“I am just not a cocktail chic girl,
nor am I a spare and stark Dwell dweller at heart.
I’m more hokey pokey than Swingers,
and I find perverse comfort and nostalgia
in the anachronistic, 1960’s does 1780’s design style…..”
Put your whole self in and prepare to shake it all about: Today — a great big, happy hudee look inside the remodeled kitchen of Kara Vallow, a producer, animator, artist and writer known for her work on “Family Guy,” “American Dad” and “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey,” among others. In cahoots with her sister, production designer Kristen Vallow, Kara channeled warm fuzzies from their 1970s childhood in Philadelphia — epicenter of America’s Bicentennial fever — to design a kitchen that captures the vibe without overdosing on the kitsch. We’ve written about this design look before. We called it Bicentennial Chic. Kara and Kristen call it “revolutionary style.” Whether it’s your style or not, you sure gotta call it imaginative — and fun! Lotsa photos, taken by Mark Douglas, styled by Kristen Vallow –>.
Cultivating “the coziness of the 20th century’s loose interpretations of the colonial style”
Kara writes:
If you were born in the 60’s or 70’s there’s a high probability that you grew up, like I did, with some Early American stylings; maybe a shiny unpainted “reproduction” maple kitchen set from Ethan Allen, or a hokey set of bicentennial themed curtains. I grew up in an authentic, 1960’s “colonial.” But, my mother’s personal style skewed modern, and she forewent Ethan Allen for silver and gold-mirrored wallpaper and bright orange shag carpeting from a place called “John’s Contemporary.” The Ben Franklin curtains and the wood paneling in the den, incongruously, remained. The styles were so contradictory that it seemed downright un-American, the two design philosophies competing for preeminence, we thought it might start another revolutionary war.
Growing up in Philadelphia during the bicentennial era, it seemed as if American domesticity skewed decidedly toward the traditional. “Early American”, whether authentic or like in our house, totally fake, was far more popular than what we know of as the contemporary iterations of mid-century design schemes. My sister had on elementary school friend who lived in a mod apartment and it seemed impossibly exotic and glamorous.
To craft her plan, Kara collected and studied inspiration photos — like this Formica-meets-knotty pine kitchen on our baby site Knotty is Nice. [/caption]
The coziness of the 20th century’s loose interpretations of the colonial style really appealed to me: knotty pine, brick hearths, tilt-top tea tables, brass candlestick lamps with gilded eagles. This was reinforced when I visited Colonial Williamsburg at the age on nine. Being a colonial tourist was probably the first time I felt “right” – the bewigged surfaces, clip-clopping hooves on cobblestones, the bonnets and velvet cloaks, the coal fires of the blacksmith. The impersonator’s debates among gentry legislators and much to-do about gunpowder and taxes, and the anodyne pronouncements of George Washington and Ben Franklin. The place’s artifice eventually casts its spell on me. When the Bicentennial Celebration in Philadelphia rolled around, I took the “pledge to keep the spirit of ’76 alive” very seriously.
Of course, there’s also a pink bathroom in this story
Kara continues:
I actually bought my very ordinary, 1956 ranch house in part for the pink bathroom, which I am currently unmuddling after 10 years of living with an old linoleum floor and leaky faucets. I’ll send you some photos when I’m done, if I’m ever done. The worst part of the house was the kitchen.
It was a makeshift galley that was squeezed in-between the living room and an unnecessary third bathroom. Its renovation, done by homeowner/erstwhile handyman in the 1970’s, was a total disaster.
The old counter took a turn and jutted out into the space, which was already very narrow. I enlarged the space by eliminating a half bath [there was already a large (pink!) bathroom on the first floor and another full bathroom upstairs].
I enlarged the opening between the living area and the kitchen by a foot or two. I wanted to open it up a little but retain the living room and kitchen as two separate spaces. I also added sliding glass doors that open up onto the garden.
“Going for a kind of midcentury, colonial revival thing that no one understood or approved of”
She took her design cues from original features of the house, and scrutinized old catalogs and photos for inspiration. She did the initial remodel in 2009, and continued working through last year toward the kitchen we are looking at today:
I was going for a kind of midcentury, colonial revival thing that no one understood or approved of.
I found these old Ethan Allen catalogs online and the images just rocketed back to some sort of ‘safe place’ in my psyche. My sister and I pored over the images… We were mesmerized.
We are both artists working in creative fields, and STILL people thought we were nuts. I know you will understand!
The house has original exposed brick walls and fireplaces that I took cues from for the backsplash.
The wallpaper is a sunny, baskety pattern from Hannah’s Treasures.
There was a specific Gattlers and Sattler model stove I coveted and I waited until I found one – in motley condition — at a stove restoration place no longer in business.
It took almost a year but they it restored it and painted it to match my Big Chill refrigerator (a workhorse that has never given me a day’s problem).
