Become Your Home’s Historian – Atom Stevens

This week, Atom Stevens, Denver area mid-century Realtor, photographer, designer, and advocate, tells Mid Mod Remodel how to become your own home’s historian. 

Becoming the expert in your own home can mean a lot of different things. It might be rattling off the square footage of your roof to a potential contract or on a call without thinking. It might be having handy access to documents about the repair and maintenance of your furnace or water heater. Or it might just mean knowing some interesting history of who built your home and why they made some of their choices. 

All of this information – from dimensions on a floorplan sketch to archival advertising of your home’s builder – falls into the category of Home Improvement Planning I call “discovery”.

And while it might not seem like your most pressing concern, when you’re trying to pick out backsplash tile, or nail down contractor beds, it has a purpose. The more you know about your home, the more you are empowered to make confident and correct for you choices.

Every home has a story and every homeowner can benefit from becoming their home’s resident expert! When Atom Stevens bought his house in Harvey Park, he had no idea it would lead him on a journey to becoming a local Cliff May historian and advocate for mid-century preservation. Not only did Atom find a vocation, he also found a great value!

What secrets does your house hold and how can you go about uncovering them? Learning about your home’s history may lead you to information about structure, mechanicals, and materials that can help you as you remodel plan. So, where do you start? 

Today, Atom shares his expert tips on uncovering your home’s history.  

In Today’s Episode You’ll Hear:

• How old school ads can help you along on the search for your home’s history.
• Why a cross country search might help closer to home.
• How to be your contractor’s history BFF and help them see the value in your home!

Listen Now On 

Apple | Google |  Spotify | Stitcher

Resources Atom Stevens shared (and more)

• Learn how to join the ReMod Squad and get ready to remodel in 2023 by watching my FREE Masterclass, “How to Plan an MCM Remodel to Fit Your Life(…and Budget)”, ON DEMAND.
• Get my Ranch Resource List right here!
• Go here for my Home Assessment Workbook. 
• Find Atom all over social media:
  • On Insta @harveyparkmodern, @cliffmayprefabs, @atomstevens and @modernatom
  • On facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/hpmodern
  • And online @ modernatom.homes
• Interested in that Airstream Doc Della mentioned? Find out all about Alumination: Independent Documentary About an American Icon! 

And you can always…

• Join us in the Facebook Community for Mid Mod Remodel
• Find me on Instagram:@midmodmidwest
• Find the podcast on Instagram: @midmodremodelpodcast

Read the Full Episode Transcript

Della Hansmann  00:01

Becoming the expert in your own home can mean a lot of different things. It might be rattling off the square footage of your roof to a potential contract or on a call without thinking. It might be having handy access to documents about the repair and maintenance of your furnace or water heater. Or it might just mean knowing some interesting history of who built your home and why they made some of their choices. 

All of this information from dimensions on a floorplan sketch to archival advertising of your home’s builder falls into the category of Home Improvement Planning I call discovery. And while it might not seem like your most pressing concern, when you’re trying to pick out backsplash tile, or nail down contractor beds, it has a purpose. The more you know about your home, the more you are empowered to make confident and correct for you choices.

Della Hansmann  00:44

So tune in today for the second half of my talk with Atom Stevens about where his decades deep dive into Cliff May has taken him to the tracks in California, Denver, Las Vegas and Dallas, each built by local builders. He knows more about Cliff May than most people ever will. And he’s telling us how he discovered this and what that discovery has meant to him in today’s interview.

Della Hansmann  01:07

Hi there. Welcome back to Mid Mod Remodel. This is the show about updating mid century homes. Helping you match a mid century home to your modern life. I’m your host Della Hansmann architect and mid century ranch enthusiast, you’re listening to season 11 Episode Four. Before we get started, my resource of the week is my free DIY home assessment workbook. This is a guide to collecting the basic information about your home from roof pitch to reference photos, and it can make a great jumping off point for documenting your house and becoming a true expert in your own home. Grab it at midmod-midwest.com/resources.

