The Mushroom Factor

Probably the most repeated question we’re asked about redoing our kitchen is whether we’re getting stainless steel appliances. When I say no, I inevitably first get looks of surprise and then something on the order of “how strange are you?”

What is it with stainless steel?!

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against the glowing surface…except for the fact that everyone’s kitchen is done in it. For that reason, and because it doesn’t fit my kitchen’s style, I am NOT buying stainless steel appliances.

So, aside from stainless steel, what are the kitchen trends of today? And how far off, whether by intention or ignorance, are we as we renovate our kitchen?

The Top Five Kitchen Trends, according to This Old House online

1. Earth Friendly
“Green is in all over the house-perhaps most of all in the kitchen,” writes Kristin Mucci, of This Old House online.

I painted my walls green. Does that count?

Actually, we’re doing some fairly green things in our renovation project. One example is recycling the wood we saved from our porch ceiling when we rebuilt it 15 years ago. It’s fir pine and after stripping the white paint and finishing it in a clear varnish, it looks stunning in the sunporch section of our kitchen.

2. High Tech
“The kitchen of the future is here now, chock full of techie elements that meld functionality with fun.”

Okay, here’s where we fall a bit short. While some people are putting high definition television into their refrigerator doors and hood ventilations, we’re the last household on the face of the earth that doesn’t subscribe to viewing beyond the three majors, ABC, CBS, and NBC (or so our children tell us).

3. Colorful
“Stainless steel might never go out of style, but it’s sure losing some steam against this year’s bright appliance hues.”

Ah, what we lack in technology (and stainless steel), we make up for in color. Our white refrigerator was great in function but with the front of it rusting away, it lacked in form. We took it to an auto body paint shop and had it painted red. We love it!

4. Fresh and Healthy
“Companies are catering to nutrition-conscious consumers with products that help keep cooking healthy.”

No, we haven’t put in a copper sink with natural antibacterial qualities, as offered by Native Trails. But a new kitchen really brings out an enthusiasm for cooking and with that comes an interest in healthy, good quality food. Hey, the fact that we can now find our spices greatly enhances the success of our meal!

5. Convenient and Multifunctional
“This year’s products pack it in for multitasking, time-challenged consumers.”

I can’t begin to tell you how moving from cramped cooking quarters to an efficient triangular work zone makes life so much easier!

So there you have it. Our kitchen certainly isn’t keeping up with the latest trends, nor do we want it to. But it’s ours and it fits us perfectly. Can’t do better than that!

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As I’ve mentioned, we’re in the midst of a big kitchen project.

We’ve been at this project for more than a year and may easily be for yet another. People are often horrified to hear this, but really, it’s not been that bad. It’s tolerable for two reasons. First and foremost, it’s not like we’ve been put out of a kitchen for a year. For the past twenty years, we’ve used our pantry as the kitchen and continue to do so during this project. Secondly, we’re pretty easy-going people. This is pretty important! Patience is a virtue, my dears, one will worth cultivating during home renovations.

An old house kitchen in its original state, such as ours is a rare find. To a kitchen designer, it’s a blank palette waiting for the first splash of renovation. To the layperson, it’s a bit of a challenge!

Neither of us are professional designers. While we did consult one initially, for the most part, we’re winging it on our own. We’re hoping our artistic and technical abilities are enough to carry us though—here’s where input is welcomed!

Our kitchen before

Our ideas: They’ve been evolving…

Our ideas have been contingent on two things: original design and budget. We want to maintain the simplistic, Craftsman style to which the house was originally built and, for budgetary reasons, we need to do the whole project ourselves with a minimum of purchases.

But, hey, we’ve been planning this project for twenty years! We want it to be good! I guess that makes three contingencies: design, budget and quality. Is this a feasible combination? We shall see.

Our kitchen: Our plans for after

1. Bring the cooking and storage into the kitchen where it belongs. Convert the pantry into a laundry/pantry room.
2. Combine the walk-in closet and sunporch into a breakfast nook—still to be called the sunporch because it’s such a cheerful, sunny room.
3. Keep the existing windows (they’re only ten years old and of original size). The counter underneath will have to be 1-2 inches less than standard height, but that’s okay because we’re short people.
4. Build a china cupboard on the kitchen side, a similar cupboard on the dining room side, and a pass-though opening in the wall between.

