We really struggled with this issue. Our house is quite contemporary and also quite tropical in style. We didn't know which way to go, feeling we could embrace either one and make it work. The struggle came in more from what we felt the house should have.

My personal preference would have been a beautiful white Peacock kitchen. That was absolutely not going to fit the space. It became hard to create a kitchen that didn't reflect what my soul wanted to have.

In the end we went contemporary, with little subtle pieces of tropical. Hopefully we did something that will fit the house. Kitchens aren't easy to change and we want to leave behind something others can embrace.

Our house is a 1972 post-and-beam set in a forested area in the hills of our area. We tried to pay homage to both the style of house and it's setting.
Our kitchen is shaker style cream cabinets with no frou=frous. I love the strong, linear lines of a post and beam and it doesn't lend itself to fancy stuff, we even opened up the ceiling to expose another beam and added more windows in the family room to add to the construction style.
With respect to the setting - we went "organic" in choosing our materials with granite counters, wood floors, slight khaki tint to our walls, more light through the windows - all to connect the interior of the house to the exterior as well.

Our 1954 modest less-than-a-ranch was the least decorated of its twins on the street--no cute gables, no funky window config, no bumped-forward or bumped-backward single car garage. I think all three owners of the house favored spare, modern lines. But the house plan itself was not really any style at all. Painted pine trim throughout plus oak floor in all rooms except bath and kitchen, doublehung windows with a single mullion in upper and lower. Each of the neighbors has modified the original house and it's a shock to see how different the interiors are--colors, furniture, drapes, usage. Ours has been modified by us 3 times and each time we've introduced more oak trim but in contemporary ways. Although I'm an American Studies fanatic and love the styles from colonial to federal to antebellum, I can't make myself actually commit to living in a fake old house. Instead, I've hauled in Chippendale and spare wooden Scandinavian Mod furniture pieces plus plenty of DH's favorite oak, oak, oak and some walnut. We have non-furniture antiques all over hell here, but they're contained in restricted places and we have modern pieces for everyday usage. Ironically, except for the lack of pastels, we've really got a historic-inspired Swedish look going. Lots of reds in fabrics and wood furniture and rugs, leggy furniture, repurposed old stuff, silver and twinkle and coarse linen and handcrafted textiles. Very different from one neighbor's knotty pine and brown naugahide and from another's cute but oppressive blue and brown country kitchen and another's original 1950s linoleum and beige paint everywhere and from the most spectacular re-do which you'd swear was an original Craftsman house with a new kitchen to match. I guess the nondescriptness of the original has given us license to be ourselves.

We have an 1890 home and I tried to make the kitchen as much of that era as possible. I used a lot of salvage. Just recently we had some folks over that had never been here before. They commented that I was lucky that the kitchen didn't need to be redone as it matched the house so well. Ha....I then told them what I had done. They were amazed. Now I guess I could either be happy or glad when I think about it LOL. Think I'll be glad. c

we did our best to 'go' with the late 1930s home that we have. We get a lot of comments we did pretty well.

Oh I really hope so! We bought a 1902 Connecticut farmhouse on its own small lake about 18 months ago and are expanding it and updating it.

The guiding principles in my reno is that it should look old, and also look simple plain and modest (like a farmhouse). Of course to do that seems to be costing me an arm and a leg ....

So my kitchen will be very neutral, partly unfitted, and features lots of wood, zinc, marble, etc.

I'd be quite glad to have your kitchen trailrunner, ;)

Our house was a 1950, builder grade, "nondescript" house too.
If it were MCM or had any flair I would try to work with that, but ours is a fairly blank slate. Things that had been redone over the years were not done with much care or money. The neighbors across the street (original owners!) say that no one lived here for more than 6 or 7 years and no one ever had children live in this house, which probably explains the lack of love or style it has.

