Jane’s 1956 retro renovation kitchen

Jane aka Elvis sends these photos of her lovely yellow-and-blue retro renovation kitchen. In completing what sounds like a fast-paced update, she combined some of the old, with some of the new — probably pretty typical for all of us looking to combine the best of today’s functionality with the wonderful spirit and lines of our home’s original era. Read on for Jane’s material list, choices, vendors and learnings, along with more photos….

Jane writes:

We inherited a 1956 time-capsule kitchen, however, every surface of that capsule was battered and worn. Since we were on a tight timeline to move in (and my husband refused to have our usual fun of living in the middle of the project!) we contracted with several local craftsmen to do a lot of the work. Our warm-yellow walls and blue countertops are not strictly mid-century, but we tried to make fundamental decisions in the spirit of the fifties.

As much as we loved the original beech plywood cabinets, they were in bad shape. They were delaminating and chipped on the edges, so we reluctantly had them filled, sanded and painted. We salvaged all of the beautiful bronze pulls, which we stripped and then shipped to a place in Salem, OR, that clear-coated them.

There was no dishwasher, so we puzzled over adding one: The kitchen isn’t large and we couldn’t afford to lose a lot of cabinets or drawers. My husband was delighted when he discovered that just one bank of drawers needed to be removed to perfectly fit a European-size, 18” Miehle stainless dishwasher. And it’s the best dishwasher I have ever used. A plus was discovering the dishwasher door had a design detail that echoed the fluted metal countertop edge we used.

The original countertop was a beige linen-pattern laminate, but after 50-plus years, it was shot. We resurfaced with Formica (Indigo Terra) and we opted to lower the height of the laminate backsplash to 8 inches for a better fit around the sink windowsill. Our wonderful cabinetmaker installed this and all the metal channel edging (he had never worked with that countertop edge with a spline on the back and swore he’d never install it again!) We got all the 8-foot lengths of edging from Lansing Linoleum in Portland, OR. We reused the original stainless sink with its Hudee ring, and found an appropriate-looking Price Pfister single-arm faucet to replace the plastic one that was there (not the original, I’m sure!)

The original Thermador stainless steel wall oven was in perfect shape and works beautifully. That wasn’t the case with the original 42” electric cooktop. Visually, it was very cool, but it had two non-functioning burners and extended into the right side of the sink area, threatening to burn the elbow of anyone using the sink. We replaced that with a much smaller (30”) Wolf gas cooktop and added a Zephyr exhaust hood to replace the huge wall-mounted 90s microwave/fan that loomed over the stove. We wanted to eliminate LEDs and digital readouts from view, so we installed an outlet and hid our small microwave in a cupboard over the oven, with mixed success: It’s fine for warming something, but even with a tiny fan cooling the cupboard, it gets too hot if you bake potatoes.

We replaced the enormous side-by-side white fridge with a smaller counter-depth stainless Fisher&Paykel model. I love the new fridge, but I wish now we had opted for the curved-front model for a more appropriate look.

The floor had been updated to a parquet-look vinyl. To judge from the lower cabinets, the floor had previously been several different layers of asphalt tiles, very likely with asbestos in them. Since we didn’t want to try removing the flooring due to that health hazard, we had a floor installer add a thin layer of plywood and install simple 12” cork tiles in a checkerboard of light and medium brown. He sealed the floor with several coats of urethane. We ordered the tiles from a local company, Interstate Flooring, but they seem to be widely available. While I really like the floor, I didn’t realize how soft the cork tiles are and we’ve had some denting and cat-claw “patina” that’s noticeable in certain light. If that’s an issue for your readers they might prefer something more durable like the thicker 12” Armstrong Excelon tiles. They were our second choice.

For lighting, we did install period inappropriate under-cabinet lighting – just for plain old function. But we added two polished nickel Aloha wall sconces from Rejuvenation: They look great and really light the sink and work area nicely.

If I had it to do over again, I’d wish for more time to do research. It’s hard to make so many quick but appropriate choices in a hurry. And after reading your blog over this past year and a half, I know there are so many more sources available than I knew of when we remodeled in early 2007.

And I wish we had had the time to do more of the work ourselves. Unlike my husband, I really like working on our home projects. It’s fun, you have the satisfaction of making it happen yourself, AND it saves you money!

On our own, this time, we’re working on tweaking our adjoining breakfast room into more of a 60s look. Now, if I can just find the perfect pull-down light to go over the table….

Jane (AKA) Elvis

Many thanks for sharing, Jane. LOVE the 18″ dishwasher – brilliant! Also, it looks like you have some groovy stuff going on outside the kitchen door…I’ll be after you for that next.