Atomic Ranch Renovation Guide 2025

BUYING AND WORKING ON a Mid-Century Modern home is not for the faint of heart. Not only do you have to be willing to buy a house that is more than 70 years old, you have to be willing to get the guts up to working speed, make the right decision about renovating it, find the right people to work on it with you and be willing to do this in a time when the math tells you that the property it sits on might well be more valuable that saving the house would be. But we save it. Because we believe in saving and preserving these works of art and the part of American history they belong to. We believe we are the stewards of the stories they hold…

WHETHER IT’S WHAT GETS YOU INTO your future dream home or it’s your foray into a mod-minded investment property, there is a lot to consider when buying that fixer upper on the market with the attractive sale price. Kimber Dempsey is a Denver-based mid century modern real estate specialist who also recently bought a property, that was a major renovation undertaking. So between her experience helping people buy and sell mod homes and her own experiences taking on extensive renovation projects she’s got a lot of hard-earned advice that will help you enter into your fixer upper buy with more confidence and less surprises. “You have to know that the bones are good and be able to assess that from an inspection standpoint everything is in good shape,” Kimber says.…

LIGHTING WALLPAPER PLUMBING TILE FINISHING TOUCHES…

THIS HOME, LOCATED IN BELLEVUE, Washington’s Lake Hills neighborhood—the Eastside’s first Planned Unit Development (PUD)—was built in 1958 by Bell and Valdez as a one-story building measuring 1,650 square feet with three bedrooms and two baths. The current homeowners, Darrell and Evonne Benedict, longtime friends and neighbors of Rick Chesmore, principal architect at Chesmore/Buck Architecture, asked him to modernize the kitchen and open the main living spaces, expand the view to the backyard garden and add more efficient lighting as well as additional ceiling insulation. “The kitchen was in the middle of the Great Room with a dropped ceiling at 7’ x 6” high with walls enclosing the space and was only accessed by two 2’x 6” wide doorways leading to two different rooms,” Rick says. “The enclosed kitchen enclosed…

AS AN ARCHITECT AND INTERIOR DESIGNER, a 1959 mid-century home that needs some love is a fun project, but when that home belongs to a friend who is a professional surfer and also from your native South Africa, the project becomes a joyful creative collaboration. Dustin Morris, Principal and Owner at Eyoh Design, had just that opportunity. THE VISION Creating a surfer-friendly abode required some specific priorities: privacy and the ability to, as Dustin says, “lock up and go.” The home, located in the SoCal beach town of San Clemente, needed to be a safe landing place for the homeowner and his family, and it needed to be fairly low-maintenance to accommodate the client’s travel schedule. “Essentially in the beginning it was just a house. The slope was largely unkempt,…

TERRAZZO IS A MOD DESIGN DARLING. But can it fit into your budget? Well, where there is a will there is a way and now with the availability of ready-made terrazzo tiles and other products, getting the chic look and historic elegance of terrazzo is more in reach than you might think. From the floors of the Chrysler building and the Library of Congress to the glamourous homes of the rich and famous in Palm Springs, nothing says modernist luxury quite like terrazzo. Nothing says luxury like the price tag either. The material has been in use for centuries but it was actually considered a humble construction technique because it utilized marble, glass and stone chips or scraps. But its beauty has always been undeniable and its durability has given…