Messy living room picture to show you what I've got going on elsewhere! Definitely working on re-staging it soon.

it depends. probably a few more pictures with regard the size and orientation of kitchen and adjacent spaces. everything is in context. if its a small closed in kitchen you want to focus on storage and a good working set up. if its been opened up then adjacent seating..an open feel with light airy aesthetic can come into play.... You are asking about trim out and surfaces but nothing provided about the kitchen and the zones around ... period homes with smaller intact space [walled in kitchen] for kitchen can often have good results with Ikea cabinets/soapstone counter and other details like hardware/lighting use of a bit of color to get enough of what corresponds to the other parts of the home. the picture you have for review doesnt provoke comment because the kitchen isnt shown. as well..it could be newer construction as much as any other decade. the actual 1915 year comment has interest but now expending a lot of money for a kitchen remodel will have to be something to take you forward quite some time 2020's and beyond so function is paramount. the commenters are very good at beginning points to help you get oriented with inspirations / not get ahead or get out of synch w a budget/ expected results/returns etc. either of these could be whats at play ...we dont know....

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What a lovely home. I like consistency in thinks like trim work and flooring, so I’d carry the fir into the kitchen and do a combo of painted and wood cabs. If you go with white, go creamy white, not bright white. The graining in oak is too much in my opinion. I’d try to find a different wood for the cabs that plays well with the trim work and floors.

Trim the kitchen windows the same as the rest of the gorgeous trim in the house. If you are not firmly decided on tile floors, consider Marmoleum instead for softer underfoot that's easier for long standing.

I like what you are doing to bring back the beauty of the home but IMO kitchens and bathrooms need to be in the 21 century we live differently , cook differently and honestly no one IMO wants a 1915 kitchen to work in. I think nice cabinets in a style you like but painted would be a good homage to the home but really think how will you use a wall mounted sink in real life.I think something like this could work . BTW the furniture inside does not have to be so formal. IMO what you have loooks a lot more Victorian than Craftsman This is IMO more in keeping with the style of the house

PCC is correct that your furnishings are victorian but the architecture is craftman. Be careful building a white kitchen, many trying to use modern white kitchen finishes with shaker cabinets and marble or soapstone, like the one above, often look more edwardian than craftsman.

Just a quick note that "Craftsman" doesn't have to be oak. My parents had a PNW craftsman for a few years. It had the original cabinets, coated in white paint. The wood underneath was something very red toned--probably fir or mahogany.

My house was built in the 20s and i have all the natural fir trim in the same color as yours.

my kitchen will have white painted cabinets (shaker), soapstone, oak flooring (same as rest of first floor) but the window trim will remain the natural color.

Hey, folks! Uploading a few oh-god-why pictures of the existing kitchen so that I can go into further detail. Thanks for all the replies so far!

So! To explain the above. You'll notice a drop in the ceiling of ~7-8 inches. The nearer side is actually a dropped ceiling concealing the original ~108" height. The far side of the bump is ~89", where the '50s addition bumped the kitchen out on to what had been a porch. Unfortunately, increasing the ceiling height in the bump-out is going to be a non-starter as the engineering for it would just be atrocious, probably turning a 40k-50k project into a 150k+ project.

Design challenge one: managing a ceiling height transition from 89" to 108". My options, so far as I see them, are: 1) stack uppers on the high portion, 2) have a soffit over the cabinets to keep all upper at the 89" target and clad the soffit either to match cabinets or other trim in the space, or... 3) ???

My current thinking is that if I do stained cabinets, I'll probably stack uppers. If I do painted, I can do either the soffit or stack. Either way, the drop-down will be clad in some form, possibly to match the trimming on the beams in the living room for continuity.

Design challenge two: mixing period aesthetics with modern function, while also avoiding specific current-era design trends. The wall-mounted sink Patricia has correctly called out as a very period feature that doesn't see as much modern use. I've fortunately lived in a 1920s historical apartment before, and found the wall sink useable-- the concession is that a garbage disposal would be visible, so either I skirt the sink or omit it. I think I can live without a garbage disposal, so long as I have a suitable large trash-can pull-out nearby for easy scraping, which is effective workflow design regardless. Dishwasher will remain near the sink, but I'll panel it. Likewise, while I love my current fridge, replacing it with a panel-ready fridge will be necessary. Otherwise, I definitely plan on having plenty of counter space, so it won't be a period facsimile with all the variable-height tables, built-ins, etc.! I've been looking at ranges rather a lot, and I think the Ilve Magnificent II at 36" will be a bit of a splurge for me, but will also be as close as I can get to a suitable look without completely breaking the bank -- color TBD.