Della Hansmann  01:41

If you want to go further into mastering your home remodel, this is only the beginning. Following the steps and the mid century masterplan method will take you on a journey of self reflection, home discovery style focusing and layout brainstorming that will lead to a remodel that’s just right for you. And let you do all those things in the most efficient way possible. Because you’d probably rather spend your time living in your unimproved home then stressing about it for longer than necessary.

Della Hansmann  02:06

So before we get into the interview, I want to let you know that this is a really great time to learn more about and I would say join the ready to remodel program. That’s because while it always offers the step by step actions you’ll want to take to plan a remodel with on demand video lessons, workbooks guides, examples and more to walk you through the remodel process on your own and monthly live support zoom calls with me plus anytime access to our Facebook community of fellow midcentury updaters.

We’re about to start another remodel squad. These Home Improvement energy bursts involve weekly support calls to take you through the steps of the program in sync with a group of other mid century homeowners so you can build on that collective energy and make plans happen more quickly. Those calls are kicking off on Monday February 6, so sign up before then to join this squad.

Della Hansmann  02:54

You can learn more about ready to remodel and our remote squads by watching my free recorded masterclass planning a mid century remodel to fit your life and budget. There’s a link in the show notes at midmod-midwest.com/ 1104 or get your invite directly at mid mod dash midwest.com/ready to remodel. Okay, let’s talk to Atom.

Della Hansmann  03:14

So you bought your house 18 years ago? You didn’t know what it was. Was there anyone in your neighborhood at all who knew what they had or thought it was cool that you were aware of?

Atom Stevens  03:26

There was, um, but not many. What’s interesting is so Harvey Park, the kind of describe the geography we’re in southwest Denver, an area that was built in the 1950s. So it’s all mid century. In the Harvey Park neighborhood there it’s a huge neighborhood, there are 4300 houses. Of those 4300 houses only 170 of them are Cliff May homes. And for decades and decades.

So Cliff my homes have these cedar exteriors. The only brick they have on them is the chimney the fireplace, right. And through the decades there was this notion that in Harvey Park, if it’s not brick, it’s cracked. So you can actually get a Cliff May home for really cheap not that long ago because people had no idea what these were about. They had no idea that they were something to be appreciated. They just thought these homes have no basement. They’re smaller than all the other homes in the neighborhood. They don’t have brick exteriors. Like what’s the advantage? You know, why? Why would anybody pay a lot of money for this these houses and

Della Hansmann  04:34

so overlooked and looked down upon? Oh, my God. Yeah,

Atom Stevens  04:38

absolutely. So we get we got a great deal on our house. And there were a lot of distressed properties among the Cliff Bay homes, a lot of them that you know, it’s funny, right, Atomic Ranch Magazine did an article in Harvey park of a different kind of home called the Carey holiday home. I don’t remember what year I want to say like 2008 or something like that, where when they interviewed the homeowner one of the quotes from the homeowner is he described the Cliff May homes as being because he knew what they were. He described them as being a near condemnation condition, and that he wished he could just haul them out to California and sell them for the more than $130,000, or whatever they were worth at that time. And so that was real telling for me.

Della Hansmann  05:28

So, there was more of an appreciation for Cliff may already in 2008, for example, but not in Denver. I mean, I saw when I came to Denver, Denver is a brick town and I learned a little bit about the history of that being a choice by the city fathers after a big fire and also kind of a an estin brick money making scheme. But certainly, you know, it goes all the way back to our children’s stories, the House that the third little pig built is built from brick solid,

Atom Stevens  05:57

sturdy houses, the brick house.

Della Hansmann  06:00

And here in the Midwest, our tracks are mid century tract homes are not necessarily are mostly not built of brick, but they usually have some brick decoration on them because of that class factor of like, oh, well, it’s got some brick. It’s now as a mid century remodeler, I much prefer a house that stick framed rather than one with brick siding or a brick structure because it’s so much easier to modify to put a small addition on right to change to extend a window. But even here in

Atom Stevens  06:33

Harvey Park, not all the brick houses are the same. A lot of people don’t know this. But it’s one of those little things I’ve been able to figure out. It’s all the houses, it’s brick veneer. It’s brick siding. However, not all of them are frame buildings. So there’s one builder actually there were two builders in the neighborhood that actually built with block construction with brick veneer on the outside so they call it double masonry construction. So was block with brick veneer and then plaster interiors in 1955. Still doing plaster interiors.

