I've been collecting for a 50's kitchen for years. What does that mean? Well, it means that I am constantly on the lookout for cool little hoodads and thingymajigs from the 50's. I search thrift stores, Restore, craigslist, ebay and garage sales for anything and everything nifty.
When we rented a home in Brady Lake, things were easy. The mid-century shell was there already. So I just focused on appliances, towls, dishes, salt and pepper shakers and various thingamabobs to make my kitchen complete. Then... when we bought our home in Ravenna, everything changed. I remember the first time we came into the house to look at it. I took one look at the brand new cabinets and said, "Oh, those have to go!"
The search was on, but there were many other renovation projects to complete before we tackled the kitchen. We've taken on a room a year, and now -- at last -- the kitchen project is underway! Needing a whole house re-plumb and finding two kitchen worth of cabinets on ebay were how it all started. We gutted the kitchen on 4th of July weekend, invited 5 plumbers into our home, then took the truck to mechanicsburg PA to pick up the cabinets.
Since then, life has been just a little bit crazy. We've been stripping cabinets to bare metal and experimenting with different painting techniques and colors (sooo many shades of pink!). Gaylen's been rewiring a bit at a time as I insulate and drywall behind him. We've moved things around a zillion times, but now we have it just the way we want it. One problem: I still need a corner base cabinet with a lazy susan. If I don't find it before the rest of the project shapes up, Gaylen will build one out of wood, and we'll have to bribe our friend Cory into fashioning a metal door for it. So that's the plan... for now.
I thought about painting my uppers pink and my base cabinets aqua, leaving the appliances white. I also have some sparkly pink tile for a backsplash and some vintage wallpaper to work in somewhere. This is a "dream as you go" sort of project, so even I don't know exactly how it will all end up, but it's exciting and frightening all at once. Can someone pass me a Xanax?
Stay tuned for updates and details, and feel free to leave some feedback!
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
My Reverse Split Level
One of the things that I like best about our humble abode is the fact that there is no other house just like it. The one thing about suburbia and those new home allottments that I just cannot stand is the cookie-cutter houses that make me expect to see cookie-cutter people coming out of them each morning at EXACTLY the same time! Our home was built sometime in the mid 1940's, but we don't have an exact year. Why? Well, our deed says "1960," but there is no way that the house is that new. We suspect that this may be the first year that anyone bothered to officially call the structure a house, or perhaps it was the first year that it could qualify as a house.
The original structure was 25 feet wide and 23 feet deep and was built out of ammunition boxes. We are just west of the Ravenna Arsenal, and -- though a neighbor whose family has lived across the street for generations told stories about this -- we could hardly believe it when we tore down the paneling in our breezeway and found the words AMMUNITION FOR CANNON WITH EXPLOSIVE PROJECTILE stamped in several places! It is really cool, and you just wait -- it's only a matter of time until my nemesis, Martha Stewart, starts making and selling stencils with that same message so that you too can get that look. she'll make a fortune.
I believe the original structure included a small garge and a connector to it as well. As far as we can tell, this is made of ammunition box wood as well, though we might have to wait until we tear it all up to know for sure. Eventually, the owners of the home made the small garage into a bedroom and added a 2-car garage behind it. The original garage is now our library...a favorite gathering place for all our geeky friends. Then one of the owners -- and I'd like to know who -- added a second floor. It's not that I mind the second floor. In fact, I love it! It is one big bedroom 17'x21' and was a major selling feature for us. HOWEVER...the construction was haphazard (folks don't get permits out in these parts), and it could have actually taken the whole house down. A friend of a friend who happens to be an architect took one look at what we found when we gutted the living room and said that we were facing "catastrophic structural collapse." Sweet! I'm just glad that we -- weekend Home Depot warriors that we are -- were the people who bought the house. Plain ol' folks who just move their stuff in and live there might have been crushed.
So... my original point was that our house has a unique shape. I never knew how to describe it until I saw this vintage exterior color guide on my absolute favorite site Retro Renovation (retrorenovation.com). It seems that split levels were a mid-century rage, but since my second floor sets back a bit instead of jutting forward, I'm going to call it a "Reverse Split-Level" from now on. Eventually, we would like to have real wood siding and stone, but this little ad made me have fiendish ideas of adding pink and aqua to my exterior palette! Oh boy...that might just be enough to send Gaylen over the edge. I've added a pic here of the house after a wakky ice storm. Gaylen took the pic of course. Had it been me, it would have most likely just been a shot of the sky.
The original structure was 25 feet wide and 23 feet deep and was built out of ammunition boxes. We are just west of the Ravenna Arsenal, and -- though a neighbor whose family has lived across the street for generations told stories about this -- we could hardly believe it when we tore down the paneling in our breezeway and found the words AMMUNITION FOR CANNON WITH EXPLOSIVE PROJECTILE stamped in several places! It is really cool, and you just wait -- it's only a matter of time until my nemesis, Martha Stewart, starts making and selling stencils with that same message so that you too can get that look. she'll make a fortune.
I believe the original structure included a small garge and a connector to it as well. As far as we can tell, this is made of ammunition box wood as well, though we might have to wait until we tear it all up to know for sure. Eventually, the owners of the home made the small garage into a bedroom and added a 2-car garage behind it. The original garage is now our library...a favorite gathering place for all our geeky friends. Then one of the owners -- and I'd like to know who -- added a second floor. It's not that I mind the second floor. In fact, I love it! It is one big bedroom 17'x21' and was a major selling feature for us. HOWEVER...the construction was haphazard (folks don't get permits out in these parts), and it could have actually taken the whole house down. A friend of a friend who happens to be an architect took one look at what we found when we gutted the living room and said that we were facing "catastrophic structural collapse." Sweet! I'm just glad that we -- weekend Home Depot warriors that we are -- were the people who bought the house. Plain ol' folks who just move their stuff in and live there might have been crushed.
So... my original point was that our house has a unique shape. I never knew how to describe it until I saw this vintage exterior color guide on my absolute favorite site Retro Renovation (retrorenovation.com). It seems that split levels were a mid-century rage, but since my second floor sets back a bit instead of jutting forward, I'm going to call it a "Reverse Split-Level" from now on. Eventually, we would like to have real wood siding and stone, but this little ad made me have fiendish ideas of adding pink and aqua to my exterior palette! Oh boy...that might just be enough to send Gaylen over the edge. I've added a pic here of the house after a wakky ice storm. Gaylen took the pic of course. Had it been me, it would have most likely just been a shot of the sky.
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