What lurks beneath

So one of the reasons we embarked on this project, was to undo the great deal of damage that was done to the kitchen by the previous owners. As our neighbor George pointed out, they really liked to do everything cheaply, and--as it turns out--crudely. 

The original kitchen came with the built-in cabinets, in their lovely jade green color, built well into the walls. The floor cabinets lined up against the east window wall (there are two window walls, about that later), the pantry on the left, as you're facing the window (and the rising sun), then (moving right) cabinet, sink, cabinet. Above them, was tile: two shades of green (it's hard to say now how these worked with the jade green of the cabinets--was it horrible? a kind of green cacophony?)--pale green squares bordered by brighter green trim. The trim was used to make the windowsill as well, and the whole combination matched precisely the tiles in the upstairs bathroom (which remain in place and undisturbed to this day). Moreover, the tiles had special built in shelves for the soap--two of them, which again, match exactly the soap shelves upstairs. The original wall paint was peach (or peaches & cream)--I'm not sure why this was thought to match the greens, but apparently this looked good in 1931. 

So what did the previous owners do? Well, clearly they hated the green & peach combo; and clearly, they needed the kitchen to move into the late 20th cen (my guess is, this work was done in the 1990s, but I don't know enough about kitchen archeology to be able to determine the exact date of the laminate countertop). So, to make improvements they

a) painted all the tile white (because chipping paint is so much better than tile!)

b) removed the cabinet to the left of the sink, put it against the south wall (thus creating an amazingly awkward space in the corner--hard to reach, on the one hand, yet strangely empty)

c) ran the white laminate countertop across the whole thing making an L shape

this made it possible to put a dishwasher where the cabinet used to be next to the sink, thus bringing the kitchen into the modern age. Other, similar improvements were placing a 36 " range and giant refrigerator against the north wall, thereby blocking half of the other window (this window is only 30" of the ground, which makes it impossible to put a cabinet or really anything else in that space). The remodel also necessitated smashing out the edges of the soap shelves, because the white laminate countertop had a back splash that interfered with the original design.

I never loved the old kitchen--the cabinets had nearly 80 years worth of dirt and grime on them that no contact paper could improve; the bottom shelves were on hinges and meant to slide in and out, but were at this point, rusty and difficult to move; their arrangement no longer made any sense because the moved cabinet blocked the remaining cabinet; the dishwasher was not very well secured and though new, was noisy and strangely mobile; in order to get the garbage disposal to work you had to reach under the sink (where something vile had spilled long ago) for the cord to plug it in by hand via extension cord, etc. But if I could have realized earlier how easy it was to get paint off tile (evil Jasco, you did us proud!), that all these years--five now?--we could've been looking at pretty green tile, instead of chipping white paint--I don't know, maybe the whole remodel wouldn't've happened, or seemed so urgent and necessary.

So, now the question is, how much of the original tile can we keep, and how much must go? The tops are cut to make room for top cabinets (which we no longer have); the soap dishes are smashed; the left side is unfinished because of the pantry that was; and the whole thing is, as Rob keeps pointing out, asymmetrical. 

Oh yeah, and the new Ikea cabinets are blue.