So we have we have about five or 600 homes in the neighborhood that still have plaster interiors in that old world double masonry construction. So and that was as we were talking about in the last podcast, this notion of every builder was trying to figure out what’s the value I’m going to bring to this generation. Those builders that was it, I’m bringing you old world sturdiness and like

Della Hansmann  07:30

with a modern practicality of a block form. I bet the homeowners who buy those houses planning to remodel them are nastily surprised,

Atom Stevens  07:39

a little more challenging for them. I’m sure

Della Hansmann  07:41

I once came across this is totally off the topic. But I once came across this fascinating 50s era advertising pamphlet for homes built from concrete like fully concrete walls, concrete interior walls, with channels for the plumbing and electrical. This was their idea of home of the future and right that to me, I was like this is so fascinating. And sounds like it’d be impossible to insulate impossible to make possible to repair Oh, my God a nightmare. But

Atom Stevens  08:08

well, one interesting thing too, you know, going back to the Cliff may homes, you know, one of the things Cliff may did in California that, that he felt like really distinguish the homes he was designing is that all of them in California were slab on grade. Right, which is how the Cliff made homes. It’s an it’s interesting how the Cliff May has escaped California because we didn’t really talk about that in the last episode. I alluded to it, but I didn’t really talk about it.

Atom Stevens  08:36

Cliff may in order to scale, he actually decided he was going to license lumber yards and local builders to build his designs. So the homes here in Denver were actually built by a company called burns construction, who is licensed by May to manufacture and build his product here locally.

And of course, one of the local changes that they did is they didn’t do the slab on grade. Thank goodness. Because here in Denver, you have to have footings that go down over three feet, right because the frost line so if you’re going to do all the excavation to have footings going down three feet, why then do a slab it makes more sense to do a crawlspace which is what they did under these houses. So it’s kind of funny then when I see people in California trying to do renovations and they’re trenching the concrete and have piles of dirt in the middle of their house. And it’s plumbing and electrical is super simple in our house is because we just go down on the crawlspace and do whatever work we have to do down there.

Della Hansmann  09:37

Hey, yeah, whereas here we have at least a four foot frost protection requirement and so we all have basements because once you’ve gone down four feet, you might as well just keep digging, but you’re definitely better off for moving around for relocating things in a kitchen or for switching around the location of plumbing in a bathroom you can just change that also much more easily to crawlspace as well. It’s fun to see. So we’re speaking of escaped California. Are there other enclaves of Cliff May homes around.

Atom Stevens  10:05

So there are so in my obsession, you know, I have my map of the Denver area where I’ve obsessively fine found all the 7000 mid century modern homes in the Denver area. I’ve also been finding and counting Cliff May homes across the country. And so a great majority of them are in California, 1000s of them. I think my current count nationwide is a little over 2700 Cliff May homes across the country. And I found them in 17 different states.

Atom Stevens  10:35

So the one in Denver is the largest tract outside of California with 170 homes. Number two is surprisingly, Las Vegas with roughly 120 homes. And then I think number three is Dallas, Dallas, Texas. So it’s interesting. Each of those tracks were built by local builders there, they weren’t built by May, they were all just licensed by May to build his homes in their area. And some of them have regional variations like in in Texas, they have some brick veneer walls in the outside instead of the cedar board and batten. There’s a little tiny tract in Tucson, Arizona that has all brick of all brick veneer on the outside of the house with the weeping mortar, if you know what that is. That’s really interesting, actually. Yeah. washed out and kind of it’s kind of a sloppy looking. Yeah.

Della Hansmann  11:33

However, it’s not as common in the Midwest. I’m not I don’t think it holds up very well to the elements here. But

Atom Stevens  11:38

yeah, I would think so. We have a surprising amount of weeping mortar here in Denver for some reason. But that aside, I have found them as far east as in the suburbs of New York City. Really? Yeah.

