:51)
Well, thank you. It feels like such an honor to be the first mid-century homeowner on the podcast. I've been a listener for a long time, so I'm very excited that you're venturing into the world of mid-century homes.

Stacy Grinsfelder (11:04)
Yeah, I don't really know what took us so long, honestly. What's wrong with us?

Sarah  (11:09)
Well, I

do feel like the mid-century houses are, I feel like they're gaining momentum in popularity, but for the longest time, I think most people didn't see them as old houses. They just sort of saw them as the houses that their grandmothers lived in or their grandparents lived in. And they just, think for a lot of people, just seemed a little dated, but not necessarily an old house that could be loved and made into something beautiful.

Stacy Grinsfelder (11:36)
Yeah, I think we're getting there. I think you're absolutely right about that. And what is the definition of historic now? Is anything over 50 years? So we're getting there, the 80s. And my goodness, I can't think of anything from the 80s right now, architecturally, that's really all that interesting. But we'll get there. Catch me in 20 years, and we'll think of, gosh, this great house from the 80s that's on True Tales from Old Houses. But I don't know. We'll see. Have you always been a fan of mid-century homes?

Sarah  (11:53)
Right.

So, not always, it's sort of been, I say recent, but probably the past maybe, know time is such a crazy thing now, but probably the past 15 years that I became really interested in mid-century design, the first house that I ever lived in on my own as an adult was a new construction, sort of mass development house. And so it was just kind of cookie-cutter and looked like everyone else's home. And as I was...

trying to get my own style in terms of decorating that house, I came across a Drexel Declaration dining room table on Instagram. And I thought, wow, like that's so clean and yet still organic and beautiful. And so I latched onto that, and that was my first ever mid-century purchase was that piece of furniture. And that was just the start of something much, much bigger. And I ended up

really getting into mostly furniture, then sort of accessories, and then when I was deciding to move, I decided I wanted to look at mid-century architecture and really just jump in. And so that's what led to 1957, House Down South.

Stacy Grinsfelder (13:13)
Interesting. So how did you find the house? How did you find 1957 House Down South?

Sarah (13:18)
So that was a really long journey. Like I said in the intro, I live in Columbia, South Carolina. The South is not known really for mid-century architecture, particularly mid-century modern architecture. The architecture that's really appreciated in the South tends to be more traditional design. So, just finding, well, first finding a real estate agent who understood what I was looking for

was the first sort of hurdle, getting them to understand what was the design and the style that I wanted. And I found a wonderful agent and then just became the slow process of actually finding a mid-century modern house, and ⁓ not just a mid-century house. And exactly, yes. And the mid-century has mid-century traditional, mid-century colonial. There was a lot of different.

Stacy Grinsfelder (14:01)
Right, two different things for sure.

Sarah (14:10)
design movements happening at that time. And I was particularly interested in mid-century modern. And so it was just slow. There weren't a lot of houses on the market. It took about probably eight years of looking. There were a couple that I considered the problem that I ran into. too was because it's not a popular style, there were a lot of renovated homes. So there were not a lot of houses that had what I considered to be

Stacy Grinsfelder (14:33)
right

Sarah (14:37)
architecturally significant details on the interior still intact, let alone on the exterior. Most everything had been painted. So there were a couple that I considered, and then 1957 House Down South came on the market. And a funny thing about the house is when it came on the market, I had actually been inside the house. It was on a

Historic Columbia, which is our local historical organization, they did a mid-century modern tour in the spring every year for a few years. And this was a house on that tour before I was really deep diving into mid-century design. And I remember going into the house and thinking it wasn't that special. And that was sort of my only memory of it. I kind of popped in and popped out and thought, it doesn't seem very mid-century to me. I don't know

why they have this house on the tour. And then it ended up going for sale. And I realized in that moment, it was the way that it was staged, or the family who lived in it did not have a mid-century aesthetic. So they sort of designed the interior of the house and furnished it with more traditional furnishings. And you really kind of couldn't see past that to see what were really intact mid-century design details.

So the house came on the market. It was significantly out of my price range. And so I thought, ⁓ this is sad. This is kind of the closest I'm going to get to this intact mid-century house. And the house ended up just kind of lingering on the market for another about eight months. And so I just kept an eye on it, kept watching it, and eventually put in an offer, and it was immediately rejected.