Design challenge three: Color selection. As you can see, this is a rather long space! And the pictures were taken in the morning. The room just isn't terribly bright. I'd liked the idea of white cabinets to help with light reflection, but I worry that with all the CVG trim and the need to resolve the ceiling drop cladding/ceiling height transition, there's going to be a lot of weirdness in the space that I'll regret my decisions on. Of course, an alternative is indeed a different color-- a muted, pale sage-y green would play well with CVG fir, work well with both period and modern trends, and still give me options on flooring and backsplash.

So, that's where I am at the moment, and those are the complications I'm mulling over. I'll reread the comments so far and engage a bit more. Apologies that I buried the lede! Posting at 5 am doesn't allow for much brain capacity.

(also, points to @Patricia Colwell Consulting and @roarah for identifying the furniture! You're quite right. While I've more mission touches in other spaces, the furniture ends up being a mix of historical styles. Definitely makes it easy to spot the experienced hands and keen eyes when you point that out! :D )

Another not-relevant note: your "oh god why" kitchen isn't to modern tastes, but it's 2000% better to work in than whatever was originally put in that kitchen. I've worked in the original 1920's kitchens of 2 different family members, and they really, really suck. Most reasonable people who have to cook daily would rip it all out and replace it with the best they can afford. Which is what previous owners of your house did. It's great that you now have the opportunity to put in something attractive and period looking, but with modern function.

I have a 1914 Craftsman bungalow and just renovated my kitchen. My goal was to remain true to the vintage feel, and I love it! Cabinets are custom inset; the nook and wainscoting are original, although he nook cabinetry was added about 25 years ago. The trim in the rest of the house was painted white by a previous owner.

I would not put a white kitchen in a PNW home with Beautiful Fir trim. If you’ll notice most all the inspiration pics of painted kitchens posted above also have painted trim. They would not look as good with wood trim. Why not use VGF cabinets with some glass uppers to break up the wood, as roarah shows?

i like maybe deeper counter and some cabinetry like this down to counter.have you thought of cutting a pass through to dining room or living room in the adjacent space. seems like some feature rather than the straight walls leading to the very suburban looking window

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. altho with blinds and window treatment like a valance you can make some ambience. look at these wall cabs....your space is medium....not real large so you have to pick and choose. think of a feature . wood vs painted ..inset or not ..I dont think is as critical as getting something other than plain vanilla layout. and you cant have an abundance of things here.

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I love your natural wood trim, and think you could choose either natural or painted trim in the kitchen, as long as it is visually separate from areas with natural wood trim. I agree that the kitchen window trim is not quite right for the style of your home, and of course that can easily be changed to a more Craftsman style. If you are interested in preserving the integrity of the original house, I would not open up the floor plan or add a pass though; I think those design choices are too contemporary. Personally, I am not a fan of open plan homes in general, but clearly I’m in the minority:)

The green sage color would be my painted cabinet choice if not using wood. It plays beautifully with wood and it was a common dye color in painted wood work historically.

I am not a pro, but if you have options besides stark white, I'd consider not necessarily yellow-based white [like Dover White], but a white that's softer. Believe me I know this might not pertain, but here's from houzz: "Afraid it'll look too white, some choose paint with a yellow undertone, and it reads yellow, making the room look more RUSTIC." [my Dover White a bit?]

"Benjamin Moore’s Swiss Coffee is a warm white without the CREAMY FEEL / not too yellow, or almond ? a great color to mediate between warmer and cooler materials and natural and artificial lighting."

They didn't put darker stain on the island.

Seems banquette's walls aren't white, but the chairs are... casual mix?

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Toasty backsplash, and not way Craftsman helps.... ?

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St. Paul Historical Renovation · More Info

Here's our 1915 SF Bay Area bungalow kitchen. We did this 12 years ago when we had more time than money but if I'd had the budget, I love how @chinacatpeekin did the uppers next to the stove. We mixed frameless and inset cabinetry to maximize space, and mixed colors because one person wanted white cabinetry and the other wanted colored cabinetry. (Had we known gray would take off in the way that it did a couple of years later, though...)

Most of our trim is sadly painted so we stuck with that, but you can see a little glimpse of the fir door in the last photo--it is trimmed in white too. We used fir and maple throughout to pull the wood tones in with the white. They don't match, but play well together for me. All of the kitchen trim was new but matched to the rest of the house--the kitchen had 1939 cabinets with 1990s tile and trim, painted to look like the trendy mid-2000s wood cabinets with rose granite on top to sell the house.

