The ghost of kitchens past

Yes, the new starts today were in the kitchen, but before I get to that, here are a few pictures of the finished exposed brick. You can see that the plaster came off more cleanly in some places than others, but I like it that way.

Now on to what you haven’t seen before. In the beginning I had some reservations about opening my kitchen to the rest of the house. Does anyone remember the carrot soup explosion of ’06? But my kitchen is pretty tiny, and in the morning I get nice light at the back of the house, even with the overhang. I’m planning on putting in a patio door at the back end of the kitchen, and between that, removing the awnings, and hopefully adding tube skylights in the upstairs hall, I’m hoping that I’ll have a bright, sunny house. And I’ll solve the problem of the messy kitchen showing by putting a higher counter across where the wall was to block the view of my dirty dishes. So here’s today’s demo work!

I love finding signs of what the house used to look like. This very kitschy 1950’s wallpaper probably dates to the last time anyone made renovations that actually improved the house. Don’t worry about the blurriness; I have a few decent sized slabs of plaster with this paper on them, and I’m trying to decide if I can do something with them in the future!

Around the same time as that wallpaper went in, the door to the basement stairs was moved from the kitchen to the dining area to free up more wall space, I wouldn’t be surprised if the house’s first modern kitchen was installed. The plaster arch that we just ripped out dates to that renovation, and I was sad to lose it. But I very well may install a new arch that spans the full width of the room where the old wall was. We’ll see.

And the part you wanted to see, here’s how the house looks without that wall in the way:

And, I may have been sad to lose the arch, but we didn’t destroy it yet! What do you think, maybe I can sell it? Maybe not, but for now it lives on, sitting against my parents’ garage door.

(This picture is not my parents’ driveway; it is my back yard, with my neighbor’s back yard visible in the background.)