When Nothing Can Be Saved
Many mid-century kitchens endured later “updates” that robbed them of Retro character. When Laureen Skrivan bought a 1941 worker’s cottage as accessory space for Wren & Willow, her design/build firm in Tacoma, Washington, she inherited a kitchen remodeled in the 1970s. Wiring and plumbing were obsolete. Similarly, John and Evan Degenfelder’s only bathroom had lost all evidence of the original and the Sixties remodel had failed. • Skrivan decided to treat the 1941 cottage as though it were a modest Art Deco dwelling of the early 1940s. She liked the results so much she moved in and still lives here. A key feature of the remodeled kitchen is a set of Crosley cabinets, acquired at little expense. “These steel cabinets became popular in the 1940s and ’50s, after the war,” says Skrivan. They were dented and rusty but rescued by a classic-car restorer who sandblasted them, bent them back into shape, and repainted them a luscious jadeite. Like cabinets of the 1940s and earlier, they have no toe-kicks. “We did a rubber base instead of leaving the steel exposed,” she says. “Our research showed they did that or they painted the bottom strip black.” • The Degenfelders’ only bathroom was in worse shape than their kitchen (see p. 36). Long-term leaks had rotted through the white-oak flooring to the subfloor. The remodel had involved cheap plywood installed even behind the tub. Only two things were salvageable: the door (now stripped and refinished) and the privacy-glass window. The tall bathroom cabinet came from a local house built the same year.