When I announced that Harvest Gold was Retro Renovation’s 2014 Color of the Year, I asked readers to be on the lookout for harvest gold kitchens for our archive. I’ve received many emails — thanks, all! — but this one is particularly notable: Robin spotted a virtually unused harvest gold kitchen — complete with cabinets and all appliances — including a harvest gold refrigerator and dishwasher — for sale at the ReStore in Worcester, Mass.
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I do not believe this kitchen is from 1963, as advertised. We did not see gold colors like this on kitchen appliances until 1968. And this one — with the shadowing around the edges: I’ll guess a few years later. In any case — what a fun find!
Robin wrote:
Hi Pam,
You said you were looking for some harvest gold appliances? I live in Worcester, MA, and I’ve taken some awesome photos of a complete and UNUSED harvest gold kitchen from 1963 that our Restore in Worcester has for sale. It’s a full suite of harvest gold wooden kitchen cabinets, harvest gold GE fridge and Kitchen Aid dishwasher. A chrome Westinghouse wall oven and cook top with NuTone range hood, stainless steel sink, and a brown/pink Wilsonart boomerang countertop and back splash with metal trim for the whole thing. They even have the original fluorescent ceiling fixture/light. The kitchen came out of a house in Worcester, and the Restore folks said it was a second kitchen in a finished basement that the owners had never used. They even have the manuals for the appliances! It photographs beautifully because it’s not in pieces… they have it all staged as a room (IKEA style, if you’ve ever been). They even have a little 70’s era kitchen table and fondue set in front of it, and a teapot on the stove! Super cute.
Thanks for your blog!
-Robin
Thank you, Robin! It is so great to see the Worcester ReStore celebrating this kitchen for what it is — having fun and playing it up, rather than apologizing for it.
Above: Interesting that the boomerang laminate countertop does not seem to have any gold or even avocado in it. I wonder — if this was for a basement kitchen — if the homeowners just chose “what they liked” rather than trying to be matchy matchy decorator-like.
From what I *think* I now about old refrigerators, the one above likely is an energy hog. The key to high energy usage on old fridges: Does the freezer have automatic defrosting? If so, that’s what uses so much energy — the freezer compressor is turning off and on all the time to repeatedly defrost. Old refrigerator-freezers that DO NOT have automatic defrost may not use excessive energy. The only true test: Put it on a meter; don’t assume.
Stainless steel wall oven. Yes: We do see stainless steel used on vintage appliances including all the way back to the 1950s.
These old dishwashers were absolute WORK HORSES!
Above: Sexy controls, even.
Above: A classic “Circline” ceiling fixture. Throws a lotta light, I bet!
Thank you, Robin. I live only an hour and a half from Worcester. If I were a decorator with a warehouse, I’d drive on over and snap these up for sure for a future project. However, I’d probably try to deal re: price. It’s hard to fit someone else’s kitchen into yours… the refrigerator likely uses a lot of energy… and despite my adoration of vintage colors, it’s going to take a special buyer to understand and embrace this kitchen.
Slide show of harvest gold kitchen
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Robin, NV says
That first picture really needs a starburst halo around it and angels singing in the background. What a super find! It’s amazing how well matched everything is – the GE fridge and the Kitchenaid dishwasher match perfectly.
I miss those old workhorse dishwashers with the locking lever on the front. My new-ish dishwasher has an electronic lock, which I’ve replaced twice in 4 years.
LREKing says
I can see the appeal and hope it gets a good home, but frankly the color and the trim give me the screaming heebie-jeebies.
