If you give a house a reno, you’ll find yourself going down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass. Because renovating a bathroom often can lead to renovating a kitchen. And wasn’t I going to wait on this until I built a shiny NEW house next door? MUAHAHAHAHAH Well played, Universe, well played.

I woke up this morning pondering what a 1925 kitchen would look like and, as one does, I headed to the internet to find out. What I saw were multiple photographs of massive (by my standards) kitchens with room for multiple people to move around without it feeling like a mosh pit. One article that I now can’t remember where I read it stated that a kitchen of 10 by 12 feet should be “adequate”. Which of course meant I had to jump right up and measure my kitchen. A paltry 9′ by 11′ 6″. As I was looking around the room and taking in original 1925 details, I was wondering just how the Chapman family, especially Annie Chapman, dealt with feeding 7 people from this tiny space.

Based on the capped-off gas line behind my stove, I know where the stove was placed in the room. The sink wall is the same as it would’ve been in 1925 albeit with garbage 1980s countertops over 1960s low budget cabinets. There’s precious little cabinet space, unlike the glorious images from 1925. No room at all for a Hoosier cabinet if an icebox were installed. And no breakfast nook. It does, however, have a half-baked pantry that makes no sense. I know it’s original to the house because the millwork around the doors is the same throughout the house.

In my wanderings through the world wide web, I came across this amazing Crane kitchen advertisement from 1925:

This is the stuff of dreams right here.

When we laid laminate floor down a million years ago, we found some kind of deep red linoleum tile in disrepair under the sheet of lino that had been laid down sometime after the 60s. I just can’t imagine this tiny room with a blood red tile. What color was the kitchen? What did the appliances look like? How on earth did they manage in that tiny space? We will probably never know.

So what’s next for the kitchen? Taking a page from the 1920s and their love of color, It will be completely redone in white and turquoise with a tile floor to match. White appliances will replace the black ones and a slimmer fridge will replace the behemoth that currently reside there. I will be studying the principles in this 1921 book for inspiration as well. Once the new house is built, our two oldest kids will take up residence here and they won’t need a ginormous fridge. Which is mostly wasted space anyways. And that is another rant for another day!