Yesterday, Elizabeth invited us to weigh in on floor tile choices for her blue bathroom Retro Renovation. Setting up the story, I came across an earlier email that I had let fall through the cracks. She had sent me a photo of her pink kitchen refresh in progress. Good news about the time lapse, though: Her work is now finished — and goodness, wait until you see this transformation!
And after!
I asked Elizabeth about the kitchen. (It’s in a different house than the one with blue bathroom.) Following is a lightly edited version of our emails:
Dear Pam:
This house is my 1965 day house in Burnet, Texas. It is named Diamond Crest because it has adorable diamond shaped windows on the front side panel. (And because diamonds are a girl’s best friend.) I mentioned I was buying it in that old original article–or maybe in the comments thereafter, I don’t remember now. I bought it in October 2014!!! It’s 99% done now, but it took forever because we would get to doing other stuff. And my husband doesn’t go there, so he was in no hurry. I was reading your recent “The Hard Way” awards, and thought, GEEZ! Even when all you do is throw money at a project, it still ends up being hard! My husband, who is NOT a plumber, had to install the floating toilets because no one else knew how.
It is a darling 1,774 s.f. house and my goal was to change nothing, only restore it to perfection. Plus better.
Diamond Crest had been a rent house and the landlord put in that same beige Mexican style tile that is on every current floor in Texas. I had all of that busted out even though it was brand new because THAT’S NOT MID-MOD. (Luckily the terrazzo entry hall and pink tile bathroom and mint green tile bathroom floors were left intact.)
Elizabeth shared the resources she used:
So for the kitchen and adjoining laundry room floor, I found something from the Azrock Collection: Cortina Grande Solid Vinyl Tile in the colorway “Kink”.
The laminate is Abet Laminati Rosa Crazy Horse. It replaced beige (possibly original) beat-up laminate. It was not easy finding pink floors and pink countertops, let me tell you.
The kitchen light is a Saturn Three Light Crystal Drum Foyer Pendant that I bought online from AllModern.
But it was easy enough finding pink appliances, of course –Big Chill!)
And she continued:
The construction is 100% complete. I put in adorable pink window shades because I know it will take me forever and a day to find the fabulous floral pinch-pleat draperies I want. I bought a $5 t-shirt from WalMart about four years ago and IT has the exact pattern I would love on it! I’m never going to give that shirt away! Think Dorothy Draper, I guess. Also, I still need to curate the place with décor. I get busy with other stuff, and it just sits there for a while.
But you have heard much more than you bargained for. Do know that every single purchase was made in consultation with retrorenovation.com! (And that was a lot of purchases!) So you were my constant companion through this, even though you didn’t know it!
Thanks,
Elizabeth
Yowza! Thank you, Elizabeth. I simply cannot imagine being unhappy in this kitchen!!!
More stories about Elizabeth (shown above, from our 2014 story) and her other projects:
- Blue bathroom remodel – tile choices
- Elizabeth’s red and white kitchen and wall o’ Cath Kidtson wallpaper
The post Elizabeth’s 1965 kitchen before and after — from gloomy … to retrolicious appeared first on Retro Renovation.
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