The last day HomoDommi was here, we pulled down the remaining gypsum on the east wall. (We originally had hopes of leaving it in place and patching the holes, but it was clear that there was going to be as much patch as wall.)
This allowed some fun: finally getting to uncover the original doorway in the east wall. It was walled up in the 1950s remodel.
This allowed some fun: finally getting to uncover the original doorway in the east wall. It was walled up in the 1950s remodel.
(The view from the front door of the house.)
I believe HomoDommi had still harbored a desire to reinstate the doorway, but all the framing had been removed. And despite strong temptation to have that doorway back -- returning the room to its original integral flow, and encouraging the fen shui of the house ("energy" flow all the way from front to back of the house), I have not come up with a workable design that would allow it.
We don't yet have the full story of that corner of the kitchen, but we believe that in the original layout, there was a door to the east (gap showing above) and around the corner in the south wall, a swinging door leading to the dining room. Each were about a foot away from the southeast corner. Useful for flow, perhaps, but in essence cutting a 6 foot square of useful space out of a 13x11 kitchen. Because of other portals in the room (the door to the bathroom in the north wall, the "entrance" hallway from the west, which itself has a door to the basement) the walkways essentially cramp the usable kitchen into an 11'x7' space with, even then, one walkway passing through it.
The original kitchen, of course, didn't require space for a dishwasher, refrigerator, or a microwave. (The icebox, if there was one, or cooling box, would have been in the back landing -- which is now the bathroom.) The stove with oven took up a major portion of the floor space. There was always only one cook, and no need for eating or hanging-out space in the kitchen. And frankly, the cook's needs were considered secondary to other needs of the household. (It astonishes me, living in a post-feminist, usability-aware world, how the back-to-nature architects of the Craftsman and similar styles could be so sensitive to other human needs and entirely ignore the cook, leaving her with essentially the technology she'd had available for 100 years before.)
By mid-century, space was needed for a refrigerator. The stove had changed considerably, shrinking down from a massive house-heater to something more familiar (more about that in another post). One person still did all the cooking, but at least the concept of a "work triangle" had been recognized. The solution by the 1950's remodelers was to crunch the kitchen into that 11'x7' workspace (with that walkway passing through it), but with an efficient layout for the cook.
The more I study the kitchen and even the detail work on the cabinets (which we hated so much), the more respect I have for this particular project. It does not suffer the same mistakes of so many other projects in the house, caused by poor design and cheap materials.
At that time, they also entirely removed the east door, and shifted the south door about 3 feet further out from the corner -- creating an eddy in the flow between working kitchen and dining room that could be used as a little breakfast nook. A mid-century telescoping lamp hung over a little table there until shortly before I moved in, bringing with me (as Girl-Child once complained) Many Changes. This family didn't use the table much, and it generally was littered with piles of cans and newspapers for recycling.
Part of the reason the table didn't get much use is that a person sitting at it half-obstructed the passageway from kitchen to dining room. Because a door opening into the kitchen would have ended up banging the back of the diner, the swinging door that was originally in the neighboring position was converted to a sliding pocket door, as shown below. A clever solution, but the sliding door often falls off its rails, proving a frequent irritation. As long as we were pulling down the drywall from the east wall, we uncovered the sliding door on the south wall, too. Perhaps, we thought, we could repair or replace the hardware. The Texan is not averse to reconverting the door back to a swinging one; HomoDommi has misgivings about children slamming through it.
We don't yet have the full story of that corner of the kitchen, but we believe that in the original layout, there was a door to the east (gap showing above) and around the corner in the south wall, a swinging door leading to the dining room. Each were about a foot away from the southeast corner. Useful for flow, perhaps, but in essence cutting a 6 foot square of useful space out of a 13x11 kitchen. Because of other portals in the room (the door to the bathroom in the north wall, the "entrance" hallway from the west, which itself has a door to the basement) the walkways essentially cramp the usable kitchen into an 11'x7' space with, even then, one walkway passing through it.
The original kitchen, of course, didn't require space for a dishwasher, refrigerator, or a microwave. (The icebox, if there was one, or cooling box, would have been in the back landing -- which is now the bathroom.) The stove with oven took up a major portion of the floor space. There was always only one cook, and no need for eating or hanging-out space in the kitchen. And frankly, the cook's needs were considered secondary to other needs of the household. (It astonishes me, living in a post-feminist, usability-aware world, how the back-to-nature architects of the Craftsman and similar styles could be so sensitive to other human needs and entirely ignore the cook, leaving her with essentially the technology she'd had available for 100 years before.)
By mid-century, space was needed for a refrigerator. The stove had changed considerably, shrinking down from a massive house-heater to something more familiar (more about that in another post). One person still did all the cooking, but at least the concept of a "work triangle" had been recognized. The solution by the 1950's remodelers was to crunch the kitchen into that 11'x7' workspace (with that walkway passing through it), but with an efficient layout for the cook.
The more I study the kitchen and even the detail work on the cabinets (which we hated so much), the more respect I have for this particular project. It does not suffer the same mistakes of so many other projects in the house, caused by poor design and cheap materials.
At that time, they also entirely removed the east door, and shifted the south door about 3 feet further out from the corner -- creating an eddy in the flow between working kitchen and dining room that could be used as a little breakfast nook. A mid-century telescoping lamp hung over a little table there until shortly before I moved in, bringing with me (as Girl-Child once complained) Many Changes. This family didn't use the table much, and it generally was littered with piles of cans and newspapers for recycling.
Part of the reason the table didn't get much use is that a person sitting at it half-obstructed the passageway from kitchen to dining room. Because a door opening into the kitchen would have ended up banging the back of the diner, the swinging door that was originally in the neighboring position was converted to a sliding pocket door, as shown below. A clever solution, but the sliding door often falls off its rails, proving a frequent irritation. As long as we were pulling down the drywall from the east wall, we uncovered the sliding door on the south wall, too. Perhaps, we thought, we could repair or replace the hardware. The Texan is not averse to reconverting the door back to a swinging one; HomoDommi has misgivings about children slamming through it.
(The pocket door on the south wall, hardware exposed. The door is pulled out a little into the portal area.)
Having seen it up close now, HomoDommi says that the hardware would not be easy to replace, and there's not much he can do (given the design of it) to make it less likely to derail. The other thing we discovered, though, is that there might be structural problems with the sliding door.
When they hollowed out the wall for the new form of door, the remodelers removed one of the structural supports. They did install a strong cross-support -- two 2x6s framing over it, as you can see. But one of the 2x6s is buckling, ever so slightly, cracking apart in the middle of a large knot unfortunately placed right in the middle of that board.
We could, I suppose, try to replace that one beam, or we could reinforce it with a couple of 2x4s hammered vertically underneath it, and put the door back on hinges of some sort, swinging or not. Or we could leave it -- in 50 years it hasn't collapsed -- if we hadn't followed a whim and removed the drywall, we might never have known about it in the first place.
Another opportunity to ponder.
Merely a mid-term comparison shot: this is the kitchen a month ago, from the same vantage point as the top photo, before we started the latest renovation.
2 comments:
This is soooo interesting. Thanks for all the photos and explanations.
When you do sell the house, it might be nice to leave a set of photos for the new owners, so they have the evidence of the past in case they ever contemplate any changes.
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