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…
Diana says
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.
sablemable says
Love your kitchen, Diana! The floor looks like it was well taken care of.
Sara in AZ says
You have a FANTASTIC kitchen! It is so great that it has been left all original. Simply Awesome!
vacationbarbie says
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.
RetroRuth says
I love the color scheme and I adore that dinette set! Great job, Diana, and what a bonus to find the pamphlets!
sumacsue says
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.
Juji says
OMG! It’s sooo adorable! I love the floors!
Diana says
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!
retropink57 says
Ohmigosh….this kitchen is fabulous…LOVE the floor pattern and color combination!!!!
jeanne says
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?