We are redoing it and bringing it back a decade or so. I am going for very early modern/contemporary/simple. I want it to reflect a 20's-40's sensibility. Very little frou frou with clean lines and chrome. We are not going for a 50's "Jetsons" look nor a diner stle, but what a very forward person in 1930-1940 or so would have done. We'll have touches of deco and are using some vintage materials and architectural salvage.
I would love if no one could tell if my kitchen were new or not (not counting people who had seen the hideous washed oak it had prior, lol). I also want it to be just as mysterious 10 years from now with only a few hints of what year we did it. It will be purposely not be part of current trends of today. I also want it to look different than the many cookie cutter kitchens I see as a real estate agent. Often, they are nice, expensive, and yet somehow interchangeable with the neighbor's house.

I think that in general the house can have a Newer style kitchen than the house style itself, the problem is when the house has an older style kitchen. An 1820s house that never had a kitchen to begin with can have pretty much anything from 1900 sanitary, to 1940s metal, to 60s "country kitchen" to 70s lacquer etc, but these all just show the house has been lived in all along.

However, the White, Soapstone, and subway tile kitchen references an older style, but it is NOT usually a early-20th c."sanitary kitchen" replica, --it is its own 2000s style--so it is at home in many rather "soft contemporary" builders homes of the 60s-90s. It may not look so good in a glass box or John Lautner but in the typical house that is vaguely period revival on the outside with a contemporary layout on the inside, it still works.

I have an 1896 colonial revival and we are doing a period kitchen (victorian era) though I'm not interested in true restoration. It's more "spirit of". For instance, the cabinetmaker looked a little scandalized when I indicated I liked the sprayed oil finish rather than the hand-painted finish coat. And one contractor suggested that I should live with the slant in the mudroom floor since it's "authentic". No, actually somebody cut a joist to put in a staircase and hence the floor is not properly supported. Call me crazy, but I'd like that fixed...

I would say yes. We have a nondescript 60's single-story ranch (like diannalo not MCM), and have a retro-inspired kitchen with modern touches.

I love the kitchens I see here, but so many would not work for our current home/space at all.

This is a really good question and one that my husband and I struggled with when we redid our kitchen. Should it match the style of the house (a late 60's ranch)...and what exactly is 60's ranch style? Mid century modern? Mad Men style?

But we decided to just go with what we liked...which is nothing too fancy yet not minimalist, either. I do think our slate backsplash pays homage to the era of the house though, so even though I don't normally like slate--I thought it worked in this situation :)

Here is a link that might be useful: Our Kitchen

Hijack - Ahomewest - I love your backsplash - what a cool surprise in your kitchen. It is so different and against your counter it really adds an interesting detail.

My house was built in 1909 and still has most of its original details. XH and I bought this house as lovers of old houses and with every intention of doing as much restoration work as possible -- as opposed to "remodeling." Well, when it came to finally addressing the rather vintage kitchen I inherited, I can tell you that a remodel,as opposed to a restoration, was very much in order! Although I tried to keep my 6 burner, double oven antique stove (circa 1920's), that grand old dame was not able to survive the rigors of the remodel. Still, in keeping with the age of the house, I replaced her with a brand new 6 burner, 4-oven Aga 6-4 -- a modern day, pro-style cooking machine with a turn-of-the century appearance. I replaced the unfitted kitchen furniture with shaker inset cabs and installed counter tops of soapstone instead of more contemporary-looking granite - again more appropriate for a "period" kitchen. While I would have much preferred to have kept all the original moldings and trim work and merely stripped them of a century's worth of paint jobs, the GC convinced me that such a task would be very costly and time consuming and wouldn't yield the pristine original wood results I envisioned. So, in the end, even though I ended replacing much of the original woodwork, all the replacements were milled to appear identical to the original. Along the way, many other modern day "compromises" (read "conveniences") were made, such as installation of recessed ceiling lights, range hood, new triple glazed, double-hung windows, and replacement of the humongous century old radiator (a cast iron clunker and serious space-hogger) with a brand new and streamlined Runtal radiator. And, so on and so forth with every aspect of the remodel. In other words, I tried very hard to design a kitchen that would be exceptionally functional and energy-saving by today's standards, but would have the look of a kitchen that would "fit" in a century old house.

