Episode Summary
This week on Home In Progress, Dan starts off with one of the more entertaining detours the show has taken in a while: spite houses. Real buildings, built by real people, for the sole purpose of making someone else miserable. Then he gets into a deep dive on two-tone kitchen cabinets, answering six questions that almost always come up when people consider taking on that project. And he closes out with deck season, including why most product claims about longevity don't hold up in Michigan, and why RepcoLite's Deck and Dock Wood Protector works differently than most of what's out there.
In This Episode
- [00:00] -- Show Preview
- [00:54] -- Spite Houses: When Homebuilding Gets Personal
- [15:26] -- Two-Tone Kitchen Cabinets: Six Common Questions Answered
- [41:25] -- Deck Season: What You Need to Know Right Now
Segment 1: Spite Houses -- When Homebuilding Gets Personal [00:54]
Most people who've had a bad run-in with a neighbor or a family member haven't responded by constructing an entire building. But spite houses are real, they show up throughout American history, and they're exactly what they sound like: buildings put up primarily to annoy, block, or inconvenience somebody else.
The Tyler Spite House -- Frederick, Maryland [02:27]
112 West Church Street, Frederick, MD
In 1814, the city of Frederick decided to extend Record Street straight through a piece of land owned by Dr. John Tyler, a wealthy ophthalmologist who was also credited as the first American-born physician to perform a cataract operation. Tyler fought the decision, lost, went home, and started thinking.
He found an old local ordinance that said the city couldn't build a road through a parcel if construction on a substantial building was already underway there. So he hired a crew and overnight, they poured a foundation directly in the path of the road. When the road workers showed up the next morning, they found a hole in the ground, a crew of builders, and Dr. Tyler reportedly sitting in a chair watching the whole thing and looking very pleased with himself. The road was never built.
Tyler finished the house. It ended up being a three-story Federal-style mansion with 17 rooms, over 9,000 square feet, 14-foot ceilings, and eight working fireplaces. He never actually lived in it. He already had a house right next door. The whole thing was just a very expensive way to win an argument.
The Tyler Spite House still stands at 112 West Church Street in Frederick. It's been a bed and breakfast, been used as offices, and has been on and off the market for well over a million dollars for years. It's also rumored to be haunted, so there's that.
The Boston Skinny House [05:57]
44 Hull Street, North End, Boston (along the Freedom Trail, across from Copp's Hill Burying Ground)
This four-story wooden house is 10 feet wide at its widest point and tapers down to just over nine feet in the back. At the narrowest spot inside, you can stand in the middle and touch both walls without fully extending your arms. There's no front door. You enter from a side alley.
The story that's been passed around for generations goes like this. Two brothers inherited a piece of land from their father. One went off to fight in the Civil War. While he was gone, his brother stayed home and built himself a large, comfortable house on basically all of the inherited land. When the soldier brother came home and saw what happened, he had one thin sliver of land left to his name. So he built the narrowest house he could fit on it and positioned it to block his brother's light and kill his view.
Whether that's all historically accurate is a little murky. But the house is real, it's still there, and if spite didn't build it, something at least a lot like spite was probably involved.
The Plum Island Pink House [09:47]
Newbury, Massachusetts, outside Newburyport near Plum Island
A pale pink house with a cupola, sitting completely alone in the middle of a salt marsh. No neighbors, no trees, no context. Just wetlands in every direction.
Built around 1925, the story goes that a couple going through a divorce agreed the husband would build his wife an exact replica of the home they had shared in town. The catch was she forgot to specify where it had to be built. So he built it in the middle of an isolated salt marsh, with no fresh water and plumbing hooked up to saltwater. She allegedly took one look and refused to set foot inside.
Whether that's true or legend, nobody can say for certain. But the house is still out there if you've ever made it up toward Plum Island.
A Note on Exterior Color and Spite [12:43]
Dan wraps the segment wondering if some of the truly baffling exterior color schemes you see driving around might have a little spite behind them. If you're going the other direction and want a color scheme that's actually beautiful, RepcoLite and Benjamin Moore can help. And if you do go bold, Benjamin Moore Aura covers beautifully no matter what color you choose.