Stacy Grinsfelder (16:14)
Ha

Sarah (16:15)
And I thought, okay,

Stacy Grinsfelder (16:15)
ha.

Sarah (16:16)
This is really it. I have to give up on this house. And it set for a few more months. And then I was like, let's just give it one more go and see. And so about 30 days later, we had a deal, and that was in August of 2020. And then we closed in November of 2020 and started the journey to kind of make it our own.

Stacy Grinsfelder (16:38)
Wow.

So let me see if I understand. So you had seen it on a tour, and it was staged differently than the way, or it was furnished differently than you would have. So you didn't really notice the details, but then when you toured it as a potential homeowner, then you saw it differently. That's when you started seeing, wow, all these details are here. Everything I want is here in this house.

Sarah (17:00)
Yes, so when I went to tour it with the agent, the couple had already started moving almost everything out of it. So it was pretty much just a shell. There was hardly any furniture in it at all. And that was the first time that I thought, my gosh, the den is, you know, lofted. And I hadn't noticed that before. And there's this amazing screen and the entry. And you think that would have just like hitches smack in the face when you walk in. But for whatever reason, it was just all this

sort of oversized furniture that really took away from all these details. And there were very large rugs everywhere, so you couldn't see the parquet. So yeah, it wasn't until I saw the house nearly empty that I thought, okay, there's a lot left here. Of course, there was a lot that had been changed. I don't have any original bathrooms, and that's sort of one project that I'm working to bring back.

And then, so that's sort of the biggest one was all the, I wanted an original bathroom, and that was sort of the thing that I had to concede with the house was just, I wasn't going to get that, but I can bring it back.

Stacy Grinsfelder (17:59)
Right,

Before we pivot to that, let's talk about the architect. Did you already know who this was, or what have you learned since?

Sarah (18:07)
No, so I did not know when I purchased the house, I did not know that it was architect-designed until we were doing the negotiations for the contract. So that's when I learned that it was designed by a local architect named Maynard Pearlstine. And there were some things that conveyed with the house to every owner. So I'm the fifth owner of the property. And as part of the conveyance in the contract, what also conveyed was a

AIA merit certificate. So it won an American Institute of Architects local merit award in 1957. So I have that award and also the the newspaper article from 1957 in December when all of the merit award winners were announced. So I have that as well and the blueprints for the house. So I have both the architect's set of blueprints and then also

the set of blueprints that were provided to the workers in the field every day. So I have two sets of blueprints, which is really amazing. and ⁓ I love, I love learning. I love research. So when I had those things in my hand, I just thought I have to know more about him and the house and his design style. So I just started researching. went to newspapers.com and went to...

Stacy Grinsfelder (19:03)
That's neat. Yeah, that's so neat.

Sarah (19:23)
local library researches just to see what I could find searching his name and searching the address of the property. So yes, I learned about him. He designed several mid-century modern buildings in Colombia, as well as several residences. And they were all mid-century modern. He also lived in Charleston for a while and designed houses down there on the coast.

And I actually had the opportunity to send Mr. Pearlstine a letter. He was still alive when I purchased the house. He was in his nineties, and I sent him a letter and told him who I was, and he was grateful. I did receive a short letter back to him, sort of explaining what he remembered about the house. And he unfortunately then passed about six months later. So he is no longer with us, but he has definitely left a mark on Columbia in terms of modernism.

Stacy Grinsfelder (20:13)
Yeah. Have you been able to reach out to any other homeowners or any of those building owners, and you've been able to communicate with each other and find out if there are other, you know, original features still intact from some of these other homes?

Sarah (20:24)
Yes, so I have been in touch with two of the daughters of the original owners. Their names were Edwin and Shirley Copeland. And Edwin was a business owner. owned a variety of businesses in Columbia and Shirley was a homemaker. And they had four children, three girls and a boy. And I have been in touch with two of the surviving daughters, and they have been very helpful. They're also

sort of a little older, but they are, they're really excited to hear from someone who was excited about the house that they grew up in. And so it's been fun to learn from them some of the details that they recall about the house. And we've been able to implement some of those changes based on what they recall, which has been a lot of fun. And I've been in touch with all of the past owners before me, and about, I guess it was last

summer, I got in touch with the first owner who purchased it from the estate of the Copeland's when the Copeland's passed, and they had pictures from when they purchased the house, and it was in the early 2000s. So was sort of really not great digital photos, but it was really exciting to see, even though the quality wasn't great. I was able to see things that I didn't realize were original features. And one of those was

two sets of bullet lights in the dining room that I thought were just can lights. And I had this, they sent this picture, and I thought, my gosh, that's so strange that there's two sort of pull down bullet lights, right? Where there's can lights exist. And I had lived in the house for almost five years by then. So I walk over, and I grab a dining room chair, and I set it under the light, and I look up, and I think, I think it's just pushed up in there. I think the light is just pushed up inside.