Della Hansmann  11:52

Fascinating. And always in an enclave or sometimes as a standalone.

Atom Stevens  11:58

Um, sometimes in a standalone, that’s pretty rare. But they did clip me did have this notion of selling these houses as kits, kind of like Sears where you can just order a house. But in most cases, it was a merchant builder, who was licensed to build them and normally had had a local lumberyard, doing the manufacturing instead of shipping houses all the way from California, which would have been definitely been cost prohibitive. And they, they again, because of the with the regional variations, they still did it. flat packed, you know, so even though it might have been a short drive from the lumberyard to the site, they still flat pack them on flatbed trucks and erected them the way they were meant to be built by Cliff May,

Della Hansmann  12:46

it must have been quite a parade to watch it happen to watch them.

Atom Stevens  12:52

Be I have zero photographs here in Denver, but I did get one. One person described it. As before the houses arrived. All the streets that were the Cliff may homes were just foundations and chimneys. So you had these streets that just had foundations and chimneys, and then the houses started arriving on flatbed trucks.

Della Hansmann  13:14

Why didn’t No one photo document that? I mean?

Atom Stevens  13:16

I’m sure somebody did. But I have yet to find any. That’s an ongoing search.

Della Hansmann  13:21

You wish for like an eight track video, or right? That would be amazing.

Atom Stevens  13:27

eight millimeter film of the houses going out?

Della Hansmann  13:31

Yes, this is my lack of AV accuracy. Speaking of total sidebar, I’m just going to pause in the middle of this podcast to pitch everyone. As soon as it’s available. I haven’t checked yet. There was an amazing documentary at Denver modernism week screen there on the airstream and its history. And part of the reason that documentary is so compelling is that it is filled with all of this original video footage, and new great documentary interviews. But yeah, why didn’t anyone take a whole bunch of like here? It goes up fast, it goes to the next one here. So that would I would sit there and watch that.

Atom Stevens  14:07

Yeah, I would think there would have been news coverage about it. But I haven’t found any so far.

Della Hansmann  14:12

And you would know. So, that is a perfect transition. Because this I want to get some of your expertise for my listeners on how they can research their homes. Everybody wants to know more about their homes. I think a lot of people imagine that their blueprints for their house are just sitting out there somewhere. And that’s so much

Atom Stevens  14:30

I get question all the time. And I wish that were the case, because that would be amazing,

Della Hansmann  14:36

Me, too. But there are things you can find out and it’s not just about your house about the builder of your house or the year your house was being built.

Atom Stevens  14:45

You have the fortunate thing is because in the 1950s and even late 40s We’re moving into a time where there were more merchant builders, building neighborhoods of homes at one time. That makes a lot of Research much easier because these people had to advertise to sell houses. And so just as where I started, you’re talking about in my in the last podcast about how I discovered that my house is a Cliff May home by looking at ads in the newspapers.

That’s exactly where I would tell people to go first, unless they know that their house is a custom home, in which case, it does become much more complicated. But if you live in a tract home,  if you live in a merchant build home in the 1950s, there’s bound to be an advertisement for it somewhere. And once you once you start to then learn the builder and learn the name of the product, you might learn your model name, like they gave a lot of the models names.

Della Hansmann  15:39

Yeah.

Atom Stevens  15:40

And then learn the features, the selling points of the homes, once you have all that information, it becomes it’s kind of snowballs, then it becomes for a lot of people kind of an obsession, like, Oh my God, I want to learn more. Who was this builder? Was there an architect? What were they all about? And the biggest thing to me and why I’ve really kind of loved this part into my real estate practice. I’ve collected, you know, almost 4000 ads for the Denver area. Because this stuff really excites people, and it creates a pride of ownership that they didn’t have in their home before when they know what its story is and what its features were and if even just with reading the advertising copy from the 1950s it’s it’s a soothing thing to me because it was all so beautifully written like.