Current sale: Benjamin Moore Aura and many other premium Benjamin Moore exterior paints are 20% off at every RepcoLite location through May 25.
Segments 2 and 3: Two-Tone Kitchen Cabinets -- Six Common Questions [15:26]
Two-tone kitchen cabinets look great in photos. Then you stand in your own kitchen and try to figure out where the colors go, and suddenly you've got a lot of questions. Dan works through six of the most common ones.
Question 1: Where Do the Different Colors Go? [19:17]
Stop thinking about color first. Start by looking at your kitchen and finding places where it already naturally changes or transitions. Two-tone cabinets work best when the color shift happens somewhere the eye expects a shift anyway.
An island is the most obvious example. It already sits apart from the perimeter cabinets and reads as its own piece, so a different color there makes sense to people right away. But there are other natural breaks to look for too, like a pantry wall, a built-in hutch, a coffee bar or desk area that feels separate from the main kitchen, or a clearly defined wall of cabinets that stands apart from the rest.
The most common rule of thumb is lighter colors up high and darker or stronger colors lower or on a focal point. Lighter uppers make the kitchen feel more open. Darker lowers give it some weight and ground the space. That's why you see so many kitchens with cream or white perimeter cabinets and a navy or charcoal island.
It's a rule of thumb, though, not a hard rule. Dark uppers can work if the kitchen has great natural light, taller ceilings, glass-front cabinet doors, or a mix of open shelving. Context matters.
What you want to avoid is a scattered approach where the second color shows up in a random cabinet over here, another section across the room, maybe one upper somewhere else. Even if each individual spot makes some sense on its own, the overall effect reads as unplanned. Keep the color placement logical and intentional.
Question 2: Do I Need an Island? [24:47]
No. In kitchens without an island, the most straightforward move is light upper cabinets with darker lowers. But you can also pick a defined zone to give a different color to, a pantry wall, a built-in hutch, a coffee bar, a prep area that sits apart from the main run of cabinets. Designers talk about this as giving an area its own identity, treating it more like a piece of furniture than a cabinet that has to match everything else. A deep green pantry wall against off-white perimeter cabinets can look great, for example.
One thing to watch in a no-island kitchen: keep it to two cabinet colors. Once you add a third on top of floors, countertops, backsplash, hardware, and appliances, the kitchen starts to feel like a lot very quickly.
Question 3: Will Two Colors Make My Kitchen Feel Smaller or Busier? [26:17]
It can, but it doesn't have to. In a larger kitchen with good natural light, you've got a lot of room to work with. You can go darker on the lowers, use a bold pantry color, push the contrast further. A smaller kitchen with limited light is a different situation. Two cabinet colors in a tight, low-light space can make the room feel chopped up, and one cabinet color might genuinely be the smarter call there.
Dan admits this is the question that probably rules out his own kitchen for the project. That's okay. Not every space is the right fit for it, and it's a lot better to figure that out before you paint everything than after.
Question 4: How Do I Choose Two Colors That Actually Work Together? [29:07]
One color should do the calming. The other should do the talking. That's the principle. Pick one quiet color and one color with some character. If both are loud, the kitchen becomes visually exhausting to be in.
The quiet color is almost always going to be something like a warm white, a cream, or a soft greige. The character color is where the personality comes in: a navy, a sage green, something deeper and moodier.
Three Benjamin Moore pairings Dan mentions that work in just about any kitchen:
White Dove and Hale Navy -- a warm white paired with a navy that basically acts like a neutral. It's not going to look dated in 10 or more years. About as safe and timeless as it gets.
Swiss Coffee and October Mist -- a creamy white with a soft sage green. More muted than the navy option, better for someone who wants to step into color without it being too loud.
White Dove and Aegean Teal -- Aegean Teal was Benjamin Moore's Color of the Year back around 2021 and is still going strong. A little more current-feeling than the other...