BTW, although I often describe my kitchen as a "period" kitchen, the actual design influences span many periods -- largely from turn of the century (20th) to the art deco era. The design "theme" itself is also very eclectic. In fact, I call it "NYC-Paris-Urban Bistro-Sophisticated Cottage." LOL! So while the kitchen reads "old" to most, I'm sure an interior design purist would find me all over the early 20th century map in appearance and with a whole lot of new millennium tendency in substance. That said, if I ever move, more likely than not, I will do a total switch over to some ultra-modern high rise condo apartment and go totally contemporary with my new kitchen!

Ours is a 1920's bungalow, with some arts and crafts aspects but nothing heavily mission or Greene and Greene. Yes, we've tried to make the kitchen fit the house, but it's not a restoration with any rigorous attempt to bring the kitchen back to 1920.

I have the original house plans. I read Jane Powell's "Bungalow Kitchens" with interest, but what she recommends (and calls "obsessive restoration") was not our goal. Would I want to go back to nothing but a stove on one wall, a sink on another, one built-in pantry cabinet, and an icebox in a separate space by the back door? Not so much. Do I want to make a vintage hot water heating tank a feature in my kitchen? Not so much. Is my new stainless undermount sink period appropriate? No so much.

We did, however, keep the cabinet style very much in tune with the original built-ins in other rooms. We repeated an arch style that is found elsewhere in the house. We stayed with natural materials where we could. Most importantly, I think, instead of opening our kitchen into one big (albeit long and narrow) space we kept a partial separation for our breakfast nook/butler's pantry area, preserving it's function as a buffer between the formal dining room and the working part of the kitchen. So the flow of the house is still much as it was designed to be.

this is a cool question kathec! Loved reading everyone's thoughts and approaches.

I love modern and I love vintage, so I had thought that getting the right the right balance in our kitchen would be complicated for me. We were moving the kitchen and creating it from scratch, and we live in a 1920's house so the new space definitely needed to flow with the rest of the house.

To balance my likes and be true to the age of the home - I came up with a mantra for our whole house remodel:

Everything wood (floors, window casings, baseboards, crown molding, cabinets, arched doorways etc..) leaned historic so it fit with the bones of the house.

Everything metal (lighting, hardware, faucets, sink, appliances) leaned modern to give me some of the sparkle and fresh detail I wanted.

That approach guided everything in our remodel (but was especially important in the kitchen and our new master bath) and helped the remodel hit the right balance.

We have a 1950's split. Although I really can't say my kitchen is from that era, we chose a white traditonal kitchen so it does go with the "feel" of the house.

We had a 1925 Storybook/colonial and we put a traditionally-referenced kitchen with current materials in that one in 2003. Maple shaker cabinets with a glaze, furniture feet look on cabinets, white subway, granite, Rejuvenation fixtures, heart pine flooring. Definitely not period-appropriate, but not out of place in that house.

The current house is 1978 construction, but from a 1960-ish plan. It's a BH&G riff on an Eichler-style poast-and-beam house. The 1978 kitchen had sort of rancho-look cabinets, laminate, pony walls and soffits. We went more modern with slab cabinets, quartz, no uppers, BS to the ceiling and SS appliances. So, it's not period 1960, or 1978 -- more like 2010 "Dwell" with a nod to the MCM past.

The OP referenced a ca. 1990 colonial/traditional -- thousands of folks live in those. Also those from 1980, 1970 and 2000. I think that those houses work well with a kitchen that isn't readily identifiable as being from a "period" at all. Just use good design, good materials, good construction and you'll have a good kitchen.

Here is a link that might be useful: Modern kitchen in MCM home

We bought my DH's grandparents small 1930's farmhouse from his Aunt (who was raised in the house) while she still had some renters in it. Since we were not in a hurry, we did not actually move into the house for several months. We did not want to change the basic look of the house so we initially were just going to add on to the back so the front stayed the same and were not really going to effectively use the old space. We played w/ several various floorplans, then scrapped them all once we moved in as we were able to figure out how to better use the old space in combination with an addition that basically did not alter the look of the house from the front. While our kitchen is definitely a lot larger than any his grandmother would have ever imagined, I like to think she would be happy with how it turned out. We used alot of antiques with a mixture of new stuff (sink, hood, fridge, base cabinets, countertops) and we both love the way it turned out. His Aunt is also very pleased with how it has all turned out as she was really scared of what we were going to do to it. We think she is as proud of the end results as we are which really means alot to us.

