Discuss Ädel White bungalow kitchen on IKEAFANS.com. We're Personalizing the IKEA Experience. Ädel White bungalow kitchen - Project Blogs are returning - better than ever! Tabsets and Photosets and Notes, oh my! Forum open for POSTING!.
I seem to have deleted the mission statement. But it said something about wanting to give the kitchen as much of an early 20th century bungalow kitchen feel as possible, while adding functionality to make it easier for me to be organized, and to work in the kitchen.
List of Materials, Fixtures, Appliances, etc.
Ädel white cabinets, Domsjö double sink, Elverdam faucet, Stenstorp island, Bekvam cart, Numerar birch countertop, Perfekt open shelves, Renlig panel-ready dishwasher, various smaller fixtures such as Rationell dividers, etc.
Hi all! I am playing catch-up with this blog, since we started a while ago... but we still have lots of work to go on the project.
Our bungalow was built in 1911. In many ways, it has not been updated since then. For example, all the beautiful Craftsman woodwork in the living and dining rooms is still intact with its original 1911 coat of shellac. The bedrooms and hallways still have wonderful built-in cupboards. But the bathroom and kitchen... well.
I don't have any pictures of the kitchen when it was bad, except for some that show the one great thing left in it -- the big built in cabinet:
It needs some work, but we are keeping it forever. The rest of the kitchen, though, was ugly 1980s cheap oak cabinets, a horrible stick-on tile floor, and decades of crud.
Instead, I wanted something more like these:
Ädel White bungalow kitchen
I got the book Bungalow Kitchens years ago, after we moved in, and it became my wish book. But I didn't think we'd ever get around to actually redoing the kitchen, though it desperately needed work.
Then the stove broke. The old, awful early 1970s stove. It wasn't really worth fixing. But it turned out the part that broke couldn't be easily replaced either. So I asked for a new stove. And my crazy but wonderful husband called me over one day because he saw this on Craigslist:
"Do you want that?" he said. "Uh..." I replied.
So we went and checked it out, and decided to buy it. A cast-iron stove. I told him I wanted just one more thing -- a new floor, because the tiles were so gross that it was impossible to make the floor ever look -- or be, really -- clean. And that I was going to paint the cupboards creamy white, put on some bin pulls, and make the kitchen look a little more antique to match the stove.
And then he decided we were just going to go ahead and get new cabinets, sink, dishwasher, etc.
Next thing I know, we have a vintage icebox and plans to convert it to a fridge, and he's actually looking at IKEA cupboards and a Domsjo sink. So everything really just snowballed from there.
Now, here's the materials board for the project as it stands at the moment:
Ädel White bungalow kitchen
And here are some pics of what we have so far:
Ädel White bungalow kitchen
Ädel White bungalow kitchen
Ädel White bungalow kitchen
The sink is not under the window because it never was in this house; moving it would be more costly than we could manage. So I will live with it being next to the window. I can still turn my head a bit and see out the window while I use the sink.
The backsplash is powder-coated tin and will be put up very soon. The counter is Waterloxed birch butcher-block. Much of the room still needs to be painted... we sort of did that backwards. But that's OK.
Oh, yes, we are putting a swinging door back in where there was one originally. A lot of people would not want one these days, but we like to have the option of closing the door to the kitchen when necessary. Bungalows are pretty open (they were ahead of their time that way) but it's nice to hide the noise and mess of a kitchen away sometimes. Even though the kitchen will be beautiful now.
Truthfully, I wanted custom cabinets with inset doors in the proper early 20th century style. But the IKEA cabs look more appropriate than I would have expected, and I love the soft-close feature.
The dishwasher is the panel-ready Renlig. It fits right in! I love everything so far.
While I was researching kitchen ideas, I made a web page with a ton of pictures of 1905-1925 kitchens. If you're interested in such a thing, check it out:
Some other random stuff about the kitchen, for background info. I am sorry, I get a little wordy. I should have been writing this blog all along instead of waiting until now to catch-up! There are not many places where I get to talk about my kitchen.
The original kitchen in 1911 did not have any cabinets other than the one big built-in on the other side of the room. The sink was in the corner, a wall--mounted sink, probably the kind with an integral drainboard on either one or both sides, and legs! (The link I posted earlier to "A Model Kitchen" shows a bunch of them like that.) It is sort of strange that it was not under the window even then. On the rest of that side of the room there must have been free-standing furniture, if anything.
One basic principle we have is to not do any damage to the house's original elements if possible, and to restore whenever we can. Adding IKEA cabs and a tin backsplash will not damage what was on that wall originally, though it will cover it, and a later owner (or us, someday) can restore it better. That wall, along with all the walls in the kitchen, had a faux tile plaster wainscoting. The original builders scored lines in the plaster to make it look like tiles, then painted it with shiny gloss enamel. We restored the faux tile near the stove, but are covering it around the sink and cabinets with the tin. We'll restore it where it's visible around the rest of the room, though.