If we had done wood cabinetry (which we debated), it would have been Douglas fir. Floors are Marmoleum Click. I love-love-love our stacked cabinets and wish we'd had budget to do more of those! Ours are faux-stacked--actually just one big box, with shelves and face frame placed to make it seem like two. (First photo is old--there is now a similar VGF shelf to the left of the hood as well.) I also love that we did not open up the kitchen to the rest of the house. At the time this was because we had a large dog, but it has served us well in pandemic times since the eat-in area of the kitchen (not shown here) is now a home office. Being able to close the door to the room has been invaluable--though certainly not a use case we envisioned when we remodeled!

Here's one of my favorite kitchens: https://www.houzz.com/hznb/projects/fremont-kitchen-of-the-week-pj-vj~16678 

That kitchen is in Seattle and has period-appropriate features including VG Douglas-fir cabinets (although I think the floors are a different species). Photos:

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Microhouse fremont cottage - reclaimed fir cabinets · More Info

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My kitchen is definitely specific to my tastes, but I was going for a similar look in a 1920 bungalow (Utah) with Doug-fir cabinets combined with thoroughly modern kitchen conveniences (hood, two sinks, coffee station, etc.). Here are photos from my backsplash reveal: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/5835918/backsplash-reveal-thanks-to-color-club-for-color-encouragement

I am in the middle of a remodel with a very similar layout and certainly had the same orange oak colored cabinets 😂

I took the plunge and decided to paint them. The steps below describes the process and recommendations if you choose to go that route.

The lowers were first. I sanded SO MUCH! Used Killz primer. I also used Behr cabinet and trim enamel tinted to SW colors for both uppers and lowers. The lowers have wood grain showing. I hate it. It looks like small cracks in the paint. I hate it.

After learning a few things from the lowers, I started the uppers. This time, I used Bin’s shellac based primer! MAGIC! I did sand but not nearly as much as I did my lowers. I used 3 coats of primer and they were smooth as glass when I laid the first coat of paint. MAGIC! I will be repainting my lowers asap.

If you use the shellac primer just know, go fast. Do not back roll. Go fast. If you miss a spot, don’t attempt to roll over it. Get it on the next round. It dries within minutes. For real. Minutes. I was going thru those sponge brushes so fast. I finally decided to try another method. If you hear anything, hear this… shellac based primer is magic but it is a PAIN if you don’t get the hang of it before you tackle the main project.

1. Sand and clean thoroughly.
2. Use a tack cloth
3. Work in small sections at a time.
4. Turn off all vents or fans to keep dust to a minimum
5. Now for the magic part, go to lowes, they have a roller called the whizz flock roller. USE IT…. You’ll thank me later.
   6 Pour the shellac into a small tray, saturate the roller, really saturate it. Roll small sections in ONE direction and move to next section.
6. Put the roller in a ziploc bag, squeeze out excess air, put in fridge. (It will be nice and soft and ready to use for the next coat) This was a game changer for me. I was wasting so many sponges, brushes, rollers etc. before stumbling upon the whizz flock. I have used the exact same one I started with for all my uppers.

I’ll post a pic of mine for reference.

My cabinet uppers are SW Eider White semi gloss (love them) and lowers are SW Dovetail semigloss (don’t love them). My walls are Eider White eggshell.

Good luck

This is the paint on the uppers. Almost glass like. Not flawless but close enough for me.

Lowers. I don’t even want to think about it. 😂

@chinacatpeekin just saw on the other thread that we are in the same city--I would love to know who did your cabinetry (since I love your corner upper and would love to think about doing something similar, and we definitely want to add a banquette).

Thanks! You’re in Oakland, too? I’m in Glenview! He did the cabinets, but the nook was (more or less ) original to the house. I am sure he could build one for you. I contacted my contractor for his number; . I’ll try to PM you…

Thanks--I think I fixed my settings to allow messages! (Crazily I don't think I had updated them since Houzz took over GardenWeb...) Would love his info, though--your cabinets are beautiful! (And yes--we are near the lake.)

Artemis78, I should have it tomorrow. I tried to send you a message but don’t seem to be able to….Houzz, grrr.

@chinacatpeekin -- just checking, is that range an Aga? Just checking to make sure I didn't miss a historically-styled brand of range in my hunt for the right balance of style, capability, and price point.

Evan L, it is a reconditioned vintage 1950 Wedgewood. Before I found it locally, I was looking at the Aga Mercury and the Aga Elise as a backup plan. Those are beautiful, but I’m glad I found this, my first choice! My stove pre-renovation was also a Wedgewood, but not as pretty:)