This elegant kitchen features coffered ceilings, marble countertops and custom cabinetry by Crown Point Kitchen cabinets set the tone for overall design of the room. As well as looking good, they need to be good. Their quality and condition will affect the resale value of the house. That’s why it’s important to maximize the value of your cabinet dollars. According to Consumer Reports, with cabinetry accounting for 40% of the room’s budget, it may be too easy to focus on the amount and not the value. The nomenclature by which cabinets are sold may seem similar but mean significantly different t ..read more

In a rural 1790 farmhouse, the simple cabinet with butterfly hinges hides the dishwasher. Photo: Rob Gray The “Colonial” kitchen is of course a 20th-century convention. Owners of very early houses often restore the original kitchen, with its huge fireplace, as a keeping room/parlor, then incorporate a plain, functional kitchen—perhaps one with Colonial, Federal, or Greek Revival-era cabinetwork—into a wing or ell. Don’t fall under the spell of trends you see in kitchen showrooms: Surprisingly, a period-inspired kitchen that goes with the house is less likely to become dated.  In a Royal B ..read more

Made of butternut, the kitchen cabinets were distressed and then stained, resulting in a soft, hand-rubbed finish. The hood over the range is made from custom, acid-washed, standing-seam metal. The wall and shelf behind the stove are fashioned from the same material. A Massachusetts native who opened his Boston firm in 1925, Wills loved New England’s small, historic houses and made a specialty of designing updated yet authentically proportioned versions of Capes, saltboxes, and garrison colonials. Hundreds of his houses stand, including the 1500-square-foot Cape that Blank proceeded to enlarge ..read more

The modern kitchen is really a modern phenomenon. Kitchens as we would recognize them don’t evolve until the early 1900’s. Even modular cabinets are not the norm until after WWII. Brent is the owner and founder of Hull Works, in Fort Worth, Texas. His period-authentic architectural millwork and window restorations adorn custom homes and historic institutions across the country. https://hullworks.com The post Video: A History of Kitchens with Brent Hull appeared first on Old House Journal Magazine ..read more

During the height of the 19th-century Victorian era, plumbing came indoors, first to the upper classes and in urban areas. That’s when a bedroom in an earlier Federal or Greek Revival house might have been converted to a bath. The basin and pitcher familiar from the old days was now a sink bowl set into a plumbed dresser or vanity. Early plumbing catalogs show entire suites of bath “furniture”: tubs encased in raised paneling, hand-painted sink bowls set into Eastlake or Elizabethan Revival cabinets. The bathrooms of the earliest adopters were, not surprisingly, large and lavishly furnished ..read more

The ca. 1920 row house, in the Fairmount neighborhood of Philadelphia, needed major repairs; it had been gutted by a fire in the 1970s. The subsequent remodeling made no attempt at a period look: “It was a DIY ‘Mediterranean’-style job with tiled countertops and harvest-gold appliances,” says homeowner Lynne Gery; she and her husband, Daniel Womer, bought the house in 1986. “I’d approached a few contractors over the years,” Lynne explains, “but I never met anyone I felt comfortable with. So we procrastinated.”  Lynne found Airy Kitchens through their Instagram posts. “They caught my eye ..read more

  The kitchen table, built for a clothing store as a display piece, is where family and friends gather during Colonial dinners held monthly, for which the owners cook in the fireplace.  The lady of this 1790 stone Bucks County farmhouse has worked on many buildings, but when it came to remodeling a kitchen in her own home, changes frightened her. Recalling the family’s earlier work on the house, “I was young and scared,” she says, smiling. “We did the kitchen in 1990, but I could not bring myself to follow my designer’s advice. For the next 15 years I lived with the result. Finally ..read more

A new paint scheme brings out the best in the 1922 home, which before had been done up in green and white. The off-center entry block softens the cubic massing.  Here in the Twin Cities and beyond, thousands of wonderful old bathrooms survive from the 1920s and ’30s. You know the ones: period tile, pedestal sink, Art Deco lighting—also clogged pipes, a tub but no shower, the window in the wrong place. The same problems plagued our main bathroom. Our 1922 house was purchased as a fixer upper. Some years ago, we did a very necessary kitchen renovation, and added a powder room at that time ..read more