Della Hansmann  16:34

Yeah, it was beautiful. And I agree, I found my house wasn’t even a merchant builder. It was a guy who did a house and then did another house. I didn’t know their house, but I know his name. And he did a house in the Parade of Homes in 52. The same year he did this house and I found the ad for that and a little sketch and it’s so delightful. It really makes you feel like you

Atom Stevens  16:57

it is something and then like with the Cliff May homes, you know, did to discover that this isn’t the only neighborhood in the country like you could go to other sister neighborhoods and see the same product done in a different way or in a different place. That’s fascinating. And the Cliff may homes aren’t the only example of that. There were the Hoffman homes where they were a Phoenix base builder that built into the Midwest, actually they built in the Denver area. Albuquerque, Chicago, if you’ve heard of the Chicago suburb Hoffman estates,

Della Hansmann  17:32

I know, suburbs that that name is totally familiar to me. And the thing is, when I was living in there in the Chicago suburbs in the 1970s era, split level house, which I did love the split level. I thought that I thought that was ticky tacky trash, I did that. And now I’m like, Oh, if I could just update that house. If I could backdate that house if I could take out the remodeled kitchen, and if I could put back in the cool features. I would sing songs about it. I would write epic poems about that. And then I lived in that house. I didn’t appreciate it at all. So yeah.

Atom Stevens  18:06

And there’s a lot to be said about that. And the Cliff may homes here in Denver, they were just built with steel cabinets. We ended up taking ours out because my wife didn’t love them and didn’t want to live with them. I get it because they were they weren’t the best. But I encountered kitchens all the time that are these beautiful handmade furniture, mahogany cabinets. And it kills me when I see people take those out for a couple of reasons. One, if you wanted those cabinets like that built today, you wouldn’t be able to afford it. It would cost as much as your house to hire a carpenter to build cabinets at that level of carpentry.

Della Hansmann  18:44

Right?

Atom Stevens  18:45

The challenge is just trying to get my head around it. We actually did a big renovation where we took down a pony wall around our kitchen and reconfigured it. And is we started by interviewing contractors and started to find that everybody we interviewed had no idea what they were looking at.

Della Hansmann  19:06

Yeah

Atom Stevens  19:06

So big challenge was finding a contractors that really got it. And you know, the what, what the great service that you provide being an architect is that you can take any contractor and through your drawings and instructions, even get them to do anything. But when you’re a homeowner and you’re just hiring a contractor directly, when you don’t have a contractor that gets it, it’s gonna get really messy really fast.

So I ultimately ended up just being my own contractor because I didn’t trust any of the general contractors that we interviewed. So, I mean, I’m blessed. I’m blessed to have my design skills. So I was able to get away with that, but most homeowners can’t. Yeah, so that’s a huge challenge and you really bring in all the expert help that you can to help you navigate that because contractors will quickly ruin your house, if you

Della Hansmann  20:03

and with the best of intentions is the real tragedy, because the reason that most houses most mid century houses get ruined by contractors, not because the contractors are trying to ruin the houses, but because they’re doing what they think is the right choice for the house and what most people have been asking them for. Because it’s what they’ve been seeing in a magazine on HGTV.

It’s what was appropriate for a house of another era. And so basic Yeah, this is I have slowly and carefully focused and streamline my business until basically what we do is try to give people exactly the amount of information they need in order to show a contractor who wants to get it, but does not know exactly what you’re talking about when you say, Isn’t this a cool mid century house? And they’re like, it’s a basic little house from the mid century era. Sure. And you’re like, oh, no, isn’t it a cool little mid century house?

Atom Stevens  20:33

I’ve got some great trim, that’ll work. look good in this house? Yeah,

Della Hansmann  21:00

like here, I’ve got some great crown molding for your house. And you’re like, yeah. So my goal is just to give people the information, the visuals that they need to show a contractor like, this is what I want? No, really, it’s simple. And that’s good. That’s fine. I like it. And then most, most of my clients can find any, doesn’t need to be a contractor who specializes in mid century once they have that vision. But yeah, when you’re when you’re just calling up contractors out of the phonebook. They might not see what you see, in fact, the odds are that they, the odds are they definitely don’t see what you know, yeah, biggest challenge was finding someone who gets it. What about the most rewarding thing you’ve done for the house? In 18 years?

