Showing posts with label gas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gas. Show all posts

Plans for an (IKEA) 1920's kitchen

The current plan for the kitchen is to restore the gas service and install a 20's-30's stove. Photos from the last trip under the house show the gas oven installed where the modern electric one is, and the water heater in its same spot in the laundry room as well.

Space is very tight in the laundry room - I believe it used to be a sunporch, perhaps screened, with the security back door in the kitchen instead. With this in mind, it would be a neat thing to get a smaller, on-demand water heater which wouldn't take valuable laundry floor space. At the same time we would restore/re-install the stove line, its business end being only 6 feet away.

This plan is just in its beginning phase; I haven't contacted a gas plumber yet. The supply pipe coming from the mound of dirt under the laundry room is corroded through at the surface, as happens here in Florida, and it may need replacing to the street. No longer do we have a meter, although our neighbors do and I'm going to check to see if it's still moving. This could cost $$$$! We would receive about $800 in cash rebates from our local gas company, though, for replacing those two electric appliances.

This is my rough drawing for the kitchen, pretty similar to the original kitchen of this house. I did a bit of research in the past year, including peering into windows of old houses for sale, looking at available period apartments, ebay sales, books and internet resources like Indiana Historical Society's model home collection; also online state photo collections from MN and FL. Much of it was surmised from house archaeology, like the 2, 12" deep upper cabinets, unpainted areas behind the current cabinets, and the rotted hole below/behind the kitchen sink.












It's clickable, but huge. The bottom drawing, a little undecipherable, is the other side of the room with the intact ironing board cabinet on the right. Somehow the drawings remind me of a Calvin & Hobbes setting.

Just reinstalling the chair rail will add instant 1920's value, cheaply. I can reuse our one intact base cabinet shell (1970's plywood) in virtually the same spot, with a new face frame. Multiple doors on a single compartment are annoying when those doors are separated by a face frame. I'm ready for demolition!

Cat count= 5 outdoor, 2 indoor.

Spelunking..ugh

I took no less than 44 photos during a recent trip under the house. No, I don't use drugs under my house. These photos here are the glamorous, beautiful cream of the crop. They are small in case you are eating.

This rusty thing I found under the bathroom. It's about 8" long and could be mistaken for a faucet except that, it's rusty and the "spigot" hole goes all the way through. Both ends look round but are actually a hex shape. Perhaps it's a bracket of some sort, maybe for the toilet?











Here, it looks like the bathroom gas heater (radiator?) was installed underneath the sink. Does this mean the house had a wall-mounted sink, not a pedestal? Our inspector did say the white PVC should be replaced with the less-likely to freeze CPVC. Luckily this year it was 29 degrees at the lowest, for about 3 hours. And it was a warm 29.









This photo shows rotted wood torn away revealing a 2-3' length of original mesh and mortar tile floor. Glad to see it's so very supported from below. I don't know how much will be salvagable. I would totally try to find green reproduction tile, or if not, buy a kiln and learn to make it, and then sit there and piece the tiny tiles together. I will not give up my obsessive quest. Perhaps American Restoration Tile would know something.








But here are some newly found hex and black tiles from below the floor, once buried in rubble and now back together with their mosaic tile friends. I bet the green would be prettier if it was sealed. It must be a border to the hex. The tops of the black baseboard tiles had whisps of white paint, possibly making a match to the scored false-tile plaster board pieces in the rubble, also painted white, meaning there was no water-repeling wall tile when the bathroom was built. I think the white subway tile was installed in the kitchen.













And some mischief with a sleeping cat. If we could train her unconscious to hold a pencil, maybe she'll learn to write!
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