Kitchen in antique house
Comments (31)
Allison W
last yearlast modified: last yearFacing West toward fireplace
facing East toward refrigerator
view facing north toward oven and sink
Facing south toward Butler pantry and powder room
Butler pantry view from kitchen
Butler pantry facing East
Butler pantry built-in cabinet, facing north toward kitchen
Pantry, facing east
Pot rack
Original floor plan. The pantry on the right was turned into a bathroom and opening to the butler pantry was enlarged.
Current peach paint color (it has a bit more color to it in real life)
Floor
decoenthusiaste
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Kitchen in historic home
Comments (17)Owner of of 165 +/- year old Greek revival home here. Ok, first thing to understand about old houses is that you can't really have a reproduction peruiod kitchen and have a modern function kitchen in the same space. The technology has just changed too much. I'm assuming hot and cold running water are required, right? Second, from the picture of your house I can see it is not a first-settlement level structure so: a) Understand that the original kitchen would not have been the full-time working space of the homeowner's wife, mother or sister. It would have been staffed by some variety of domestic worker(s). This is a fundamental difference between then and now. Decorative choices for spaces not occupied by the homeowner's family are always more utilitarian. b) The present-day fantasy of the "great room, open to the kitchen food prep area" would also NOT have been accurate. After the era of primitve settlement-period dwellings, by the early 1800s the almost universal presence of domestic workers meant that the kitchen cooking areas were always separated from the dining and sitting room areas. Only extremely poor people, almost at the peasant level, or first settlers in newly-opened areas lived and cooked in the same space. Third, your house was on the cusp of a significant design style change and you should look carefully at it to discern where it falls. At the end of the 1700's through about 1840 (depending on how quickly the new styles were adopted) was the period of Federal style. This means smaller-scale, and finely made but simple moldings, trim, proportions, but not quite as delicate as the style preceeding it, Georgian. The succeeding style, Greek Revival, is bolder in scale, often wider, more ovoid-based moldings. There is sometimes a kind of muddling between them, but it's usually possible to separate the styles pretty clearly. Neither of them, of course, has the floridness of the later Victorian style(s). It would be useful I think, after you have determined which style your house largely falls in, to visit old house museum buildings to strengthen your eye for the appropriate scale of decorative treatments. This is not to say you will be looking to copy the various historical kitchen arrangements, they don't work with modern needs. You would be trying to fix in your mind the shape and scale of the decorative details: moldings, baseboards, door styles, proportions of the rooms, etc. These can then be approximated when choosing cabs, trim, and so forth. That way the modern fixtures will blend in to what your building already is, instead of being at cross purposes, design-wise. Don't get muddled up by contemporary recreations of older-seeming buildings. Find the real thing when training your eyes. Otherwise you will be copying a copy of a copy. For instance I often see really fat, heavily-turned, legs or columns and gargoylian corbels (all late Victorian elements) combined with delicate Federal-scale inset cabs. It all may appear to be an historical style, or "transitional", or whatever, but if these elements are in the same piece, it just makes me dizzy. Of course, you can have any style kitchen you want, as throughout time kitchen upgrades have happened according to the tastes and desires of the current owners. Some of the modern ones such as "French Provincial" or "Tuscan" being faux styles (meaning that were always fake, and not representing anything that actually ever existed to begin with) will be less likely to be successful. But you could, if your heart was set on it, have any authentic style of kitchen that came after your building's creation on the grounds that it might have been installed by some previous homeowner in the then-current newer style. The difficulty is that until after WW II many of the now-necessary appliances, amenities, and functional details didn't exist so you are stuck with trying to graft them on to an imaginary recreation of an interpretation of an earlier period. You can see how you can fall into the weeds here. It always seems simpler to me to study your house to get the massing and scale imprinted in your design sense. Understand how the orginal room uses worked and why they were what they were, and then set about choosing design elements that blend well with what is already there. Something about the house attracted you in the first place. If those were original elements, then strengthen the connection to them when choosing how to arrange and decorate your kitchen. If, OTOH, you're attracted to a completely modern design (I'm not referring to recently made stuff, but the Modern or Contemporary styles), then these can also work quite well as long as you get the scaling right: more delicate for a Federal structure and bolder for a Greek Revival one. You didn't say where you are, but my final advice is to resist the urge to falsley farmhouse-i-fy an urban structure. City people always had access to superior materials, more fashion-forward styling and more skilled craftsman. The reverse is true for me. As the owner of a really rural farmhouse built before the Civil War but in, even then, a late-appearing, country-made imitation of the elegant Greek Revival style, I can readily see the difference. It would play my much-loved, but truly country-cousin version of GR false if I added high-style GR details. HTH, L....See Morecost to refinish antique farm house sink
Comments (2)It's not possible to refinish at any cost. There's not one company left in the US that re-porcelainizes them anymore. Any other method of "refinishing" is just fancy paint that will fail when used in a hard use environment like a kitchen sink....See MoreLove our new home, but hate the antique white cabinets/kitchen! Help!