Kara has strong opinions about some of the products she used:
Regarding my appliances: When it comes to kitchen appliances, nothing new can compete with the virtues of vintage: the rounded lines and gleaming enamel and chrome, the simplicity and durability. Somehow, we have been persuaded to lust after commercial stoves, paneled or stainless steel refrigerators and granite, shudder. Even people with old homes, who don’t even cook, insist they want/need a “cook’s kitchen”. I think it’s a fad that began when men became interested in cooking and couldn’t possibly cook without all those BTUs, on one of those rinky-dink ranges that women had been using for years. Commercial or “modern” kitchens in an old house causes severe cognitive dissonance. Stainless steel anything will be the avocado green of the 21st century.
Linoleum: I have a love affair with linoleum. It is pretty and colorful, and there are still 100s of colors and patterns being made. Real linoleum is bio-based. highly durable, anti microbial. It’s made from linseed oil, cork, ground limestone, and pigments on a burlap backing, all renewable. My house is completely solar-powered and a priority for me is to get by without major environmental impact.
Back to the kitchen, she says:
I really love knotty pine paneling – I LOVE it. It reminds me of our summer vacations in the ratty Poconos in the 1970’s. Unlike the more formal style of the 18th C. Colonial furnishings, the Early American style was casual and rustic, often coated in wide knotty pine-wood walks, cabinet and floor planks.
I really wanted a knotty pine kitchen. I ended up going with something as close to my knotty pine dream as I could get without being committed.
I found the three mid-century colonial copper light fixtures that hang over the island on Ebay for $20.
I also really desired a dutch door because they remind me of a barn and I can imagine a horse sticking his head through it.
Los Angeles is full of all the ubiquitous icons of mid-century décor; the atomic starbursts and boomerangs. In the east end of LA where I live, there are an astounding number of homes designed by a Richard Neutra, Gregory Ain, John Lautner and R.M. Schindler. I am just not a cocktail chic girl, nor am I a spare and stark Dwell dweller at heart. I’m more hokey pokey than Swingers, and I find perverse comfort and nostalgia in the anachronistic, 1960’s does 1780’s design style.
My sister and I like to call it “revolutionary style”, but really, the style was so traditional that it isn’t “revolutionary” at all!
***
Yup: Straight from the heart of Los Angeles, Birth of the Cool: 1960s – 1970s Early American interior design — done well — has a rightful place in our design pantheon. Let’s hear it for the Revolutionary Revival!
P.S. This story also gave me a major flashback to the pair of brass finger hole candlesticks I bought on a trip that passed through Gatlinburg or some such back around… 1974, when I was 14 or 15 years old. Possibly the first “serious” interior design accessories I ever bought with my own money.
Kara’s resource list:
- Linoleum countertops: Linoleum City
- Metal countertop edging: Eagle Mouldings
- Wallpaper: Hannah’s Treasures
- Copper drawer pulls: Liz’s Antique Hardware
- Copper switch plate covers: Rejuvenation
- Copper light fixtures: Ebay
- Stove: Macy’s Classic Stove Works (no longer in business, it seems)
- Stove exhaust hood: Serv Well
- Red brick tile: Ann Sacks
- Refrigerator: Big Chill
- Custom dishwasher panel: Elmira Stove Works
- Sink: Hagan and Flynn
- Carpentry by RY Construction
- Wood from Stock Building Supply
- Vintage wallpaper installation Bob Mattox
Thank you, Kara, for sharing this terrific story! Thanks also to Kristen and Mark for help with the photos — and for supporting Kara in pursuit of this dreamy dream kitchen.
And you bet: Of course, we wanna see the pink bathroom when it’s done!
Randerson says
Love it!! The cockles of my heart, too, are warmed by the gentle nostalgia of the Early American style that was very prevalent, at least in the Mid-Atlantic and New England states, in the 50s and 60s. We had it in our home in Maryland, as did my Aunt & Uncle in Framingham Mass, and the style was far more popular with the growing middle class back then than MCM, which I also love. Not being able to decide on just one, we have our kitchen, family room, and BR in the EA style, and LR in MCM. Now what would make our kitchen complete would be Armstrong’s classic small red brick floor pattern, if only they would bring it back!!
pam kueber says
Yes, #5852, we want you back !
Mary Elizabeth says
My favorite part of this kitchen reno is the brick. No, it’s the cabinets. No, it’s the countertops. No, it’s the decorative items. No, it’s the wallpaper…I just love every bit of your work. Kudos to your sister as well.
rue says
Kara’s kitchen is fantastic! It took me right back to my 70s childhood.
I’m in love with her stove and that wallpaper, especially 🙂
Trish says
Another great story!!!! reminds me of my grandparents house in the mid 70’s. warm fuzzies all around.
Mary Elizabeth says
Loved this story of Geronimom’s furniture. I have a theory that furniture you place somewhere temporarily gets into cahoots with your house and “woos” you until you accept it.
Geronimom says
Oh, your lovely kitchen with it’s Colonial style look SO resonated to me and brought back many wonderful memories! When my parents were newlyweds – & soon pregnant with me – in 1961, my mother cashed out her pension fund from years of teaching and used it to purchase the furniture for their new house in Oklahoma City. I grew up with “Tell City Company” hard rock maple & “Dixie Co.” colonially influenced furniture in the dining room and all 3 bedrooms of our house. Other than the dining room chairs, (which we 3 kids somehow managed to destroy, to the chagrin of my mother), that furniture survived almost every move (13!) our family eventually made. Other “cooler” styles came & went, but Mom & Dad never upgraded. That was the furniture we had, there was absolutely nothing wrong with it – & they were not rich – so accept & deal with it!
