Diana’s 1963 home in suburban Pittsburgh includes something that I haven’t seen in the flesh yet — mid century oak cabinets in a “planked” style, complete with colonial wrought-iron hardware. Planked cabinets are one of my favorite all-time looks. Of course, Diana noticed right away that her “Koenig Cabinets by Elish & Co.” are a great match for the cabinets featured in the vintage Caloric kitchen featured on the homepage of the site in the new multimedia box. I know of at least one company that offers planked door style today – Omega/Dynasty. Read on for more from Diana – including the brochure (saved from the dumpster, of course) created to market her Ryan home.
Diana writes:
…The photo of the “vintage Caloric kitchen”… looks eerily like our kitchen in our 1963 house in the overall design, the oak cabinets, the hardware, and the built in appliciances. I love that photo. We live in Mt. Lebanon, a South Hills suburb of Pittsburgh. Our house was built in 1963 and it was the spec house for this model. We still have the original pamphlet that was shown to folks who viewed the house. It has the
floor plans and other info about the original house. My husband found the pamphlet in a pile of recycling papers that the previous owners of this house left for us to leave out with the trash. My husband thankfully decided to look through the recycling papers before setting them out and we were so elated to find it and so disappointed that the previous owners would think to even trash it. The photos of the exterior show what our house looks like, there are two others in our development that we’ve seen. But, the others have been updated unlike ours, which is still pretty original in floor plan and other features.
[I asked her about the few updates they'd made to the kitchen - and LOVE that dinette set, swoon!] The counters are corian, we really struggled with putting that in. I wanted something retro like Formica but my husband really wanted something without cracks and nooks. So, we compromised and got corian, which we both figured was the least intrusive of the newer materials. Yes, the floor is marmoleum, we had a lot of fun putting it in…
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{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
That kitchen is beautiful and looks so much like the Caloric kitchen ad. I love the yellow and aqua color scheme and that dinette set is GREAT! Where did Diana find that dinette? It matches so perfectly. Or did the kitchen color scheme come about after she found the dinette?
Ohmigosh….this kitchen is fabulous…LOVE the floor pattern and color combination!!!!
We bought the dinette set before we moved in and the rest of the colors in the kitchen followed that. We got the dinette set on Ebay from someone who lives a couple hours from us. It was a real bargain too at $140!
OMG! It’s sooo adorable! I love the floors!
My husband lived in Mt. Lebanon for a few years back in the early 1980s; he loved it there. We visited there once and it is a lovely neighborhood. This kitchen looks like a lovely place too. Spacious and sunny. I like the aqua and yellow color scheme. I REALLY like that hutch with the aqua trim. It looks great with the dinette set.
I love the color scheme and I adore that dinette set! Great job, Diana, and what a bonus to find the pamphlets!
When I was house hunting I saw a ton of kitchens with the same type of colonial hardware, but in most cases the cabinets had been painted…which made the hardware look ‘busy’. It looks so much better with the natural oak cabinets.
I love your floor! My kitchen tile is in the exact same colors.
You have a FANTASTIC kitchen! It is so great that it has been left all original. Simply Awesome!
Love your kitchen, Diana! The floor looks like it was well taken care of.
Thanks for the feedback.
Unfortunately, our floor is not original. The house had vinyl tiles when we moved in. They looked ok, but they were coming up and they weren’t original so we decided to rip them out.
We found the original floor underneath (which is identical to the Armstrong flooring), but it was completely destroyed by previous floor applications. We decided to lay Marmoleum Click over the original floor. The Marmoleum Click is environmentally friendly, it floats over the original floor so it’s easy to replace later, and it seemed a fitting material to use in this kitchen.
Oops, I meant to include a link to the original Armstrong flooring in our kitchen.
Here it is: http://retrorenovation.com/2008/01/03/another-choice-for-retro-50s-60s-floors-and-flooring-vinyl-sheet/. Of course, we didn’t know it was original at the time, but we thought it might have been and after I read about it here I figured that it must have been original.
I have this kitchen in my 1961 house.
I have the original appliances. The cabinets were a dark pine color from years of not being cleaned. I painted them white and kept the black wrought iron hardware.
I will try to post pics for you.
I just LOVE this site.
It validates my house!
Your kitchen is beautiful! That table is the prettiest I’ve seen! And the Fiesta makes me want more colors. So cheery and warm. How do you like the flooring?
Beautiful kitchen, beautiful table, love the colors…you made it work! This looks great.
What a great looking kitchen and I really like the flooring design. How are the tiles to care for?
Two big thumbs up! Not only does it look great, but it seems like a nice place to hang out with friends and family.
We have mixed feelings about the flooring. I love the materials, the colors, and the design (which was mine). However, we weren’t as pleased with the installation. I think if one wants to use these marmoleum tiles (called “Click”) then one should make sure to hire someone who has had lots of experience installing them or do it yourself if you can. One good thing about the Click is that they float so there is no need for a sub-floor.
Marmoleum also sells sheets but those require a sub-floor and therefore are much more expensive. If we had to do it over, I’d probably use Marmoleum again but I’d consider the sheet and make certain that the installer had experience required for the job.
I Like your kitchen and your floors are nice.
hello! i think your kitchen looks stunning! im looking for “retro” flooring too and came across the Anderson flooring which i thought was a good option and think it looks great in your kitchen. was your pattern based something you came up with on your own or based on something you saw somewhere?
thanks!
The dinette is wonderful. We need one exactly like this. Any suggestions? We are not having luck with ebay or craigslist…
Are you interested in selling?!
Hi Matt, the floor pattern was something I came up with. The new floors are actually Marmoleum, which can come in sheets or in individual squares that snap together. We got the squares (called Click).
Kari, I don’t want to sell the dinette set, I so love it. I got it on ebay after scouting for a couple months. I think you just have to be persistent in your search. I did a local search on ebay too so that I could save on shipping and up my price for the dinette. It was still super cheap ($140 for the entire set).
Diana
Actually, your Corian counters may not be that far off the era. I live in a building from the early 1960s that still has lots of original owners, who recall ordering up their color scheme for the kitchen (they installed appliances to match the color of whatever geneva steel cabinets the buyer selected and had both matching and contrasting formica counter colors). Anyhow, I had to replace my counters, though the cabinets are going strong, a couple years ago, and put in white Corian, without much reflection more complicated than I like it that you can bleach them clean and thought the integral sink was kinda cool. As the workmen we hauling the pieces of it up to my unit, I ran into one of my older neighbors who admiringly exclaimed how she did like a modern touch for kitchens as modern as ours ; ) and how she’d been a bit cross that Corian had hit the market just a year or two after she’d bought her unit because it was more modern and chic than marble, which is I guess the material Dupont was marketing it as an ersatz for, and exactly the look she thought the kitchens were going for!