So this has been our project. I’ve been documenting it in greater detail at this site. But be warned, like our kitchen project, it’s usually running a bit behind.

We’re pretty easy-going people, don’t forget!

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What better way to work off the over-indulgences of Thanksgiving dinner than to knock down walls the very next day. And so our kitchen project officially begins!

Over the years, we’ve removed plaster and lathing in exterior walls throughout the house in order to add insulation. The job doesn’t get any cleaner with experience, we simply become smarter in dealing with it. Here in the kitchen we laid a tarp to protect the floor and catch debris. As it filled, we dragged it out the door and onto a pickup truck.

Debris gets heavy! Plaster is a type of cement so it gets VERY heavy! We had to unload the tarp often.

Need a kitchen sink? It’s a Kohler.

Lovely, yes?

Hidden Secrets
In 20 years of remodeling, we’ve found apricot brandy bottles and a few old magazines. Other than that, there haven’t been significant treasures.

But remodeling exposes secrets of other kinds; some pleasant surprises, others scary near-misses. As we removed plaster from around the chimney, we were pleased to see it’s Watertown Brick, a locally made cream-colored brick.

Somewhat frightening though, were the charred bricks and burnt lathing around the cookstove’s pipe opening into the chimney. The lining between the pipe and chimney had rusted, leaving a poor fit that allowed sparks to get into the wall.

Wow, God keeps a watchful eye!

Levels and Slopes
We suspect the sunporch at one time was an open, exterior porch. The floor level is lower than the rest of the house, with a slight pitch. The ceiling is also lower and pitched about 2″ within nine feet. Knocking out the ceiling revealed an angled rafter built to provide the pitch.

When it comes to slopes elsewhere, we’re pretty lucky. Our house was built well. Not only is it structurally sound, it’s also accurate. Overall, we don’t have the crooked walls, poorly-angled corners or other issues that often come with old houses

We suspect the sunporch at one time was an open, exterior porch. The floor level is lower than the rest of the house, with a slight pitch.

The ceiling is also lower and pitched about 2″ within nine feet. Knocking out the ceiling revealed an angled rafter built to provide the pitch.

When it comes to slopes elsewhere, we’re pretty lucky. Our house was built well. Not only is it structurally sound, it’s also accurate. Overall, we don’t have the crooked walls, poorly-angled corners or other issues that often come with old houses.

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Like every other room in our 1917 American Foursquare, the kitchen is…well…square. Yes, there are four walls, but how much space these four walls provide is quite questionable. In this one room alone, there are five doors and two windows!

The Pantry
For the most part, we use the pantry as our cooking and storage area. It has counterspace and cupboards, but it’s crowded! For a two-chef family, as we often are, it’s even more crowded!

The Kitchen
While the pantry isn’t conducive to the gathering of family and friends, the kitchen certainly is. Long before we lived here, it was used as the main room of the house. The elderly couple before us kept a daybed, table and TV in the kitchen.

Next to the sink is the doorway to the pantry. And yes, that’s a mirrored medicine cabinet over the sink! When we bought the house 20 years ago, I said that was going to be one of the first things to go. Somewhere along the way, something happened.

The cookstove is original to the kitchen. It’s a Monarch Malleable woodburning stove, from Beaver Dam, WI. It creates such a warm, cozy ambiance. No, I don’t regularly use it for cooking – I have enough trouble using a conventional stove! But we’ve baked in it once a while for novelty’s sake.

Oh…And that’s Clyde, our renovation mascot!

The art on the wall is a print by American folk artist Doris Lee. We like to think her kitchen scene shares many similarities with ours. And the table? My father-in-law made it for us the year my husband and I turned 30. Like, um, last year? Not.

So, there you have it…this was our kitchen for the first twenty years we’ve lived here. So many memories and happy times! And now the time has come for a few new walls—new walls with new tales to tell. May they be as good as the old!

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