The "Did We Really Like That Stuff?" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Checking out a few photos I found of our first house that Carol and I purchased in 1968.  House was located in the neighborhood of Grandview Heights in Manheim Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  It was an English Tudor semi-detached home with a detached garage.  

Our first home at 925 Janet Ave.

The home was built in 1929 and many parts of the house reflected the architecture that was used in that era.  The kitchen was one of our top priorities when we moved to the house.  The kitchen had woodgrain contact paper on the walls and bright yellow paint on the door, window and kitchen cabinets.  The kitchen cabinets were mostly metal which was very common in the 1950s since World War II had ended about 10 years before and the factories that produced weapons for the war were put to work making metal kitchen cabinets.  

The kitchen as it looked when we moved into the house.
White enameled cast-iron sink and metal cabinets.

One of the factories was the General Electric factory who not only made cabinets, but also appliances.  The white ceramic sink was hung on the wall with no cabinets under it therefore there was some wasted space and there was no trace of a dishwasher, except for the person standing in the kitchen, which usually was me.  The stove and refrigerator were white and in need of replacement.  

Same view but with a double stainless sink and dark
wooden cabinets above and below.  Our harvest yellow
electric stove stands to the left.

In the 1960s dark wood began to replace the metal cabinets and colored appliances became quite prevalent with pastel colors like avocado green and harvest yellow being the most popular.  Well, we decided our new house was in need of a new kitchen.  Since I taught high school wood shop at the time, it was an easy decision that I make all the cabinets.  Pine framing and plywood doors with a v-groove in them and metal drawer pulls added to the design.  We built in the sink and added a stainless double sink.  Our kitchen was taking on the look of a modern kitchen for the early 1970s.  

Here you can see the fridge to the left and the basement
door with the flowered contact paper on it. Just awful!

We replaced the stove and oven with a new harvest yellow combo and added a harvest yellow fridge.  Added formica pre-formed kitchen counters and placed ceramic tiles on the walls.  We had a door in the kitchen that opened to the basement stairway.  That, along with any other woodwork was painted yellow to match the appliances.  On the inset of the doorway we added some psychedelic contact paper.  We cut a small pet door in the bottom of the basement door and added the same contact paper to the movable panel in the pet opening.  We were way too cool for the old neighborhood we were living in at the time.  As we looked at the old photos we wondered how we could ever have liked something as hideous as that kitchen.  Hey, times and tastes change and we were part of the era when that type of stuff was in style.  Our current kitchen will probably look awful to the people that will eventually buy our house.  But, that's going to be their problem to solve. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.