Rejuvenation Projects Blog

Job number one was tackled shortly after we’d moved in. The kitchen featured a set of St. Charles metal cabinets in generally excellent condition. They were originally a swank aqua color if the top of the cabinets is any indication, but somewhere along the lines received a pretty nice spray enamel paint job in an off-white. Here’s a shot of the kitchen prior to move-in:

Note the sweet General Electric oven that I believe to be original, contrasting nicely with the ceramic cooktop nearby. One thing that may be of interest only to me is that the back side of the temperature knob on the oven features a movable slider that allows the user to adjust the actual temperature setting relative to the dial-indicated temperature. I’m an engineer, and even if I don’t do much cooking at all, I require precise temperature control. Speaking of engineering and the oven, if you have one of these that’s stuck in perma-buzz mode on account of a broken knob on the clock/timer, a section of a drinking straw used to center that knob will take care of the problem, so long as you’re not too concerned with doing the job right. I’d also recommend not inadvertently knocking that straw out of the opening for the knob and on to a hot oven door.

The wallpaper on the back wall wasn’t doing it for us at all, and the house as a whole lacked some color, so we decided to take a cue from the original cabinet colors and go bold. Of course, that meant the wallpaper would have to come off, and we were definitely apprehensive about how severe that battle might become.

Fortunately, the week before we moved I was mountain biking while on a business trip in Taiwan and managed to do quite a number on my wrist, so that meant I wouldn’t be holding up my end of the bargain. We were quite lucky in that my parents decided to come down to do what they could to help us get settled in. Little did they know we’d also put them to work with wallpaper removal. My dad and my wife doing some of the heavy lifting:

While the wallpaper came off easily enough, it soon became quite clear that when it was put up it was because that wall was in sad shape and somebody didn’t want to fix it. This meant discrepancies in wall flatness up to a quarter inch would need to be fixed, which was a bit daunting for me as I wasn’t wise in the ways of the drywall compound. Fortunately, this small wall provided plenty of opportunities to practice. Eventually the wall was approaching something remotely resembling flat and it was time to TSP it and prime. Learned a valuable lesson there: don’t try to mix in some old Kilz with new, unless you like stringy goo on your freshly-sanded wall. Eventually I fixed that mess and it was on to the paint.

Painting was definitely a non-OSHA sanctioned event as we had a bit of trouble reaching the ceilings around all the cabinets with conventional ladders, or even one of those groovy articulating ones. In the end, we ended up calling in a step stool and some small scaffolding as well, and used various combinations thereof. We even had my wife on the ladder on the countertop, but the ladder is wider than the countertop so I was supporting one side of the ladder. Not at all pretty, but it got the job done.

The next obvious choice to go was the chandelier. In something of a recurring theme, the existing chandelier was a very niece piece but we just didn’t think it fit the house (it will have a new home in my sister’s dining room, though). We settled on the Orbis Tri and got a custom length due to the high ceiling; the custom length took a little extra time but was well worth the wait. In the mean time, I ended up having surgery on my wrist, which put me out of commission for a while. I ended up having to travel a bunch too, so the seemingly trivial task of hanging the light ended up taking several months. When we did get to the light it was impressive to see how well packaged it was and how easily it went together. I will say that if you’re not super excited about being high atop a ladder hanging a lamp one-handed that you should probably still try to focus on not repeatedly ramming the globes into each other as you hang them, as you may find yourself with a cracked globe and a less-than-sunny disposition. That’s certainly no fault of the lamp as glass obviously doesn’t take too kindly to that sort of abuse. It was easy enough to get a replacement globe and all is well with the fixture now.

In any event, here are things as they sit today:

Current kitchen

We managed to find a complete kitchen’s worth of St. Charles cabinets near Chicago and purchased them. The set is in excellent shape and will be used to add cabinet space around the fridge. This will entail removing a tiny excuse for a desk, getting a cabinet-depth refrigerator that will hopefully be less intrusive, and then painting both the existing set of cabinets as well as the ones we’ll be adding. For now, we have a light for the front porch that’s been sitting even longer than the Orbis did, so we’ll get that installed and take some pictures of it as well.

Thanks for reading.

It all started innocently enough. We had been married about a year and were living in a nice enough house in a vinyl village, complete with a single solitary tree in the yard. The plan was to find a slightly bigger house with a basement, and maybe a bigger yard with trees, plural. A shorter commute to work was in the plans too. Then, on the first day of looking at houses, we saw “Space House.” Check it out at our local master of MCM cermonies’ site, Atomic Indy, for some photos.

Our Realtor™ probably had no idea how prophetic it was for her to tell us that the house ruined the search process for us. I didn’t know what mid-century modern was at the time, but I knew I wanted it. And so, the hunt was on. Over 50 houses later and halfway through another tour, my wife asked if I was ready to put in an offer on this house. We did, and are now the proud owners of a house that has smaller bedrooms, no basement, and is farther from work. We did get the yard, quite a few trees, some wildlife, and a couple cats at no extra charge. I’d like to think we got a bit of style as well.

So, what does the house look like? Here’s a shot of it the first time we came to see it:

Front of the house

My favorite part of the house is probably the back yard. It’s pretty secluded by way of the house itself and the trees all around. The covered patio was great as it allowed us to spend some time outside even during cool or rainy weather.

Lofely wife with realtor in lovely yard

I feel pretty comfortable saying that I like blue more than the average person. I have a couple “bass boat blue” (think the giant metal flake paint jobs you see on bass boats) Schwinn Homegrown mountain bikes to prove it. That said, this bathroom may be a bit much even for me.

This is what some might call a blue bathroom.

You only get a hint of the toilet in this shot, and miss out on the blue tile around the shower as well as the sink, but you get the idea. The yellow tile wouldn’t have been my first choice, but it stays for now. The toilet was a subject of lively debate as it is a one-piece design which I discovered was not appropriate for a vintage 50s house, courtesy of Retro Rennovation. I appreciate a toilet that’s built for speed, but figured this thing was awfully low and fat to be of the fifties. My wife and I debated this point, with her contending that it was still possible that it was the original toilet, until I discovered that the nice people at Eljer date their toilet tank lids. Our toilet features a “born on” date of August 26, 1977. Who knew you could get so excited about a toilet?

Here’s the more questionable bathroom. Don’t get me wrong, it’s perfectly nice, and I have no doubt that the person that did it thought it was absolutely killer. It’s just that it’s like walking into a completely different house when you turn the corner from the master bedroom into the master bathroom.

The offending bathroom

Check out the sweet sponge paint on the wall. I think it really makes it all come together, and applaud their dedication in carrying it through the HVAC vent covers as well as the speaker grates for the intercom.

So, now to the more interesting stuff. The house was in great condition though some of the paint, wallpaper, and lighting left quite a bit to be desired, at least for our tastes. Our initial project required removal of some wallpaper in the kitchen and replacement of the chandelier therein, closely followed by replacement of the light on the front porch. The other big hitters are a pretty heinous ceiling fan, some lighting over the dining table/pool table, and some sort of alternative to the 70s acoustical tile on the ceiling of the great room. That all leads to the big project, fixing the bathroom. We’ve been in the house just over four months and are definitely a bit behind schedule, but we’re hoping to have most of this resolved sometime later this spring. We’ll see how far off I am on that guess later on…

So, soon enough I’ll have a post or two dedicated to the work done thus far, hopefully with less words and more photos.