Planning a Vintage Kitchen

If all goes according to plan, and nothing happens between now and then to change things, I should be moving in October. Yeah!
I'll be making a 10 mile/15 minute move to Strathmere. A dream come true. I thought it would be another 5 or so years until I could move there. But years of begging have finally paid off and my Dad is letting me move into the upstairs unit of the Summer rental.
I love a big project and this will sure be one. But I want to get started NOW and I can't. The house is currently closed for the Winter and there will be Summer tenants in it from June-September. So I will only be able to think about moving in until them. I'll have the whole Summer to pack up my stuff in the cottage (which is where I usually stay on the weekends in the Summer) and my stuff here at home, including all my Dandelion Vintage stock.


The house that I will be moving to was built in 1902 and it has been somewhat remodeled over the years. My parent's collect antiques and respect the oldness of old houses, so it hasn't been gutted and modernized - no stainless steel and granite crap in this house. But I'd like to take the look back a few years. Starting with the kitchen.
I collect green kitchen items, mostly from the 1930-40s, so I'll have plenty of that stuff for decorating. That's my favorite look for kitchens and that's what I'll be hoping to somewhat accomplish in my new kitchen. I'll have plenty of accessories and decorations,  it's the cabinets, walls and flooring  need to de-modernize.

Some images of Dream Kitchens that I love - (oh, and green is my favorite color, so it will be a green kitchen, with some yellow accents)

I would love to be able to find old linoleum flooring for my kitchen - especially like the floor in the 1st photo above. When we bought the house it actually still had old linoleum flooring in all the rooms, with the wood floor around the edge painted a horrible brown. The linoleum is probably still under the carpets, but it's probably worn and brittle.



This is what I have to work with, the kitchen as it is right now. The paneling, while not too dark, needs to be painted. The faux bricks aren't too bad, I might white-wash those, but I've worked with that brick stuff before, as you will see later. The cabinets are less than 10 years old and also not bad, but I'd like them to have an old look. I already have a 1940s kitchen table set that will go in here. There is grey carpet on the floor, which has to go. The ceiling never got drop-ceiling, thank goodness - my Dad is the king of dropceilings. It's a punky 1940s ceiling though, not too pretty.

8 years ago I owned my grandparent's 1928 Sear's Kit House - and I spent a year working my way through the house, fixing it up. (Then my dad talked me into selling and moving down here to the woods.) I took the 1970s kitchen as far back to the 1930s as I could (pretty good considering that I had to work around a brown 1970s stove, which still worked fine and was not ready to be trashed and replaced yet)
below are the photos from that house. See, more faux brick. I was going to white wash it, but decided that I liked it. I had the cabinets custom made with glass to show off my green dishes and I painted the existing bottom cabinets white. There was dark brown paneling half way up the walls, which I also painted white. I removed the wallpaper and painted the rest of the wall pale green.




  I miss this sweet little kitchen, and boy it was little.  

This window was originally an exterior window, but they added on a laundry room and then this window just looked into that room. I filled the shelves with my vintage kitchen stuff. This stuff will all be moving with me to Strathmere and my 'new' kitchen. I've got lots of time to plan (and to save money for the project) and to convince my dad to let me do whatever I decide to do in the kitchen. I know he's going to fight me over taking out the carpet, plus it's only about 8 years old, so that may have to wait.