The Intentional Decisions We Made With Our Midcentury Home Renovation

The first time I stepped into a midcentury home I was a teenager.  It was my aunt’s house in Pasadena, California. I loved the simplicity of it.  It felt cozy but spacious, a great place for entertaining. But I always thought that I would never be able to afford something like it.  It seemed unattainable. At the time I didn’t even know that it was midcentury. But I came to know and love that era of design and when Simone and I met, I found out that we had that in common.

In 2006 when I was house hunting, a midcentury home wasn’t even on the wish list. I guess my teenage assumptions spilled into adulthood and I didn’t bother revisiting that old dream. Though a midcentury home wasn’t one of my intentional decisions at the time, it was my intention to purchase an older home, a home with character. 

Turns out my realtor and friend lived in a neighborhood founded in 1912, filled with beautiful midcentury homes. And as the universe would have it, the home just a few doors from his went on the market. Dare I say it was meant to be. 

It was a ranch-style house built in 1953. And though well maintained, it needed a lot of updates. I remodeled the Pepto Bismol pink bathroom and pulled up the shag carpet that covered the beautiful original hardwoods. But that was about it. As a single guy, I could live with the wood paneling that covered the walls of the family room and the outdated tile that covered some of the floors.  I lived in it for a few years before Simone moved in. 

Just before the wedding, we made a few additional updates. We replaced that wood paneling with drywall, painted and pulled out ceiling tiles. 

We knew we wanted to expand the house eventually and went back and forth with a few architects. Our preference was to keep the ranch-style but some architects suggested building up to decrease the disruption to the existing floor plan.  Also, if we went up we’d get uninterrupted skyline views of the city.  Very tempting!

Others kept the ranch-style in the plans but their vision just didn’t match ours.  But through the referral from a friend, we found an architect whose design brought our vision to life and aligned with our appreciation for the midcentury style. 

While adding a second level would have been great (I mean who doesn’t love skyline views?), we are happy with the intentional decisions we made when deciding to renovate our home and happy that we stayed with 1-story living.

We will be in this house long term. 

I try to stay away from the term “forever home” because we don’t know where life will take us. But for the distant future, we don’t see ourselves leaving this house. We are very active and in good health now, but as we grow old this home will be able to accommodate us. Fortunately, we had enough land to expand back and we weren’t forced to go up. 

We celebrate history.

This house tells a story and is a part of the history of the neighborhood. We wanted to maintain some of the original features of the home so it doesn’t look like a completely different house. And certainly didn’t want to look misplaced from the neighborhood.

We got to insert more of our midcentury style. 

One of the drawbacks of buying an older home is that you don’t get to design it with your preferences and style in mind. You just find something that closely matches your aesthetic or something that you can enhance to more closely match your style. The house was already midcentury, but with the addition, we got to insert even more of the midcentury elements that we love.

Now that we are back in our home, we are so glad that we kept it a single story.  We made intentional decisions to stay in our neighborhood and to keep it a ranch style home so that it not only suits our current needs but will also work for us in the future. 

What’s your design aesthetic and what do you love most about it?

With Intention,

Sean and Simone

If you enjoyed what you read, sign up for our newsletter and share with a friend.