Also, though the rest of the kitchen will have creamy white trim, I can't bear to paint the wood around the windows. It is old-growth Douglas Fir, with its original coat of 1911 shellac, still in excellent condition. The house is 98 years old and I can't bear to be the one who paints over that wood. And the rest of the wood in the room has been painted over many times, and I don't want to strip it all. Too dark. So the windows will look different from the other trim, and it will just have to be a quirk of the house...
We uncovered the original linoleum. It was a marbled green with bits of butter yellow and even red specks! It was beautiful, but the condition was not salvageable. It broke my heart, but we tore it out. The good thing is that we got the red Marmoleum and I love it to death.
The old cabs covered a heat vent in the floor that was next to the stove. It was covered with a chunk of plywood and then plastered over. (Wouldn't the wood be a fire hazard?) We opened it up again and found a metal vent grate at Earthwise salvage that fit perfectly and matches the existing one in the bathroom.
The original built-in has had replacement doors, unfortunately. With the money saved by doing the rest of the kitchen IKEA, we hope to be able to afford some custom doors to restore the built-in.
At the right end of the pictures above (not included in the
pic
), is a wall with a back door, a fridge alcove, and some built-in cabs around the fridge area. They are newer than the other built-in, probably 1950s vintage, but we like them and will keep them, just painting them. They won't match door styles, though I guess we could try making replacement doors for them too. In the back of one of those cabs you can see where there was a milk or ice delivery door in the wall!
The layout of the kitchen has probably changed very little from 1911 until now. The stove has always been where it is now, and the sink has always been near the corner. The thing is, the room, roughly 11'x14', has 4 (!) doorways and a row of 3 windows, and a built-in takes up all of one wall. This means that, without major structural change, there is really not any way to change the layout all that much. We don't want to make any structural change. One very good reason is because the other side of the wall with the stove on it now is the dining room, which is surrounded with beautiful mahogany-colored wooden wainscoting and a plate rail, all still in original finish -- so obviously we want to keep that and never damage it.
So, despite my best attempts at shaking things up in the IKEA planner, we ended up right back at the same layout it had before -- except no cabs around the stove (no room now with the bigger stove, and it would look funny with the antique-style stove), and we put cabs all the way to the ceiling above the sink, and the cabs themselves have different features and will hopefully be more functional.
When this is done, I hope to do the bathroom. Unfortunately, it was more "modernized" than the kitchen, and we have very little budget left, but I have some good ideas for a low-budget renovation. Soon.
That is so cute! I love that light fixture. I am torn between that kind of schoolhouse fixture and those modern/artsandcrafts style ones in my project blog. It is great that you have elements worth saving in your old house. My house never had much and what it did have it long gone. But is it a problem to have that cute stove off by itself without counters next to it. It looks authentic that way, but does it work?
I can hardly wait to see how the rest comes together!
That is so cute! I love that light fixture. I am torn between that kind of schoolhouse fixture and those modern/artsandcrafts style ones in my project blog. It is great that you have elements worth saving in your old house. My house never had much and what it did have it long gone. But is it a problem to have that cute stove off by itself without counters next to it. It looks authentic that way, but does it work?
Thanks! As far as the stove goes, it's not a problem -- notice that the burners are all on the left side, and the right side is a small worktop, so that serves pretty well. On the left side of the stove now is a Bekvam cart, and when the kitchen is finished, there will be a Stenstorp island within reach, too. I've been cooking with the stove for a few weeks now and it seems fine.
Just to the right of the stove as you see it there is a doorway. So there wasn't much more that could be done with that wall unless we got a different stove. Which would have been less fun.
Today we cut the tin ceiling tiles for the backsplash. They are from American Tin Ceilings in Creamy White Satin. Materials were less than $100.
Currently the tiles are tacked in place with little linoleum nails (we needed to do this to make sure we were cutting them correctly and they would fit properly). Next, we will take them back down and put them up properly with Liquid Nails and some more linoleum nails (and touch up the nails with some white paint). So the seams are more visible now than they will be later, I think.
In other words, this isn't the finished backsplash, but it looks pretty close to what it will look like. We also have to get some moldings for wherever any raw tin edges might show, but there aren't many places where they will be visible.
Love it! The links were great- I really like that you're investigating the past like this!!
Here's a kitchen that I saw in a very expensive bungalow in Minneapolis set in probably the most desired part of town- it's been in the same family apparently for 112 years... 3686307_3.jpg
We are the premier IKEA Kitchen Installer in Massachusetts. Our company offers complete in-house design service followed by an impeccable installation.
Custom. IKEA. Doors. The idea for Semihandmade came from a desire to offer the same craftsmanship we produce in our Los Angeles-based Handmade studio to a wider audience, at a lower price.
Our House ‘takes the pain’ out of the design and installation process by providing hassle-free service every step of the way. Serving CT and the greater NYC area.
Treasure the people in your life, not your possessions. 
Too dark. So the windows will look different from the other trim, and it will just have to be a quirk of the house...