Geronimom says
Boy, does that takes me back to my high school days in the ’70s! I had the after dinner chores – alternating with my brothers – of “clearing the table”, which involved trying to stuff all the leftovers into a harvest gold refrigerator JUST like that one. Or “washing the dishes” by first scraping & rinsing everything before shoving it into a harvest gold dishwasher JUST like that one! Our kitchen, if I remember correctly, had dark brown wood cabinets with harvest gold laminate countertops – wish I could find some old photos! Anyway, in an inadvertent nod to that era, the walls in the LR/DR of my current 1960 built house ended up being painted with a color very close to that harvest gold I remember so well (Benjamin Moore Chesterton Buff) as a kid. Walking into those rooms now always gives me warm, comforting memories of enjoying many family meals as a kid surrounded by that lovely Harvest Gold color!
Anne-Marie says
Delightful kitchen. Thanks for sharing. I actually needed a reminder of what 1960’s range hoods looked like.
I love that the pictures caught ReStore’s sign about being in service to fellow human beings. I *heart* ReStore.
Janelle says
We have a similar circline light fixture in our original 50’s kitchen. They were trying to jazz it up by putting a textured “bubble” center piece. We joke with our neighbors that ours is fancier than theirs because we have the “crystal ball” center.
Diane says
I’m a bit new to the site so forgive me if this has been asked before… is it possible to use vintage doors on new appliances? I am concerned about the energy/repair issues old appliances have but it seems that their sizes must be almost the same… cane we swap out the doors/panels on our new appliances? (along the same line of thought, if the cabinets aren’t configured properly, but the cabinet FRONTS are the proper size, those could be swapped out as well, right?)
pam kueber says
I do not know…It’s certainly an interesting idea.
Habitat for Humanity ReStore of MetroWest/Greater Worcester says
Good Morning, Diane!
As far as I have seen the hinge mechanisms and controls on newer, EnergyStar appliances cannot be changed out with the older appliance hatches. However, you can get new faceplates to match an existing Antique or Retro kitchen cabinet setup. The Controls will be all modern however the colours can be matched.
I hope that this helps.
Louis Garcia
Floor Manager
ReStore of MetroWest/Greater Worcester
Diane says
Thanks for your reply Louis. My current dishwasher is the kind that accepts a ‘panel’ so our carpenter made one to blend into our cabinetry (1929 kitchens had no dishwashers.) Since there are other appliances that accept ‘panels’ (like a new fridge) I thought maybe – somehow- the lovely harvest gold front (or any similarly sized retro front) could be used to achieve the ‘look’ whilst gaining efficiency. (My current home is Craftsman but my next may be Mid-Century!)
Jana B. (Berniecat) says
What a wonderful find! Having a sunny yellow kitchen, harvest gold is my absolute favorite kitchen color!!! Thanks for sharing! P.S.Lynda – maybe the basement kitchen was never used because the mother-in-law never moved in?
Mary Elizabeth says
Wow, beautiful kitchen. I’m sitting here at birthday breakfast with DH and friends, and we are all wondering the same thing. Was it for a mother-in-law, and she needed to go into a nursing home in a hurry? Or did she maybe stay in the apartment but end up not cooking for herself? Maybe they fixed up an apartment for a child graduating from college, and he/she got a job out of state. So many possible stories could be made up about every vintage kitchen, can’t they?
Rick says
Oh, if only this were copper, avocado or even poppy red (remember poppy red?). Sorry, Pam. Off topic, but are trash compactors ever spotted in Time Capsule homes? I remember thinking this was such a brilliant appliance idea-waay back when.
pam kueber says
Here’s my story on Poppy Red — https://retrorenovation.com/2012/09/28/rare-poppy-red-stove-and-refrigerator-original-colors-from-frigidaire-circa-1975/
And, I added a link to the story above. To magnetically pull folks into the retro color vortex! Thanks for the reminder!
Gail DeVore says
Trash compactors are an idea the sounds good but in real use is not… my folks had one in the early 70’s. If you compact all your trash that means it is in your kitchen for many days longer, and begins to smell! Also the compacting sound was very loud and alarming if you had cans and glass in it. Of course soon recycling was encouraged so you would need to sort that out of your trash anyhow. So very soon we weren’t allowed to actually turn it on, and it became a very expensive trash container, which was emptied daily as usual. 20 years later they finally uninstalled it, still in working condition, and took it to the metal recycling dump.