Stacy Grinsfelder (21:45)
neat.

you

Sarah (22:07)
And sure enough, I'm standing on the chair, and I pull it down. thought, how are there just so many little hidden features in this house that I've lived in? And they were both still there. Someone had just kind of pushed them up and made them can lights. So that fun little finds like that, that I never would have thought of had I not seen the picture of the dining room from that early 2000s picture. So yeah. Yeah.

Stacy Grinsfelder (22:16)
How fun.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's neat. Little treasures in there. Yeah.

Have you uncovered other things like that?

Sarah (22:32)
Yes, so another one was, which I was very excited about, so I knew that the two of the bedrooms had built-in units, and I knew that from the daughters. So was both of their rooms, and they told me that there was like a built-in dresser and desk, and they were asking me if these things were still there, and I'm like, no, unfortunately they're not there. So then, when I got the pictures from the first owner who purchased from the trust in the estate,

they had pictures of both bedrooms, and they had pictures of both built-ins. And I was like, my gosh, this is exactly what we need. And in the girls' room, there were two pegboards on either side of the desk where they could, you know, hang their little artwork or baskets or whatever. And I thought that looks so familiar. Why do those pegboards look so familiar? Like they're not there. And then...

Probably the next week I'm in the shed in the backyard, and I'm getting the lawnmower out to mow the grass, and I look up, and there's the pegboard sitting in the outside shed that they had clearly just taken down and moved it over to the outside shed. And I thought, my gosh, there's one of them. Like this is crazy. And then a couple months go by, and I'm getting ready for Christmas, and I'm going down to a different exterior unit. This place has storage galore, and I go under the house, and it's like a

Stacy Grinsfelder (23:30)
Right.

It sounds like it.

Sarah (23:46)
sort of a little, sort of like a little workspace under the house. And that's where I store some of my exterior Christmas stuff. And so I'm getting that out, and I look to my left, and there's the other pegboard hanging on the wall. And so immediately we're taking those down, and we have since refinished them, repainted them, and they're back where they always belonged in the girls' bedrooms. So that's been fun, little exciting things like that.

Stacy Grinsfelder (23:56)
wow.

Yeah.

That's really neat. You talked about how you moved into the house, and you needed to go back and put the you know, restore the bathrooms, because this really is a restoration project. You are trying to restore the bathrooms back to original, which I find really inspiring. So I guess my questions would be twofold.

First, how do you find out what they look like? Maybe you have pictures or information from past, maybe you've already partially answered that. But the second is how do you find what you are looking for to bring those bathrooms back to original?

Sarah (24:42)
I do have photos, and those are the photos that I mentioned before. So I have photos of three of the three original bathrooms. So I at least know color of tile and general layout, which has been very helpful. And of course, I know that from the blueprints, too. I can see what the layout of the original bathrooms looked like. So the process of...

just sort of putting all that back together is then figuring out, okay, so I have a picture of the sink. What is this sink that I'm looking at? So thankfully for things like Google Lens and like Vintage Faucet Shop in Chicago keeps a wonderful website of vintage colorful things that go in a bathroom. And so it's just a lot of just research, just looking online and trying to piece it together and say, does this look like

the picture? Do the handles look like the picture? And so thankfully, too, with the blueprints, I do have a schedule list of quite a few things. So I can at least kind of tell brands. So I know that all of the bathrooms had Crane products. So I learned that the sinks in all the bathrooms were Crane Criterion sinks, which then sort of pieced together that probably everything else in there was Crane Criterion as well. So that's

Stacy Grinsfelder (25:43)
good.

Sarah (25:59)
That starts the process, and then it's actually finding the pieces to put back in. And that can be more challenging. Sometimes it's simple. Sometimes you can go on Facebook Marketplace, and someone's ripping out an old bathroom, and there's a blue commode ready for you. Just come pick it up. I wasn't quite that lucky with the sinks. Crane, I think, is a little more challenging to find.