Atom Stevens  21:41

Well, I mean, I hate to say that my house is still a work in progress. It’s kind of like a lot of architects live in like, very live and work in the in the least designed spaces. And like engineers work in, you know, air conditioning engineers work in offices, or the air conditioner is broken. It’s like, it’s like you’re you’re always so busy helping everybody else that you never take care of yourself. So our house is still very much a work in progress.

There’s still so much to do. But it has been rewarding to learn about my house and share it out to people in the neighborhood and in the city and really see the neighborhood transformed. Yeah. So you know, the houses surrounding us, although I’m getting a little jealous, are looking amazing. Which is kind of lighting a fire under my butt that I need to get more work done on mine. But you know, having that understanding and then sharing it with others has been super rewarding. And something I’m really proud of.

Della Hansmann  22:39

What do you wish you’d known before you started? Or the alternate version of that question is, were you better off not knowing what you’re getting into when you started?

Atom Stevens  22:51

That’s a good question.

Della Hansmann  22:53

I’ll put you on the spot.

Atom Stevens  22:54

I don’t know what I wish I had known. I’m glad we happened onto this house.

Della Hansmann  23:01

You’ve been yet so fortunate to find something. As we said, I think earlier in this episode, at almost almost a moment of teardown, I’m sure you share this feeling to me it’s so exciting to be in this moment. To be that there are still single owner homes out there there are still a lot of mid century homes out there that have need maintenance work have deteriorated due to the vagaries of time but are still here are still standing and we can come in right now and call timeout and fix them back up again. And they’ll last another seventy years.

Atom Stevens  23:32

are still even though we cry every time we see a house family flipped or something like that. There’s still tons of opportunities. In fact, there’s another so you know, with 7000 houses in the neighborhood of course there’s like tons of neighborhoods. There’s another neighborhood that I’m hoping to be listing house in soon that it’s for an original owner who has their house has never sold and they were actually an interior designer so that kind of adds to it. So they’ve taken the whatever upgrades they’ve done to their house were very conducive to the rest of the house, which is great.

In that same neighborhood I’m going to be meeting a couple a 99 year old couple who still lives in their original home. So these are things that I just eat up because they’re just it’s my favorite thing to walk into a home that somebody’s lived in for 60 years. A lot of times it is a time capsule like they’ve changed very little like it almost feels like the builder got so much right that they didn’t feel the need to go through and you know trashed the whole thing in the 1980s or something like that.

And I just love that happens to I definitely find some single owner homes that I’m like oh, look, look when you just your kids moved out and you were like we deserve a new kitchen and look what you did out here. But no it’s it’s so powerful to find a house that that really is a time capsule and I have so much love for that my grandparents actually bought it bought a house from a single owner builder in 1953 and lived in it like a time capsule kind of sealed there.

Atom Stevens  25:13

Same thing in the suburbs of Chicago and Barrington. They haven’t they had a time capsule tri level that not much. Maybe the carpet was changed here and there but in fact, every time they changed the carpet out, they would leave the old carpet in one of the bedrooms. So it’s almost like they have a gallery of old carpets.

Della Hansmann  25:39

Oh, that’s really fun. My grandparents replaced their orange shag living room carpet with orange shag living room carpet. And they had to go to every carpet store in town to find one that still had it. But they did. They did this in like the early 2000s. And at that low, everyone in the family shook their head. They were like oh my gosh, aren’t doing anything. There they go. And I didn’t really glom on to that then either, and now I’m just like, I love that choice. That’s amazing. But yeah,

Atom Stevens  26:08

my grandparents had shag carpet too. They had green shag carpets, it was kind of like a lawn. My grandma though she would lose jewelry in it. So they eventually stopped doing the shag carpet.

Della Hansmann  26:21

Yeah, I don’t know I have a little I do the very millennial thing. I have a little rug a ball shag runner in my hallway as like the nod to it that I also can take outside and shake and throw in the laundry rather than wondering what kind of dust mites are living in a mid century history of shag carpet. But I love these ones so much. Well, there’s never an end to this kind of story. But no,

Atom Stevens  26:45

we could go on for hours and hours and probably days.