B.T.W. that gold side by side was the very one my folks had too, and they passed it on to my first apartment. Made me realize I hated side by side’s and it was an energy hog. I turned it in to the local electric co. for the $100 savings bond.
Valerie says
The 1978 house my parents purchased in the mid 1980’s has a trash compacter (harvest gold, no less). The key is to be careful what you put in it in order to avoid smell. Anything potentially smelly should go in the garbage disposal or compost.
As Depression babies, my parents never threw away anything food except egg shells and peels. No plate scrapings. Those went into your mouth before leaving the table or were stored as leftovers for the next meal if off a serving dish! Shells and peels were put in a jar or plastic container with a tight lid until it was full to avoid attracting fruit flies, etc. Then they can go in the trash (on its way out the door) or compost heap.
If all you have in the trash compacter is really paper waste and plastic wrappers and such, smell isn’t really a problem. As others have noted, cans and bottles go in the recycling bin anyway. It does take more thought than a regular trash can, and I don’t know that I personally would want one.
Joe Felice says
I have never felt the inordinate desire to have a trash compactor, either. You are right about people who grew up during the depression–they wasted nothing. As a child, I had to clear my plate, or finish it the next day. We often had “left-overs,” or they went into the lunch box. (Remember those?) They and we didn’t have recycling, except for the Boy Scouts, who collected newspapers. Do you remember incinerators? We had those at the back of the yard by the alley. Every so often, someone would come by and empty them. (I assume it was the city. I recall that there was a company that would come and pick up what I called “slop,” for the hog farms. I know that we never had that-much trash, and it only needed to be picked up every-other week. What a difference from today! The amount of trash generated by most Americans is astounding! And kids’ eating left-overs or taking lunches–are you kidding? If people recycle religiously, as I do, there is actually little trash to be picked up. But sadly, most people do not recycle, and I often hear the remark “Oh, so I suppose you think you’re saving the planet.” As if I should feel guilty, whereas, in fact, I think they are the ones who feel guilty. (And they should!) We only have one planet, but we sure are doing a great job of ruining it by being so wasteful. But there is nothing that would ever change our mindset–not even another depression. Whenever I look back at what those people had to live through, it blows me away! I mean a dust bowl, followed by a depression, followed by a World War! Any of this would be imponderable to anyone born since those days. I am thrilled that we on this site recycle, repurpose and reuse so-many things. Keep up the good work!
Patrick Coffey says
Trash Compactors will only be found in time capsule houses dating from 1969 forward as 1969 is when Whirlpool introduced the first trash compactor
JKM says
Our brand new 1973 harvest gold kitchen had all Hotpoint appliances including double wall ovens, cooktop, refrigerator (with ice through the door!), dishwasher, and the very latest in appliances – a trash compactor! I was 12 when we built the house and it was big fun putting things in, hitting the button, and listening to it “mash.” I seem to remember it having a deordorizer that sprayed every time the drawer was pulled out and pushed in.
Joe Felice says
Ice through the door and a trash compactor would indeed have been avante garde for the time. And yes, there was little can of spray deodorizer that spritzed , but I thought it was when the “compact” button was pressed.
hannah says
What an absolutely sunny and fabulous kitchen. I’d take that in a heartbeat! The fridge *swoons*. Love the faux wood handles.
lynda says
Such an interesting story. I wonder what the back story is? I am curious as to why a basement kitchen was never used. One would think a museum of some type might like this kitchen. Has anyone contacted the Smithsonian?
Sam R says
“Lightly used” might be a better term. There is some definite use wear around one of the knobs on the range hood.
My parents have a basement kitchen that was intended for entertaining. The stove hasn’t been turned on in at least 25 years, and everyone is afraid to try it now.