Retro Renovation

Reader Leslie has given me numerous ideas for stories coming up - including this incredible find - and watch for her groovy house to be featured this Saturday. I didn’t know anything about these Baranger displays. This one is on eBay (and YouTube) for $5,500 - but reading all about it, is free! Thanks, Leslie!

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It is really really corny to admit, but I grew up reading Ann Landers. Religiously. And there’s no question, she had a big influence on me. Remember, this was back in the day of 3 TV channels and one local newspaper. I also was an incredibly avid reader of my mom’s Ladies Home Journals, Redbooks [...]

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Pam (left) and Cindy
Yesterday I had my first live visit with a Retro Renovation reader and it was SO MUCH FUN! Cindy - of the 1963 bathroom including the foldaway scale and TP holder with ashtray - lives in Holyoke, about an hour away. She was on her way to NYC with a planned stop [...]

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Yowza.

Even though this blog is about middle-class mid-century homes - it’s hard not to salivate over the moneybags mansions.
Click through to see 22 photographs of this fantastic house, you will be glad you did!

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My husband bought me a nice camera for Mother’s Day and I have only recently started to play around with it. At “the estate sale house” this weekend, I found lots of good subject matter. It was a c. 1910 house, but had been modestly updated in the 50s, when Pittsfield was a-boomin’.

I loved the [...]

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Happy 4th, everyone. Here in the beautiful Berkshires, James Taylor’s 4th of July concert at Tanglewood is the must-see event each and every year. JT lives right here in Lenox, and his Sweet Baby James, with its Stockbridge-to-Boston, is literally our national anthem. The crowd goes wild - me included. I have to say, I [...]

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Following up on today’s main post, I went looking for a photo of a real mudlark, and found this 1950 movie instead:
In 1875 London, young Wheeler, who lives by scavenging, finds a cameo of Queen Victoria which he thinks so beautiful he risks his life to save it. Possessed of a desire to see the [...]

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Yesterday was a simply perfect day. Warm and sunny and as soon as I got up I had two estate sales to hit. Pretty much the first ones of the season - it’s been a late start. I drank 2 cups of coffee, checked the blog, then dashed out of the house. There is nothing [...]

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Wow, yesterday was the Hula Hoop’s 50th birthday. I am a born-to-hula hooper, a California girl. My favorite was the shoop shoop hula hoop.
One of my proudest moments in the past few years was beating a 17-year-old at a company picnic hula hoop contest in a final-death elimination round that involved the TWO hula hoops. [...]

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Not much for me to say about this place - Greg’s contemporary in Granada Hills, California.

Beautiful! Love love love the light fixtures - are they all one ’set’? Where did you find them? Ooooh, I see you even kept your cottage cheese ceiling!

I particularly like how Greg has kept his color palette simple — taupey/grey [...]

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