Vintage appliances

 

My mother would be hard pressed to locate an instruction manual of something she purchased last month.  A., shall we say, is a bit different.  He keeps all of the manuals to everything he's every purchased, neatly of course, and all in one place.

In fact, he keeps manuals to things that he didn't even buy.  Yes, that's right!  When we recently cleaned out all of the kitchen drawers prior to the renovation, we unearthed manuals and installation instructions for the major appliances—manuals that are so old and so wonderful I just have to share them here.

A. thinks his kitchen was last renovated in the early 1980s, well before he bought it.  That may be true, but the appliances seem to have been even older than that.  The stove certainly looked dated...

 

But check out the instruction manual:

Look at the food styling!  Look at the font!  That can't be from the early '80s.  Maybe the '60s?  I love the fake daisies stuck into the meat.  Centerpiece, main dish...why choose?

And here's the Magic Chef dishwasher:

What era was this?  Look at her hairdo!

There isn't a single date on any of these manuals, but they seem much older than 1980 to me.  The amazing thing is that they mostly worked: the dishwasher cranked away when, on occasion, we asked it too; the fridge hummed reliably (if inefficiently) day in and day out; and the stove offered three working burners, provided you had a pair of pliers to get around a broken knob.  Which is pretty good, I think—will the current crop of appliances last thirty or fifty years?  Somehow I doubt it.

Kitchen cabinets: to splurge, or not to splurge?

A.'s kitchen hasn't been touched since the early 80s.  It's starting to die on us—the stove has two fully working burners, a knobless one that needs to be turned on with pliers, and one that doesn't work at all, and some cabinet hinges are breaking—but for a kitchen that old, it has held up remarkably well.  The fridge and dishwasher still work (will the current fridges last thirty years?), and it doesn't look nearly as dated as you'd expect.  If you look closely you'll notice the laminate and the appliance brands that are no longer recognizable (Tappan ranges anyone?!), but if you don't look closely the kitchen still feels quite airy and fresh.  It's a rare early-80s kitchen that still doesn't look too bad.

But now we're remodeling.  New cabinets, appliances, and countertops, and a new coat of paint in the kitchen area.  Yay!

When we first started looking at the options, I fell in love with these totally splurgy cabinets from Viola Park.  To me they seem really expensive, although they're right in the middle between budget cabinets and custom ones (which are really crazy expensive).  The walnut version makes me drool:

Aren't they pretty?  I love this look.  I just love it.  The oak is nice too:

But using them would have meant an extra $5k, which, I agree, can't be justified.  A single walnut drawer unit from Viola Park is something like $1400, whereas the same unit from Ikea is about $270.  Yikes.

So we're going with Ikea, because they sell some very nice designs at a really reasonable price.  Here are the sleek Nexus brown cabinets we chose:

  

The cabinets will be installed on Monday, but the countertops will take several more weeks.  I'll post the photos when it's all done!