And so I did use the shop in Chicago. They thankfully had two pink Criterion sinks for the first bathroom that we're restoring. So I did purchase those there and have them shipped in. It's a lot of just looking, figuring out where you can find it, and if it's feasible to get it to where you need it to be. Because a lot of things are just, they're too far away, or they don't ship, and

Stacy Grinsfelder (26:33)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sarah (26:46)
So you have to decide, am I willing to go get it, or can I find a way to get it here?

Stacy Grinsfelder (26:50)
Are you open to replicas or are you looking purely for original?

Sarah (26:53)
I'm looking purely for original.  I am, yeah, quite a purist when it comes to putting it all back. Yeah. The goal is really to get it back to as much as I can as it existed in 1957 as possible.

Stacy Grinsfelder (26:58)
I love it.

Yeah, I love it. How about things like tile? How do you handle tile?

Sarah (27:13)
I'm so glad you asked about tile because I did forget to mention that. So the tile is sort of similar. I was able just by continually looking for Google images and looking for vintage tile samples, I was able to determine what the.

The main bathroom we're working on right now is what I call the pink and blue bathroom. So that's where the Crane sinks were. And then also there was a teal blue tile that sort of had like a striped pattern on it. And of course, that's not manufactured anymore. So I began reaching out persons who deal with custom tile to see if anybody could recreate it. And thankfully, I was able to find someone who's willing to hand-paint all of the tiles

to exist as they existed in that bathroom. And so that's the route we're going to kind of get that as close as possible to what that tile looked like. But they're great in terms of that's just the countertop tile. The rest of the tile is just regular four-by-four tiles. And so there are companies that still do the 1950s and 60s vintage tile colors. B &W tile in California is one that I know that does

Stacy Grinsfelder (28:06)
Yeah.

Sarah (28:23)
It's a replica, but it's also exactly as they produced it in the 1950s. Nothing about their process has changed.

Stacy Grinsfelder (28:29)
Yeah, what color is it? Just in the colors you're talking about, too, in the blue or the teal or whatever. Wow.

Sarah (28:34)
Yes, so they have an array

of colors. Yeah, B &W has every color that you can imagine in terms of wanting for a mid-century bathroom, yellow, purple, burgundy, pink, teal. ⁓ So yeah.

Stacy Grinsfelder (28:46)
Yeah.

I was picturing those four-by-fours when you were talking about your bathroom. was thinking, I bet they're square tiles. That's what I'm picturing. Square tiles. Yeah.

Sarah (28:50)
Yeah.

Four by fours. Yep, four by

fours. If you want to do a mid-century bathroom, you can't go wrong with four-by-fours.

Stacy Grinsfelder (28:59)
How about the kitchen? Was it intact?

Sarah (29:00)
So it was, thankfully, the kitchen was intact. However, it was sort of a slight little renovation done by the original owners in the 1970s. And it's very 70s, it's very brown. There was no orange involved that I've been able to see, which is shocking. Yeah, it's just, yeah, I wouldn't have been surprised if they had some orange or some avocado in there, but it was just a lot of brown.

Stacy Grinsfelder (29:13)
Orange? Was there orange involved?

Yes.

Ha ha ha.

Sarah (29:26)
So all of the original cabinets are intact. They replaced the floors and the countertops.  Both would have been some sort of like linoleum or laminate product in the 1950s, and those have been replaced with ceramic tile. And we're actually in the process now of working on the kitchen, and we were not able to find a contractor who was willing to take on the cabinets because the cabinets had been actually re-stained a really dark brown. And

Contractors were just saying it's too time-consuming. We don't want to strip it. It's not going to be worth your time. We can bring in these really beautiful other cabinets for you, and they'll look exactly the same. And of course I said, that's just not going to work for me. So

Stacy Grinsfelder (30:07)
Yeah, good for you. Stick to your

project there the way you want it to be.

Sarah (30:12)
Yeah,

so it was really important to me that we kept the original cabinets and I was able to find a woodworker in Columbia who has stripped all of my hallway doors for me because they were all painted, of course, everything got painted somewhere along the way. So he stripped all those doors, and I said, hey, would you be willing to take on stripping some cabinet doors, maybe 42 of them?

