This is a project that is super-easy to do, and you will get a lot of compliments from both friends and family. There is no limit to how much you can spend. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me and I’ll be happy to help you out.
In the mid-to-late 90s I lived in the house that now serves as my office and, as always, I had a great view of the corner of the street I was sitting in. In fact, I have an old photo of the corner taken around 1983.
The property that I lived in was a modern house built in 1996. That was the year when mid-century modern was coming into its biggest popularity, and that’s when I first started watching the houses that were being built all over the city.
I remember that time well because it was the time when we were getting our first car. Before that, I was a car guy. Back then, I couldn’t even drive a stick shift. I had to use a stick (which I still have) to go get my daily coffee.
Mid-century modern was really a term for all the homes that were being built at the time. It was the look of the homes that we were seeing that was so different from the rest. They were all built out of concrete, brick, and wood (usually). They had dark brown brick on the exterior and brown brick on the exterior. The homes were built to be tall, slim, and sturdy, without much ornamentation.
The other thing was that architects would build them to be a certain length, width, and height (a standard) so in the end you had a big house that was easy to get in and out of. These were basically the only homes built of the time. And they were all built pretty close to the same time.
The Mid-Century Modern movement of the 1970s, was built in the 70s. Not too long after, but before. So you had these homes that were really tall and the architects just used those buildings and made it look like they were old. But that was really cool because you could just walk in and get in the house without having to get a key.
These homes were also, in a way, self-contained. You could be in one of these houses and you didn’t need to have a lot of stuff that you didn’t have room for in any of the other houses. So you could take things out of you life. And in those days, the idea of a “kitchen” was really new.
That’s one of the really cool things about mid century modern design, and it’s something that is almost a little outdated. We tend to see homes that were big and tall but look small and in need of a lot of space. In a lot of ways the idea of a kitchen was really new. But in a lot of other ways it was really, really old.
Its also the kind of space that would never have been thought of in the first place. There was no kitchen. The kitchen was there. It was just not what the home was about.