Our 1892 house is on it's third kitchen constructed in 2009. I was a stickler for immediately recognizable Victorian details, and used period furniture and cabinetry for inspiration.

The materials are modern rather than salvage. The cabinetry is qs oak, counters are soapstone, sinks are white apron front. The only concealed appliance is the integrated dw. It is a layout never imagined in the late 19th century. The space is much larger than a period kitchen. It has an adjacent room for baking which was inspired by the scullery or hired help's work space. The cabinetry color is cream, the sink a replica of a large farmhouse sink, and other than the built-in ovens and one cabinet, it is completely unfitted.

This cupboard was inspired by tin-front pie safes.

Farmhousebound, I bet you are absolutely right in thinking that your grandmom-in-law would have been thrilled with the way her kitchen turned out! And thank goodness your aunt-in-law's fears have been arrested in the process. IMHO, your kitchen is a marvelous kitchen! One that I have put on my list of GW favorites.

mtnrdredux - your description made me chuckle because when I started out, I pictured my kitchen as a modest farmhouse with slab front cabs (possibly metal ones), some chrome accents and nothing frilly, except maybe some retro print curtains.
At the time everyone seemed to be putting English manor kitchens and French chateau styled ones with corbels, fancy decorative moldings, medallions, etc...on GW and my vision was so different and hard to explain. I then found out pretty quickly that "farmhouse" meant very different things on here than in my imagination.
I think you described what we are trying for very well. Your kitchen and mine may look very different in the end, but I bet I like yours and hope you see a kindred spirit in mine. I thought I was the only one not trying to look more high end, so to see the word "modest" used is refreshing. Most people just use that word to modify the word "budget" and not the actual outcome.
I love seeing how many people here are striving for period friendly looks. You don't have to be a slave to the era your house was built in, but I love seeing at least nods and winks about the original time period when someone is renovating. When I see someone take a house that had style and change it far in another direction, I often wish they had bought a house with less style if they were so intent on making it something else. I guess the only good thing you could say about our house is it was a very blank slate, so any style added just has to be an improvement, lol.

Wow, great question, Kathec.

Ours is a 1904 farmhouse and we're trying to bring about the feel of an old farmhouse kitchen, which is nothing like what is there, now. Currently, it's a small, closed off kitchen, without much light. We're hoping to open it up as a larger, brighter kitchen, with a small seating area at one end. The kitchen will flow into the dining area and make family entertaining much easier.

We're planning to use simple materials, painted finishes, and tile backsplash for the remodel. Hopefully, they will bring about the 'spririt' as someone mentioned earlier, of an inviting, but hardworking kitchen :)

Our home is an 1873 farmhouse; when we bought it, the kitchen was sporting a very up-to-date look for 1968 (when it was last renovated). It looked out of place.

We ended up with a kitchen that we think pays homage to the era of the house---we did panelled appliances; two unfitted pieces (a hutch and a pantry); used soapstone for countertops and an antique workbench for an island; exposed the brick chimney; and found faucets and lighting that looked as though they could have been from that time.

Our cabinet maker used milk paint finishes and all of the doors and drawer fronts are made from antique salvaged wood. We only have two upper cabinets instead of a solid run around the room, and also used an arched toe kick that lends more of a furniture feel to the cabinetry.

Where we went obviously 2011--new appliances including stainless double ovens and induction; a porcelain tile floor (would have loved to get down to the original wood but it wasn't in the cards), new energy efficient windows, and a somewhat wild copper backsplash/door insert.

I think it looks like it belongs now! :-)

I think in any typical post war house, which is about 60% of the current stock in the united states, the outside is based upon some historical precedent while the inside is essentially contemporary (excluding custom built "period" homes). This is particularly true of houses built after 1980, which were the McMansion precursor and the mini McM, which tended to more closely mimic some historic or regional style on the facade.