Stacy Grinsfelder (30:36)
Ha

Sarah (30:36)
And he said, sure, let's give it a shot. I can't come do the bases, so you would have to do those yourself, but let's do it. And I said, OK. So I'm looking at my kitchen right now, and I have sort of partially stripped cabinet bases and no cabinet fronts. And we're just going to make it work

Stacy Grinsfelder (30:55)
Are you stripping the finish and then bringing the stain lighter? Is that what you're doing? Okay.

Sarah (31:00)
Yes, that's what we're

doing. Yeah, so the cabinet bases were actually painted, and then the cabinet doors were stained, but both are dark brown. So we're stripping the brown paint off of the bases themselves, and then we'll do a light sanding, and then the wood is like the rest of the oak in the house, like in this room. So we'll just have that stained back to sort of match everything else.

Stacy Grinsfelder (31:25)
So you're getting the house in order, and it's going to look as it was built in 1957. And the other thing that I find so interesting, and you'd mentioned this in the dining room table that you initially found that that kind of started you on the path to this mid-century you really, you were furnishing the house from the mid-century as well, making the entire house match that era, which I find sort of, I find it fascinating because not everybody leans in that hard.

Sarah (31:53)
No, they really don't, but I actually don't understand why not. I think it's a lot of fun. The thing about mid-century design was it was designed for the masses and to have this like very sort of casual but also forward-looking feel. And so the furniture is really fun, the textiles are really interesting.

Stacy Grinsfelder (31:58)
Yes, well, go for it. Yeah, why not?

Sarah (32:20)
And the quality of the furniture is just exponentially better than anything you're going to find today. Even I think some people shy away from mid-century furniture because they'll say, well, it's laminate and it's not solid wood. Well, that laminate is still better quality than most furniture you're going to find, even in stores today. I tell people, don't let that sort of keep you from

purchasing mid-century furniture. So yeah, so I'm all in to mid-century design. think there are only, I guess there's only one piece of furniture left in the house that's not, period. And that's a bed frame that's on its way out, because we're having a new one constructed by a carpenter.

Stacy Grinsfelder (32:50)
Yeah.

Now I'm living part-time in an apartment as well, and we ended up furnishing the apartment in used mid-century furniture. So I tend to agree with you that it does hold up so much better.

And we partly did that because right around the corner is the store, and we can just go buy it and then just walk it over. We don't have to load it up because we don't really have a truck or anything like that. But it does last. It seems to last. They take it into the shop. They spruce it up a little bit. They reupholster what they need to reupholster and then sell it from there. And it's great. Even everything that's laminated is

pretty much in perfect condition. It's fantastic stuff for sure.

Sarah (33:40)
Yeah, it is great. And I can appreciate the walking furniture back. I have a very small car, and I call it the clown car because somehow I have managed to fit very long dressers in there and other things that should not have fit under any scenario. But yet I managed to make it work. But I always joke that eventually I'm going to bite off more than I can chew, and I'm going to have to just leave something in the middle of the highway somewhere. It's just going to get abandoned.

Stacy Grinsfelder (33:53)
Yeah.

So I was once in this man's house. It was a family house, but the man was really into antiques, and he was into French provincial antiques, and they were all over the house, and he just was into the thrill of the hunt. And you could tell because he had collected these over probably a 40-year period.

And so do you get that way? Like, are you constantly looking for a certain piece, or are you just the kind of person who kind of has your eyes open, and if you find it, you find it? Or do you have a list of items that you are hoping to find that will fulfill your goal of having, you know, the perfect lamp for this spot and the perfect, you know, settee for this room and whatnot?

Sarah (34:44)
So I'm a little bit of both. I definitely started off with a wish list ⁓ and thankfully I've been able to check off everything except for an Eames lounger. So I don't know when I will be able to just get the Eames lounger, but that's sort of the last thing on my real wish list. But I'm constantly learning too. I follow other mid-century houses on Instagram, and I see what they're furnishing their homes with. And so sometimes that will sort of spark an interest and...

Stacy Grinsfelder (34:58)
Yes.

Sarah (35:12)
something new. So for the longest time, I was a really big fan of Knoll furniture, and I wanted everything Knoll tulip design, which is sort of a singular leg down the middle and then sort of a rounded bottom. And so I started hunting for Knoll everywhere I could and was able to find a table and chairs for the breakfast room and some armchairs for some other places.