When my grandparents passed, mom inherited their victorian style dining set, a style which at the time I preferred. However, my mother told me that as her only daughter, she wanted ME to inherit her colonial set that we had grown up with, and my brother was to get the victorian set. I was not happy. In fact – hanging my head in shame here – I selfishly told my mother I didn’t like her furniture & thought it was just plain *u..y*!
Apparently my negative attitude didn’t change things for mom. She passed a couple of years ago & when we went to clear out her house I found a list she’d made of things she wanted each of us kids to have. Front & center was my name with “maple dining & bedroom sets” listed next to it. My brother was still getting the victorian set. Truthfully, I wasn’t thrilled, but we packed my things into the moving van & headed back home anyway. I wondered how I was ever going to fit this colonial style furniture into my modern style home. I shouldn’t have. As fate would have it, within the year we ended up using money mom left me to help purchase a 1961 granny ranch house – coincidentally built the same year as the furniture with which I had grown up. It was to be a second, “vacation” house until the time hubby & I eventually retire & stop wanting to navigate all the stairs in our current home.
We furnished the granny ranch house with thrift store & estate finds, as well as furniture inherited from other family members. It is now a conglomerate of mid century looks – with Mom’s colonial style dining hutch and table holding center court. That furniture, which I thought I would hate?..I actually truly love now! Mom SO knew what she was doing when she bequeathed it to me. Whenever I enter that house I see the dining room furniture & am instantly transported back to all the countless Thanksgiving, Christmas & family dinners held around that table. I can feel my much missed mother’s arms lovingly wrapped around me once again. I am immediately back in the “secure” place of my youth. I am ever so thankful that my wise mother realized that having that furniture would end up being so special to me. It’s where all of my childhood memories are anchored. My grandparent’s victorian dining set was beautiful – but it isn’t where my memories go when I look back on my past. I think Mom knew that not only would those wonderful memories be revived for me with that furniture, but also that I, as the “sentimental” one, could now appreciate more than anyone else in our family how very much that colonial style furniture she’d picked out and purchased with her own hard-earned money actually meant to her. And she would be right – I do!
tammyCA says
Love your heartwarming story. 🙂 I really wish I had some of our family furniture, especially the kitchen table & chairs that were passed down from the grandparents from the ’30s & the coolest & I think, rare high-fi ever (years later I saw one at the flea market for thousands of dollars!).
Carol says
We had Tell City Company furniture too! Mom’s 1960’s ranch still has all the original light fixtures. (wagonwheel, copper and sleek ones) She still has all the original bedrooms. Two early american and her mediterranean, and the living room is french provincial. The bathroom is rather atomic. The den and eat in kitchen are the only changes due to wear and tear. My parents bought excellent quality furniture with the intention of keeping it a lifetime. To buy new furniture of this quality now would be considered high end. I’m so glad she kept everything the same because it still works great today and fits the house quite nicely.
Eileen Herlihy says
Tell me more about your countertops! They are great. Did you use a linoleum flooring on the counters? I was confused by your Resource List. What was the brand and name of the linoleum? Anything you wish you hadn’t done, or so happy that you did do?
pam kueber says
Eileen, yes, Kara used linoleum on her countertops. There are two main brands, Forbo/Marmoleum and Armstrong. I will bet she she used Forbo/Marmoleum.
Elizabeth says
Beautiful, charming, homey, lovely, whimsical, quality, real, artful, respectful. Not “good” but “GREAT”! Congrats!
Scott says
Congrats to marching to your own drum. The more you scour through vintage publications the more you realize the identification of MCM items is not always as simple as it seems on the surface.
This is fun to see and trips off a lot of memories as I grew up surrounded by a complete living room suite of MCM Early American all bought at one time in 1958 that I have never seen anything quite like since. It seemed hum-drum then but in retrospect was anything but.
pam kueber says
You have underscored one of the main reasons I love to spotlight Early American and other “less popular TODAY” vintage styles, which is: Our mothers and grandmothers etc. were not unconcerned with beauty and style — they made their choices carefully and chose beautiful things, according to the fashion of the day and their own drummers. Who’s to say any vintage styles are those unacceptable-on-this-blog words u*** or h****** etc.!
tammyCA says
And, if you look at vintage magazines you’ll see so many Golden era movie & TV stars had their homes decorated in early American colonial style.
pam kueber says
I really just now paid attention to the recessed spice rack, with the vintage jars inside. HEAVEN!
Mary Elizabeth says
That’s about the third thing I noticed, too–those lovely spice jars! Have you been collecting for long? I’ve never seen any of them turn up around here (Northeast), but I’d be on them if they did.
Tim says
Very homey! Glad you made it just like you wanted. Love the pine cabinets, too.