With these houses it is difficult to assign a particular identity. If the outside is Mock Tudor or Norman--what does one do with the kitchen when there are no "tudor" or "norman" elements inside? This is when it is both harder and easier--you can't take a particular stylistic clue from the house necessarily--if it was built in 1990, do you particularly want to stick with cathedral oak and hunter green laminate in 2011? --On the other hand, whatever the current American kitchen is will fit pretty well, as long is it isn't relying too heavily on historic references.

I really don't think it matters a great deal that the kitchen match the house. There are some things I personally wouldn't put together, but I don't mind if you do. I think most kitchens don't go with the style of the house - they go with whoever did it and I think that's fine.

I think historically correctness is fine in an old house and don't mind that when the kitchen now contains dishwashers or other modern amenities. The ones that do bug me - for instance "craftsman style" in a bungalow - only bug me because they are often completely inaccurate and the person doing the style is insisting that it is accurate. I don't mind that they choose that look for their kitchen, I mind that the person thinks its accurate or somehow matches the house.

Just about everything in styles is fashion and trends - interrupted here and there with technology improvements. It always has been.

Thank you for sharing your stories. It's so interesting to see what you have chosen for your house.

I agree, palimpsest. My house interior is not a total blank slate. The builder did take a couple of stabs at carrying the mock colonial look inside. The study is paneled in wood with crown molding, the formal living room has crown molding, a picture rail and the formal dining room has a chair rail with molding (to mimic paneling), crown and columns that divide the dining from the living room. These are the 3 rooms you see from the front entry. As you continue to the back of the house where the kitchen and family room are, there's none of that. I'm assuming the builder wanted to wow their buyers. The front rooms would be the first and last you'd see, so the ones you'd be likely to remember. They saved money and labor not continuing the moldings throughout.

DH and I agree that we should trim out the kitchen, breakfast nook and family room to keep continuity. The cabinet door style we ended up with is a painted maple raised panel traditional. I bought my cabinets from a out of business shop, so I only had 4 styles to choose from. One I eliminated as it had cathedral doors, which I didn't think I could live with, and another was a wide stile shaker style (similar to Ikea Adel), which seemed too linear for my space.

Despite the numbers of white kitchens on GW, white traditional kitchens are not the norm in my immediate area. Texans like wood and stone. They quarry a lot of stone locally, especially white/tan limestone. The current builder trend is "old world" with a distressed, dark wood, of course they're not building many mock colonial type houses these days either.

I've decided, or rather my budget has dictated that I go with a more collected look (ala craigslist). The cabinets "go" with the traditional feel of the house, but my range and lighting are more vintage. These elements are a bit easier to swap out in a few years as my budget allows. I suppose these elements might make it harder to date the space as well.

Here's some images from my house:
Before:

Cabinet detail:

To Mnerg: "I read Jane Powell's 'Bungalow Kitchens'"
Heh, I'm reading that and her "Bunaglow Details: Interior" books right now! I agree she goes a little far w/ the restoration stuff, but it's great to see original bungalow kitchens (many of them, it looks, right before they were gutted) to get ideas.
We have a Chicago '20s bungalow that we're trying to restore. In fact, right now we are trying to decide whether to be true to the original hardwood in the kitchen and rip up the relatively new tile floor the previous owner put in, or save the expense and headache and live with perfectly (just not for us) fine tile.
Mnerg, do you have pics of your finished kitchen? Would love to see them!

Ours is a 1905 foursquare. Our new kitchen is part of a 2 story addition we built on the back of the house. We tried to make the new kitchen very much in keeping with the original, using similar materials and lots of salvage. Probably our biggest compliment came when the 3 daughters who had grown up in our house since 1942 came to see it again. The all loved what we had done and said it still felt exactly the same. They were thrilled to see that we kept their mom's old farmhouse sink and the old paisley wallpaper that they helped hang. My feeling is that, especially in an old house, the goal is to avoid a "disconnect" between the kitchen and the rest of the house.

ellendi,

I searched but wasn't able to find a link to your kitchen. Can you point me to it? We have a 1950s split level with an original kitchen and I'd love to see what you've done with the layout.

