[mini-trad mysteries] Pantry, Service Porch; Can YOU help?

When it came time to buy our house, I had—like most shoppers—a very keen idea of exactly what I wanted.  

• Three + bedrooms
• One + bathrooms
• Built before 1950
• Ideally! built between 1890 and 1940
• With as many original, historic details intact as possible

We found that house, too.  But it wasn’t meant to be.

Instead of my dream house, we found a home that I’ve fallen in love with despite its faults.  It has the curb appeal of a shipping container, but has some really cute little details throughout.  (Including original tile in the kitchen and the bath!)

We mopped AFTERWARDS, oops

But our strange little mini-trad also has some odd mysteries about it.  

In our kitchen is a pink and beige/off-white linoleum flooring that is not original to the house.  The house was built in 1948 and based on some snooping I did, I found evidence that the original flooring is still there under the new-ish linoleum.

In our service porch is a recessed space that we use (and the previous owners used) as a pantry.  In the floor of this pantry are two small holes up against the east wall.  Gutting from the north wall is a strip where there is no linoleum and no original flooring, but it doesn’t open up to the crawl space.  Obviously, something was there when both the original flooring and the “updated” linoleum was installed.  But what?  A washer?  A sink?  

Note the shelf supports

When looking into this recessed space, it quickly becomes clear that it was updated to be a pantry.  The shelving is unsophisticated.  Wooden boards supported by slats of wood nailed to the west and east walls.  I suspect that the “pantry” shelving was installed before the linoleum was installed, but I cannot be clear.  If it was, then whatever left its “footprint” in the floor would have likely co-existed with the shelves.  Therefore, said appliance would have to have been on the short side as the lowest shelf is only about a foot and half off the floor.  And that doesn’t make sense.

I have no clear indication when the linoleum was installed, and no clear idea when the “pantry” was converted.  But it all does leave me scratching my head, that’s for sure!

For a bit of extra mystery... Notice how in this last photo the linoleum was installed either after the water heater was replaced/added, or that the heater was lifted to install the flooring.  Weird.

Haus: Dilemmas of the MiniTrad Owner

I cannot help it.  I've been thinking a LOT about paint.

Haus, Sweet Haus

When we were in the market for our new haus, I had very definite ideas about the exact sort of haus that I wanted.  It would be old (built before 1940) and it would have a lot of charm.  Instead, we bought a house built in 1948 and with the curb appeal of a plain box.  *sigh*

(Why did we buy it, then?  The neighborhood, mostly.  But the interior features several darling details and original elements that we just adored.)

Since buying the haus, I've learned a lot more about post-war architecture.  For a start, our home is transitional, but mostly Minimal Traditional in style.  Minimal Traditional, or MiniTrad, homes were pretty much exactly what it sounds like: usually single-story homes built with very minimal details, and traditional elements.  They were often small and square, wasting almost no space on hallways.  Effective, efficient, affordable housing for our returning soldiers and their families, basically.  Our home feels a touch more transitional, though, in that its footprint is longer than most, has a large kitchen and service porch, and has a very long hallway from front to back.

Most MiniTrad homes are rather plain building on the outside.  Ours, being almost all stucco, is double drab in that it's currently painted the color of sand.  And did you spy that uninspired white accent color on white trim?  Yeah, yawn....

If there is one good thing about having a home that was built in the late 40s, it's that color was starting to be all the rage in homes.  The color palette was moving away from the earthy tones that dominate the Arts and Crafts movement, choosing instead vibrant, almost painful colors.  Folks were using color to brighten their lives and to forget about the austere war years.  Yellow was very popular in interiors.  Bright blues, and even jade, started to appear on exteriors.  The homes were small enough, that such bright colors didn't look garish.

My efforts to find a suitably historic palette have not, alas, turned up a plethora of available paint.  But I did find out that Sherwin Williams does market and offer a Historic Collection.  Worse still, they have a wonky, but addicting color visualizer tool.  (Wonky in that all attempts to save images after "painted" have thus far failed, or produced buggy images.)

Still, can you imagine how much more fun my haus would look painted gold with avocado trim?  Or jade with bright blue door?

Alas, I think we will have to wait a bit.  While the wood trim is liable to need some touch-ups soon, our  financial priorities have limited our ability to purchase paint for the stucco.  Any ideas on how to brighten up our home with just a new color trim?