Stacy Grinsfelder (35:20)
Mm-hmm.

Sarah (35:36)
And so then I moved on to, really into, I'm going to say this wrong, aesthetic vintage on Instagram. If you're watching this, I'm sorry, Modeline or Modeline lamps. ⁓ Okay. ⁓ So it's a style of lighting, and it's, I don't have a piece yet, but I find it really interesting and beautiful. And so I'm constantly always sort of just adding to the wishlist.

Stacy Grinsfelder (35:47)
Well, I don't know how to say it, so you're fine with me.

Sarah (36:03)
But I also love estate sales. I love vintage shopping just for fun. So a lot of it, too, is just sort of seeing what's out there and then adding it to the collection if I feel like I have a great place for it.

Stacy Grinsfelder (36:16)
I know there's a place for you on Instagram, but do you ever hear, just in your day-to-day life, like, why don't you just update it? Does anybody ever just tell you or ask you why you don't do something different with your house?

Sarah (36:27)
all the time. Pretty much every contractor who walks into my house assumes that they're being called in to rip out all that's left of the wood paneling and paint everything white. That's always the assumption coming in. So their mind is blown every time I tell them, no, you're not here for this room. You're here to go to this other room and actually make it look more like this room. So yes, I get that so much. And even, yes.

Stacy Grinsfelder (36:39)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Sarah (36:54)
People online for sure don't understand it and say, sort of like, yeah, I mean, of course people who follow me, think, do follow the account, I think get it, but there's always, if you have sort of a reel that goes viral or a post that goes viral, I always have the people saying like, dated, that looks old, you should paint it white. That's just sort of like the refrain that I hear pretty constantly.

Stacy Grinsfelder (36:57)
they don't. Okay.

Sarah (37:20)
So yeah. yeah. Yeah. I think so. Yeah.

Stacy Grinsfelder (37:20)
Yeah, I sort of feel like they're trolls, though, right? The paint it white people, yeah, they've got to be trolls by this time.

What do you think's misunderstood maybe about mid-century modern homes? Or do you feel like there's anything that's misunderstood?

Sarah (37:34)
I do. I think that, like I said before, I think a lot of people who see mid-century houses or even just mid-century modest houses, a lot of ranch houses were built in the mid-century, but they have a lot of the design details that architecturally really significant houses have, like the wood paneling or the colorful tile. And I think a lot of people just look at it and see dated, and they just think that it's

not conducive to modern living, and it's just old or it's dirty, and it makes me sad to think that someone can look at something that I find to be so beautiful and not be able to see the beauty in it. And I think a lot of it is just that we've sort of everything has to be the newest and the best sort of in society, and I think that we've lost a little bit of like small spaces can be cozy and

darker spaces can be cozy and set a very homey vibe, which is what I think mid-century houses do so well. And the flip side of that is the other thing that they do so well is a lot of them have a lot of windows and a lot of access to inside-outside connections, which I think that we should appreciate more. Getting outside of your house and enjoying it for what it is.

And mid-century houses have a way to do that really beautifully.

Stacy Grinsfelder (38:56)
Good points, all good points. If people want to follow along with your projects or see the house, where can they find you?

Sarah (39:03)
So on Instagram, the Instagram handle is @1957housedownsouth, and I'm not great at updating, but because our projects are very slow. We have trouble finding contractors, so we end up doing a lot of things ourselves. But if you're interested in seeing what a real restoration process looks like when you have sort of weekend warriors doing the tasks who otherwise have

full-time jobs, then please come on over and see sort of what that looks like. So yeah, you can find our projects there that are ongoing. Again, some of them take quite a bit to do, but I put them up in stories so you can see the good, the bad, and the ugly of stripping paint, and most of it is ugly. It's not fun, but it's so worth it in the end. So that's on there. And then of course, like I said, I love to do estate sales and vintage.

shopping. So I love to take people along and stories on that too, to just be like, is, these are the cool things that are out there. Go and go in your own local thrift stores and see what you can find. And you can have an interesting piece that no one else in your neighborhood will have.

Stacy Grinsfelder (40:08)
And there are lots of gorgeous pictures of what you've already done, as well as interior shots of the house and everything. So yeah, thank you for explaining more about mid-century modern homes, the restoration process that you're going through, and clearing up some, maybe misconceptions that people have about mid-century homes. Thanks for being here.