How about you? Does or will your kitchen go with your house? Or is/will your kitchen be a reflection of personal style?

This is such an interesting question! We've had plenty of discussions of how a kitchen shouldn't clash with the style of a house, but I don't remember one specifically about what we're doing/done.

My new kitchen is definitely a reflection of my personality, though not so much my style, except in very subtle ways. Most of my choices started with function rather than appearance, and I went for harmony within the function rather than a particular look. The result is striking, different and quirky, and that is reflective of my personal style.

My house? My house has no style. It's a box. I've made up a story for myself because I needed some labels for a starting place. I call it New Orleans because it has bricks, railings and French doors and windows, bougainvillea and ferns. That's the outside. The bones of the inside is kind of dressy casual and '80's Home Depot. I had tried twice before to buy Spanish style houses. My new kitchen, which fits the dressy casual (emphasis on casual) but not particularly the N.O. except for being colorful, would look awful in a Spanish style house, but the same finishes could have been tweaked slightly to work there.

excellent question, and one i've asked myself about quite a few times.
my house started out as a one room logging cabin back in 1816.
it's been remodeled at least three times, getting bigger each time. i think the first big remodel was when the shed roof kitchen addition was added back in the 1940s. than a bedroom wing in the 70s, and finally by us in the 90s, when we blew out the rear wall facing the water and added a two story 24x12 addition.
we still display the original beam used to date the home in the stairwell.
so now i have this sort of contemporary farmhouse. the living room and dining area is one large L shape space, and the entire second story is given over to the master suite.
we furnish it with older pieces, such as my dh's aunt's couch and chair. we even have pics of him as a two year old on that couch--but i like my fabric better, lol.

anyway, the new kitchen will add space, seating (altogther i'll be able to seat at least ten) and a huge new mudroom, which in snow and mud country we really need.
it will have a mix of custom and stock cabs, as well as some furniture pieces.
it has a open feel, but not contemporary furnishings or decorating.
it's sort of an evolved ski/family/farm home.
and someday i'm going to connect the second story to the barn with a bridge, which will really emphasize that!

lobita, here's one shot of the butler's pantry cabinets (all I could do without getting in the carpenter's way at the moment.) The original unit was in the same configuration, but with less space between countertop and uppers, and not as deep overall, with drawers that no longer functioned, and coated in many layers of lead paint.

{{!gwi}}

"Does your kitchen go with your house age, style?"

My Greek Revival was built in 1858 with the original kitchen (destroyed in 1934) as a seperate building that was comprised of a massive cooking fireplace & little else except a servant or two - so it's safe to say my current kitchen isn't a replica, LOL!

Being a typical Greek Revival, all of the rooms are large, symmetrical with high ceilings following the theme of 'simple yet bold'. And that was my motto when planning a new kitchen - making sure that perfect scale was maintained with materials blending in rather than competing with original architecture. Since there were no appliances in 1858, I rationalized that antebellum kitchens were utilitarian in nature & nothing fits that description better than stainless - as long as it's subdued.

to lobita, regarding floors: Our vinyl tile floor, and the couple layers under it, were all in bad shape, and we had hoped to get back to the original maple floor that we found under the one corner we pulled up. The rest of the ground floor is oak, and upstairs is maple. When we took it all up we did indeed find maple. And fir. Um, and large patches of pine boards where for some reason holes were cut into the basement. It was a thorough mess.

The new maple floor is lovely, and we were able to add hot water heat under it and get rid of the radiators. Just don't pull up your tile and count on something underneath that's worth refinishing. Good luck with your decisions!

I think so...

Traditional to Transitional and my kitchen is a white
traditional to transitional kind of space.

~boxer's home sweet home.

