My sanity

It's something I question quite a bit.

Especially, when it comes to this house.

Case in point, my latest venture in un-remuddling.

The bathroom you see below looks perfectly fine, doesn't it?

Well, to my eye it just didn't look right.

Of course, I knew there had been some updates to it through the years. For one, the newish sink and toilet didn't match the 1930s bathtub. I happened to find the base of the original matching sink in the side yard.

I'm still looking for a matching top to go with it.

Picture this in pink-ish brown:

image via google

No toilet out there though.

The second thing that bothered me was that the tile happened to be from the 1950s, but I'll get to that later.

The third thing was the drywall.

In case you're not up on your drywall history, it's existed for a very long time, but it just wasn't commonly used until after WWII. Lath and plaster was much more common and the walls in my home are no exception. If you're curious enough to learn more, you can read more about it 'here'.

'So, what could it be covering up?'

That's the question that nagged me for almost 8 years, until one day about a month ago, I thought to myself...

'Why not just tear a little piece off by the outlet. Worse case scenario I could just patch it and forget about it.'

Cute wallpaper?!

And that's when it all started.

Okay, so I can fix the trim around the cabinet.

Why not try the other wall?

ah oh...

Okay, so I'll figure that out later.

How about the sink area....

And so it went and here I am.

Or was, to be honest.

The walls and ceiling are almost done.

You know what took so long?

These:

Those, my fiends, are the remnants when you take off drywall.

It leaves behind an evil hard glue that won't come off with anything except a hammer, a chisel, a sander and a scraper.

And if you're not careful it'll try to take the wallpaper with it.

You know what else it leaves behind?

Four billion screws and nails.

It's not fun.

at. all.

But, it's so worth it.

I found three layers of paint in different shades of tan-ish pink underneath the sink where it's never been wallpapered, so I know the wallpaper isn't original, but I love it anyway.

I think it's from the 50s, which was when the tile was redone.

Speaking of..

I also happened to find a tile in the side yard, that just happens to match one of the paint colors I found in the bathroom.

It all makes so much sense now.

My little 1930s bathroom, got a makeover in the 1950s and then the last owners changed out the sink and toilet and added the drywall.

So, I'm doing my best to take it back to when it was redone in the 50s.

It'll be like the rest of the evils had never been done.

And you'll never guess what else!

I know who the owners were in the 1950s, but I'm not telling you about Fred and Pearl until next time.

You're also going to have to wait for pictures of the finished bathroom.

Or at least as finished as I can get it.

Who knows when or if I'll ever find those missing bathroom fixtures.

xo
rue

my kitchen inspiration

As I have said before, my home was built in 1930 and although many people would try to modernize it, that's not my style. In fact, the previous owners were set to gut the entire house, from what I can tell with all the pamphlets in the cupboards. Luckily, they never got around to it and decided to sell the house.

One of the main things they were going to do was put in dark wood cabinets, granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances. You know... like every. single. house. you see on HGTV, especially House Hunters. They had already started with the stove, the sink, the fridge and most of the knobs. It looked ridiculous, because the original 1930s cabinetry was still in place, but it was topped with 1970s white, stained, laminate counter tops and the floor was a horrid dark reddish brown linoleum. On top of that the whole room was painted puke brown, including the cabinets and the hinges. I don't know if they were trying to make it monochromatic or what, but the whole thing was a mess.

Below are some before pictures to give you an example. It was right after I moved in, so please excuse the mess.

 Here you can see all the 'lovely' brown, the counter tops and the sink...

 This is a close up of a cabinet that was added later in the house's history (it's gone now) and you can see the  horrible knobs....

 The painted over hinges... ugh!

More brown cabinets on the bottom and the gross flooring.

And finally the breakfast nook where they had tried to minimize the cute details.

See what I mean? Awful.

Can you imagine that little room with dark wood? It was already dark enough!

Anyway, at first I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, except to get that brown out of there and although I knew I didn't want it to look like my last kitchen (that you can see in this post), because it wasn't right for the house, I had to do something right away. So, I sanded down all cabinets and doors, soaked all the hinges to get the paint off, and then painted everything white to get a blank canvas. I knew then that I wanted color and lots of it, but I waited about 6 months to get a feel for what the kitchen needed and spent a great deal of time looking at pictures of 1920s, 1930s and 1940s kitchens that I found on the internet. 

Here are some of my favorites:

A couple of breakfast nook examples.

That generation certainly wasn't afraid of color and patterns!

  Here's some real life kitchens from the era, just for fun:

And finally, here are recent pictures from magazines, museums, and movies that I saved for inspiration via pinterest:

Pretty neat, huh?

After looking at all these pictures and more (a lot more!), I came to the conclusion that it should look like a kitchen built in 1930 (which it was), that had progressed over time, but had stopped somewhere around 1960. I thought it would seem more natural that way and I wouldn't have to stick to one era, since that's not the way the rest of the house is decorated. After all, I wanted it to look old, like grandma's kitchen, not a 1930s museum!

Well, that's all I have for today. I hope you enjoyed it.

I promise I'll show you what I did soon ;)

rue