Della Hansmann  26:49

Well, this is I’m just gonna put you on the spot. Because if someone asked me this question, I don’t think I could tell you, but what would you do next? What’s your next? What will you do next? What’s your next home tweak that you want to,

Atom Stevens  26:58

um, we actually have to finish what we’ve started. So we kind of got stalled in the middle because have we had a couple of things happen in our family. And they can totally push us off track. And we just haven’t gotten back on track yet. But one of those is that the dining room in this house is so small the original dining room, we actually kind of folded it into the kitchen to make a pseudo eat in kitchen.

And part of that is we actually put it in an island that is meant to have a lower table height portion attached to it. That will be our dining room table. So that makes it more space efficient, because then there’s still space to get around it. And that table we actually have the wood, it’s going to be a piece of live edge walnut that we just need to get finished and actually installed onto the island. So that’s kind of the big next thing to get done so that we can finally feel like the space is finished.

Della Hansmann  27:56

Yes, that sounds fabulous. And that’s such a that’s a great space saving design for if you’re if you’re fitting an island in where there’s almost no room for an island plus table at two different heights. I’ve just sketched that into a project in the last couple of months. So nice. Let me know how you like it when it’s done.

Atom Stevens  28:14

Oh, sure. We’ll take plenty of photographs.

Della Hansmann  28:17

And where can people find you if they want to see what you’re up to selling houses see your fun research, see what you’ve done to your own house. Worst thing,

Atom Stevens  28:26

the best thing to do is to follow my Instagram because that’s where I’m most active. So that’s at modern atom ATO M I also have another Instagram that’s specially focused on my neighborhood Harvey Park, and that one is at Harvey Park modern if you want to see what Harvey Park is all about. I also run an Instagram called Cliff may prefabs at Cliff make prefabs where I’m just focused on the Cliff May homes nationwide.

So check that out. And then my photography Instagram is at atom Stevens ATO M Ste ve NS and so those are all good places to connect to me as well. I also have a website modern atom ATO m dot homes. That’s the whole website address. And that I have a curated list of all of the mid century modern and charming homes including some 80s mods because I’ve been really getting into those lately that are currently for sale across the Denver area. So that’s always a good spot to check to see that curated list of homes for sale.

Della Hansmann  29:34

That is quite a list. Well fantastic and it’s funny I follow your Cliff may prefabs account too and I didn’t know that was you? Nice. All worth a follow for everyone listening well. Marvelous. We’re gonna have to have you back to talk more about Denver about Cliff may about your journey about everything you’ve learned about how to learn things about mid century homes, but for now, thank you.

Atom Stevens  29:57

Thank you.

Della Hansmann  29:59

What a journey that Atom Stevens took from buying a home he and his wife instinctively liked but knew next to nothing about to being one of the leading lights in our merry band of national mid century fanatics. If you want to do the same, you don’t necessarily need to hit the microfiche section of your library, although it wouldn’t hurt.

Della Hansmann  30:17

To recap, the more you know, the more you know about the history of your home the neighborhood the mid century era in general, the more you’ll learn practical things about the construction of your home how to plan an addition that the builder already pre planned for you, where you may conversely encounter unexpected roadblocks and how to draw on the design details of the era to create a home update that’s doable and delightful.

Della Hansmann  30:40

Like I said at the top this week, and next are a great moment to spring into action on your home research and home improvement plans because we’re about to begin another great ReMod Squad group inside of the ready to remodel program. There’s really no substitute for the wonderful feeling of doing it together. Sharing your know how your questions and your enthusiasm with a group of other mid century homeowners who all care about getting it right and getting their projects going is so motivational.

Della Hansmann  31:04

I’ll be walking this next ReMod Squad through the Master Plan process simplifying their home improvement plans starting on February 6. I’d love for you to be one of them. So are you ready? You can learn all about the ReMod Squad and watch the free masterclass by going to the link in the show notes at midmod-midwest.com/1104. Plus you’ll also find a summary of everything Atom just said and some of his microfiche research available without having to visit the windowless part of your local public library. These vintage ads and images are cool. Go check them out.

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