Here is a link that might be useful: Kitchen

I believe our original kitchen was on a dirt floor in the basement of our 1825 house. Between 1840 - 1860 a HUGE clapboard addition was added to the brick house including the present kitchen. 1914 saw the addition made smaller and the house turned into a 2 family. I had a really had time deciding what "time period" to use for windows, trim, doors, flooring, type of woods, etc. The kitchen was a gut. I decided on 1914 since that was the last major renovation. I had many clues in the house. An architect purist would say to compliment the house but not match it. I matched where I could. I have a 5 panel fir door for the half bath vs. 6 panel black walnut doors in the main house. (I have other 5 panel doors in the addition) Trim matches the 1914 period but it's all painted (way too much work to strip the old trim). I have quatersawn oak floors just like what was added in 1914 but I went with cherry cabinets because that's what I prefer. I have granite because I wanted it - typhoon bordeaux would not have been used in that period. I paneled most appliances. So, I did take cues from the house to guide me but added a few things that I wanted or liked.

I like to think that what we're doing "references" our home's age and style, but we're definitely not purists. As I type, my butler's pantry oak window frame is being painted white. Gasp!

Our house's kitchen was originally about 15x9. It had a free standing farmhouse sink, a large stove, and possibly a hutch-like cabinet on one wall. There was a single light, probably hanging over a work table in the middle of the room. There was a pass-through pantry connecting the kitchen to the dining room, and a second butler's pantry behind the porch, and both pantries had a couple of built-ins. The "laundry room" was a three-basin soapstone sink in the basement and a clothes line in the backyard.

I have thought a lot about what it would be like to be the "woman of the house" in 1910 and making due with what was available. I am convinced that Mrs. Original Homeowner would think I was crazy if I tried to recreate anything much like that first set-up with so many great new options available. Still, we tried to pick materials and finishes that were in use in homes at the time - wood (painted and stained), marble, soapstone, slate, subway tile. We had our cabinets built to look similar to the originals, and we are using the blueprints to replicate one of two missing china cabinets in the dining room. We are installing push-button switches and some period-appropriate lighting, and we repurposed a sewing room as our new pantry (which is right behind and very similar to the original pantry).

In short, we have a grand old house that had a tiny, dismal, minimally functional kitchen. I like to think that if our house had a choice, it would pick the one it's getting! ;)

Yes, the kitchen matches the style of my 1940 cottage....but only because it's the (scary) original. However, I want to do this:

Someday, somehow...I'll have a kitchen with drawers that don't fall out and smash my toes. :)

An interesting question and not necessarily easy to answer. The shed style architecture of my house is informed by the Texas Hill Country vernacular common in this region. There isn't a typical kitchen style for this house and the kitchens in these houses run from sleek modern to barn wood and tin.

We've opted for an simple updated version of the original early 1990's kitchen with the addition of some local favorites like a copper apron sink. We're keeping the existing oak cabinets and at first I wanted to disguise them, but lately I've been rethinking that because we are surrounded by oak trees so it's a natural choice. The backsplash decision took a while because even though the floors are Saltillo, Mexican tile would be too out of place with the modern lines of the house. After ruling out slate as too dark, we are planning on the same split face limestone used on the exterior and interior of the house.

Even though I didn't start with a blank slate the informal style will reflect our own personal style. The interesting part is deciding where details based on popular local styles end and our own style begins. Since we love the house, then what works with it will also reflect our own style.

My kitchen goes with my house. I'm not sure what style you would call my 2000 house in Florida or what style you would call my kitchen. Both are rip-offs of a few styles I think. One of these days I'll give all you experts a crack at helping me figure out what style my house more closely resembles because I have no idea.

We moved into out 1939 "semi-traditional" house built by my DH grandfather in 1984. It was totally original. Never been renovated. Worn, outdated. Kitchen was 7' wide and completely closed off from the rest of the house. 1200 square feet with one bathroom. My MIL grew up here with her sister and her parents. As soon as we had our first son, and he started using the bathroom, I needed another bathroom. That turned into a second story additon. 15 years later, we got around to the kitchen. By then, the house only slightly resembled the original.

We tried to keep with the traditional look, but everything is new and larger and to tell you the truth, who wants to live like they did in the 40's (unless it was with the priveledged).

We opened up the kitchen, it was a gut, now all new. However, when my MIL walked through for the first time, she had tears in her eyes, "this is what your Grandpa wanted to build."