old kitchen(doorbell hanging aloft)
If we counted correctly, it seems like there are at least 5 layers of something on the kitchen wall. Most notably some powder blue sticky tile that was used like a sticker out of a gumball machine. It was covered by some unknown substance which was covered by a few different kinds of wallpaper, which was finally covered by some thick, thick paint.
It's like a good tree, except some people put all that stuff there instead of the earth growing it, but still. So much like a tree.
This house doesn't seem old though. It just doesn't. It definitely takes ripping the wall down to make a girl realize the age of this thing. It is way beyond using a walker and has totally been catapulted into the ICU. After a few visits to a Midwife, I am sure we can get it back into Labor and Delivery.
I have started thinking about who lived here before us.
Who was it that lived here? Who decided on the taupe (maybe it was yellow once) wallpaper with the cute little guys on it? Who wanted the powder blue? What kind of sink was here before? It makes me not want to take it away or to keep samples of the wallpaper so we have a scrapbook of the house "before" to display in the kitchen of now. I want a record for these people so we can all talk about the "good ole days" when the kitchen was without a dishwasher and had a stove without a hood.
Why do I want a record you ask? Well, I think its because the kitchen deserves it. The progression it will go through deserves to be recognized and commended. It is no easy feat to become new again and we can't have our kitchen running around thinking it is any better than other kitchens in the neighborhood just because we have renovated it. That just wouldn't be fair to those kitchens just waiting for their very own renovation.
Don't worry kitchens, you'll get there.
Love this. When we were doing the stairs in our house we found a single folded piece of newspaper hidden in the wall. The date at the top was 1984 and it was the TV Guide section, which showed Fraggle Rock was coming on at 11am. We are still so tempted to put our own folded section of paper back in before we wallboard it up. We don't get the paper, but I think the occasion merits buying one.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the renovations!
Wow - I love this! I totally get what you mean. I always wonder what an old place looked like through its various incarnations. And I wonder what the person doing the decorating was thinking when they picked what they did. I also wonder if the height chart on the doorframe to my great-aunt's kitchen was sanded and painted over when the house was sold. Things like that really tell about the history of a place and the families who lived there.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with all that work!
Alexis - I love that. What treasures can we leave behind.
ReplyDelete