Sarah (40:28)
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

(Sponsor Message)

Stacy Grinsfelder (40:49)
We're back. You know, what stayed with me after my conversation with Sarah wasn't just her impeccable taste or even the era of the house. It was her patience. She isn't buying replicas, which I'm pretty sure I would have done. She is tracking down original fixtures and fittings from that period. And that kind of dedication is so rare. We really don't hear that story very often here on the show.

You know, there's that saying, everything old is new again.

I've seen companies go back and dust off their archives. Kohler is a really good example of that. They've been around since 1873, and they were one of the first American manufacturers to introduce coordinated color fixtures in the early 20th century. Sinks, tubs, toilets, all in matching hues instead of just white.

A lot of us have seen those beautiful pink bathrooms, yellow bathrooms, or even blue. At the time, that was a huge shift. And then in 2024, Kohler celebrated its 150th anniversary. And for their anniversary, they pulled six archival colors

from their historic catalog and asked the public to vote on which one should be reissued. Some of you may remember this, and some of you may have even voted. I know I voted. It was a big thing on Instagram. You know, designers, old house people, a lot of us really loved this campaign. The colors up for consideration were Peachblow, Spring Green, Lavender Gray, West Point Gray, Blueberry, and Fresh Green, which, if I remember correctly,

looked more like avocado, what a lot of us may remember is avocado, and Fresh Green looked like the avocado color. The winners were Peachblow and Spring Green, which was more of a leafy green color. Kohler then re-released both those colors for a limited time, and I think they were available through part of 2025. I'm not sure. I didn't buy

I know how many people bought them. I do know the colors sold out. They called it the anniversary celebration, but let's be honest, it was a marketing campaign and a very successful one at that.

But regardless, I jumped on that train.

I had a chance to visit the Kohler campus in Kohler, Wisconsin, because I was in the area for a family reunion. The campus itself is part corporate headquarters. It's part design hub. I think you can still go there and pick out things for your modern-day kitchen and bathroom. And there is a historical showcase. It includes a small museum that walks people through the company's evolution. You know, it shows those early enameled cast iron tubs, and then you get to see all the really fun colored

mid-century fixtures, and they have a bunch of these past innovations, including this really wild thing called the electric sink. am not sure what they were doing with that.

giant showrooms, like full-on bathrooms and kitchens, kind of like a big IKEA, if you've ever been to IKEA, with working product demonstrations. And it included lots of high-tech talking toilets. That seems to be the big thing: bidets that would talk to you. And then you could also see how the company's manufacturing history tied into American domestic life.

You know, basically, how Americans bathed, how we washed dishes, how we used indoor plumbing. And thank goodness for that. I love my indoor plumbing. I love my flush toilets. We are so spoiled now, and I'm not mad about that.

Within the museum, they have rows of original bathroom fixtures from the decades past. So the sinks, the tubs, the toilets, and all of those colors that we associate with very specific eras. You can see the original Peachblow and Spring Green. And then they have the rest of the greens and blues and pinks that, unfortunately, people are still ripping out of their homes without a second thought. Somewhat crushing.

I will put a handful of photos, I took a bunch of photos, and I'll put a handful of those photos

from the Kohler Museum in this week's newsletter on Substack-- fixtures, the colors, and yes, the electric sink.

I'm still not sure what they were thinking about there. So, if you'd like a little visual context for everything that I have just described, including a few extra photos from Sarah's house, you will find it there on Thursday.

And that's it. Thank you for listening to True Tales From Old Houses, and thank you to our Sutherland Welles, Brouns & Co. Linseed Oil Paint, Heritage Supply Co., and Repaint Studios. To continue the conversation, follow True Tales From Old Houses and me, @blakehillhouse_ on Instagram, and subscribe to Notes from an Old House on Substack.

I genuinely, genuinely love hearing from you, so send messages, send voice memos, send photos of the bathroom fixtures you saved from the curb, Instagram, Substack, email, and the voicemail button on the website. I check them all.

And before you start scrolling Zillow for split levels, I need a favor. If you enjoyed today's episode, leave a rating and review wherever you're listening. It's free, and it takes about 30 seconds. It helps more old house people find the show. Also, hit follow or subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. I'm going to need you after I apply the 50-year rule to my childhood because that math, it hurts.

Take care of your old houses and each other. Until next time.