Comments (50)We moved into our forever home last year. The kitchen and bath cabinets and layouts were the one of the things that didn't really work for us. the first thing we did was change the cabinet hardware and wall colors in the whole house. First step in making it better. We now like the kitchen layout and cabinets, they grew on us. The added expense of changing everything wasn't worth it to us. And we are okay with that. Just saying this to be another voice to live with it for awhile. Put the color you love on the wall instead of the cabinets and decorate with it. If you decide in a while you need to change the expensive things, you will have had time to figure out what works and what doesn't in its current layout. And already have the things to coordonate with it. I think the flooring and countertop would look nice with navy walls and copper accents. I would forget the sink. but it is your house. do what will make you happy. We still plan on changing the master bath/closet/laundry area of our home. But adding a garage comes before that. Priorities. Have fun making your new house your home....See MoreAntique desk in a minimalist modern house
Comments (1)I've got a largely contemporary house, with my great grandmother's antique china cabinet in the entry hall. Works just fine for me. And for people who visit, I might add. Adding something unexpected to an otherwise consistent layout isn't a mistake, huge or otherwise, in my world....See MoreAllison W
last yearlast modified: last yearThanks!! Yes we are definitely going to check out all the structural things, plumbing etc also. Interesting idea about removing the bathroom. Then we wouldn't have a bathroom on the first floor though unless we could squeeze one into the coat closet under the stairs (has no plumbing--then we wouldn't have a coat closet). We also thought about removing the mudroom and pantry walls to make that part of the kitchen but the storage and entry space is also really good to have. That stuff is ours rather than the previous owners.
Here are pics showing the clearances with appliance doors open--25 in between open oven and Island. 30 in between open fridge door and island. We've lived here a couple months and that hasn't been challenging but if people are seated at the island you can't get by very easily. If we were to change the heating system and get the radiator out of there we would gain 10". Island to the wall is 42.5 in.
Allison W
last yearMaybe a smaller powder room could work. The blue line would then be the outline of the kitchen and the yellow would be the new powder room door. There used to be a door there anyway.
Not sure how small we can make the powder room without it being too cramped. The island ends at the left edge of the bathroom door. Here's a pic showing what would be left of the powder room if you lined up the wall with the stone in front of the fireplace (excuse the mess). The powder room would be 52 and 1/2 in by 39" rectangle plus another small rectangle with a curved corner 40" by 17" that the door would enter into.
On the topic of changing walls that little half wall between the two halls I'm also thinking about taking down.
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last yearKendrah
last yearYou have so many cool things going for this room, I say nix a textured ceiling, it will just be distracting. Plus, if you don't have a hood on your range, it will be a real bitch to keep a textured ceiling clean.
Our last house was from 1852. I really don't like the idea of recessed lights in an old home but we did need good kitchen lighting. We hunted salvage stores and found cool miss matched surface mount, bare bulb fixtures - some metal, some ceramic, all white. It looked pretty cool. It might be a nice way to add a feature to your ceiling without making it textured. Imagine this kitchen but in yours add six lights:
Capitol Hill · More Info
Or, I'd go with a big fixture or two over the island and maybe something on the wall above the windows, like this:
Westport Country · More Info
I would not add a pot rack. You have great tall ceilings and this will make them feel lower. Plus, the sq footage of your space isn't that big and I think a pot rack will make it feel even smaller. Hopefully with good organization in your pantries and butler's pantry, you won't need it.
Beautiful cabinets and countertops. If you start reconfiguring, they will likely have to go.You have so many ideas and I'm wondering how far down the road there various bigger changes are that you want to make to the layout, moving doors, cutting walls. It is pretty big work. If you are doing it within the next couple of years, I would consider what you do now to be a stop gap measure and not invest too much at the moment.
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last year3. My main question is about lighting design. Right now the lights are very random. Bought a second hand pot rack with lights for over the island but I'm not sure of how it's going to feel, if it will be too cluttered or ruin sight lines. We could use the storage space though. For task lighting seems like recessed lighting would be strange with the antique textured ceiling. We definitely need some type of lighting over the sink and stove and some type of lighting over the island and something in the storage pantry and the butler pantry. Ideas?
1. there are going to be code issues w the old wiring start w electrician in your area to get what that entails2. i would noy hang that pot rack in main space, maybe 0ver butler pantry sink
3. schoolhouse pendants and pully pendants
4. look at historical photos
6. you can add recessed if its well blended
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